Industry Pulse: October 2009

ATLANTA – As the medical office building (MOB) sector has grown up in recent years – some healthcare real estate veterans say the sector was a non-sector until the early 2000s – one aspect of it continues to be elusive: comprehensive data. While there are definitely people and companies in certain cities and geographic markets that follow and compile MOB statistics quite closely, there still seems to be a long way to go. In Atlanta, a team of people with Richard Bowers & Co. is close to completing a database with a comprehensive listing of all of the MOBs available for sale or lease in metro Atlanta. Richard Smith Jr., a broker with the firm, is leading the effort, which is called Medical Office Buildings of Atlanta. According to a recent blog on the Web site, at www.mobatl.blogspot.com, the area has more than 430 medical office properties. The staff is taking pictures of all of the properties and setting up a mapping program. The listing also includes all of medical practices and tenants in each of the properties. “Our vision is to provide complete and free access to all medical office building data with the ability to look up property details at your convenience … on your time,” according to the Web site. Other tidbits from the site include various reports about the area’s MOB sector. For example, Medical Office Buildings of Atlanta recently reported that MOB deliveries for coming months are at historic lows. Projections show that in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2009 there will be 100,490 square feet of new MOB space delivered to the market. In Q1 2010, that is projected to drop to 34,060 square feet. These figures are drastically lower than during an MOB