Elizabeth Razzi

Elizabeth Razzi served as editor in chief of Urban Land from 2011-2021. She has been a writer and an editor for The Washington Post, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, and other publications.

Incoming Global Chair Peter Ballon shares why he first got involved in ULI and what he sees as the Institute’s top priorities for his two-year term.
To win the war for talent in a post-pandemic environment, employers and landlords will seek to provide highly amenitized spaces that will lure workers away from their homes. But it remains to be seen how that expense will be paid for—and whether lenders will give due credit to those amenities when determining property values, a panel of four experts in U.S. office markets concluded during the ULI Virtual Spring Meeting.
Peter Ballon, global head of real estate for CPPIB Investments, kicked off the 2021 ULI Virtual Spring Meeting with a keynote panel of industry leaders from Europe, the Asia Pacific region, and the Americas discussing global capital flows.
Because their decisions are lasting, real estate professionals must lead the way to cutting carbon emissions by 50 percent in this decade and by 100 percent by 2050, Spencer Glendon, senior fellow at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, told participants during the 2020 ULI Virtual Fall Meeting. He exhorted real estate leaders to pressure others for change, even to beg for regulation, in order to avoid potentially chaotic migrations as people eventually abandon areas rendered undesirable or even uninhabitable by rising temperatures and drought. “You can’t do this alone. You must demand better regulation,” he said.
The ULI Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate’s latest semiannual consensus forecast of real estate and economic indicators anticipates a 5 percent decline in real gross domestic product (GDP) for this year, with increases of 3.6 percent and 3.2 percent in 2021 and 2022, respectively. The semiannual survey based on the median of the forecasts from 43 economists and analysts at 37 leading real estate organizations completed in late September through early October, also anticipates this year’s unemployment rate to be 8 percent, declining to 6.6 percent in 2021 and 5.5 percent the following year.
Prospects for economic recovery may be slow and uneven over the next couple of years, experts said during a State of the Industry panel at the 2020 ULI Virtual Fall Meeting.
Two Heitman executives explained how their firm applies climate risk analysis—at both the asset level and the community level—when evaluating investments. They spoke on a Virtual Fall Meeting panel announcing a new research report, Climate Risk and Real Estate: Emerging Practices for Market Assessment, recently issued by ULI and Heitman.
The events of 2020 so far have been turning us all into masters of resilience. The Fall issue of Urban Landis available for members to access on Knowledge Finder.
While the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing recession have spurred ULI members to act quickly to adjust their business practices, a significant number of respondents to an Urban Landreader poll say they expect the real estate business to do better during this recession than during the Great Recession of 2007–2009. And a majority see opportunities for growth.
Anthony “Tony” Williams, who served as the mayor of Washington, D.C., from 1999 to 2007, has been awarded the 2020 ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.
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