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Real estate dealmakers look forward to a much busier 2025. High interest rates and uncertainty have choked markets for commercial real estate since rates began their relentless rise two years ago. In 2024, banks and other lenders struggled to underwrite new loans and refinance expiring ones. Potential buyers and sellers argued about the value of assets.

In Lafayette, Louisiana, homelessness and the lack of affordable housing are creating strain, prompting NIMBYism among community members and leaving civic leaders uncertain of a clear path forward. Understanding this challenge and the tension it can create throughout a city, ULI members gathered community members and leaders to dig into the difficult challenge of housing the city’s unhoused and most vulnerable residents. Supported by the ULI Homeless to Housed (H2H) grant initiative, Catholic Charities of Acadiana in Lafayette and ULI Louisiana gathered more than 300 residents for a series of community workshops to better understand the challenge and to outline pathways toward more deeply affordable housing and services for people most in need.

As California pushes toward a clean energy future, the city of San José has emerged as a leader in building electrification, offering valuable lessons for other cities nationwide. With residential buildings representing the largest source of natural gas use in the city, San José’s initiatives aim to reshape how these buildings are powered while prioritizing community needs, equity, and affordable housing. In 2022, ULI partnered with San Jose on an Advisory Services Panel (ASP) to inform this policy direction for multifamily buildings of all types. The aim of the ASP was to support the city in enabling property owners to step up their electrification retrofit efforts, encourage the adoption of on-site solar and batteries, and move the market forward.

Increasingly, such disasters as storms, wildfires, pandemics, and flooding are spurring cities across the United States to prioritize resiliency. Coastal communities throughout Florida know the urgency firsthand. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, many Florida communities were isolated in 2024 when hurricanes and other weather-related events closed roads and cut off power. Our most vulnerable populations took an especially hard hit. Planners, academics, and community members are rethinking how to elevate their response and help communities become more resilient. Could one answer be on four wheels and a chassis?

One of Singapore’s most vibrant districts demonstrates how public/private partnerships and the community can shape the built environment.

Governments, businesses, and communities need to collaborate to reduce carbon emissions to ensure that decarbonisation is not just a buzzword.

Held in fast-paced and bustling Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in mid-November, ULI Asia Pacific’s REImagine 2024 brought together more than 100 professionals in a uniquely engaging way.

For two hundred years, the Warsaw Citadel at the heart of Poland’s capital was a restricted military and administrative area, cut off from public access. With the recent opening of the Polish History Museum, as well as the new Polish Army Museum, the 19th-century fortress’ 74-acre (30 ha) grounds now serve as a multifunctional cultural and educational facility and park that preserves and showcases the country’s heritage.

10 museum buildings strengthen ties to communities and the public realm

Estimates suggest that, on any given night, almost 800 individuals are unsheltered, and more than 3,700 are living in emergency or transitional housing in Philadelphia. Homelessness can often be connected to difficulties in finding affordable housing.

The Covid-19 pandemic led to a foundational shift in how and where people work. As the real estate industry has sought to better understand how the pandemic has affected cities as a whole, the concept of the “urban doom loop” has frequently been mentioned as one of the most negative effects of the global health crisis, particularly in the U.S.

As the real estate industry accelerates its net zero journey, reducing embodied carbon has become a critical focus. Embodied carbon represents the carbon emissions tied to material extraction, production, transportation, disposal, and building construction. These emissions account for 11 percent of global annual carbon emissions and up to 50 percent of a building’s total emissions over its lifetime.

Although market dynamics are changing in countries across Asia, new opportunities are opening up in real estate investment

Four experts discuss how to rebuild urban cores by bringing the public and private sectors together to create thriving downtowns that entice remote workers to return to the office and broaden the mix of uses.

Consumers have kept a steady foot on the gas this year. A record-high 197 million consumers shopped in stores or online over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). The NRF forecasts that holiday sales will grow between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent, with total retail spending in the United States falling between $979.5 billion and $989 billion during November and December. That forecast also is consistent with NRF’s annual U.S. sales growth—between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent—for 2024.

The U.S. economy did very well in 2024, said Barbara Denham, lead economist for Oxford Economics, and the forecast for the coming year is more of the same—both in New York City and across North America. However, in presenting Oxford’s favorable economic forecast for 2025 at a ULI New York event last month, Denham also noted many caveats ahead of the incoming U.S. administration.

The ULI Foundation Honor Roll recognizes donors based upon their cumulative lifetime giving. The ULI Foundation’s recognition societies honor and thank members and friends who have committed to supporting the Urban Land Institute generously and consistently. Members of these societies enjoy several benefits, including invitations to member-exclusive events and ULI Foundation communications.

Eight months after the devastating 1995 bombing, a 13-member panel delivered a report detailing downtown redevelopment strategies.

Multifamily experts gathered at the University of Southern California to highlight where denser construction is creating affordability.

The transformation of Indianapolis’s historic Coca-Cola bottling plant into the Bottleworks District represents one of Indiana’s most ambitious adaptive use projects.

ULI has selected Rick Reinhard, principal of Niagara Consulting Group, as the recipient of the 2023–2024 ULI Apgar Thought Leader Award, which recognizes the authors of outstanding works written for Urban Land magazine.

Conducted in October, the Emerging Trends in Real Estate® survey ranked Tokyo (1), Osaka (2), Sydney (3), and Singapore (4) as the four cities with the best investment prospects for the region. However, MSCI data and anecdotal reports reveal that market disparities are profoundly evident across both geographies and sectors in Asia Pacific.

A new initiative aimed at promoting low-carbon steel in China’s real estate sector has been launched, co-convened by ULI Greenprint, the World Steel Association, and the China Iron and Steel Association. This collaboration unites major real estate developers and steel manufacturers to drive the transition to low-carbon steel production, with the goal of significantly reducing emissions in Mainland China and Hong Kong. China’s steel industry plays a pivotal role in global efforts to combat climate change.

Hurricanes damage and disrupt communities, properties, and economies in various ways, whether direct, indirect, or both. Translating these impacts into credit risk and other financial implications can be complex. However, a range of tools and analyses enables lenders, investors, and developers to pre-emptively anticipate hurricane damage when a storm approaches, as well as to adjust long-term strategy to mitigate risks and seize opportunities over time.

On September 30, 2024, green banks, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), nonprofits, tribal organizations, state and local governments, and coalitions nationwide received funding from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a historic $27 billion investment by the United States federal government to mobilize private capital to combat the climate crisis. As the GGRF is activated, Americans have an array of policies, standards, tools, and data, plus more than a decade of experience, as well as much greater political support for action on climate and social equity issues.

During his keynote address at the 2024 ULI Singapore Annual Conference, more than 300 participants gathered at the Parkroyal Collection Marina Bay to hear Olivier Lim, chairman of StarHub and the Singapore Tourism Board—based upon his 35 years of experience in real estate, banking, and leadership—how land and real estate shaped Singapore’s path as a nation.

With insights and research from a ULI Technical Advisory Panel and ULI’s Terwilliger Center, the Austin Housing Conservancy fund, a revolutionary approach to preserving workforce housing, was born. Now known as the Texas Housing Conservancy, the fund became the nation’s first to combine a nonprofit investment manager, Affordable Central Texas, with an open-end private equity fund.

At ULI Chicago’s October gathering at the new 73-story 1000M apartment tower, located at 1000 S. Michigan Ave., key members of the building’s development, architecture and construction teams hosted a tour of the project and enlightened attendees with a panel discussion on the history behind the skyscraper’s signature cantilever.

Experts from Hines, JBG Smith, and Gensler anchored a McKinsey & Company panel, Reimagining mixed-use districts: strategies for new developments in an ever-changing world, at the 2024 ULI Fall Meeting last month. Panelists explored innovative ideas and case studies to illustrate how to make complex mixed-use projects work in today’s market.

After a quiet first half of 2024, CMBS originations increased 59 percent in Q3 on a year-over-year basis, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Quarterly Survey.