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Beth Mattson-Teig

Beth Mattson-Teig is a freelance business writer and editor based in Minneapolis. She specializes in commercial real estate and finance topics. Mattson-Teig writes for several national business and industry publications and is the author of numerous white papers.

A common phrase heard during the pandemic is that people cannot wait to get back to normal. “If there is anything that we know now, it is that normal just doesn’t work for far too many people,” said Julia Stasch, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, moderator of a ULI Fall Meeting general session titled “Build Back Better: The Mandate and the Opportunity,” featuring Brookings Institution vice president and director Amy Liu, and founder and chairman of PSP Partners and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Administration Penny Pritzker.
Despite potential storm clouds ahead, survey results from the Emerging Trends in Real Estate ® United States and Canada 2022report show strong optimism.
Despite a forecast for higher inflation and rising interest rates, experts continue to have a favorable view on returns and performance for commercial real estate. However, the high tide of the improving economy is not raising all boats to the same level. There remains a clear bifurcation across and within property sectors.
The pandemic is a bit like jury duty: no one quite knows just how long it’s going to last. That analogy set the stage Tuesday morning for a panel discussion titled “Economic Outlook and What It Means for Real Estate”—with a keynote by Austan Goolsbee, professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, followed by a discussion with Constance Moore, former president and chief executive officer of BRE Properties and a ULI trustee and governor, and Roy March, chief executive officer of Eastdil Secured, also a ULI governor.
A recent ULI webinar—with member speakers from ULI Toronto, ULI British Columbia, and ULI Alberta—addressed what leading real estate companies are doing to decarbonize their operations and development in anticipation of regulatory requirements.
As is common in the infrastructure and regulatory world, economic analysis is increasingly being used in the real estate industry to provide quantifiable insights into the long-term outcomes of design and investment strategies related to owner, occupant, and community impacts. Companies are using evidence-based research to understand how changes in the workplace can have a direct impact on both employee well-being and bottom-line financials.
Many owners have already picked off the low-hanging fruit of installing LEDs, and upgrading equipment where budgets allow. Modernization—and specifically, the ability to leverage tools to take a deeper, more granular dive and capture more operational data—is allowing owners to identify hidden inefficiencies, reduce energy use, and boost net operating income.
The latest “Real Estate Economic Forecast,” produced by the ULI Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate, points to a U.S. economy that has likely already hit bottom, with growth resuming in the second half of the year that will soften some of the blow. Panelists on a ULI webinar said that this outlook comes with crossed fingers due to uncertainty related to the path of COVID-19 and the time it takes to develop an effective vaccine.
Multifamily property managers in the United States are developing a new playbook to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. The primary focus for apartment owners and managers is making sure their residents and employees are safe. At the same time, the industry is very much in the customer service business.
The latest research from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies highlights a problem that many communities are experiencing firsthand—that the cost burden for rental housing is expanding and pushing higher up the income ladder to affect middle-income households more significantly.
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