The 50 top-selling U.S. master-planned communities (MPCs) during 2018 surpassed their sales totals for the previous year by an average of 5 percent, according to data from RCLCO Real Estate Advisors. The top two communities were both in Florida: the Villages, with 2,134 home sales, is once again the top-selling community in the country, followed by Sarasota, Florida’s Lakewood Ranch.

Stakeholders who have worked to push for more affordable housing know firsthand that it can often be a contentious issue. But what if there were a way to avoid strategies that “backfire” and instead leverage more effective messaging to build public will and get people excited about providing high-quality housing for everyone? Advocates for more affordable housing described what methods are working for them, including the recent zoning changes in Minneapolis, at a recent ULI Minnesota event.

A number of cities in the U.S. Northeast are supplanting outdated office product with new thanks to strong, diversified economies; vigorous job creation; and increasing formation of businesses. Further driving development in the Northeast—New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey—is continuing demand from the education and medicine (“eds and meds”) and technology sectors, among others.

While new office space paradigms are emerging in response to changes in technology and work styles, there is no consensus about the “best” future for workspace. A panel of real estate investors, occupiers, and corporate real estate experts discussed the future of workspace at the ULI Japan Fall Conference, held in Tokyo in November.

As part of the release of Emerging Trends in Real Estate ^® 2019, ULI Philadelphia gathered a panel of industry leaders to talk about what is working and what is not for their sectors both in Philadelphia and other parts of the eastern United States.

According to data from Yardi Matrix, the average size of a new U.S. apartment has shrunk 5 percent over the last 10 years, while the average price has risen 28 percent. The average floor plan of a new apartment measures 941 square feet (87.4 sq m), but that is still larger than the overall average of 882 square feet (82 sq m).

With rising demand for small cohousing units, developers in Asia embrace the for-rent market.

The workplace of the future needs to provide flexibility and wellness in order to drive innovation, said a design expert giving a keynote at the 2018 ULI Japan Fall Conference in Tokyo.

Housing affordability has become one of the most talked-about land use issues in virtually every major urban center in North America. Less focus has been directed to the lack of affordable housing options in small towns and rural areas, despite a significant need that spans the demographic spectrum.

The ever-increasing traffic congestion in South Florida, a region that includes Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties, has not gone unnoticed by either local officials or private companies, both of which have been working on solutions to traffic woes for years. At ULI South Florida/Caribbean’s ULI Miami Investor Symposium in late October, two speakers—one from government and another from the private sector—laid out their plans to alleviate some of the congestion.