ULI full member Christopher Coeshas jointly published a multimedia essay through the Brookings Institution titled “ The Great Real Estate Reset,” which cites the cyclical nature of the U.S. real estate industry as a whole and the opportunity to think differently in the year ahead given the current economic situation.
The essay notes that real estate is the largest single asset class in the United States, representing over 40 percent of private assets nationally, followed by bonds, stocks, and cash.
“Our built environment is an expression of health, innovation, community, and culture. It is a physical reflection and embodiment of the human experience, its values, and its aspirations—and the ways they have evolved over time, for better and for worse,” the essay states.
“For generations, the presumptive American real estate consumer has been a middle-class white family—a fact that is reflected in the products, pricing, planning, and public policies that form the baseline of industry practice. But today, five converging trends are disrupting this market fundamental: persistent segregation by race and income, the demographic transformation of America, destabilized regional housing markets, the future of work, and disruptions to the retail ecosystem. Thus far, the real estate industry has only responded at the margins to these trends.”
Coes is a member of ULI’s Transit-Oriented Development Council and a nonresident fellow of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. It has been announced that Coes will be joining the Biden administration as principal deputy assistant secretary for transportation policy at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Coes’s coauthors are Jennifer S. Vey, senior fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, and Tracy Hadden Loh, a Brookings fellow.
