Market Trends
In September 2022, ULI honored architect Jeanne Gang with the ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development. Gang is the founding principal and partner of Studio Gang, an architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago, with offices in New York City, San Francisco, and Paris.
ULI Asia Pacific Young Leaders hosted a forum on housing attainability in May with a focus on Australia, China, and Singapore. The event started with a short presentation by Ken Rhee, Senior Director of ULI China and the primary author of the newly released 2023 ULI Asia Pacific Home Attainability Index.
At the recent 2023 ULI Spring Meeting in Toronto, panelists noted that transaction volumes have dropped significantly with the slowing of lending and bank failures.
Participants in a recent ULI webinar highlighted a new research report, Bridging the Occupier Landlord Gap for the Future of Workspace, which analyzes how changing occupier behavior and broader macroeconomic trends are affecting the demand for office space.
The Real Estate Economic Forecast, produced by the ULI Center for Real Estate Economics and Capital Markets, is based on a survey conducted in April 2023 of 41 economists and analysts at 37 leading real estate organizations. According to the survey, the U.S. economy will slow in 2023 and 2024, with recovery expected to begin in 2025. The real estate market will follow suit, with flat to negative results over the next two years, followed by mostly positive news in 2025.
AFIRE, the association for international real estate investors focused on commercial property in the United States, has released its AFIRE International Investor Survey: Q1 2023 Pulse Report, underwritten by Holland Partner Group. U.S. market shows stability as a preferred global destination for investment with allocations up 6 percent from 2022, relative to a 5 percent decline in European investment.
A ULI webinar in December focused on the role of commercial real estate in fulfilling the vision of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, with leading companies pledging to net-zero operations as soon as 2025.
The ULI/Allen Matkins Capital Markets Roundtable, now in its eighth year, brings together investors, developers, lenders, managers, and intermediaries to share insights and perspectives on the current and future outlook for real estate capital markets. topics discussed included which sectors of the market are strong, which should be avoided; and what the thoughts and strategies of some major players in real estate financing and investing are for the coming year.
Real estate economists offered a less optimistic forecast of the near-term U.S. real estate and economic environment compared with six months ago, downgrading predictions for a wide range of economic, capital market, and real estate variables. Some of the biggest changes to forecasts included 2023 gross domestic product, job growth, and private real estate returns, according to the Fall 2022 ULI Real Estate Economic Forecast.
ULI and PwC US has released Emerging Trends in Real Estate ® 2023, an annual report highlighting the trends shaping the real estate industry. Insights from the report reconfirm two bifurcated market trends: aspects of the real estate industry are “normalizing” and reverting to pre-COVID patterns while others have permanently shifted to the “new normal” that was adopted with the pandemic.
The Dodge Momentum Index, a monthly measure of the initial report for nonresidential building projects, improved 5.7 percent in September from the revised August reading. In September, the commercial component of the index rose 2.9 percent, while the institutional component also increased, seeing a double-digit gain of 11.7 percent.
Building on the 2020 pilot and 2021 update focused on the COVID-19 pandemic’s implications for housing, the 2022 edition of the index explores the attainability implications of shifts in housing demand and regional competitiveness due to demographic changes, pandemic-influenced employer and employee location decisions, and the high cost of both building and finding homes in the largest and most economically vibrant regions.
In the context of an economic shock from the outbreak of war in Ukraine and continuing inflationary concerns, Emerging Trends in Real Estate ® Global Outlook 2022focuses on the global outlook for the real estate industry increasing pressure for finance to support the decarbonization of real estate. The industry challenges lenders and their regulators to provide debt for the retrofit of existing buildings and the scale-up of the “climate tech” needed.
ULI MEMBER–ONLY CONTENT: How can urban cores rebound from the pandemic? Members of ULI’s Urban Revitalization councils discuss the pandemic’s potential long-term effects on development in urban cores, opportunities for creative redevelopment, steps that municipalities can take, ways to enhance resilience in urban cores, and other trends.
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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.
Renters are now the majority in more than 100 U.S. suburbs that were previously homeowner territory 10 years ago, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by Yardi’s RentCafé. Another 57 suburbs are expected to follow suit in the next five years, with many of these suburbs belonging to the Miami, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles metro areas.
The real estate industry can simultaneously combat inequality and boost property values by improving broadband access, according to a new ULI report. Broadband and Real Estate: Understanding the Opportunity, from the Institute’s Curtis Infrastructure Initiative, makes clear that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but a necessity for participating in society and the economy.
The Dodge Momentum Index fell to 155.8 in July, a 6 percent decline from the revised June reading of 164.9. The index, issued by Dodge Data and Analytics, is a monthly measure of the initial report for nonresidential building projects in planning, which has been shown to lead construction spending for nonresidential buildings by a full year. The two components of the index fell in July—commercial planning by 3 percent and institutional planning by 9 percent.
History shows that well-managed cities are resilient to the ravages of pandemics and will evolve to become even more resilient, economist Ed Glaeser told attendees at the 2021 ULI Asia Pacific Summit.
Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, warns of the danger of significant inflation and calls for a more comprehensive policy approach that speaks to both the supply and demand sides of the economy.
ULI OnPoint, which first launched in January, was adapted and tailored for the Asia Pacific region in March.
While many businesses in the United States have been coping with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic for a year or longer, the broader availability of vaccines and a rebounding global economy are cause for more optimism than skepticism across the real estate industry, said industry leaders participating in a recent ULI webinar. Industrial, self-storage, and single-family rentals have been some of the sectors surging, while laggard sectors are still betting on a burgeoning recovery.
As the new appointees at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development settle into their roles, they face challenges both old and new. Ethan Handelman, the new deputy assistant secretary of the agency’s Office of Multifamily Housing Programs, addressed the 2021 ULI Housing Opportunity Conference in March.
Northern Italy, one of the hardest-hit areas during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, is poised to come out of the pandemic far stronger, with a greater emphasis on green space and social cohesion, said Pierfrancesco Maran, deputy mayor for urban planning, green areas, and agriculture of the municipality of Milan, speaking at the 2021 ULI Virtual Europe Conference.
The Villages, a retiree-focused community northwest of Orlando, in 2020 once again topped RCLCO’s listing of the 50 top-selling U.S. master-planned communities. Total new home sales among the communities were 20 percent higher in 2020 than the previous year, RCLCO reported.
ULI MEMBER–ONLY CONTENT: As climate change puts coastal areas at risk from rising seas and subjects Sun Belt and Southeast cities to hotter temperatures, some of their residents may go elsewhere. Experts say it is time to start preparing.
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Europe’s property sector is in the midst of a cyclical downturn that is coinciding with long-term structural changes in real estate, according to the 18th edition of the Emerging Trends in Real Estate ® Europereport. However, according to the PwC and ULI survey of almost 1,000 industry leaders across Europe, real estate generally is seen as one of the few asset classes to generate acceptable returns at a time of low or negative interest rates.
U.S. real estate economists predict generally improved economic and property market news for the rest of 2020, as well as for the following two years, compared with their forecasts of six months ago, according to the fall 2020 ULI Real Estate Economic Forecast.
Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor in chief of the Economist, outlined several trends accelerated by the global COVID-19 pandemic in a presentation at the 2020 ULI Virtual Fall Meeting.
