Could ownership of 250- to 400-square-foot (23 to 37 sq m) homes help low-income people acquire an asset and begin to accrue wealth? Panelists at the 2018 ULI Spring Meeting said it is certainly an idea worth trying.

Companies may be starting to see that squeezing more employees into less space is starting to be counterproductive, but panelists at ULI’s 2018 Spring Meeting agreed that expansive offices were largely a thing of the past, especially with wireless communications and cloud-based applications increasingly allowing employees to get much of their work done off site.

Like many areas of the United States, California is facing a housing affordability crisis in its most populous area, and the San Francisco Bay area is ground zero, with sky-high rents and housing prices. To help address the issue, ULI San Francisco created the Housing the Bay initiative in early 2017. Through research, events, and workshops, the initiative aims to explore the underlying causes of the Bay Area’s high housing costs and inadequate housing supply and propose solutions.

In many ways, San Diego illustrates the challenges facing many attractive U.S. cities, including the demand for affordable housing, struggling retail, and the need for more senior housing. At the top of the list is a strong community wariness of any new development, which has made it difficult to build meaningful mixed-use projects, said speakers during a January panel discussion organized by ULI San Diego–Tijuana.

Innovations in sensors, digital tech, and the “internet of things” (IoT) have created connected buildings that are becoming standard fare today. That evolution in building tech is generating more operating efficiencies—and opening the door to bigger cyber security risks.

Most hotels in the United States operate under the umbrella of large hospitality chains such as Hilton or Marriott. But today’s hotel owners and investors are increasingly flying solo, eschewing big-brand affiliations to create their own independent identities.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the median size of a new single-family home declined for the first time since 2009, slipping 2 percent to 2,422 square feet (225 sq m) in 2016. This is only the third time in the last 20 years that it has fallen, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

U.S. multifamily rents increased in May for the third month in a row, according to Yardi Matrix’s monthly survey of 121 markets, but the rate of growth continues to decelerate. On a year-over-year basis, U.S. monthly rents were up 1.5 percent nationwide in May. The year-over-year growth rate has decreased for 13 straight months since peaking at 5.4 percent in April 2016.

What is the fastest-growing means of transportation in the United States? The bicycle, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. People bike for many reasons—better health, recreation, transportation, to save money, to run errands. But the biggest reason that bicycling is booming in the United States is the growth in bicycle infrastructure.

As job growth in the professional services sector has increased substantially over the past several years, office real estate investment trusts (REITs) have benefited from strong leasing fundamentals. However, more office construction and oversupply concentrated in major metro areas such as New York City, Houston, and Washington, D.C., continue to concern those in the market. Plus, interest rate survey data from Trepp.