The hotel industry in the United States faces complex challenges in 2025, according to Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality analytics for the CoStar Group. During the “State of the U.S. Hotel Industry” presentation at the ULI 2025 Spring Meeting in Denver, Colorado, Freitag highlighted the challenges facing the hotel business amid macroeconomic uncertainty.

Once a sprawling expanse of uncharted land, Las Vegas, Nevada, has evolved into the entertainment capital of the world, a gaming super-hub, and a premier destination for sports. This remarkable transformation didn’t happen overnight; it stemmed from decades of strategic planning, investment, and visionary zoning recommendations.

Las Vegas is unlike any other place in America. Each year it draws more than 40 million visitors to the dazzling casinos and hotels that “turn night into daytime”—and transform the city into a glittering jewel in the desert. With 164,000 hotel rooms, Las Vegas is the largest hospitality market in the U.S.—outpacing Orlando, Florida, the next biggest market, by approximately 15 percent, according to JLL.

Standing in the shadow of Regions Field and within earshot of Railroad Park, Birmingham’s Urban Supply hints at what the next chapter of downtown life could look like. Once-quiet brick warehouses are being steadily reimagined into patios, storefronts, and gathering spaces along a new pedestrian alley. Early tenants have begun to open their doors, and programming is slowly bringing people into the district. While the project is still in its early stages, the framework is in place for a vibrant hub that will grow block by block in the years ahead.

What trends are shaping the future of the industrial sector? Four experts from ULI’s Industrial and Office Park Development Council talk about the industrial submarkets and property types that offer the greatest opportunities, challenges developers face in bringing new projects to market, ways artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are reshaping the sector, tenant priorities, and other key trends.

After a quiet first half of 2024, CMBS originations increased 59 percent in Q3 on a year-over-year basis, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Quarterly Survey.

As aging retail continue to evolve, one increasingly popular trend has been to redesign malls as town centers—recalling a time when such commercial districts were the heart and soul of a community. Mall–to–town center retrofits are emerging throughout the nation, especially in suburban communities, where pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environments are highly attractive to millennials now raising families.

Many mixed-use projects get the hardware right. They feature a thoughtful mix of uses, beautiful buildings, and name-brand tenants. Far fewer get the “software” right—the pedestrian flow, the plaza experience, the hospitality-level service, and all the subtle details that turn a mixed-use project into something more. These elements transform a development into a vibrant, urbanesque destination—one that delivers on the promise of being a true community gathering place.

In Midtown Atlanta, the Georgia Institute of Technology Foundation is turning the 100-year-old former Biltmore hotel into a mecca for incubating technology startup ventures.

Currently, vacancy rates in the Washington, D.C. area are around 20 percent, in line with the national average. The nationwide housing shortage, meanwhile, has hit a record high of 4.7 million homes, despite a five-year uptrend in new construction. The deficit is particularly pronounced in highly desirable urban and inner-suburban locations such as Alexandria, Virginia.

The mission of the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has been to ensure that everyone has a home that meets their needs at a price they can afford. Established in 2007 with a gift from longtime member and former ULI chairman J. Ronald Terwilliger, the Center’s activities include technical assistance engagements, forums and convenings, research and publications, and an awards program. The goal is to catalyze the production and preservation of a full spectrum of housing options.

In the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, two not-for-profit organizations—Fresh Hope Communities, the public benevolent institution entity of churches of Christ in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory; and Nightingale Housing of Brunswick, Victoria—came together to develop a building that holds 54 units renting at 80 percent of market rates, as well as two community-focused commercial spaces. The Churches of Christ Property Trust has provided a 99-year lease for the land, which allows the units to remain affordable far beyond a more typical 10-year period.

In the heart of London’s Covent Garden neighborhood, a complex of five Victorian-era structures—previously home to a seed merchant company, a brass and iron foundry, and a Nonconformist chapel, among other uses—have been restored and adapted into a single, cohesive office building with ground-floor retail and dining space. The three-year restoration preserved the property’s industrial heritage, yet it provides enough flexibility to meet the needs of today’s workforce.

A growing body of research indicates that physical space profoundly affects our brain health. The capacity of our buildings and public spaces to be regenerative in that regard remains largely untapped, however. The key resources for developing brain capital are brain skills—cognitive processes such as memory, attention, and critical thinking; and brain health—the overall functioning of an individual’s brain throughout that person’s life.

ULI San Francisco and the Civic Joy Fund have announced the winners of the Market Street Reimagined competition. This international competition of ideas, which attracted 173 submissions from nine countries, challenged entrants to create a new vision for the city’s main thoroughfare that would draw more visitors and businesses to the area. A distinguished jury, hosted by San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie, divided the $100,000 prize among the winning teams and designated eight additional entries as honorable mentions.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed the nearly 900-page One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4. The budget reconciliation legislation extends numerous provisions included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that directly affect commercial real estate, including reinstatement of bonus depreciation and extension of the Qualified Opportunity Zone Program. It also incorporates provisions aimed at incentivizing affordable housing, including a significant expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. At the same time, the new law makes major cuts to wind and solar incentives.

Five experts from ULI’s Residential Neighborhood Development Council discuss the challenges and opportunities ahead for homebuilders; what buyers and renters want from their neighborhoods, and how they value sustainability and resilience; what state and local housing policies are effectively encouraging housing construction; and other trends.

Amblebrook, an innovative retirement community in the historic setting of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was specifically designed to remedy this social disease. It shatters the mold of the conventional 55-plus community.

Consumers have kept a steady foot on the gas this year. A record-high 197 million consumers shopped in stores or online over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). The NRF forecasts that holiday sales will grow between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent, with total retail spending in the United States falling between $979.5 billion and $989 billion during November and December. That forecast also is consistent with NRF’s annual U.S. sales growth—between 2.5 percent and 3.5 percent—for 2024.

Northern Mexico has experienced a significant expansion in the Mexican industrial real estate sector since its major decline from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, due, in part, to low-cost production in China. During the pandemic, that trend began to shift.

The National Retail Federation’s Hot 25 Retailers ranks the nation’s fastest-growing retail companies. Rankings are determined by increases in domestic sales between 2022 and 2023; all retail companies with global sales in excess of $2 billion, and key format leaders were eligible.