Property Types

The 21st-century challenge facing Hilton Head, a resort town steeped in 20th-century tradition: how to reach beyond the affluent retirees drawn to its famed golf resorts to a broader market that includes baby boomers and members of generations X and Y who enjoy its pristine beaches, but who have many other recreational and cultural interests as well.

With an inclination for hiring the young and entrusting them with much responsibility, Charles Fraser employed many budding real estate professionals who eventually became accomplished leaders in both the industry and ULI, including four who became ULI chairmen.

In July of 2012, the community of Mammoth Lakes in California filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy. The third most-visited ski area in the United States, the community is fighting its way back from the brink.

The hydraulic fracturing of rocks is a way to extract natural gas from far below the ground. It has strong economic and land use implications, especially in the West, where the process is fairly new, but it is not without controversy.

What does economic recovery mean for the industrial and office sectors?

A sustainably designed, adaptive-use, urban food factory in Portland, Oregon, helps a neighborhood suffering urban decay, foreclosures, and job losses.

At the 2021 ULI Carolinas meeting, held as a virtual/in-person hybrid event in March, the annual Crane Watch session showcased projects under construction in North and South Carolina that use innovative planning and design in their placemaking efforts, creating iconic projects that help shape the neighborhoods that surround them. The projects this year included a historic storefront restoration, a shipping container–based food yard, and a massive nine-block development.

Through the new Yield Chicago program, seasoned and emerging development professionals are joining to share industry knowledge, networks, and best practices.

In a discussion of the ongoing transformation of U.S. retail, panelists participating in the 2020 ULI Spring Meeting Webinar Series agreed that the authenticity, differentiation, and transparency creating a sense of place in mixed-use retail spaces are likely to be what consumers seek in the future. Single-use spaces are about convenience, but that is only half of what consumers say they are looking for.

The U.S. economy did very well in 2024, said Barbara Denham, lead economist for Oxford Economics, and the forecast for the coming year is more of the same—both in New York City and across North America. However, in presenting Oxford’s favorable economic forecast for 2025 at a ULI New York event last month, Denham also noted many caveats ahead of the incoming U.S. administration.

Multifamily experts gathered at the University of Southern California to highlight where denser construction is creating affordability.

With insights and research from a ULI Technical Advisory Panel and ULI’s Terwilliger Center, the Austin Housing Conservancy fund, a revolutionary approach to preserving workforce housing, was born. Now known as the Texas Housing Conservancy, the fund became the nation’s first to combine a nonprofit investment manager, Affordable Central Texas, with an open-end private equity fund.

Real estate developers across the United States and around the world are under pressure to cut the amount of carbon their activities put into the atmosphere.

What does it take to secure debt in today’s challenging commercial real estate environment? It all boils down to experience, relationships, and a lot of creativity. That’s according to an expert panel speaking this morning at ULI’s spring meeting at the New York Hilton Midtown. The panel is the first in a series of three, which will include Raising Equity (10 a.m. Wednesday) and Borrowers’ Experiences—Recent Success Stories (10 a.m. Thursday).

Experts say the real estate market in our cities is responding to the dramatic changes caused by COVID with a “flight to quality.” This headline suggests optimism that a safe harbor still exists out there as does the fear that we all need to act fast and run (for our lives) before things get bad. It reflects a winnowing to the essential characteristics that can ensure the best overall return and insulate us from the changing winds in the economy.

With an unemployment rate of 2.6 percent, a diverse economy anchored by health and education institutions, and a flourishing tech and life sciences sector, Greater Boston appears poised for continued growth, even with the specter of a potential recession on the horizon. But, like many other growing U.S. cities, the demand for housing far outstrips the supply. Much of the expanding workforce is in danger of being priced out of the market, as are many longtime residents.

Using available land is a key strategy for filling the District of Columbia’s need for affordable housing units, Mayor Muriel Bowser said at ULI’s Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C. Bowser recently articulated her vision to construct 36,000 additional housing units in the District by 2025.

No single solution exists among the efforts to deliver attainable and affordable housing in a country where home prices continue to escalate significantly and the dream of homeownership is out of reach of millions of households, an expert panel told attendees at ULI’s 2019 Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C.

The National Retail Federation predicts a record-breaking 2025 holiday season, with U.S. sales for November and December projected to grow between 3.7 percent and 4.2 percent—pushing total holiday sales past $1 trillion for the first time. Yet there also are signs that consumers are nervous; that mood, plus accounting for inflation, could leave holiday spending relatively flat.

From Dead Mall to Living District: Replacing the “Great Wall of Galleria” with a Connected Urban Core

For decades, civic leaders have tried to revitalize Market Street, San Francisco’s central thoroughfare, only to see their efforts founder. “I sometimes call it the great white whale of San Francisco,” says Eric Tao, managing partner at L37 Development in San Francisco and co-chair of ULI San Francisco. “Every new mayor, every new planning director, every new economic development director has chased that white whale.” This year, however, an international competition of ideas hosted and run by ULI San Francisco, with support from the ULI Foundation, generated fresh momentum for reimagining the boulevard. The competition drew 173 submissions from nine countries and sparked new conversations about the future of downtown San Francisco.