Boasting an average growth rate of 6 percent per annum over the last ten years, a rapidly expanding skyline, and significant infrastructure projects underway including the widening of its famous canal, Panama is becoming one of Latin America’s premier gateways for trade and commerce. Read more to learn what U.S. real estate entrepreneurs need to know before embarking on projects in this country.

In recent years, there have been numerous marketing articles and communication strategy workshops on the need to have a social media presence. This need is validated by the tens of millions of hotel reviews on websites like TripAdvisor, where travelers give their feedback about hotels, effectively serving as an unpaid focus group. Read more including two case studies, to learn about this increasingly important trend.

The U.S. hotel sector, now rebounding from the Great Recession, is on more solid footing thanks to a return to core real estate principles and conservative lending practices, creating the stability required to respond to changing customer values. Read about the trends in hotel development, possible changes driven by technology, and where the boutique hotels are leading the brand hospitality firms.

With a strong economy led by government, education, and health care, the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, area consistently ranks among the nation’s best economies. Read what local insiders have to say about how the multifamily sector and the Class A warehouse segments have improved, as well as what’s in store for the retail and office sectors in the Research Triangle area in 2011.

The so-called redline drawn around the Phoenix market by investors seems to have been erased, says Steve Betts, chair of ULI Arizona. He attributes the metropolitan area’s resurgence to HEAT—Health care, Energy, Aerospace/defense, and Technology. Read what other local players are saying about this uptick in activity and why it appears that the road to recovery will be a long and bumpy one.

Dynamic, large-scale projects that create new centers of activity can be catalysts of downtown revitalization. Sundance Square in Fort Worth, the Columbia Heights revitalization in D.C., and L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles—the three 2010 ULI Awards for Excellence winners—are recent examples. Read how these projects created benefits that extend well beyond the neighborhoods where they stand.

Real estate developers around the world are responding to increased consumer interest in cycling and walking as preferred modes of transportation by building projects adjacent to trails, bike paths, bike-sharing stations, and other infrastructure that supports human-powered mobility, according to
Active Transportation and Real Estate: The Next Frontier, a new ULI report.

In 2012, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a private institution, partnered with the city to serve residents in south Philadelphia. This public/private effort is unprecedented in the variety of services located on a single site, the speed of public approvals, and financing.

ULI has announced an area in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood as the study site in the 14th annual ULI Hines Student Competition. The ideas competition provides teams the opportunity to devise a design and development program for parts of a large-scale site.

Ten projects leverage public and private resources to realize complex new developments.

A new ULI report explores the social, environmental, and economic benefits of creative placemaking, along with successful case studies in the United States.

Investors who specialize in “deconverting” condo properties back into rentals are finding opportunities. But the deals take patience and fortitude.

As attention turns to what real estate markets may be like once the COVID-19 pandemic has wound down, the outlook for office properties is particularly hazy. More than a year of home-based work left office spaces idle, and it remains unknown how many people will resume their daily commutes once health conditions and local regulations permit.

Will the COVID-19 pandemic bring about the end of the viability of open-plan office space? Panelists speaking during a recent ULI Asia Pacific webinar concluded that flexibility, technology, variety, and health would be the key concepts bringing companies and key employees back to offices.

Despite the office sector’s current bleak outlook, the longer-term outlook is much rosier, speakers said at the ULI Virtual Fall Meeting.

Affordable and workforce housing policies and programs put in place by the governments of New York City, Los Angeles County, and the states of New Jersey and New York have been selected as finalists for the 2018 ULI Larson Housing Policy Leadership Award. The annual award, presented by ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing, recognizes innovative ways the public sector is addressing the nation’s affordable housing crisis.

The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced finalists for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award, which honors exemplary developments that ensure housing affordability for people with a range of incomes.

Behind the new home construction, park improvements, and a rising downtown skyline that are attracting out-of-state migration, some longtime families in Boise, Idaho, are struggling to afford housing in a market that has seen rents more than double in the past decade.

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.

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.

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.