Property Types
ULI Property Types provides insights into challenges, opportunities, and innovations specific to each property type, supporting developers, investors, planners, and policymakers in making informed decisions and responding to dynamic market conditions. It organizes and showcases content on the major real estate classifications — including hotels and resorts, industrial, mixed-use, multifamily, office, residential, and retail — to help industry professionals understand how different segments perform and evolve.
Hotels and Resorts
According to research by Marcus & Millichap, the accelerating U.S. economy, supported by strong employment growth and rising confidence levels, bodes well for continued hotel property performance. Elevated consumer and business confidence levels will likely buoy room demand through the remainder of the year, keeping occupancy at a record high and supporting growth in revenue per available room.
While America’s South continues on a steady course with a growing population and an increasing number of jobs, officials are acting on some challenges, which include traffic, housing affordability, education needs, and the rising cost of construction.
Experts in hotel development discuss the rising popularity of social spaces in hotels, the role of technology in the hotel experience, the ways guests are shaping in-room furniture design, the competition from Airbnb, the need for “Instagrammable” spaces in hotels, and changing approaches to hotel restaurants.
Industrial
Demand from growing cloud-computing providers has set the U.S. data center market on pace to break 2017’s record leasing activity, according to CBRE’s latest U.S. Data Center Trends Report. Northern Virginia and Phoenix are also seeing significant new construction to meet demand.
Prime logistics rents increased globally during the 12 months ended March 31, accelerating their growth in many markets due to strengthening economies around the world and greater demand for distribution of goods bought both online and in stores, according to a report from CBRE. Prime rrents increased by 3.2 percent across the globe in this year’s first quarter from a year earlier, exceeding the previous 12-month period’s 2.2 percent global increase.
The growing popularity of online grocery shopping could result in demand for up to 35 million square feet (3.25 million sq m) of U.S. cold-storage space shifting from retail stores to warehouses and distribution centers within the next seven years, according to a report from CBRE.
Mixed-Use
A recent announcement from the Atlanta city government has once again sparked conversation around the redevelopment of a once-vibrant mall in Atlanta’s historic West End neighborhood.
The construction landscape has largely held steady across the United States and Canada.
Spanning 80 acres (32.4 ha) and 1 million square feet (93,000 sq m) of industrial space, The Works is located off Chattahoochee Avenue, a once-quiet industrial corridor on the west side of Atlanta. This pocket of the city—now known as the Upper Westside with a new CID to prove it—has seen explosive growth since plans for The Works were announced in 2017.
Multifamily
Even as national policy support becomes less predictable, many states and localities are hard at work developing pragmatic, scalable housing solutions.
In 2015, Austin, Texas’ mayor at the time, Steve Adler, brought together business leaders, real estate professionals, and housing experts to take on the crisis in affordable rental housing and the risks it posed to the city’s workforce stability and economic sustainability. With insights and research from a ULI Technical Advisory Panel and ULI’s Terwilliger Center for Housing, the Austin Housing Conservancy fund was born, offering a revolutionary approach to preserving workforce housing. 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.
The ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing has announced two finalists for this year’s Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing Award and eight finalists for the Terwilliger Center Award for Innovation in Attainable Housing.
Office
Canada’s real estate market is in the midst of a pivotal shift as the Bank of Canada (BoC) rolls back what has been “higher for longer” interest rates. Yet despite welcome relief on financing costs, real estate leaders are still moving somewhat cautiously amid uncertainty and fluid market dynamics.
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.
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.
Residental
The 2022 ULI Asia Pacific Home Attainability Index analyzes home attainability, both for ownership and rent, in 28 cities in five countries in the Asia Pacific region including Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea. These countries have a combined population of approximately 1.8 billion or 21 percent of the world’s population.
To find new solutions, speakers at the 2022 ULI Europe Conference said that it is important to not only understand what’s driving housing unaffordability but also consider the mismatch between who has the power to deal with the problem and who has the mandate to deal with the problem.
Multifamily Tax Exemption Program makes housing affordable to more renters.
Retail
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During the recent ULI Asia Experience the Experience retail summit, real estate developer, owner, and operator Sid Yog, founder of the Xander Group and chairman of Virtuous Retail (VR) South Asia, discussed the broader Indian retail sector, as well as several of the company’s recent urban Indian retail developments. Joining him in the conversation was Susheela Rivers, office managing partner, co-chair for the global real estate sector, and head of real estate Asia Pacific for DLA Piper.
At the 2020 ULI Asia Pacific Leadership Convivium, an international retail CEO shared her experience of engaging with customers, both offline and online, during the COVID-19 pandemic and how working with understanding landlords has helped create win/win outcomes.