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Midyear earnings season is getting underway, and news from large real estate investment trusts has been mostly positive, but mixed. REITs have benefited from strong underlying real estate market fundamentals and ongoing low interest rates, although new supply is becoming a concern for some product types in selected markets. Plus, interest rate survey data from Trepp.

Construction during the current real estate cycle has generally stayed below historical trends, but deliveries have increased as the cycle matures. For example, real estate investment trusts like Avalon Bay and Equity Residential with significant investments in apartment markets like Manhattan and San Francisco have already cut their revenue forecasts several times this year. Plus, interest rate survey data from Trepp.

His Highness the Aga Khan, leader of the nondenominational Aga Khan Development Network, has been named the 2011 laureate of the ULI J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development.

There was a time before Prohibition when St. Louis had more than 40 breweries. By the 1980s, however, that number had dwindled to just two. Today, experts speaking at a ULI panel said St. Louis’s smaller brewery scene is again thriving, with 50 separate breweries operating locally.

The New York Timesrecently published an interesting article on the popularity of Washington, D.C., as an “ideal place to grow older,” citing such senior-friendly assets as easy walkability and a prevalence of community gardens doing double duty as sources of fresh food and places to socialize.

At the closing session of the 2015 ULI Spring Meeting in Houston, two local icons—landmark real estate developer Gerald D. Hines and James A. Baker III, who served in three presidential administrations and was secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush—talked about leadership and perhaps its most crucial ingredient: the willingness to take bold risks and run with game-changing ideas.

With 2016 under way, I am very excited and hopeful about the changes taking place at ULI this year. We are continuing to move forward in three key areas: 1) a new global governance structure;
2) a major new information technology initiative; and 3) a relocation into a new workplace in Washington, D.C.

Panelists at the recent ULI Housing Opportunity 2019 conference said that while the data paint a bleak picture of America’s housing affordability, the spending priorities of California’s new governor may be a sign of positive policy changes at a more local level.

Panelists at the recent ULI Europe Conference in London talked about what the real estate industry is doing to embrace disruption, whether by funding tech startups through in-house venture capital funds or by leaning in to the multichannel e-commerce experiences of the future.

ULI and Heitman, in collaboration with Arup Group and consulting group Milliman, in newly published research find that real estate investors are starting to look beyond individual property vulnerability to climate change and to scrutinize the resilience of the broader market.