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ULI senior fellow Stephen Blank’s highlights from panel discussions at ULI Spring Meeting, including an increasing flow of foreign capital into the U.S. real estate markets, increasingly competitive Euro-lending business, and the pricing of real estate debt.

Competition for prime assets in Europe’s major real estate markets is leading investors to continue their move into secondary assets and recovering markets, according to Emerging Trends in Real Estate Europe 2015, a forecast published jointly by ULI and PwC.

Panelists at the ULI Europe Annual Conference in Paris last week see Spain’s “bad bank” moving forward with plans to sell off troubled assets, while France and Germany continue to take a more measured approach.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, delinquency rates for commercial real estate mortgages continued to decline during the fourth quarter of 2013, reaching record low levels. CMBS rates were at 6.97 percent, as compared with the high of 9.02 percent during the second quarter of 2011.

The population of urban neighborhoods in many metropolitan areas is growing as quickly or nearly as quickly as that of suburban neighborhoods, reflecting ongoing consumer demand—particularly among younger households—for walkable living environments that are convenient to jobs, transit, and urban amenities, according to new research published by ULI and RCLCO.

Could a 220-square-foot (20 sq m) apartment be a housing solution for low- and middle-income residents in high-cost cities? What about modular housing on city-owned land? Or single-family homes reengineered to house more people? These were some of the possibilities discussed by a panel of experts at the ULI Fall Meeting in San Francisco last week.

The Chile-based global architect has made extraordinary contributions to the design of affordable housing, public spaces, infrastructure, and transportation.

The housing sector is finally helping the U.S. economic recovery, rather than holding it back. But more Americans than ever now spend more than half their income on housing, according to a report released by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Leaders of the commercial real estate industry attending COP 27, the United Nations climate conference being held this year in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, said a variety of challenges and opportunities lie ahead in the industry’s drive toward sustainability.

Almost all commercial real estate firms have diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in place in their organizations, with the number of firms adopting formal strategies increasing 5 percent year-over-year, according to the third edition of the Global Real Estate DEI Survey released in January.