The third and final capital markets panel held during ULI’s Spring Meeting, in New York City in early March, focused on borrower experiences. Kyle Bolden, senior audit partner in the Real Estate Hospitality & Construction practice of Ernst & Young, moderated a panel on raising equity amid ongoing market uncertainty. The panelists were Brian Mutchler, managing director of Harrison Street; Jerome Nichols, president of Standard Real Estate Investments; and Jeff Rosen, a principal of Mag Partners.

Under the leadership of Chief Investment Officer Wes Fuller, Greystar, a vertically integrated real estate firm that owns, operates, and develops multifamily, student, and senior housing, began investing in international markets in 2013, including in Europe, Asia, and South America. The company’s robust institutional investment management platform now has a global presence in 249 markets.

Despite headwinds, debt funds continue to fill the void in commercial real estate financing.

A redevelopment plan for a Seattle site presented by a team of Georgia Institute of Technology students has taken top honors in the 22nd annual ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. The competition was created with a generous endowment from long-time ULI leader Gerald D. Hines, founder of the Hines real estate organization.

After developer Bruce Etkin, a past ULI Trustee and a current member of the ULI Foundation board, sold all of his company’s properties in 2021, he channeled his energy and attention to different challenges—one of them homelessness.

A team from ESSEC Business School in France has been named the winner in this year’s prestigious ULI Hines Student Competition – Europe. The results were announced by ULI and Hines, the global real estate investor, developer, and property manager, following the final of the fifth annual pan-European competition for integrated and multidisciplinary urban regeneration.

Women in leadership roles was the theme of a discussion during the 2024 ULI Spring Meeting in New York City. Kelly Nagel, who was recently named Head of Residential at EDENS, an owner and operator of mixed-use properties nationwide, hosted a fireside chat with Nancy Lashine, founder and managing partner at Park Madison Partners, a New York-based boutique advisory and capital-raising firm.

In a general session at the 2024 ULI Spring Meeting, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke with Ralph Rosenberg, a partner and global head of real estate with KKR. Clinton, who now teaches at Columbia University, focused her remarks on what she said are the three major conflicts affecting the global economy.

Nationwide, the urgent need for more affordable housing has become crystal clear. The United States is grappling with a housing crisis, and building affordable housing has become increasingly difficult. Developers face high construction costs, ongoing supply chain issues, and skyrocketing prices for land, especially in some of the country’s largest cities. Even when a project comes together and gets financing, the process to obtain permitting, gain city approvals, and actually construct a project can take years.

As a growing number of real estate firms commit to decarbonizing their assets, securing green power is becoming an increasingly necessary step for achieving significant carbon reductions. For many owners, the most straightforward and cost-effective route to green power is sourcing directly through local utility providers. However, several barriers have made it difficult for real estate and utilities to collaborate and identify solutions for increasing the amount of green power flowing to the built environment, in ways that mutually benefits utility organizations.

ULI has earned a 2023 ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for the fourth consecutive year. The award recognizes ENERGY STAR® partner businesses and organizations in good standing that demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, and commitment to environmental protection through energy efficiency.

The implications of climate change are becoming hard to ignore. The frequency of natural disasters has increased significantly in recent years, with the United States experiencing an average cost of $18 billion–plus from climate disasters per year. As these kinds of events have grown more common, calculating climate risk has become a hugely important task for commercial property owners. The topic was the main theme during a panel discussion at the April 2024 Resilience Summit in New York City.

The number of people experiencing homelessness grew by 12 percent in 2023—but Rosanne Haggerty, president and CEO of Community Solutions, a nonprofit recognized for developing innovative solutions to end homelessness, says homelessness is a solvable problem. Haggerty believes that real estate professionals are uniquely positioned to get everyone working toward the same goal of providing basic housing and infrastructure for unhoused people. Haggerty’s organization is taking advantage of increased awareness of the problem by partnering with corporations, banking institutions, government agencies, and philanthropists to help shelter unhoused people.

Developers of middle-income projects can’t use subsidy programs such as federal low-income housing tax credits (LIHTCs) to finance their plans. Middle-income developments also often don’t earn enough in rent to support conventional construction loans or attract equity investors.

The Manhattan office market is beginning to make a comeback, but much has changed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The persistence of hybrid and remote work have changed the equation for commercial rentals, both in terms of landlord-tenant relationships and the quality of office product on offer.