Total commercial and multifamily mortgage borrowing and lending are expected to fall to $766 billion this year, down 14 percent from 2021 totals. This is according to an updated baseline forecast released today by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Rising interest rates have not derailed a steady pipeline of merger and acquisition activity in commercial real estate—at least not yet. The sector has seen a number of mega-mergers announced this year but not well above the historical average.

The $99.5 billion increase in commercial and multifamily mortgage debt outstanding in the second quarter was the second largest quarterly rise since the inception of MBA’s data series in 2007.

Four teams, representing Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of California, Berkeley, have been selected as finalists in the 21st annual ULI Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition, an event that challenges teams of graduate students to devise a comprehensive design and development plan for a real-world urban site.

A number of factors are encouraging developers to try to bring Mother Nature on as a partner. On the carrot side, some governments are offering incentives to build green. There are sticks as well, which are also helping to keep builders focused on their carbon footprint

To what extent will proposed replacement policies address current issues? Are there other policies and practices that should be looked at and can older policies be tailored to meet today’s challenges? The whole array of planning and development practices are being questioned, particularly as seen through the outcomes they’ve produced or, in the case of housing, not produced.

Shopping malls, the once-bustling hubs of commerce and community, are now facing an uncertain future in light of relentless urbanization and population growth. But as the city evolves, so too must these giants. At the 2023 ULI Spring Meeting in Toronto, industry leaders tackled this very question in the panel titled “Reimagining the Mall: The Final Urban Frontier.”

ULI’s fourth annual Resilience Summit in Toronto featured a panel of affordable housing and climate crisis experts offering solutions in the face of sobering odds.

The problem of housing affordability affects more than just cities with staggeringly high costs like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. The issue is one that has spread to become a crisis across the United States, exacerbated by high inflation, rising interest rates, and a lack of housing supply, said panelists at the 2023 ULI Spring Meeting.

For new construction, owners, developers, and investors can achieve the best low-carbon results by considering both the embodied and operational carbon impacts of their buildings and striking a balance between upfront carbon in materials and long-term efficiency returns, according to a new study by ULI. The report examines the various tradeoffs presented when these two types of carbon are considered in the design of a building’s façade and envelope.

Leading SFR companies are developing strategies to tackle social equity, land use, decarbonization, and resilience for maximum impact.

Seven prominent industry associations have come together to accelerate tackling carbon emissions through carbon pricing

Telepresence robots are beginning to appear in intensive-care wards and patients increasingly get access to doctors by phone, mobile app, or computer. The rise of “telehealth” could further shrink or shift traditional office space demand, according to a speaker at ULI Central Florida’s Real Estate Trends 360° Conference.

With the challenges of technology, mobility, sustainability, and social inclusion, the public and private sectors are working together successfully to build thriving places. Reinventing underused urban spaces to prioritize people is the way. A panel at ULI Europe’s 2020 conference in Amsterdam, moderated by Marilyn Jordan Taylor, professor of architecture and urban design at the University of Pennsylvania and a former ULI global chair, discussed four successful projects around the globe.

In the Waterfront Toronto RFP for Quayside, Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs saw a key opportunity for a demonstration project unbound by the conventions of traditional urban planning or real estate economics. This was something new: a chance to innovate at the urban scale, to develop, deploy, and measure the success of a web of new technologies in an actual neighborhood.