How are tariffs likely to affect commercial real estate?

Real estate professionals—from developers to investors—may need to re-evaluate underwriting assumptions and growth expectations.

Deal-making has lately proved to be tough sledding for the commercial real estate industry. Although 2024 brought a welcome rise off the bottom in year-over-year sales, total sales still came in at the second-lowest level since 2013. The latest data from MSCI Real Assets shows $438 trillion in 12-month trailing sales volume through February, a 15 percent increase on a year-over-year basis.

The creation of public space from unused, underused, or unequally shared linear spaces in urban areas has been happening for a long time. Major reference points in the architectural and planning worlds are Boston’s Emerald Necklace, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (1878–1896); Freeway Park in Seattle (1972-1976); the Baltimore Inner Harbor (1963–1983); the Promenade Plantée in Paris (1987-1994); and the High Line in New York (2005–2019).

A redevelopment plan for a former industrial site in Cleveland presented by a team of Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology students has taken top honors in the 23rd annual ULI/Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. This year’s competition asked students for proposals to create a vibrant, mixed-use, mixed-income area on a former industrial site in on Cleveland’s East Side.

Husband and wife architectural team Hans and Torrey Butzer were living in Berlin, Germany, in late 1996 when a contest in Progressive Architecture magazine caught their attention. The competition called for designing a memorial to the victims of the tragic bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

As drones and electric flying vehicles mature, China imagines a new urban landscape

A shuttered higher-education campus receives new life as housing for older adults while providing significant benefits to the surrounding community

Finding success in deploying a collaborative strategy to combat the local housing crisis.

In the aftermath of January’s devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, Los Angeles faces a daunting challenge: how to rebuild not only homes but also the infrastructure that underpins entire communities—from water and electrical distribution systems to damaged sewers and streets to community essentials such as trees, parks, and libraries. The scale of the infrastructure challenge is immense.

ULI has launched C Change for Housing, a major new pan-European program designed to mobilize the real estate industry around two of society’s most urgent and interconnected challenges: the climate crisis and housing affordability.

As practitioners in the industry, we can all too easily reduce our thoughts about housing to the practical machinations of our work. Decisions are often made to serve regulatory agencies and capital providers, and to find the cheapest and fastest path to completion. We mustn’t lose sight of the fact that our job is to create places that serve real-life human needs.

During the 2025 ULI Housing Opportunity Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, a pivotal discussion centered on innovative funding solutions to address homelessness. The “Homeless to Housed: Marrying the Money with the Deal” session, moderated by Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett, featured key leaders in affordable housing, including Shannon Nazworth, president and CEO of Ability Housing; Joy Horak-Brown, president and CEO of New Hope Housing; and Margot Besnard, an associate on the acquisitions team at Jonathan Rose Companies.

Existing properties get makeovers to provide sustainable options for vulnerable populations

In 2014, a ULI Advisory Service panel made recommendations about the future use and preservation of Houston’s Astrodome, among the first indoor sports facilities in the world.