“It's tough to anticipate what's going to happen with interest rates. It's tough to anticipate what's going to happen geopolitically. But if you have access to capital and have your strategy in place, you can be nimble and pounce at the right time to make a deal when the right factors line up,” Keith said.

Keith noted that in 2025, global commercial real estate M&A deal value fell 57% year-on-year as volume count dropped over 70%, with deals in the United States averaging about $300 million. For 2026, caution remains, with activity centered on sectors including data centers, multifamily, and industrial.

Chapters

00:18 Welcome And Guest Intro
00:40 2025 Deal Activity Recap
01:20 2026 Outlook And Hot Sectors
02:03 Data Centers Power And Deal Structures
03:44 Where Data Centers Are Growing
04:29 Office Sector Winners And Losers
05:50 Residential Markets By Region
07:37 Single Family Rentals Policy Watch
08:47 Platform Consolidation And Vertical Integration
10:04 How Investors Can Prepare
10:59 Office To Residential Conversion Wrap Up

While factors such as geopolitical tensions, elevated interest rates, and policy uncertainty have contributed to caution in the market, Kramer emphasized that the real focus is on the apartment supply cycle and the pace of demand recovery. 

“For us, it's much more about fundamentals, much more about rent growth, occupancy and how that looks in the recovery from supply,” Kramer said.

According to Kramer, the sector is now clearly nearing the end of its historic construction wave, with the national under-construction pipeline at its lowest level since 2013 and housing starts trending toward their weakest levels since 2012.

Chapters: 

00:00 Recovery After Supply
00:23 Welcome to REIT Report
00:41 Macro Uncertainty Outlook
02:04 Supply Cycle Nearing End
04:33 Coastal vs Sun Belt
06:03 Submarket Divergence
07:36 NOI Growth Drivers
09:39 Balance Sheets and Rates
10:38 Management Priorities Ahead
11:41 Closing and Subscribe

“There’s a pricing reset going on, there's capital market stress, and there are structural demand shifts that are happening all at once,” he said.

Investors are increasingly unsure about which signals to heed, leading to a widening knowledge gap between those who understand the context of these changes and those who react purely on instinct, Dohrmann said. This moment in the market is marked by cautious capital, he said, “but curiosity is starting to come back, which is a good thing.”

Dohrmann also pointed to a “tremendous opportunity” for REITs to create joint ventures. REITs are “integrated vertical operating companies. A lot of pension funds and a lot of pension fund investment managers like to invest in joint ventures with operating companies. But the advantage a REIT has is access to both private and public capital.” 

“We like to think of it as a mood of cautious optimism with the dial creeping up,” he said.

Private real estate values appear to have bottomed in late 2024, transaction volumes are expected to rise 16% to 20% this year, and institutional investors have returned as net buyers, he pointed out.

Global investors, meanwhile, have raised their planned U.S. allocation from 11% to 16% during the last year. “So even with tariffs and political noise, the U.S. still wins on liquidity, transparency, and just the options around growth,” Bodner said.

Citing “massive” changes in corporate and consumer behavior, Laughlin noted that “as we look forward, I think AI is going to be the next disruption to how the economy takes space.” Given these vast shifts, “I do think sector allocation is going to be crucial as we seem to be accelerating these disruptions in the economy.”

Laughlin also discussed how, despite geopolitical tension, REITs have managed to maintain their position, showcasing resilience compared to broader market movements. He also pointed to a wide dispersion in sector performance, with some sectors like shopping centers thriving while others are struggling.

She shares how the firm works with commercial real estate owners to improve net operating income and increase asset value by identifying and rectifying energy waste through analysis of utility smart meter data. She explains how Virtual Commissioning is distinct from traditional retro-commissioning programs—it requires no on-site visits, no hardware installation, and no contracts with building owners. The service is free for building owners and is funded directly by utility partners.

Power TakeOff partners with nearly 30 utilities across the country to deliver utility-funded Virtual Commissioning (see map for details). Bray shares details on how Power TakeOff's team of experienced energy advisors analyzes smart meter data remotely to identify abnormalities in energy usage patterns and, through virtual consultations with property managers, facilities managers, or on-site engineers, provides personalized recommendations to optimize existing building systems and controls. 

Warehouses of over 500,000 square feet have done “very well,” Malhotra said, as companies like Walmart and Amazon adapt to the necessity of quick, last-mile distribution. Mizuho currently estimates overall sector vacancy at 7.5%. That rate is close to peaking, Malhotra said, and then should modestly trend down. “Until we see vacancy trend to about 6%, I think it'll be really hard to see real rent growth…I think we're at least a year away from a very strong market trend.”

As for the impact of current global instability, Malhotra noted that “in the very near term, spot demand is strong, but we are monitoring factors where we could see a sign of a pause.”  Instability is likely to strengthen the reshoring trend that has been a theme for the past few years, Malhotra added. Despite the ongoing conflict, the demand for logistics space is expected to reach 150-200 million square feet annually, a significant uptick from previous years.

Chapters:
00:00 AI Sparks Logistics Upside 

00:57 Industrial Outlook 2026 

01:44 Big Box Demand Split 

02:33 Conflict Impact Check 

03:54 Supply Chains And Data Centers 

05:54 Markets Supply Risk 2026 

07:55 Vacancy And Rent Path 

09:07 Warehouse Design Shifts 

10:49 Power And Automation Edge 

11:59 AI Driven E Commerce Cycle 

12:49 Wrap Up And Subscribe

Today's environment resembles a capital markets "reset" rather than a structural change in how real estate is used, he said. DeLuca also shared how REITs have performed well compared to other major indices, with their strategic focus on high-quality assets and sustainability attracting investors seeking resilience in their portfolios. As interest rates start to decline, REITs “can act quickly, and their ability to use leverage will be greatly enhanced and allow REITs to grow tremendously,” he said.

Chapters:

00:00 Rates And Deal Flow 

00:27 Meet The Host And Guest 

00:59 Capital Markets Reset

01:51 Why REITs Diversify 

02:49 REIT Sentiment Today 

04:02 Prime Office Defined 

06:11 AI And Office Demand 

07:57 Beyond Office Focus 

09:21 Picking Winning Markets 

11:03 Deal Approval Playbook 

14:02 Relationships Drive Deals 

14:39 AI In Real Estate Ops 

17:53 Sustainability That Pays 

21:10 Watching Rates Ahead 

23:07 Closing And Subscribe

Based on conversations with CEOs and senior executives, they found a strong consensus: while technical and financial expertise remain essential, they are now “table stakes,” Calinog said. What differentiates top leaders are people-centered capabilities like self-awareness, communication, and the ability to build trust and clarity amid uncertainty, she noted.

The current market demands more strategic, adaptive leadership as cheap capital is no longer a reliable driver, Cordingley pointed out. CEOs must act as “enterprise translators,” he said, connecting capital markets, investor expectations, and operational decisions. 

At the same time, leadership turnover is accelerating. Most REIT CEOs are still promoted from within—making early leadership development critical. “It's the REITs that are treating leadership capability the way that they treat portfolio construction, (with) the same rigor, intentionality, looking at a long time horizon, that are going to differentiate,” Cordingley said.

“When it comes to alternatives today, we believe more is better in client portfolios, broader is better, as well as active is better,” Sharma said. Real estate, and REITs in particular, play an important part of that alternative investment landscape, he added.

Sharma noted that the increased availability of data today has resulted in a more science, less art-based approach to designing outcome-oriented portfolios that target various client priorities such as income orientation, growth orientation, or a combination of both.  A research piece, coauthored with GIC Singapore, shares insights into a framework for building multi-alternatives portfolios, integrating strategic sizing of positions with active marginal capital allocation  to improve portfolio outcomes.

“It's less about broad sector calls and more about understanding where demand is actually showing up and how capital is being allocated and who can execute. So that's what's driving outcomes right now and that's where the opportunity is,” Zabierek said.

During the interview, Zabierek noted that real estate has become a “much more operational business and outcomes are increasingly driven by how well companies execute.” As a result, now is really the time to focus on management teams and how they're executing their business plans, not just the assets that they own, he said.

Bellisario said the overall outlook for the sector for 2026 is “positive but muted,” following a tough 2025. The World Cup is expected to boost revenue this year, with Baird estimating it will contribute 75 basis points or more to REVpar for the year. “It’s going to be a tailwind. It's just a matter of how much and when do we see those bookings start to pick up,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bellisario pointed out that wealthy travelers are currently driving growth within the leisure sector, with high-end hotels performing better than economy and mid-scale segments. Higher-end establishments can charge more for additional services, he noted, such as dining and experiences, beyond room rates. This trend indicates a potential strategy for hotels to focus on non-room revenue streams.

“Over the past 30 years, our team has done an absolutely spectacular job underwriting companies, assessing market conditions, knowing what we don't know in periods of high volatility and uncertainty, positioning the portfolio defensively at the right time periods, (and) not getting over our skis,” Briddell said.

Briddell highlighted some of the benefits of public real estate, noting that volatility should be “embraced, not feared” in the REIT market. “What we have done at CenterSquare is really try to educate our investors that volatility is actually a source of alpha. And it is as true today as it has ever been,” he added.

“We are seeing today more inbound phone calls from potential investors that are interested in increasing exposure to REITs and real estate in general…they've been out of the sector for the past five to six years, or they've been underweight, and they're looking to increase that allocation,” Sahn said. “They're looking for asset classes that give them cash flow stability. They're looking for income. They're looking for diversification, liquidity, all of which REITs provide,” he added.

As for performance, Sahn noted that U.S. REITs are “starting to regain their footing” in 2026, while Japan and Hong Kong continue to show strength in global markets. “As we look at the world today and over the next 12 months, we're seeing more opportunities in the U.S. than we have over the last several years,” he added.

Hoskins also looked at adaptive reuse as a strategy for urban vibrancy and the critical need for climate resilience in future designs. She emphasized the importance of investing in human experiences.

“It's about creating value, being ahead of some of these curves,” Hoskins said, while also focusing on investing in humans and in places “where experiences matter, because that's really where value is going to be.”

At the same time, Knott notes that these positive tailwinds are set against a cross current of a weaker outlook on the employment side.

During the interview, Knott also commented that one of the newer trends that many larger REITs are gravitating to is fund management and gathering private pools of capital as an alternative to public equity to fund their business. 

While acknowledging the benefits of a mix of public and private real estate, “in most cases, REITs make more sense for the majority of investors,” Askola said. Higher returns, liquidity, diversification, significant economies of scale, and access to the best talent are among the key reasons investors should consider REITs, he added. 

In addition to highlighting what he sees as the elements of a strong REIT management strategy, Askola discussed options for how to navigate the diverse set of REIT property sectors according to an investor’s risk tolerance and need for income. He also touched on how the sector might evolve and diversify going forward.

“I'm very optimistic about the long-term prospects of REITs,” Askola said. Typically, “REITs offer better returns with lower risk and less required effort… than private real estate,” he concluded.

Porter explained how physical climate risk now propagates through assets, suppliers, commodities, customers, and transportation networks. “Prior to this, we were thinking about all of these independently, or we were thinking about a supply chain independent of physical climate risk, and the ability to sort of pull all of those things together really helps to price in the downside and to protect facilities through adaptation and mitigation in a way that we weren't thinking about previously,” he said.

Porter shared how corporate attitudes towards climate risk have shifted from it being a peripheral concern to a core financial risk indicator. The conversation highlighted the quantifiable effects of climate risk on corporate revenues, the investment community's response, and the challenges posed by rising insurance costs. 

Citi’s overall expectation is for higher real estate stock returns this year versus in 2025. One key theme across all markets is supply and demand, Joseph said. “The supply picture broadly is more encouraging globally,” he noted, while Citi economists are generally “constructive” on global growth this year.

Higher total returns in 2026 are anticipated in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. In Australia and China, Citi is expecting about similar performance this year versus last year, while weaker performance is forecast in Hong Kong, Japan, and the Middle East.

REITs are well positioned in the U.S. for 2026, with about a 10% to 15% total return, Joseph said. He commented on the “massive dispersion” of performance within the REIT sector. “That's really what gets us excited about different REIT opportunities because different stocks and different sectors will perform differently and create a lot of different alpha generation opportunities.”

Chin said investors are expected to deploy capital into U.S. real estate markets this year on the back of recovering fundamentals and interest rates trending lower. As a result, investment volume is expected to increase by about 16%, he noted.

Additional observations during the interview included:

Total returns this year will be income-driven rather than appreciation-driven. “We are only going to see some strong capital value gain when the 10-year Treasury is trending down below 4%, but as of now, most of the total returns are driven by the income growth.”

Hemnani discussed the size and breakdown of the mREIT market, the current operating environment, macroeconomic forces impacting performance, valuation and total returns for MREITs, risk profiles, and the outlook for the sector over the next 12 to 24 months.

Commercial mREITs are able to underwrite idiosyncratic, property-level risk, Hemnani said. Not only can they execute the loan quicker than other lenders, but they also provide certainty as to who the loan counterparty will be throughout the life of the loan. “mREITs take out that uncertainty and that’s the value proposition they provide to the commercial real estate market,” he noted.

Hemnani described the backdrop for commercial mREITs today as encouraging. “If you think about commercial real estate credit, it's fairly attractive on a risk adjusted basis. Property values have declined roughly 20% from their peak and they seem to have stabilized. So the risk of a broad-based property value decline from there is fairly low.”

BREEAM is a Nareit Real Estate Sustainability Partner for 2026.

Wheeler noted that capital providers and investors “are really looking for the data and performance that can validate the claims being made about sustainability risk and opportunity.” BREEAM’s focus on carbon emissions and resilience metrics is highlighted as a critical factor in asset valuation and risk management, particularly in light of increasing regulations and climate risks. 

Wheeler emphasized that resilience isn't about a single building. “True resilience is a team sport. It's not just thinking about your asset, it's about your block, your neighborhood, and your broader community. The willingness to tackle physical risk and mitigate at the community level is critical,” she said.

“The setup for us is great. and I would highly recommend the average investor take a look at REITs,” Szymanski said. “We're experiencing some of the best growth that we've ever experienced,” she added.

For the most part, the sectors that AEW has been overweight in are still favorites, Szymanski said. Number one on that list is senior housing, where AEW has been overweight across the globe. Data centers are in second place, followed by retail. Industrial remains “on the margin,” she added.

McLaughlin discussed the performance of international logistics markets, the impact of e-commerce on leasing demand, the growing power needs of logistics facilities, emerging trends in defense-related demand, and the challenges faced by the trucking industry. 

The conversation highlighted the need for adaptability in supply chains as companies navigate a changing landscape. “I think there's an acknowledgement that supply chains need to be adaptable rather than continue to wait for perfect information. And I think that's really going to shape a return to normal in a lot of different spheres of the logistics real estate market,” McLaughlin said.

Pierzak discussed the dual divergences at play between REITs and broader equities and REITs and private real estate. Each provides an opportunity for REITs to outperform, he said. At the same time, REIT balance sheets point to access to capital, putting the sector in a “great position to really embark on a growth opportunity in 2026,” alongside signs of a thawing in the transaction market, Pierzak said.

Meanwhile, Barwick discussed global REIT performance, noting that currency movements were a significant tailwind for U.S.-based investors in 2025 as a weaker dollar bolstered the performance of international assets. For U.S. investors, strong local returns in developed Asia and developed Europe were further boosted when translated back into dollars, which widened the performance gap with North America, Barwick noted.

Read the 2026 REIT outlook: https://www.reit.com/news/blog/market-commentary/2026-reit-outlook-trends-and-strategies

Kamdem spoke about the recovery of the office market post-pandemic, highlighting regional variations, trends in leasing and utilization, the impact of new developments, and the future of class B assets. Current sentiment in the REIT space, and how valuations are influencing strategies moving forward, were also discussed.

“There's a lot of excitement in the office market right now because there's certainly been a lot of leasing that's been done in 2025…for the first time from a financial perspective, you're in a position where in 2026 going into 2027, you're going to be able to post some sort of financial and earnings growth to the market that people want to see,” Kamdem said. He added that if interest rates continue to trend lower, that will provide an additional tailwind to earnings growth.

Alperstein explained that value creation in the real estate sector has reflected financing and lower cap rates. Going forward, “what we expect is that a lot more value creation will need to come through property operations, really driving revenue growth or rental growth, really being focused on expenses and capital spend, and less so on the capital markets in the coming years.”

Alperstein described investor sentiment as slightly muted compared to recent years, reflecting uncertainty related to interest rates, valuations, transaction activity, and policy.

PECO was founded in 1991 and operated as a public non-listed REIT before its IPO in 2021.

Edison noted that the REIT structure has made investing in real estate accessible to everyone. “PECO's investors can own the best necessity-based grocery and shopping centers across growing suburbs in the market... and our retail investors can invest alongside some of the biggest institutional investors in the world,” Edison said. Today, retail investors own about 25% of the REIT’s common shares, which is much higher than its peer average, he added.

Acton noted that the largest, most sophisticated institutional investors typically have real estate allocations that are anywhere from 10% to 15% of their portfolio. Within that real estate allocation, 10% to 20% might be in the listed space.

“There's a lot of evidence that the leading investors are doing something very different than what a lot of smaller investors, certainly what a lot of retail investors, are not doing and probably should be,” Acton said.

Millrose was spun off from home builder Lennar Corp. in February, allowing Lennar to focus on the consumer-facing aspect of its business by transferring the land development side to Millrose. The REIT works with Lennar and 11 other homebuilders.

“The more modern form of land banking is about capital efficiency, where a builder is looking to clarify their own business model, looking to separate the opco (operating company) from the propco (property company),” he said.

Weill noted that institutions decreased target allocations by 10 basis points this year, although allocations are expected to increase by about the same amount in the coming 12 months. The survey showed market conviction “tick up a bit,” he added. “That to us indicates that institutions are increasingly ready to deploy capital and are viewing the next couple of years as potentially good vintages, which is what we hear over and over from institutions.”

Weill also highlighted that about one in three institutions are actively allocating to REITs. “When we ask them about what it is about REITs that is most appealing, the two main or top objectives are liquidity and a proxy for core,” he noted.

Larger institutions are more actively allocating to REITs, according to Weill, using dedicated in-house teams.

Moss pointed to funding and building performance standards as key issues of the moment. “The challenge is understanding where your buildings have to comply, (and) what all-new data points you may be needing to collect,” he said. 

At the same time, utility companies are putting more roadblocks in the way of providing data, especially for tenant-occupied spaces in buildings, according to Moss. “Staying ahead of all of that is going to take some real focus within the REIT space,” he said.

REIT M&A activity has been lively in 2025, with the pace expected to continue into 2026, especially if interest rates decline, Ismail said. At the same time, however, the size of transactions is about 80% smaller than over the past decade, he added.

Deals announced this month include the acquisition of Sotherly Hotels Inc. (Nasdaq: SOHO) by a joint venture backed by Kemmons Wilson Hospitality Partners and Ascendant Capital Partners, and the acquisition of Plymouth Industrial REIT, Inc. (NYSE: PLYM) by Makarora Management LP and Ares Alternative Credit funds.

Ismail pointed out that in a typical REIT M&A event, the premium to unaffected share price is about 15%. In the case of Plymouth Industrial, that premium stands at 50%, and jumps to 150% for Sotherly. 

“The way to think about Fermi is that it's a mainstream attempt to finance the physical side of artificial intelligence with a REIT wrapper…that is highly investable to the broadest set of investors,” Davidson said. He discussed the evolving role of infrastructure in the REIT space, the potential for strong foreign capital investment, and the challenges faced in integrating energy and infrastructure assets into the REIT model. 

Bouwinvest has executed on a fully integrated public and private real estate strategy since 2012. Berghuis noted that including listed real estate ensures the opportunity to invest in specific compelling geographic markets and sectors such as health care, self-storage, and data centers.

“Essentially, investing in listed real estate means you are also adding high quality diversified portfolios to the mix. And these portfolios are generally managed by seasoned management teams,” Berghuis said.

Other reasons to choose global listed real estate include the ability to move quickly to invest in multiple sectors and markets, and the fact that listed and unlisted investments generally do not move in sync, he noted. 

Coleman shared insights on current trends in the West Coast office market, the impact of AI on real estate, innovative leasing strategies, the effects of new tax incentives on studio demand in California and New York, and the financial improvements Hudson Pacific has made to ensure future growth. 

During the interview, Coleman observed that West Coast office fundamentals are “absolutely improving,” led by San Francisco, which he described as the “epicenter of AI.” Public safety initiatives in the city have also led to an increase in investment, he noted. 

Deloitte’s survey of more than 850 c-level executives across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific revealed optimism in the sector, with a sentiment index of 65. This marked a slight pullback from last year’s high of 68, Flood noted, but is still positive. “We're seeing that leaders still see commercial real estate as potentially a safe investment haven, given its performance during similar periods of uncertainty in the past,” Flood said.

According to the survey, 75% of global respondents plan to increase their investment levels in real estate over the next 12 to 18 months. Flood noted that as U.S. trade policy continues to be negotiated, and with a major tax bill now signed into law, “our survey shows the United States as the top market for investment opportunity in the near term, chosen by respondents 53% of the time.” 

During the interview, Flood also discusses key global property sectors and trends, capital markets and access to financing, AI integration in commercial real estate, and more.

Hughes noted that now is an “interesting time” for institutional investors to be thinking about their allocation to public real estate, where a number of higher quality assets are trading at material discounts to private market values. He described the public markets as having “a decent number of mispriced and interesting” investments available right now.

During the interview he also noted that for DigitalBridge, focusing capital into “idiosyncratic stories within a fairly rich and diverse opportunity set that is the REIT market” provides its investors with exposure to investments that are significantly different from what they can find in the private markets or in a market cap weighted index.

McEvoy noted that REITs demonstrated resilience in the first half of 2025 and pointed out that those REITs that have maintained disciplined balance sheets have been the most successful at navigating market volatility. 

“I do think the modest positive performance that REITs have experienced during these uncertain times have left them well-positioned to achieve stronger performance in 2026 as the markets stabilize,” she said. 

McEvoy also said the market is continuing to feel the effects of the high cost of capital from the last couple of years, along with higher cap rates. “And although those have been declining, investor sentiment remains cautious. As a result, transaction volume has been down.” 

Lavender noted that capital market activity for the health care sector, particularly senior housing, has outperformed other asset classes over the past couple of years. Meanwhile, office REITs have also been active on the acquisition front, he noted, with many opting for JV partnerships in the process. Sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia continue to be active JV partners with REITs, he added. 

As for interest in alternative assets, Lavender described a “huge wave of investing,” pointing out that the digital infrastructure and data center boom “is a modern day gold rush.”

Sweat is a venture capitalist and general partner at Stresswood, an early-stage fund focused on backing exceptional founders building the next wave of enterprise technology. 

During the interview, Sweat discussed critical questions a REIT leader should ask before launching an AI initiative, as well as how REITs can balance the promise of AI with the reality of implementation, and how REIT leaders should effectively communicate the value and purpose of AI initiatives to their teams. 

Ramiro noted that Armada Hoffler is benefitting from the supply-demand imbalance for top office space in the best locations. In Baltimore, for example, where the REIT has 1.6 million square feet of office space, Ramiro pointed to a “pretty astounding” level of corporate relocations. 

 “We do believe that the emergence of these alternative property types is going to accelerate in the future and that many next-gen leaders are going to be a big part of that,” Wojteczko said, referring to an anticipated pick-up in c-suite retirements within the next decade. “We believe that the appetite for some of these younger executives to really continue to focus on the alternative property types as an investable universe is significant and something that we're certainly monitoring here.” 

Reed shares how NYSERDA has evolved in the 50 years since it was founded as the state’s atomic energy agency in the 1970s. “The mission of having energy work for, and benefit, New Yorkers, making that energy as reliable and affordable as possible, has not wavered. The challenges as we look towards the future intersect with this conversation on resilience because our climate in New York and across the world is getting hotter. There's more moisture in the air, leading to extreme weather events, but also making the job of operating buildings harder.” 

Sweat is a venture capitalist and general partner at Stresswood, an early-stage fund focused on backing exceptional founders building the next wave of enterprise technology. 

Sweat stressed that AI allows humans “to do what they do best…show empathy, be creative, be influential, and make sales.” At the same time, he underlined the importance of “really thinking about what you are doing today, what is the process, and how could this potential technology improve it,” in addition to setting definitive key performance indicators. 

Cloutier shares how Legence is a leading provider of engineering, consulting, installation, and maintenance services for mission-critical systems in buildings, making them more energy efficient, resilient, and sustainable.

“The biggest trend is the continued emergence of some positivity and some excitement about what the future may hold,” Connolly said. DLA Piper carried out its survey twice this year, once in early 2025 and then again after U.S. trade policies impacted sentiment. 

Connolly pointed out that some leaders remarked on the ability to acquire some of the best properties at 50% to 60% of replacement costs, “recognizing that troubled times yield new opportunities.” He also highlighted sentiment that the market has bottomed out and that new pricing has been established. 

Meanwhile, the significant amount of equity available and intended to be deployed, expectation of stabilized interest rates, and fundamentals in the market are “really creating an exciting long-term opportunity for investment.” During the interview, Connolly also discussed views on the availability of equity capital, REIT sectors generating the most interest today, the outlook for acquisitions, dispositions, and joint ventures, and more.

What's the property worth? What are the potential hazards, the risks?

“The ASTM guide was never meant to be something extra or something brand new, but really a roadmap consistent with what firms were already doing to provide an industry-accepted standard so we can all refer back to it. So all the parties agree on a common approach to communicating the findings.” She goes on to explain the three parts of the assessment, including identifying property-specific exposure to identified risks, to estimate potential damage and downtime of identified risk exposure, and, if necessary, develop specific recommendations to address concerns. 

Watts noted that CBRE expects new office deliveries in 2025 to be about 25% of what they were in 2019. Office deliveries are not expected to pick up in 2026 either. Lack of new construction at the top of the office market creates a ripple effect as demand shifts to lower tier assets. Class B office assets still retain appeal for certain office tenants, he pointed out. 

Meanwhile, Watts described the tenant experience as “more important than ever,” with companies keen to create a positive work environment for all levels of employees, rather than just senior level staff. Also important today is the concept of “how the building meets the street,” he said, namely access to retail that meets the specific needs of tenants and that encourages companies to renew their leases.

Hill stressed that commercial real estate should be viewed as a “diversified portfolio of various different property types, not just in the U.S. but in Europe. There is an opportunity someplace, somewhere in the world to add value through listed REITs and we think that will continue.” 

He noted that adding listed REITs to a private portfolio of real estate reduces volatility. “We advocate for having a 10% to 30% allocation to listed REITs within a private portfolio of real estate because we really do think it optimizes portfolios,” he said. 

Pierzak reviewed expectations for the REIT industry coming into the year, and how the reality has played out in recent months. He described the first half of the year as a roller coaster ride for REIT investors, with turbulence resulting from new directions in trade policy and economic uncertainty. 

“The current thinking is that the ride may have ended at mid-year, really kind of leaving us in the same place as we started the year. But if the ride restarts due to the new tariff actions, the experience of the last six months really gives us confidence that REITs are well positioned to weather additional volatility and thrive,” Pierzak said. 

Elsewhere in the interview, Pierzak reviewed the state of REIT balance sheets and the impact of higher interest rates, among other topics.

Sweat is a venture capitalist and general partner at Stresswood, an early-stage fund focused on backing exceptional founders building the next wave of enterprise technology.

Sweat said technology can be beneficial because “companies are all expected to produce more with fewer resources.” He stressed the importance for REIT leaders to speak with middle management to ascertain where AI can handle repeatable tasks, and to stress to management that technology is not a “precursor to them losing their jobs.”

“We like the REIT market to gain access to the specialty sectors, which is a nice compliment to a core real estate portfolio,” Giesey said. She added that Russell Investments expects these modern economy sectors, such as data centers and single family rentals, to see stronger cash flow growth over the medium term.

The best way for investors to gain access to modern economy real estate is to trim traditional private real estate holdings and add listed specialty sectors, Giesey said. “This is the most efficient and low-cost way to access these specialty sectors at scale. We've helped clients do this in the past, and it's been a success all around.”

Flynn highlighted the resiliency of both the consumer and tenant base in the open-air shopping center space, pointing out that there’s been 13 years of virtually no new supply.

“That obviously is a big benefit and it's showcasing in the occupancy side because occupancies now are at all-time highs. Even with some disruption from tariffs and some smaller bankruptcies, retailers are continuing to expand their footprint and have identified that the store base is really the best opportunity, and the most profitable, to service the consumer in as many ways as possible,” Flynn said.

He noted that convenience and value are “the sweet spot of where consumers are focused today.”

Werner said tariff-induced volatility is a “perfect environment” for an active REIT strategy “because we're able to take advantage of things that we think are selling off more than they should or trimming things that maybe are outperforming our expectations.”

He added that across almost all property types, REITs are seeing “growing dividends at the same time as being on the cusp of accelerating earnings.” Valuations also look “pretty fair, especially relative to equities. They look extremely undervalued relative to the historical averages.”

Bodner described transaction activity across a range of real estate sectors, including office, hospitality, senior housing, data centers, and energy infrastructure, as “fairly robust.” He stressed that the real estate sector is used to operating in periods of uncertainty and cyclical change, while noting that REITs are focusing on what they can control and are “in a good place at this stage, given everything that’s going on.”

He also pointed out that there's a lot of activity around figuring out what's the right scale to have to operate in this new environment, “which likely will lead to more public to public and public to private transaction activity in the REIT space.”

Seton said he is “extremely optimistic” about Sila’s future, noting that the REIT is scaled to grow its portfolio, which currently exceeds $2 billion in assets. He said “very high quality” opportunities exist throughout the marketplace.

“If a seller is trying to bring a product to market today to raise capital or sell a property, it's got to be high quality because capital, generally speaking in the market, is constrained,” he said. While focused nationally, Sila has a particular emphasis on Sun Belt states.

During the interview, Seton discussed Sila’s decision to do a direct listing on the NYSE and why it was confident in that choice, as well as what its Wall Street sponsorship looks like today. He also highlighted the tailwinds supporting the health care sector and described what makes health care so compelling to investors right now.

In this special episode of the REIT Report, part of an ongoing series, “Building Resilience,” covering issues facing the REIT industry as it remains focused on investing for the long term, Joanna Frank, Founder, CEO, and President of Center for Active Design (CfAD), operator of Fitwel and Active Design Advisors, Inc (Adai) to discuss how public health strategies are helping to transform the built environment and support communities to be more resilient.

“How do we use our built environment to create an environment that is resilient and can foster that quality of life and safety for the residents? This was first, I think, brought to the public stage at COP 28, where there was an entire day about health because the true cost of climate change can really only be calculated when you consider the health impacts, not just in this country, but globally, and they are massive.”

“In a typical garden variety recession, which rhymes with higher unemployment, lower consumption spending, REITs tend to fare well given the long duration contractual leases that they have in place, the higher dividend income which is creating current income, and their values being tied to underlying physical asset bases,” Wilson said.

Elsewhere in the interview, Wilson reviewed public versus private real estate valuations, potential opportunities in market dislocation, global trends in REIT markets, the diversity benefits REITs offer, and more.

“During Hurricane Katrina, I was at the White House and saw the mass devastation, and I said, shouldn't we be doing something ahead of time to reduce these disaster losses Americans will almost inevitably face. What I found was there was a small but growing interest in an area called disaster resilience.”

Currently, Kaniewski chairs the finance, insurance, and real estate committee at the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), a congressionally chartered nonprofit. He shares how he first got to know NIBS through their 2005 Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves study, which showed that every dollar the federal government invested in hazard mitigation saved four dollars. Then in 2017, “on the heels of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria,” Kaniewski asked NIBS for the bottom line of a forthcoming updated Mitigation Saves study. “They shared that savings were actually, six to one. The updated report found that others benefited from these mitigation investments beyond the federal government. Communities that can continue to function after a disaster will save money, not just to the homeowner or the federal government, but to everyone in that community who would otherwise have to take the time to help those with the losses. Recovery costs were greatly reduced by those hazard mitigation investments.”

Birenbaum touched on some of the major themes in the multifamily sector today, including the increase in migration to suburban locations and the desire for larger format housing on the part of millennials. That has led to increased demand for build-to-rent homes, an area that AvalonBay is increasing its focus on.

Birenbaum also noted that about a third of the REIT’s communities have a retail component. “When you get it right, the whole truly can be more than the sum of the parts. And for us, this is an area where I think we do have a competitive advantage being a REIT because we are building and owning these assets for the long term.”

 “One of the ways in which we've thought about climate risk is a one-in-a-100-year event, which implies that if I just had a one-in-a-100-year flood, I don't have to worry about another one, I'm not going to live to be 100 years old. That's not actually how they work,” Porter explains. “Understanding that every year there's an independent opportunity for that probability of an event to occur, so if you look out over the 30 years of a standard residential mortgage, a 1% chance of flooding every year means that over those 30 years, you have a 26% chance of flooding. And so suddenly you're saying, wow, I have over a quarter chance of flooding over the lifetime of my mortgage.” 

Crate noted that Easterly has been focused on efficiency since before the Trump administration created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). “DOGE is a tailwind. We could not be more excited that the government's going to have the opportunity, through better processes, to take some of our ideas and move them forward,” he said.

SageWater helps multifamily owners protect their investment and improve residents’ quality of life through turnkey plumbing and mechanical infrastructure solutions. With forensic diagnosis, engineering design, and construction services, they upgrade and install critical systems while renters remain in their homes.

Schanuel noted that SageWater primarily focuses on the “substantial amount” of aged infrastructure in the multifamily sector that was delivered in the 1950s-1970s, and sometimes the early 1980s. “Their plumbing and mechanical systems have aged out or phased out of their useful life and really need to be addressed to ensure that the housing stock remains a top-quality asset for the ownership groups that maintain and rent out those facilities.”

Both Giulieri and Svec emphasized the importance of staying calm and focused in today’s volatile market environment. “If you can stay disciplined during times like this, the odds of success skyrocket,” Giulieri said. Svec advised listeners to “have a plan, stick to it, and do your best to keep the emotion out of it.”

During the interview, Giulieri and Svec also addressed:

• key questions to ask a potential financial advisor
• how to balance the need to have funds available for key financial milestones, like buying a home or paying for college, with ensuring that you're also saving for retirement
• advice for anyone already on the investment path, with a 401K or other investment vehicle, who's tempted to look at their latest account statement right now
• whether this is potentially a good time to either begin investing in the markets or to put additional funds in
• what a balanced investment portfolio might look like and how REITs could fit into that

Main described the corporate mood heading into proxy season as “anxious.” For many companies, however, as long as they've been engaging with their investors, have good disclosure, and aren't viewed as outliers by institutional investors, “they're probably going to have a good proxy season,” he said.

Investors, meanwhile, are “cautious,” he said, and are likely to be more “tight-lipped” given recent SEC guidance. At the same time, their core belief about the importance of strong governance practices remains intact.

Ismail said there's good reason to fear a slowdown in economic growth resulting from an increase in tariffs, not just from potentially higher import costs, but also a pullback in business investment as well as consumer spending.

As for the market response, “we'll see how the next few weeks shake out, but thus far REITs and real estate appear to be a relative safe haven,” Ismail said. One reason for that is the starting valuation of REITs prior to the tariff announcement, where REITs looked attractive relative to the S&P 500. “REITs came into this environment on the cheaper side, while private real estate came in looking fairly valued,” Ismail noted.

Rexroad discussed ways to work within the current environment of shifting interest rates, recession worries, and geopolitical tensions in order to remain consistent on strategy. “It’s really important to differentiate between short-term volatility and secular change. Short-term volatility needs to be managed and monitored. It can be a distraction if you let it be,” she said.

She noted that between 2019 and 2022, Piedmont shifted $1.4 billion of assets, or roughly a third of the portfolio, out of Chicago, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and into Atlanta and Dallas.

Malhotra noted that the 75-plus cohort in the United States is set to grow at about 4% per annum over the next five to 10 years. By 2030, the group will represent 10% of the total population, up from 7.5% today. At the same time, their spending is expected to grow over 80%, or $700 billion, through 2030.

As to how the Nareit Hawaii Community Giving Initiative, established by the Nareit Foundation, goes about selecting the programs it chooses to support, Marrone noted, “We try to ensure that grantees come from all around the state and serve as many people as possible.”

Typically, four to five Nareit Foundation grants have been awarded annually, totaling about $350,000 to $400,000. In addition, five to six grants a year totaling $150,000 to $200,000, from Nareit Hawaii are awarded to nonprofits supporting a variety of charitable causes.

https://nareithawaii.com/

Zhang explained that the ETF is designed specifically to invest in “high conviction ideas” in U.S. REITs, while opportunistically investing in international and other real estate-related securities. “The ultimate goal is to provide total return and portfolio diversification,” she said.

The backdrop for REIT fundamentals is “quite healthy,” supported by steady demand and meaningfully below-trend supply, Zhang said

“Succession is, if not the highest priority for the board, one of the highest priorities,” Ferguson said. He noted that there were seven CEO succession events per year from 2013 to 2022. In 2023, there were nine and in 2024 that increased to 12.

Cordingley noted that the acceleration is set to continue for a number of reasons, including increasing activist involvement and an aging leadership cohort. “The average age per REIT CEO is 60 and typical retirement is occurring around 64,” he said.

In research sponsored by Nareit, CEM Benchmarking took a comprehensive look at investment allocations and realized investment performance across 12 asset classes over a 25-year period (1998–2022). While private equity was the strongest performer over that period, with an average net return of about 12%, REITs and U.S. small cap stocks came in second place with average returns of about 9.7%. Returns for private real estate were about 7.7% during the 25-year period.

Van Bragt said CEM’s research “really shows that on a net return basis, REITs have done really well in the past 25 years. And so if you have real estate in your asset allocation, I think you should seriously consider using REITs or at least adding them to it.”

Read the CEM Study: https://www.reit.com/data-research/research/updated-cem-benchmarking-study-highlights-reit-performance

McLaughlin said 2025 looks set to be a “solid year” for both consumption and global trade, based on strong labor markets. E-commerce, meanwhile, is “absolutely gaining market share in all of our markets around the world,” she noted.

At the same time, there's been a lack of construction for the largest logistics buildings since 2022, McLaughlin pointed out. “Today, and looking at 2025 as a whole, we see deliveries down 35% year over year for all types of logistics real estate, but that number is a 65% decline for bulk buildings, so really setting the stage for demand and supply to rebalance and maybe even have some scarcity in certain markets.”

JLL IPT is a daily NAV REIT that owns and manages a diversified portfolio of apartment, industrial, grocery-anchored retail, health care, and office properties located in the United States.

Swaringen said JLL IPT’s mission is to be a hybrid investment that balances the stability of performance in the private real estate markets with the same history of consistent, growing dividends that public REIT investors look for.

Macro fundamentals, interest rates, and geopolitical sentiment are mixed globally, resulting in stock preferences that are heavily driven by regional teams’ micro analysis, Joseph said.

The key driver behind Citi’s list of most preferred stocks in 2025 is the presence of positive rental growth, with rental growth weakness and high valuation the key reasons for the least preferred subsectors. Sector preferences are not globally consistent, Joseph stressed, highlighting the presence of significant local supply and demand drivers.

Regionally, Citi is most positive on the U.S., Australia, Europe, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and more cautious on China, Latin America, India, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand.

CBRE is forecasting GDP growth of about 2.3% this year. With the economic momentum of 2024 continuing into 2025, “I think we're seeing the slow start to a new real estate cycle,” as vacancy begins to trend lower and rental growth generally firms and starts to head higher, Barkham said.

Barkham described investor sentiment as “very positive” given the GDP forecast and the outlook for the year, “and based on the fact that people haven't been active for two or three years, or not very active….people are anxious to get moving and adjust their portfolios and deploy capital.”

“REITs offer investors a low cost, effective, and liquid means of investing in commercial real estate. As real estate stocks, they provide meaningful benefits to investment portfolios, which does include competitive long-term total returns, a strong portfolio diversification, and stable dividend income,” McCarthy said.

Research shows that 78% of financial advisors recommend REITs to their clients, McCarthy said, with advisors appreciating their dividend income, diversification opportunities, strong risk-adjusted returns, and liquidity. 

Hafeez discussed how REITs are trading at a premium to net asset value, with certain sectors, including health care, data centers, and office accounting for the lion’s share of that premium.

Many of these sectors are taking advantage of this cost of capital benefit and have issued equity to shore up capital to be on the offensive in 2025, Hafeez said. “I’d expect REITs to be pretty active acquirers compared to the last couple of years,” he added.

REITs have ready access to unsecured debt markets as well as the ability to issue equity, Worth said, which puts the sector in a strong position for 2025.

Meanwhile, Nareit has identified four key megatrends that will continue to shape the global REIT landscape over the coming decade: specialization, scale, innovation, and sustainability. “All four of them are areas where REITs are really well poised and have real ability to execute,” Worth said.

2025 REIT Outlook:
https://www.reit.com/news/blog/market-commentary/finding-opportunities-reit-market-outlook-2025

Elena Alschuler, head of sustainability, Americas, LaSalle Investment Management, who recently served as the working group chair for the CRREM North America project, joined

this final episode of the REIT Report special series focused on building on the real estate industry's journey to reduce emissions from the built-in environment to zero. She shares her experience in engaging the U.S. real estate community in a deep and thoughtful discussion around the CRREM Framework’s approach and methodology for measuring transition risk to institutional real estate portfolios. 

Alschuler shares how “a couple of years ago, a lot of investors were starting to look at these CRREM curves, and we liked the idea of having forward-looking targets to benchmark against in terms of planning energy and carbon performance. But when we started looking at portfolios against this particular set of curves, many of us were getting crazy results. So, twelve [U.S. and Canadian] real estate companies, including LaSalle, decided to co-fund a ULI working group, which was supported by the CRREM team in Europe, to do industry engagement and Larence Berkely National Labs (LBNL) to do the technical work.”

Lachance said that with the REIT market bestowing “pretty meaningful premiums in some sectors, we expect to see a fairly aggressive deployment of capital” from companies in the data center and health care sectors, self-storage, and to some extent retail. He added that there are also companies in the office sector trading at premiums to NAV and “that's going to influence how they allocate capital.”

Green Street sees the strongest rent growth potential in data centers. “That story has been well told, but it remains an area where we think there's meaningful upside,” Lachance said.

Hodes Weill recently released its 2024 Real Estate Allocations Monitor which showed that about 39% of institutions actively allocated capital to REITs in 2023, compared with 36% the prior year. Sovereign wealth funds were “meaningfully more active,” Weill said. “I think this is an ongoing trend where institutions are increasingly active out of their real estate allocations in REITs. And REITs are increasingly a complement to private market investments.”

About 67% of institutions indicated that liquidity is one of the key reasons why they invest in REITs, which was up from about 46% the prior year.

“We were pleasantly surprised and pleased to see an improvement in sentiment as we looked at our 2025 publication relative to 2024 and 2023,” Alperstein said, “particularly given we've had a challenging couple of years with higher interest rates and really a lack of transaction activity.”

Alperstein added that the interest rate environment forms “a very important piece of the momentum that we hope to see going into next year.”

Since Local Law 97 was passed by the City Council in New York City as part of the Climate Mobilization Act in April 2019, commercial building owners in the United States have experienced the rise in regulations know as Building Performance Standards (BPS), which are intended to regulate the use of energy in existing buildings. Buildings owners are currently navigating a patchwork of law with various rules, processes, and compliance pathways in cities and states across the county.

“A good way to start the conversation is by drawing a bit of a contrast to the climate and energy policies on buildings that we've seen come from the federal level, where the emphasis has been on carrots not sticks, incentives to encourage buildings to push the envelope to reduce emissions to become more efficient. At the state and local level unlike the federal level, these BEPS laws would impose mandatory limits on buildings to either reduce their energy by certain amounts every year or to reduce their carbon emissions every year or in some cases both.”

“After two consecutive years where most survey respondents expected revenue declines, this year 88% of global respondents now report they expect revenues to increase going forward,” Flood said.

Rowden noted that factors supporting a more positive direction for the sector include employees spending more time in the office, a lack of new construction, and a record volume of office inventory being removed for conversions or redevelopments to other property types.

The participation rate for this year’s survey represents approximately 72% of the U.S. listed equity REIT industry’s total market capitalization.

This year’s survey showed a slight downward shift in voluntary turnover levels. Banoff explained that in the past few years, the baseline has been relatively higher, with “the pendulum tilted toward employees.” That’s now started to stabilize, with the pendulum swinging back toward employers, he said, although “not all the way.”

“The one thing to flag is that REITs continue to grow,” Pizzola said. He pointed out that in 2021, the economic footprint of REITs was 3.2 million FTE jobs, with that number growing to 3.4 million in 2022, before rising again in 2023. The data encompasses public listed, public non-listed, and private REITs.

“The general trajectory of where markets are headed is favorable for real estate,” Kellenberger said. He noted that the Federal Reserve is seeking to ease monetary conditions to avoid an economic hard landing, “and that will importantly bring down the cost of capital for real estate and likely bring a recovery to property values.”

Acton discussed the broader macro backdrop for commercial real estate. While markets are excited about the prospect of interest rate cuts, that sentiment is set against concern about potential recession and possible policy changes after the election. “It's a little bit of a mixed bag as far as the broader outlook goes.”

During the interview, Acton also noted that at this stage, most investors have rebalanced their portfolios along property sector lines. Going forward, it's likely going to be less about what specific property sectors investors are targeting and probably a lot more about the quality of the individual properties and locations. “Micro locations are becoming much, much more important in the investment decision than say market decisions,” he said.

PECO and Cohen & Steers Income Opportunities REIT, Inc. (CNSREIT) have formed a joint venture focused on acquiring open-air grocery-anchored shopping centers. The joint venture is 80% owned by CNSREIT and 20% by PECO and is targeting $300 million in equity. In the interview, Edison and Corl discuss the clear benefits they see from their partnership, their shared perspectives on what makes a strong investment in the sector, and the outlook for future growth.

In 2022, the TRS Strategic Property REIT Execution and Delivery (SPREAD) team were monitoring a sell-off in public REITs and were ready to take action. One quarter of TRS’s total $400 million commitment was initially invested in December 2022, half was deployed in March 2023, and the remaining quarter was invested in October 2023. During that period, the internal rate of return achieved by TRS was 17.1%.

Trovato discussed the impact of rising interest rates on home ownership and the demand for SFRs. Higher rates since 2022 have increased home buying costs and reduced housing inventory, as many current homeowners are reluctant to move due to their favorable mortgage rates. This scarcity has boosted demand for SFRs, making renting more attractive compared to buying.

Fox left a career on Wall Street in 2013 and set out to “financially empower the 99% that Wall Street often overlooks.” She created Empify with a goal to become the middleman between financial institutions and the everyday person, “because I understood the language of Wall Street, but I also understood the language in the hearts and minds of both adults and children and Empify bridges that gap.”

Empify has launched over 10,000 brand new investors, Fox said, adding that members of the WealthBuilders Community App have invested over $650,000 in REITs. She noted that a key takeway from Empify’s five-week REIT Investing Accelerator program is the extent to which REIT-owned properties are a consistent feature of investors’ everyday lives.
This episode is supported by LoopNet.

When USGBC was founded over 30 years ago and the first version of LEED was released, it established a clear and understandable framework to measure and define “green buildings.” Today, LEED has become a widely used rating system around the globe and, as a recognized indicator of leadership, has become an indispensable resource for the buildings community at large.

“There's just so much going on in this space, and the urgency is greater than ever. We have to balance the urgency of what the market needs with what's possible. While things like policy help establish a floor…. it's become even more challenging to [define] what leadership means in these times,” shares Wes Sullens, LEED Fellow and Director at USGBC. “We use our group of volunteers and experts… that help us write our rating system. It's not something we cook up in a vacuum, the idea is to make sure LEED is that consensus standard for leadership, which I think is a unique place in the market.”

Venkatesan discussed how capital investment levels have been high for both Digital Realty (NYSE: DLR) and Equinix, Inc . (Nasdaq: EQIX), and are expected to remain so.

“Over the last three years, annual investment by Digital Realty and Equinix averaged 5.5 % of their gross asset base, which is high,” she said. Both REITs have demonstrated the ability to raise capital at healthy pricing through different credit cycles and with strong leasing execution for the properties being built, she added.
This episode is supported by LoopNet.

August marks the 20th anniversary of the Extra Space IPO. Stubbs noted that in 2004, self-storage was not considered a core asset class for a real estate investor.

“We were a bit of an outlier at the time and there were still some negative connotations about self-storage. I think that it did take some time to help people understand that self-storage is a great asset class. It's very stable. It is institutional,” Stubbs said.
This episode is supported by LoopNet.

Moerenhout discussed political changes underway in Europe and the U.K. today and their impact on listed real estate. He noted that the EU's new competitiveness focus will create a more business-friendly environment, while the U.K. Labour party’s proactive policies and commitment to a new industrial strategy are “very welcome.” At the same time, political uncertainty in France following recent elections poses “significant risks,” he said.

“Investors will need to navigate these varied landscapes carefully, balancing their opportunities with the potential changes ahead. The return to, in my view, a normal real estate transactions market will probably take more time than initially anticipated or hoped for,” Moerenhout said.
This episode is supported by LoopNet.

Tredway said the current environment represents “the best buying opportunity” for commercial real estate. Fundamentals are strong and investors are in a position to purchase assets at a 10% to 30% discount compared with pre-2022 levels, “which represents an amazing return.”

“Now is a great entry point for those that have capital. And we also see hope on the horizon as we believe rates will come down...we think it's a great time to think about long-term investment in this space and we do believe in real estate as a long-term anchor for portfolios,” Tredway said.

This episode is supported by LoopNet.

Bonser discussed the current state of the capital markets for REITs and the most popular methods for raising capital.

“You are seeing people lock in to raise debt capital because they've held off for a couple of years, and you do need to get your debt balance sheet in order, so we're seeing a lot of activity there,” Bonser said.

The Clean Energy Buyers Association (CEBA) represents members with about $15 trillion in market cap. That's about 400 members who collectively are a community of commercial, industrial, and institutional energy buyers. In this episode, Baker discusses how energy customers drive demand and how CEBA is focused on addressing barriers to energy supply challenges that hold back the demand for clean energy.

Klinksiek said REITs are in a position to play a consolidator role in the market, given their access to capital, improving valuations, and operational advantages.

“We've been framing the outlook for REITs as, are we at the dawn of the next REIT golden era? We think the answer is probably yes,” Klinksiek said.

Worth discussed some of the key features of Nareit’s newly-published 2024 Mid-Year Report.

Worth noted that despite REITs underperforming the broader stock market this year, they remain able to navigate the current period of higher interest rates.

“REITs’ operational performance has been very solid. We've continued to see high occupancy rates in the major property types and we've seen positive NOI and FFO growth. We're also seeing the continuation of really disciplined balance sheets,” Worth said.

2024 REIT Mid-Year Report: https://www.reit.com/news/blog/market-commentary/2024-midyear-reit-key-themes

Bodner underscored a dynamic real estate market adapting to new economic realities and the importance of leveraging technological advancements to navigate challenges and seize emerging opportunities in 2024.

He noted that transaction volume in traditional real estate sectors continues to be lower than a year ago, reflecting persistent challenges such as valuation disparities between buyers and sellers. Meanwhile, ongoing shifts in the financing landscape are resulting in traditional lenders retreating while private credit, especially from insurance-backed alternative asset managers, gain traction.

Szymanski noted that a lot of discussion at Nareit’s REITweek: 2024 Investor Conference focused on the capital markets backdrop and what that means for transaction activity.

Whelan discussed the findings of a new CBRE report, Shaping Tomorrow’s Cities, which looks at ways to reinvent U.S. cities after the upheaval of the pandemic and the growth of remote work. She noted that urban revitalization trends that were evident in the period leading up to the pandemic were “stopped in their tracks” by COVID-19 and the “sheer concern of density being a health problem.”

The CBRE report found that a diverse built environment in vibrant mixed-use districts was more attractive to office tenants, more attractive to residents, and more attractive to retailers setting up shops to support the population in that area. Vibrant mixed-use districts are essential for urban rejuvenation, Whelan said, “because just working in cities is not the pure draw anymore.”

During the interview, Risoleo discussed the REIT’s latest results, trends in leisure and group travel, recent acquisitions in Nashville, conditions in Maui, renovation projects, sustainability targets, and more.

Commenting on the outlook for the lodging sector in general, Risoleo said it is set up for solid performance for at least the next several years, with supply growth at historically low levels.

Sullivan shared some of the findings from the DLA Piper Global Real Estate State of the Market Survey 2024. He described sentiment among CRE executives today as one of “cautious optimism.”

“I think the message we're getting is that people think the skies are starting to clear a little bit. Nobody is saying that we're there yet, but people are looking at interest rates having stabilized and there's an expectation of some rate cuts,” Sullivan said.

Keith discusses Deloitte's 2024 commercial real estate M&A outlook, noting that higher interest rates due to ongoing inflation concerns may extend the period of lower M&A transaction volume that has been in place since the second quarter of 2022.

Keith also highlights sector-specific trends and identifies industrial and data centers as strong sectors, while highlighting opportunities in multifamily investments.

Vargas shared her perspective on the importance of industry collaboration over her career, which includes 25 years at the Environmental Protection Agency and the past 13 years at DOE. She shares how the Better Buildings Initiative was designed to serve as a platform to drive and accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency and other decarbonization.

“What we recognize is that we spend about $200 billion a year to run our commercial buildings in this country. We spend, on average, about another $200 billion on our industrial facilities. And we know that, on average, 20% to 30% of that energy is wasted.”

Voigt discussed key issues impacting real estate investing today and how REITs might find opportunities amid market volatility.

“The great opportunity that U.S. REITs have, and particularly those early winners that we're seeing raise capital now, is that they have the balance sheets and access to equity to be the buyers. And oftentimes there'll be less buyers at that table and that's where you oftentimes get the best returns,” Voigt said.

Kok and Zheng are two of the academic directors of the Global Real Estate Leaders Program, an executive training program aimed at emerging real estate professionals with at least 10 years’ experience, sponsored by the MIT Center for Real Estate and Maastricht University Centre. Nareit is a participating organization in the new executive education program.

Kok noted that the program is aimed at executives who are eager to learn about the latest real estate finance or mega trends, but don’t have the time to go back to school for a year.

In a wide-ranging interview, Kelly speaks about placemaking—a hallmark of the REIT’s approach to development—and the importance of “striking the right balance” between public space, retail, and work and living spaces, alongside basic neighborhood necessities.

He also talks about the importance of affordable housing, JBG SMITH’s shift to become a majority multifamily REIT, the Potomac Yard arena project, the REIT’s ongoing commitment to National Landing and the Northern Virginia submarket, and more.

Brown described the landscape for REIT investment today, noting that most REITs issued earnings growth guidance for 2024 of around 4%.

“The REIT earnings outlook still looks very solid,” Brown said. “Demand is better than supply in most property sectors…higher interest rates as well as the higher cost of construction have started to slow supply in many of the markets we invest in. We think the picture is improving for…REIT earnings growth in 2024 and 2025.”

Register for Nareit's REITweek: 2024 Investor Conference: https://go.reit.com/reitweekRR

Myers shares his view on why it is so important to take a long term view on electrification, which refers to the replacement of fossil fuel equipment, like internal combustion engines and gas boilers, with electric motors or heat pumps.

The common case for electrification is that building owners can decarbonize and utilize equipment that is significantly more efficient. “Electrification of everything is what I'm here to talk about today. And in particular, how to spread this religion around electrification. I am a believer that we need to electrify the built environment and I'll explain why, but I do think that we need to take some important steps to get there,” Myers says.

Werner emphasized the resilience of public REITs amid economic challenges, especially in managing debt maturities and maintaining dividend payments during periods of uncertainty.

According to Werner, public REITs are now positioned to capitalize on market volatility, with robust balance sheets enabling them to acquire distressed properties. "We're still kind of waiting for the sort of big moment for public REITs to go out and make significant acquisitions or for private companies to bite the bullet and decide that going public is the only kind of way to save their company."

Hughes discussed some of the trends and developments in digital infrastructure and real estate securities markets today. He noted that the types of real estate businesses that get characterized as digital infrastructure currently compose around 40% of the publicly traded real estate market by value. “That's something that was not true a decade, a decade and a half ago.”

When analyzing digital infrastructure, the same issues that impact traditional real estate—such as supply and demand dynamics, unit level economics, the capital intensity of the asset over time, lease structures, and credit counterparties—should all be considered, Hughes said.

CBRE IM’s flagship global strategy began to allocate to listed REITs in December 2022. Troni explains the timing behind that decision and the scope it gave the strategy to access niche and specialized property sectors.

Since December 2022, the strategy has entirely invested in an actively managed but broadly diversified strategy, Troni said. She added that the addition of a completion strategy, which would unlock opportunities in those specialty sectors, is currently under review.

Troni noted that while the market is unsure about when rate cuts may occur, “what we do feel confident about is the fact that higher rates are priced into public markets in terms of the pricing levels, and they have a strong chance to outperform when the market can see the end of rising rates.”

Loffman described the contours of the REIT capital market landscape today, noting that broadly speaking, “it's been a little bit challenging,” with REITs trading at a discount to net asset value (NAV). “But as time moves on, and if we believe in the yield curve, which I certainly do, I think we'll be making strides to get closer to NAV from an equity perspective,” he added.

In this episode, Schneider shares how ESRT began the journey on decarbonization more than 15 years ago by focusing on making the business case for deep energy retrofits.

“By creating a process and publishing our energy and financial modeling, we showed what every step of the process would look like and demonstrated that we could have a guaranteed savings of 38% with a payback of three years. Frankly, it's better than we thought it would be,” Schneider says. “But more important than just the results was the idea that we could share the process and show what did and didn't work, how to do the right steps in the right order, how to work from the outside of the building in.”

Edwards said he expects to see more private real estate shift to the public market over time, pointing to the benefits REITs offer in terms of market discipline, low leverage, and their ability to weather market disruptions such as the great financial crisis and the pandemic.

Amid the market cross currents of slower global economic growth, offset to some extent by anticipated lower interest rates, “we are generally constructive on commercial real estate in 2024,” Joseph said. At the same time, Citi’s 2024 global real estate outlook also stresses the importance of stock picking, rather than broader sector and subsector allocations.

For the U.S., Citi is projecting total returns for REITs of 10% to 15% in 2024, with adjusted FFO growth of about 3%. “Growth is being driven by slowing but still solid operating results, development and the redevelopment benefit that is coming on, and the retention of free cash flow,” Joseph said.

McCready said 2023 was one of the most challenging years in memory for life sciences real estate due to a slowdown in the deployment of venture capital, higher interest rates and inflation, and “rather aggressive” real estate development of lab space in the past two years.

Based on activity so far in 2024, though, “the year is already shaping up to be much more positive than the year before, so fingers crossed that we are looking at a return to an upwards trajectory in the months and year to come,” McCready said.

Durkay said REITs today are “cheap” versus broader equities. “They do screen attractively versus private real estate. They look compelling versus where REITs have historically traded, and they look pretty fairly valued versus fixed income. The macro backdrop is favorable with interest rate stabilization and the increasing likelihood of cuts this year… I think valuations look attractive.”

Despite this backdrop, negative rhetoric about the real estate sector “and the potential for the other shoe to drop” persists, Durkay said. “Investors in Europe and Asia really do want to learn more about real estate, but it's hard to move past that conversation of the fate of offices in big U.S. cities like New York and San Francisco,” she noted.

Palma discussed the launch of Real Assets Compass, an interactive tool designed to help institutional investors and financial advisors make informed decisions about strategic allocations to listed and private real estate.

“We feel that there's an education gap among clients, institutional and individual investors alike, about some of the benefits of real estate,” Palma said. “Despite the evidence that we have that historically real estate has positively contributed to both returns and diversification benefits in broad multi-asset portfolios, it's sort of been an under-owned asset class,” he noted.

Worth outlined some of the key messages in Nareit’s 2024 REIT Outlook, including three reasons that may make 2024 a good year for REITs. He noted that historically, at the end of a Federal Reserve tightening cycle, REITs have outperformed private real estate and equities over the following two and four quarters. “We think we saw a little preview of that at the end of the fourth quarter,” Worth said.

Meanwhile, the divergence between public and private real estate valuations continues to be quite wide. Worth said that gap is expected to close in 2024, both through REITs performing well and continued markdowns for private real estate.

RFA’s clients include some of the larger public pension funds, and increasingly non-U.S. investors.

Maher said that most U.S. institutional investors today allocate less than 10% of their real estate allocation to REITs. “I think that indicates a big underweight that they're probably not aware of,” Maher said. He added that RFA’s investor clients continue to want greater exposure to a broader range of property types and will continue to look to REITs to provide that access.

Mid-size and larger institutions should have a “permanent long-term position in REITs for diversification, market knowledge, [and] exposure to property types that are difficult to access in the private markets,” he said.

McNeal discussed her role at Extra Space, the merger with Life Storage and issues she has dealt with on the legal and personnel side, legal issues facing all REITs today, as well as advice for those seeking a legal career in the commercial real estate sector.

Turning to the priorities for 2024 that she is most excited about, McNeal referred to a mandate from Extra Space’s CEO to focus on the fundamentals, after an “incredibly crazy” 2023. That involves making sure new staff are fully onboarded and trained, operating platforms are able to fully support the newly merged company, and that properties acquired through the merger are up to the same specifications as the Extra Space properties.

Powell-Rudy discussed the level of awareness around neurodiversity in the wider population today, the level of participation for neurodiverse individuals in the workplace, and some of the key factors impacting their hiring.

She also discussed practical steps that companies can take to become more aware of neurodiversity, to make their hiring processes more amenable to neurodiverse candidates, and how to signal to the outside world that neurodiversity is something that’s on a company’s radar.

In addition, Powell-Rudy covered best practices for companies that are starting up hiring programs or looking to work with a partner.

Hodes Weill recently released the 2023 Real Estate Allocations Monitor, which showed that institutions’ target allocations to real estate were flat at about 10.8% year-over-year.

“Institutions are very cautious in the market today. And while they're reasonably optimistic about the opportunity to invest over the next couple of years, right now in the moment there are numerous cross currents,” Weill said.

At the same time, several large institutions have increased their target allocations over the past 12 months, Weill noted. “I think that has been a signal to the market that they are encouraged about the opportunity to invest and perhaps lean into the opportunity.” Such institutions include Norges Bank and CalSTRS.

Bartlett discussed American Tower’s recently launched Sustainability Report and provided an overview of the REIT’s broader sustainability strategy. He explained that “neutral hosting” is central to the company’s inherently sustainable business model. “Neutral hosting allows multiple customers to lease space on a shared single tower or asset, which reduces the number of sites required and minimizes the industry's overall environmental impact”, he said.

Beyond providing digital infrastructure, Bartlett noted that American Tower’s global presence enables it to play “a significant role in fostering connectivity in a responsible, equitable, and sustainable way to realize our vision of building a more connected world.”

Halfacre discussed Modiv’s evolution toward focusing on industrial manufacturing facilities, after starting out as a diversified net lease REIT.

“We discovered that industrial manufacturing facilities were, like us, flying a bit below the radar and also, like us, providing investors with very attractive upside potential. The manufacturing sector has strong fundamentals, solid cap rates, healthy contractual rent bumps, long-term dependable leases, and somewhat of an inefficient transaction marketplace. All of that made it clear to us that we were onto something,” Halfacre said.

Auerbach said fundamentals for REITs have remained “very strong,” despite the Federal Reserve’s tighter monetary policy. “If you look at the last quarter, public REITs reported same store property level income about 10% above where they were pre-pandemic. Many of these REITs have been preparing for winter for a long period of time, cleaning up their balance sheets, focusing less on variable rate debt.”

He added that investors want management teams to do four things—grow revenues, grow profits, grow guidance, and grow dividends. “Pretty much by and large, that's been what's happening across the spectrum in the REIT industry.”

In this latest episode, Thomas discusses many of the themes and topics that appear in his newly released book, REITs for Dummies, including the increasingly important role played by PropTech within the sector.

“We've seen PropTech throughout most every property category, in multifamily, self-storage, you name it. Every sector has some PropTech component, which is really an interesting part of this innovation…it's really helped these companies grow and produce more earnings,” Thomas says.

Devine discussed new research, sponsored by Nareit, into the sustainability performance of listed REITs and private real estate as well as their approaches toward sustainability commitments and disclosure, and the relationship between sustainability disclosure and performance among REITs.

“Public and private real estate firms make different decisions regarding their sustainability commitments and their disclosure,” Devine said. Using the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) reporting structure, the research shows that historically REITs have outperformed private funds on sustainability performance. However, that gap has been narrowing in recent years

Kellenberger noted that listed REITs currently trade at significant valuation discounts to both equities and private real estate. He pointed out that the earnings price multiple of REITs versus equities today is over two standard deviations away from the long-term mean—"a level that's even cheaper than what we saw during the GFC, particularly for U.S. listed REITs.”

Meanwhile, the change in valuations for private real estate have been slower than for listed REITs, given the appraisal-based methodologies and limited price discovery in today's transaction markets, he added.

Alvarado said Safehold has made a “tremendous” amount of progress in the last six years in terms of portfolio expansion and growth in enterprise value, “but in the greater scheme of what we're looking to accomplish, I think we're still very, very early on…that's what excites us about the future.”

Speaking in conjunction with the release of JLL’s 2023 Life Sciences Industry and Real Estate Perspective, McCready noted that while Boston and San Francisco remain leading life science markets on a national and international level, other markets in the United States are showing signs of growth and vitality.

Desiderio spoke with Nareit’s Senior Vice President of Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability Jessica Long to discuss recent and upcoming activity related to federal policy that supports real estate owners’ efforts to measure and reduce carbon emissions, disclose climate-related financial risk and opportunity, and comply with local building standards.

Barkham discussed the state of global cross-border real estate capital flows, which totaled $30.5 billion in the first half of this year. That marked a 52% decline from the same period a year earlier and down 44% compared to an average of the first half periods between 2018 to 2022.

Despite being a “pretty weak year really,” the mood of the global real estate investor is “far from despondent,” Barkham said. The mood is “wary and cautious until we get a much clearer signal on the glide path for interest rates, both in the United States and in the global economy.”

Notable trends during the first half included an inflow of funds into the U.S. from Singapore and Japan, reflecting the buyout of STORE Capital Corp. by sovereign wealth fund GIC and a $1 billion Japanese investment into New York City office.

Funari discussed Nareit’s new project that initially involves tracking quarterly investment holdings for the 28 largest actively managed real estate investment funds that focus on REITs from 2010 to the first quarter of 2023.

While performance returns offer a broad market perspective on what investors think about REITs, by narrowing the focus to active managers, or “people whose income and livelihoods depends on how well they can read the market for commercial real estate, we really get to capitalize on their unique insights and their expertise in this area,” Funari said.

Pierzak noted that two main factors are at play today—the divergence in public and private real estate valuations, and challenges in the capital markets, particularly around refinancing.

The public-private valuation gap really reached its peak in the latter half of 2022, Pierzak said. Progress has been made since then, albeit slowly, he noted. However, whenever such valuation dislocations occur, “they can present opportunities for REIT investors…historically, when we’ve seen these major public and private valuation divergences, we see that REIT total returns have tended to bounce and even surge.”

Rivel recently carried out a generalist investor perception study on the REIT industry and Rubin discussed some of the findings that emerged. He noted that the outlook for REITs as an investment class in North America has “improved significantly” since a similar survey was undertaken in 2018. In the previous survey, over half of respondents said they were underweight in REITs, compared to about 40% this time.

Turner discussed the scope and growth of the tower REIT industry, its performance history, how the leasing structure works, the impact of 5G, global opportunities and challenges, benefits for the sector from AI and edge computing, and more.

Key Takeaways from the interview include:

• There are approximately 420,000 macro tower and small cell sites across the United States, with REITs owing about 90% of the approximately 150,000 macro tower sites.
• There hasn’t been any significant new development of macro tower sites in the last decade. New supply is “incredibly limited.”
• Most of the recent growth for tower REITs has been in international markets, in both emerging and developed markets.

Bodner commented on the current state of real estate transaction activity, how different property segments are faring, opportunities amid today’s challenging environment, strategies being used to get deals done, and more.

During the interview, Bodner noted that:

• It’s a “much more challenging” deal environment today than it was previously.
• Pockets of strength are emerging across the real estate landscape, including logistics, self-storage, areas of the hospitality sector, experiential real estate, and even office.
• The most important factor in terms of getting deals done today is the stability of the underlying trends that are driving activity in a particular sector.

During the interview, Whelan discussed broad office occupancy trends, changes in how office space is utilized, the flight to quality, the role of flexible office space, the importance of an office’s location, and more.

Among Whelan’s key takeaways were:

• Net effective rents, that account for landlord concessions, are continuing to grow at the top tier of the office market.
• In some cases, the rent differential between top quality and lower quality office space has never been greater.
• A great office building alone isn’t enough. “Buildings have to be in great submarkets right now,” and that means mixed-use environments.
• “The office has a really exciting role to play in the future of how cities are reinvented.” Office space is going to be in a transformative phase as it plays a key role in the evolution of mixed-use locations.

Norges Bank is a long-term investor that has roughly 4.1% of their global investment portfolio invested in real estate, with about half of that allocated to public REITs. With the firm’s focus on maximizing risk-adjusted returns, Norges has been an influential leader in promoting the adoption of sustainability for real estate companies globally for many years.

On this episode of the REIT Report, Galbiati joined Nareit’s Senior Vice President of Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability Jessica Long to discuss how the real estate industry is addressing a key challenge of decarbonization planning and the importance of real estate companies in the U.S. clearly disclosing their strategy, decision making, and targets around key environmental matters.

“Real estate is facing tremendous pressure to decarbonize. This is partly regulatory pressure, but it’s definitely coming from a shift in demand from tenants as well as investors. We don’t think the current market valuation is pricing those risks adequately today,” Galbiati said.

During the interview, Stafford discussed COAERS’ decision to use REITs as part of a portfolio completion strategy starting in early 2020—an approach that has been successful for the fund and one that it continues to assess on an ongoing basis. He also spoke about the importance of having a mindset attuned to trying a new investment approach, the benefits that REITs provide to COAERS, market issues that COAERS is watching, advice for funds considering a change in strategy, and more.

COAERS is a defined benefit plan that administers retirement benefits for regular employees of the city of Austin and currently serves about 19,000 current, inactive, and retired members. The system’s investments total approximately $3 billion and are broadly diversified across asset classes including equities, real assets, fixed income, multi-asset strategies, commodities, and cash.

Vojticek commented on the operating environment for listed REITs, DWS’s recommendations for using REITs in conjunction with private real estate to complete portfolios, the access REITs provide to emerging asset classes, the benefits of global investment in REITs, and more.

Moriarity spoke about how REITs are faring in the current interest rate climate, how their valuations compare to private real estate, REITs and their position in the capital markets, property sectors that CenterSquare is bullish on, and more.

A pause in interest rate hikes is generally expected to occur at the next Federal Reserve meeting, Moriarity said. While some are expecting a subsequent rate hike in July, “it’s fair to say that we're closer to the end (of the rate hike cycle) than we are to the beginning,” she added.

Duffy spoke about: the state of commercial real estate today and how Ranger Global distinguishes between the performance of geographies and property types; the appeal of next generation property types; the advantages and risks of investing domestically versus globally; the dislocation between listed and private real estate; and the benefits of investing in listed real estate funds.

Benjamin, who will step down as CEO on June 30, reflected on his tenure at A&B, why supporting community organizations has played an important complement to his executive role, the transformation the company has undergone and its decision to convert to a REIT, changing the culture of A&B and its progress on DEI issues, and more.

Benjamin said that now is a good time for a transition in leadership, given that “we have nearly completed the significant transformation that we’ve gone through as a company.” The leadership change also coincides with Benjamin’s 60 th birthday, a point at which he is eager to pursue new interests. Lance Parker, currently A&B's president & COO, has been appointed president & CEO effective July 1.

During the interview, Haskell talked about the opportunities from investing in global emerging market listed real estate, the scope of the market, the key theme of urbanization, challenges posed by the lack of reporting standardization, the potential shelter that emerging markets offer relative to other markets, and more.

Haskell manages the Atla Global Urbanization Listed Fund. A key theme for the fund is urbanization, and the opportunities presented by the rapid rise of emerging market cities.

“The greatest social and economic transformations in the world today are in developing countries and it all comes down, in my opinion, to urbanization. While developed cities have mostly plateaued in population growth, emerging market cities are inflecting in population and in wealth,” Haskell said.

During the interview, Miniman discussed: concerns impacting commercial real estate—including the banking crisis; potential opportunities for REITs in the months ahead; the role REITs can play in conjunction with private real estate; and the role that active managers can play for REIT investors.

Miniman said that the repricing of REITs that occurred last year, coupled with a likely near-term pausing in interest rate hikes, provide a “catalyst” for the asset class going forward.

“The listed market has taken a whole lot of the pain already,” Miniman said. He noted that in the past four historical interest rate increase cycles, listed REITs have started to gain ground about three months prior to the final increase.

“There's a growing recognition that REITs present some attractive opportunities and I think that we'll see more private firms getting into the space,” Busken told the REIT Report podcast. He noted that “it's not unusual for us to see some of our private real estate funds selectively take positions in REITs where they see some kind of a value discrepancy.”

Busken added that with $300 billion-plus of private real estate dry powder on the sidelines and needing to be deployed, “we could definitely see more private funds playing in the market.”

Columbia Threadneedle launched CRED on April 26. The ETF tracks a custom, proprietary index which typically tracks 70-90 REITs weighted across eight sectors. It is designed to outperform the FTSE Nareit All Equity REITs Index through research-driven security selection and modified market cap weighting that emphasizes income and geographic opportunity.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Zeitoun noted that the firm’s survey data also showed that 82% of financial advisors favored the REIT structure as a way to express their preferences in real estate. “So, we think that timing is right, and we know for sure that the packaging is right relative to the way that advisors and allocators build their client portfolios.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Long noted that Nareit’s latest REIT ESG Dashboard shows that 100% of the top 100 REITs are reporting publicly on ESG in some manner. “REITs really are demonstrating that as an industry, real estate is taking seriously the requests from investors and regulators and other key stakeholders that are saying that ‘these environmental and social issues are important to us and we want to understand how you're managing those things.’”

One data point in the latest dashboard shows that 89% of REITs are reporting on their climate risk policy. Long noted that these percentages show that REITs “are out ahead on this….and putting in place policies and procedures and looking at the metrics to help better manage this risk and understand what's happening within a REIT’s real estate portfolios.”

Asamoah, a keynote speaker at Nareit's REITwise: 2023 Law, Accounting & Finance Conference, developed the legislative strategy for the CROWN Act and leads the movement on behalf of the CROWN Coalition to end race-based hair discrimination.

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, she described the CROWN Act as a “blueprint for championing change,” and added that it has been “groundbreaking on so many fronts and really shows that people can have a role in creating the society that they want to live in.”

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Gardner noted that a bull run of investment in life sciences, that started in 2015, “left us with an incredible number of products in development. And those are still there.”

Gardner stressed that the life sciences industry doesn’t follow broader economic patterns. “If a product takes 10 to 15 years to develop, the investment in that product isn't going to follow a seven year economic cycle, which is why we look at this record number of products in phase two and phase three clinical trials as such an important sign of the industry's overall wellbeing. The science is still there,” he said.

Armada’s flagship product HAUS is an exchange traded fund (ETF) comprised of 25 pure play residential REITs in the multifamily, manufactured housing, single-family rental, and senior housing segments. It recently celebrated its one year anniversary of being a publicly traded entity.

Speaking to the Nareit REIT Report, Auerbach noted that most REITs in the residential sector were able to lock in attractive long-term debt and are well-capitalized to handle the current interest rate environment.

As for leasing and rent growth trends, Auerbach pointed to continued strength in many of the Sunbelt markets, while there are signs of residents returning to some of the coastal markets as well.

A co-founder of Farmland Partners alongside former CEO Paul Pittman, Fabbri was named president in October 2021 after serving as the company’s CFO since its inception. He became CEO in February.

Speaking with the Nareit REIT Report, Fabbri said the value of U.S. farmland assets is about $2.7 trillion, with institutional investors accounting for probably 5% or less of that amount. That means that there is still a lot of education to be done to show investors that the asset class offers many potential benefits. Among those are the scarcity of the underlying asset, an attractive risk return profile, asset appreciation, inflation protection, and the absence of correlation with other asset classes.

Schall has served as president and CEO since 2011. His successor is Angela Kleiman, Essex’s current SVP and COO.

Speaking with the REIT Report, Schall said, “Coming out of periods of disruption, we've always been an opportunistic company. We've always found the right investments in the right place. And I think this is the case today.”

Schall highlighted the rapid pace of investments underway today by tech companies in artificial intelligence, which is likely to drive the economies of northern California and Seattle. “That will help Essex continue to grow as it has over much of the last 30 years or so.”

Wilson Géno assumed the role of president from Doug Bibby in January, when he officially stepped down after more than 20 years of leading the organization.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Wilson Géno said, “The bottom line is, the demand for more housing in this country is as far as the eye can see.”

Research by NMHC and other organizations indicates that the U.S. housing stock is in a deficit of about 4 million units.

Wilson Géno said new households have formed in the wake of the pandemic, “and that really put a significant strain on the housing supply that was available.” Sizeable rent increases also occurred into the first half of 2022, she noted.

Boston, who is also the mREIT’s co-chief investment officer, told the REIT Report that “we're respectful of this evolving period. We're respectful that we may continue to be surprised.” In response, Dynex Capital is carrying more cash and liquidity on its balance sheet, he noted. “Liquidity is absolutely key.”

This year, Dynex Capital will not be trying to predict exactly how far or how fast inflation will go, Boston said. “We are evaluating from a month-to-month basis. We're carrying more cash and liquidity because we feel it is dangerous to try to pick one scenario and structure your portfolio around that one scenario with economic variables being this uncertain, and the potential for exogenous shocks to the economy so high.”

Dynex Capital’s number one strategy, according to Boston, is “how much risk should we take in this environment? We have a flexible enough mindset not to reject the data as it's coming out.”

“We see public real estate as unequivocally more attractive than private real estate today,” Kaufman told Nareit’s REIT Report podcast.

Kaufman said the REIT market has been “really very rational” through the recent period of tightening financial conditions, “and financial conditions do remain in the driver's seat.” She noted that REIT returns “are attractive and we have a higher level of conviction in our outlook today just given the material tightening of financial conditions and the repricing that's already occurred in the REIT sector.”

REITs are underrepresented today in institutional real estate portfolios, Kaufman said. Listed real estate represents around 45% of institutional quality real estate worldwide, but only about 20% of investors’ real estate allocation. REITs have the additional benefit of being disproportionately weighted toward non-traditional property types like self-storage, health care, and data centers, she said.

Speaking on Nareit’s REIT Report podcast, Funari noted that, in terms of how REITs respond to inflation pressures, “people are inclined to believe that there might be differences among the property sectors, but the data doesn't bear that out.”

“I think there's a lot more uncertainty entering 2023 than we've seen at least in the past few years, putting aside COVID. I think that's going to be the biggest challenge and opportunity depending on how that turns out,” Nick Joseph, Citi’s global head of real estate and head of the U.S. real estate and lodging research team, told Nareit’s REIT Report podcast.

Global sector-specific trends that Citi is monitoring include: the future of the office; e-commerce and the impact on brick and mortar; lodging demand and recovery; health care coming out of the pandemic; housing trends; and digital transformation and its impact on infrastructure.

Speaking on Nareit’s REIT Report, Scales said that Nareit is working together with its REIT members to accelerate change collectively and “elevate the way that we do things on behalf of the industry.”

Scales outlined two key projects underway at Nareit to advance diversity and inclusion throughout the industry.

She noted that the grant application process for the Nareit Foundation’s Dividends through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DDEI) Giving Campaign opened this week.

Among the groups urged to apply, Scales said, are organizations focusing on ways to help secure talent for the real estate industry by looking at ways to expose high school or college students to real estate opportunities through mentorship, internships, and any other types of leadership and professional development opportunities.

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Hill said REITs have historically produced average 12-month forward returns of more than 10% following the onset of a recession, with early-cycle returns exceeding 20%.

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report podcast, Barkham said, “real estate capital markets tend to lead the economy, both on the downside and in the upturn…it’s going to take a while for investors to start to move because they want to assess the situation in terms of fundamentals. But we do see a capital markets recovery beginning around mid-year.”

Barkham said transaction activity is likely to become better supported over the course of the year as financial conditions improve, primarily in the second half of the year. However, “that's not to say there won't be activity in the first half of the year. There is a record amount of capital looking to deploy in real estate and looking for opportunities, particularly if pricing is a little bit more favorable.”

“We want to get these students into the boardroom and into the c-suite because as leaders they can effectuate change,” Bill Ferguson, chairman of Ferguson Partners and president of the Ferguson Charitable Foundation, told the Nareit REIT Report.

Ebony Mitchell, director of strategic initiatives at Ferguson and student liaison for CLE, noted that with the lack of ethnic diversity in commercial real estate, “there's been a limited number of role models and mentors of color to attract young collegiate talent on and off campus.” She added that many of Ferguson’s clients have also struggled with attracting diverse talent, especially at the entry level due to traditional campus recruiting efforts.

Ferguson explained that students selected into the CLE Program are required to take a certain number of courses in real estate in order to graduate with a minor in real estate. Given Ferguson’s vast network of corporate relationships across 12 sectors in the real estate industry, “we are connecting them with clear opportunities,” he said.

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Pierzak noted that REITs are not only performing well but are keeping pace with inflation. Meanwhile, balance sheets are in “great shape,” with leverage ratios near historical lows.

With the risk of recession a dominant theme for 2023, Pierzak pointed out that “a recession does not have to equate to negative property total returns.”

A Nareit analysis of the last six U.S recessions shows that on average, REIT's underperformed private real estate in the four quarters before a recession. However, REIT's outperformed private real estate both during a recession and in the four quarters after. A comparison of the FTSE Nareit All Equity Index to the Russell 1000 Index found that it outperformed broader equities before, during, and after recessions.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Kelly said retrofitting has to become “the new normal” given that about a 10th of global emissions are coming from new construction.

JLL has calculated that in mature cities, 80% of office buildings that exist today will still be standing in 2050. That means a retrofitting rate of about 3-3.5% of inventory every single year to meet net zero targets. However, that compares with retrofitting rates that are around 1% today. “So, we've got to triple, quadruple the rates of retrofitting,” Kelly said.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Carlock said that the current sentiment is one of cautious optimism. “Demand on the street from any of the product types is still quite good, especially multifamily, industrial, even the hotel sector. And frankly, retail is picking up again.”

Carlock discussed the sectors highlighted in PwC’s Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2023 report that are likely to be most insulated from economic uncertainty. Industrial was in first place, followed by multifamily. “Affordability of home ownership continues to suffer, so we’re moving to a greater renter orientation in our population,” he said.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Winters noted that in general, GRESB scores start to ramp up in year two and year three, “so I'm really expecting some additional increases in the REIT score in the years ahead.”

Winters also discussed how a flight to quality real estate assets is likely to characterize the next several years, with companies needing to offer a superior investment and occupant experience to maintain competitiveness.

Winters said that achieving those aims requires “a solid ESG program that's continuing to advance.” He added that the biggest threat to ESG is inertia, but that in the current economic climate the real estate industry is more likely to accelerate ESG-oriented efforts than pull back.

“That mid-market renter is really the deepest part of the demand curve, and we only see that curve growing,” McDermott told the REIT Report. While acknowledging the current volatile interest rate climate, he added that it doesn’t “erase the fact that there is a significant need for more affordable homes, especially in the markets that we're targeting, and in that particular rental band cohort that we're targeting also.”

Elme has been fully focused on multifamily since completing the sale of retail and office assets in 2021, although the REIT started messaging its intent to focus on multifamily back in 2016.

McDermott noted that households making between $35,000 and $75,000 comprise over a third of rental households in its targeted Sun Belt markets. However, the share of new product delivering into those markets since 2018 that's affordable to households making around $60,000 is 2% or less, he added.

“The life sciences market is increasingly going global, and from a REIT perspective, it's going global faster,” McCready told Nareit’s REIT Report. “I can't think of any of the leading REITs, publicly traded or private, that are simply looking at portfolios in the U.S. anymore. Everyone is looking for exposure across the Atlantic and across the Pacific.”

In addition to seeking ways to deploy capital, REITs are taking advantage of international markets that are “incredibly effective” at creating conditions ripe for life sciences innovation, McCready said.

Elsewhere in the podcast, McCready noted that from a venture capital standpoint, things are looking “quite good” for the life sciences market. However, “where the picture seems to change radically is when you start looking at the public markets, particularly IPOs, which for the life sciences ecosystem is somewhat of the lifeblood and the way that capital and exits are created.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Frank noted that “health is seen as essential. It is seen as table stakes. If you want to attract and retain tenants, you really need to be able to answer that question of ‘how is this a health-promoting environment?’”

For investors, Frank pointed to “a distinct possibility of having stranded assets, of actually seeing your asset become less valuable, if you aren't meeting that baseline for being a healthy building because your peers and your competitors are able to articulate that.”

“Instead of having to wait sometimes maybe more than a year in order to get a decision, we are seeing folks able to test and pilot technology with a speed to deployment of sometimes just a matter of weeks,” Liu told the REIT Report.

Liu noted that four or five years ago, the annual amount invested into PropTech was around $4 billion; by last year that number had risen to about $30 billion.

Turning to areas where Fifth Wall is collaborating with REITs in PropTech adoption, Liu pointed to investments in electric vehicle charging and property management, including maintenance and renovation. She noted that there are more opportunities for collaboration that haven't yet been tapped, or are still at the early stages, such as sensor tech and improved building management systems.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Smith said that Deloitte’s 2023 Commercial Real Estate Outlook, which is based on survey results for more than 450 CFOs, showed that 48% of respondents expect revenues to decrease in 2022. That compares with only about 9% expecting a decrease in the prior year’s survey.

Despite the anticipated decline in revenues, CFOs were “pretty positive” when it came to real estate fundamentals, Smith said. Over 50% of CFOs said they expect increased leasing and rental rates in the next 12-18 months, along with decreased vacancies, he added.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Nahata noted that in addition to finding practical solutions, making investments, and innovating as a company, “it is really about working together and collaboration with other like-minded companies to make a substantive difference, whether that is working together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or bridging the digital divide to provide upskilling opportunities to underserved communities.”

Nahata said American Tower has placed sustainable operations at the core of its business. “We believe we can be champions of change in the industry and that requires addressing ESG holistically across our organization. And that includes at the very top.”

Speaking to the REIT Report, Barré points out that a number of obstacles have historically limited the ability of REITs to utilize tax credit incentives, with REIT tax credits typically going unused.

Barré points out that under the new legislation, however, REITs that make an eligible investment in EV charging stations, or geothermal and solar capability, will now have the full tax credit available to sell at the REIT level.

During the interview, Barré discusses how the legislation will impact REITs that invest in eligible sustainability-related projects. She also explains the nature of the tax credit incentives, and how REITs can qualify.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Ferguson said “it’s a fine balance…the board is there to be a fiduciary and represent the shareholders’ interests, but the bottom line is that they also need to be a good partner to the leadership team to make sure that the strategy and the execution of the business makes sense.”

Issues surrounding governance, in addition to a range of other ESG topics, will be explored at Nareit’s upcoming REITworks: 2022 Conference held on Sept. 12-13 in La Quinta, California.

“Now is a great time to prioritize the public market as it is on sale,” Bragg told the REIT Report.

Bragg stressed the advisability for investors to have a dual mandate across the public and private real estate markets as it “really does maximize one's opportunity to generate alpha.”

Listed REITs have had meaningful declines this year, Bragg noted, but it reflects a broader trend, which is that “just about every asset that one can imagine has delivered a negative total return.”

Bragg also noted that capital flows are a key driver of the disconnect in public and private market values. Private market flows have remained robust in 2022 and may even match last year’s record-setting tally, he said. Meanwhile, flows into listed REITs “remain quite tepid.”

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Coradino also commented on how PREIT is evolving its properties into community hubs.

“With assets in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. that are well located, and with opportunities to do upwards of 4,000 apartments, [as well as] medical facilities and life sciences technology, our ability to attract either buyers or joint venture partners is pretty profound. It gives us a way to harvest capital and create value in these properties,” Coradino said.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Bodner said PwC has continued to see activity building in the lodging space, as well as for casinos, marinas, and ski resorts. “All things that are tied to people being out.”

Bodner said PwC is anticipating robust deal activity in the back half of 2022, although it may be more episodic in the listed segment of the market.

The current environment has meant that there’s a lot more focus on underwriting, Bodner said. “Certainly, growth in rents and in NOI is something that folks are spending a lot of time putting attention on to make sure they feel good about their forward projections.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Ellis said there is a “tremendous leadership opportunity in our sector to really take advantage of the transition to green for the better of everyone—our occupiers and customers, our investors, and certainly ourselves as well. I think that we're in a good position to do it. We just can't slow down. We’ve got to speed up.”

Ellis described Measurabl, launched in 2013, as a “decade-long project to build the tools for measuring, managing, reporting, and ultimately acting on sustainability for the real estate sector.” He noted that there has been “a profound migration of organizations of every size around the world towards more sustainable business models. This is being done in just the span of a few years.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Bacon, who also serves as board chair at Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL), said “if you pull back the covers and look at the data, you'll see that young professionals, people earning six figure salaries in cities like San Francisco and New York, are hard pressed to find places that they can afford.”

Bacon said the biggest problem behind the lack of affordable housing today is that the building process has become too long and difficult.

As for the state of the commercial real estate sector today, Bacon said that as interest rates rise he sees a return to a “more normalized investment ecology.” That in turn will mean that investors are “going to have to work a lot harder to get some of these returns. I think some deals just aren’t going to get done.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Weede noted that “there's a lot of optimism in this industry, and I think, at least for the next several years, that's likely to stay.” However, “margins are thinner,” he added.

Weede also discussed the potential for consolidation, noting that there will be likely be more merger and acquisition activity in the next 12 to 24 months than seen in the previous 12 to 24 months. “It's a healthy industry, but you've got some players that are doing really, really well, and others that are struggling a little bit.”

Speaking on Nareit’s REIT Report, Edison noted that questions from investors at Nareit’s REITweek: 2022 Investor Conference last week revolved around the theme of potential disruption to the current environment from factors including higher interest rates and inflation pressure.

“I think we have a realistic view that there are going to be pressures on the consumer from those macro events,” Edison said.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Tripp noted that Nuveen research shows that compared to other asset classes, commercial real estate was the only one that emerged with an overall net positive return during those inflationary periods.

“We always say real estate is an inflation hedge, and we're seeing that play through right now. So it's a good time to be in commercial real estate in my opinion,” Tripp said.

“The resiliency of the American consumer is amazing, and it is once again on display. Shoppers have come roaring back to our centers to shop with a purpose,” O’Hern told the REIT Report.

During the first quarter, sales were 111% of what they were pre-COVID.

“Despite the economic uncertainty regarding inflation that we haven't frankly seen in decades, higher mortgage rates, a very volatile stock market, and the war in Ukraine, American consumers remain largely confident about their own situations,” O’Hern said.

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Sullivan said that asset classes with the ability to reprice themselves due to short lease cycles, such as multifamily and industrial real estate, “are viewed as a good bet because you can raise your rents to… at least keep up with inflation.”

Sullivan highlighted some of the findings of DLA Piper’s 2022 State of the Market survey, including that respondents see logistics, multi-family, life science, and data centers as offering the most attractive risk- adjusted returns for the next 12 months.

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Branson noted that while there are certainly lots of concerns surrounding global events, “real estate investing is on a terrific pace in the first quarter.”

The top property asset class for institutional investors from around the world continues to be multifamily, Branson said, followed by industrial real estate. And while the office asset class will definitely continue to exist, questions remain about which offices are going to succeed, and which will have to rethink the level of capital investment that will be required to compete, he added.

Burgess will become CEO of Ferguson, a global professional services firm, on June 1. Speaking on the REIT Report, Burgess attributed a skills gap within the real estate industry to the fact that many mid-level professionals left the field in the wake of the global financial crisis. “We’re definitely facing a missing generation in our industry. That’s suddenly making the succession work more challenging,” she added.

Meanwhile, Burgess pointed to changes that have occurred in the workplace. “People want to work in different ways today. They want to work more flexibly. They certainly want to work within an environment where they feel like they belong and that there’s a culture that they believe in, and they can see a future for themselves.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Whelan said it will likely be 2023 “before we can really start to hang our hat on trends that we can say are stable [in order] to build assumptions about what new work patterns are going to look like.”

Whelan described current office usage as “muted…but the good news is that it’s picking up.” Some of the Southern states have seen a higher return to office rate, although in the past week New York and Washington, D.C. actually saw some of the biggest gains, she noted.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Filson noted that 10% of the overall market would be about $200 billion, versus about $25 to $50 billion today.

Angel Oak Mortgage, which went public in June 2021, focuses on acquiring and investing in first lien non-QM loans and other mortgage-related assets in the U.S. mortgage market. Non-QM loans are not backed by government agencies and are aimed at homebuyers unable to meet the strict criteria of a qualifying mortgage in areas such as income or personal debt.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Volk discussed his upcoming book, The Value Equation, which will be published on May 10.

Volk also discussed his career, during which he introduced and led three public companies. One of those was STORE Capital Corp. (NYSE: STOR), his third net lease iteration, formed in 2011. Combined, the companies provided more than $20 billion in growth capital to thousands of businesses, he said.

Speaking on the REIT Report on April 18, Anya Coverman, SVP, government affairs and general counsel at IPA, said the outlook for 2022 is “incredibly bright. You have Blackstone, Starwood, and other large asset managers leading with a blockbuster year.”

Citing research data from Robert A. Stanger & Co., Coverman said sales overall are topping $19.1 billion in January and February. “So, this is already on pace to beat last year's record tally of $70 billion.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Dobratz said he sees “a significant amount of demand for single family housing, in particular within more affordable Sunbelt markets, at the same time that supply is very, very low.”

Companies active on the home building side are seeing benefits, Dobratz said, including timber REITs. Timber REITs are going to be able to generate much higher levels of cash flow and ultimately pay much higher dividends, given residential market conditions, he noted. “Timber is also a terrific place to be invested in an inflationary environment.”

Dobratz pointed to the war in Ukraine, supply chain issues, and high inflation as issues of macro concern right now. At the same time, he noted that “commercial real estate has historically been a great place to park capital and to protect it from inflation over time.”

Pattarkine told the REIT Report that the SEC proposals were “a lot more robust than I had originally anticipated,” given the level of initial disclosure, and require REITs to be able to get a lot of that data at the property level.

Many REITs, Pattarkine said, are already committed to science-based targets. For such companies, the SEC proposals will not impose any additional burdens. However, for REITs that have been lagging in terms of collecting data, “it's going to take a lot of work for them to get to what the SEC might require from a disclosure perspective.”

Speaking on Nareit’s REIT Report, Baker said that while more women are rising to key leadership positions across the industry, the pandemic “in many ways stalled the progress that was being made because they [women] were disproportionately forced to choose between careers and caregiving for their family.”

At the same time, Baker said, the pandemic also presented opportunities in the form of new forms of flexibility and “resetting definitions of career satisfaction and what company success and personal success is.”

Baker, who was named COO in late 2021, also reflected on her more than two decades at Camden, including her work implementing pioneer revenue management technology as well as helping to create Camden’s first investment funds.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Tanner said Pathway, launched in partnership with Regis Group and Fifth Wall, is an opportunity to support a growing segment in the marketplace—individuals that want a lease option purchase agreement or the chance to build equity in a home over time.

Pathway works directly with customers to identify and purchase a home, offering them the opportunity to first lease and then buy the home outright at a future date. In addition to investing in the homes and technology platform for Pathway and its real estate fund, Invitation Homes will provide maintenance and other services to all Pathway homes, enabling the REIT to broaden its third-party property management services.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Banks notes that since George Floyd's murder in 2020, more leaders in business are understanding that DEI is core. “They understand it is a part of the work of doing business nowadays.” However, the work won’t be sustainable unless leadership is fully committed, Banks says. “If leadership is not on board, it gives other people an opportunity to opt out.”

Banks also says that more organizations are understanding that symbolic statements are insufficient and must be backed up with action. “Those sorts of symbolic gestures in some ways can do more harm than good if they're disingenuous, if they're not followed up by anything substantive,” she notes.

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Schnure noted that it is “appropriate” for the Federal Reserve to be raising interest rates at this point and removing the stimulus that was put in place early in the pandemic.

Schnure noted that goods inflation has been at about 12% over the past year, while service price inflation has slowed somewhat. “This suggests that we're not having a long- term problem from wage pressures with inflation. I do expect inflation to slow down, mostly in the second half of this year,” he said.

REITs, Schnure said, perform better than most other sectors during periods of moderate to high inflation because they represent a real asset that own properties whose values rise with prices and with leases that can respond to changing market conditions.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Davis noted that JLL has more than $12 billion in its U.S. hotel sales and financing pipeline for 2022, the highest level since 2015, which was already a record year from a transaction volume perspective. If JLL is a proxy for the market, “my expectation is that you'll see a lot of transactions this year.”

Davis said anticipated gains for 2022 follow a particularly strong year for the industry in 2021. This was fueled by the large amount of capital that had aggregated on the sidelines to take advantage of potential distress in the sector—which never materialized—as well as pent-up consumer demand for travel.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Davies also noted that “one very compelling theme is not being correlated to the economic cycle. Through the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve seen no dip-off in farmland returns. As we’ve seen historically through other economic crises, such as the global financial crisis and the tech bubble, farmland returns stayed strong through that period.”

Davies noted that while land values historically have been a function of what was actually produced, going forward there could be increased opportunities to monetize some of the additional benefits that exist, including water quality, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration.

Speaking on the REIT Report on Jan. 24, Wheeler noted that the focus on decarbonizing the grid is “really critical, because while reducing energy consumption is important, data centers specifically will always face significant challenges to either build enough renewables to cover total usage or build close enough to an abundant supply of renewable energy.”

Wheeler also discussed how BREEAM’s relationship with the data center sector has developed over the years, whether the general perception of data center energy consumption fits the reality, and how the data center sector is having a positive knock-on effect in terms of making other industry sectors improve their sustainability performance.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Letter noted that inventory to sales levels are 10% below where they stood pre-pandemic. “Our customers are just trying to get back to the pre-COVID levels, let alone build that new safety stock on top of that,” he said.

Letter said he expects supply chain challenges will persist into 2023. Vacancy rates are at unprecedented lows and space in Prologis’ markets is effectively sold out, he added.

Prologis continues to see broad based demand in markets around the globe, according to Letter. The REIT is planning to start over $5 billion in developments this year, and also expects to make about $1.5 billion in acquisitions. In addition, Prologis’ land portfolio will allow it to develop over $26 billion of new product.

Speaking on the REIT Report podcast Jan. 12, Weil said the company’s proposed $1.3 billion acquisition of shopping center assets from subsidiaries of CIM Real Estate Finance Trust, Inc., combined with its upcoming rebranding to The Necessity Retail REIT Where America Shops, spells out its clear focus on a particularly active corner of the retail sector.

Since the REIT’s listing on Nasdaq in 2018, it has focused on single tenant and multi-tenant retail, with the latter in the form of open-air shopping centers.

“We think it's an incredibly viable, strong asset class and it creates a portfolio that has terrific underlying strength,” Weil said. Over the last four or five years, as the REIT has continued focusing on necessity retail, it has grown from about $3.4 billion of assets to a projected $5.1 billion.

“The credit markets are incredibly active, they’re liquid, they’re deep,” Hudson said. He noted that in addition to common and preferred equity deals, largely through at-the-market (ATM) offerings, his firm is also seeing a high level of joint venture activity.

Following a productive year for M&A deals in 2021, Hudson expects all property sectors to be active in 2022. “Even though we have price agreement (between buyer and seller) and the price is very high, a lot of deals are still happening.” He stressed that what is new in the current environment is the entrance of “colossal” non-traded REITs with hefty amounts of cash to deploy.

Schnure noted that the economic mood has shifted over the last couple of months, reflecting the new Omicron COVID-19 variant, supply chain issues, price spikes, and labor shortages, among other issues.

“Overall, though, the economy is quite sound. It has a lot of strength and should be able to handle these challenges pretty easily in the year ahead,” Schnure said, particularly since many of the current challenges are related to the pandemic and should ease as COVID cases come down.

As for the hot topics of inflation and interest rates, Schnure pointed out that inflation is still very connected to short-term bottlenecks. “We’re going to see continued concern about inflation, which the Fed is going to be watching closely,” he said, with gradual increases in interest rates likely to begin around the middle of next year.

“Pricing for deals has improved coming out of the pricing troughs that we saw in many sectors during the pandemic… over the last two years it has been more challenging for boards to justify a sale of the company,” Liggio said. The current pace of deal volume, supported by low interest rates and attractive financing, is likely to remain intact through the end of the year, he added.

The industrial, self-storage, data centers, multifamily, and life science sectors continued to see M&A activity from the end of 2019 and largely throughout 2020, Liggio said. In 2021, other sectors such as retail and office, have regained activity or begun to think about entering into a transactional strategic review.

Speaking on Nareit’s REIT Report, Bortz noted that strength in the market has tended to be concentrated in resorts, particularly drive-to resorts, which are often achieving higher occupancy and rates than seen in 2019.

The struggles, on the other hand, have mainly been in the urban environment, Bortz said. He noted that in San Francisco, Pebblebrook’s revenue is still down 80% from 2019 levels, while in Washington, D.C., revenue is down 70% over that same period.

Bortz said signs of recovery in business travel are already evident, “but it’s a very slow recovery.” He said business transient travel appears to be about 40-50% back, while business group travel is about 30-40% back. 

Speaking on the Nareit REIT Report, Gajdoš, who co-leads Fifth Wall’s climate technology investment team, noted that although tackling carbon emissions will take decades, the real estate industry should see it not as a threat but as an opportunity to cooperate. “Let’s work together, let’s find solutions because otherwise I believe the sector will be mandated to fix the carbon problem and I’d rather see the sector proactively working on this and finding solutions ourselves rather than a top-down approach from the government,” Gajdoš said.

Speaking on Nareit’s REIT Report, Steven Hussain, vice president of workforce programs and community relations at Prologis, explained that the REIT’s Community Workforce Initiative (CWI) training program launched in 2018 in response to conversations with Prologis’ largest customers that identified labor and talent as their number one pain point. At the same time, Prologis’ community partners were looking for “on ramps” to well-paid jobs for individuals they served.

Since then, the labor market has become even more challenging, Hussain explained. “It’s incredibly competitive and incredibly challenging to recruit right now and worker concerns around COVID-19 persist and safety is top of mind. At the same time, worker expectations around ongoing education, training, and career paths are also rising, so there’s a lot that customers and employers are having to do to adjust to this new reality,” he said.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Rigaud noted that the farmland real estate sector is valued at $2-3 trillion. Institutional ownership in the sector is only about 1%, compared with 5-15% in most other real estate sectors. The two key crops in the sector are row crops and permanent crops, with row crops having a lower risk profile than permanent crops.

Rigaud said farmland real estate and how it compares to other asset classes is not well understood by investors at this time. Some of the key attributes of farmland real estate include its lower obsolescence risk, lower fungibility risk, and lower capex burden.

Population growth has outpaced the supply of arable land, Rigaud noted, resulting in land appreciation. As a result, “U.S. farmland has had a very strong track record of delivering relatively attractive returns over long holding periods.”

“We think employment will be strong as job openings are still above the actual unemployed population right now,” Bolken told Nareit’s REIT Report.

He noted that in terms of REIT valuations, it’s a mixed picture. However, “we're very confident where the economy is going in terms of real estate and other sectors…growth is still in the offing.”

Bolken, meanwhile, noted that while inflation might not last longer term, “it's less than transitory.” As a result, Securian is positioning itself for short term inflation by focusing on assets with shorter term leases such as apartments, self-storage, and hotels, while de-emphasizing the net lease sector.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Morris said he has launched a new education platform, REIT Academy, to fill the void in executive and professional development education in the REIT industry. The inaugural program spans eight weeks, comprised of one evening per week for three hours of live instruction, as well as guest speakers from the industry.

Morris said the program will give a student “pretty much everything you need to know to be able to understand any given REIT and come to your own conclusions, using the tools that you'll learn here to assess how to value the company.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Funari noted that oftentimes homeowners think they are already invested in real estate simply by owning their own home. While that is true, they also need to examine the differences between homeownership and owning commercial real estate, she said.

“They think they are covered in their investment portfolio when we feel that, no, you really are missing out on the benefits of commercial real estate,” especially because a lot of homeowners don’t consider the breadth of commercial real estate asset classes, Funari said.

Speaking with the REIT Report, Arnold highlighted the results of new research, sponsored by Nareit, that he carried out with fellow academics David Ling and Andy Naranjo at the University of Florida.

Arnold explained that one of the main takeaways from the research is that even with no risk adjustments, 53% of the time investors would have been better off in the REIT index during the period that the private equity real estate fund was investing. The mean out-performance was 165 basis points, or 1.65 percentage points, per year. With a conservative investment for relative risk, REITs outperformed nearly 70% of the time, and their outperformance grew from 165 basis points per year to almost 600 basis points per year.

“Certainly what the industry thinks of as industrial real estate, or warehouse distribution real estate, has changed and will continue to change,” Weikal said on the REIT Report podcast.

“If we are able to use technology to provide distribution more efficiently, more effectively, and in smaller spaces, which is very often the case, can we now do that in structures and in buildings that we hadn't considered before?” Weikal said.

The proliferation of specialized data has enabled the industry to determine “the kinds of buildings that we need, the shapes, the sizes, and especially where they need to be located in order to make the global distribution system more efficient,” Weikal noted.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Fust described sustainability and ESG as “a very big tent,” requiring talent from all sectors and all levels to fill the demand being created by this accelerating market. “There's so much momentum underway in this space. I believe truly that anyone who has the passion and interest in this sector can find a very rewarding career,” she added.

Fust noted that corporate sustainability roles were really just being created about 15 years ago and were relatively thinly staffed at the top corporate level.

“Many of those first chief sustainability executives are now preparing to retire. And as we're having to then magnify these roles across just about every organization, we’re finding that there's significantly more demand than there is talent,” Fust said.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Sullivan said that as of mid-August, “we have not seen any material decline. Traffic volume is holding up pretty well in the face of the Delta variant concerns.”

Sullivan said Transportation Security Administration (TSA) data point to a “pretty consistently high” level of comfort in traveling, particularly for the leisure traveler. Recovery in the business sector is going to occur later, however.

One reason the leisure market is seeing strong demand is the new flexibility provided to travelers who are able to work remotely, Sullivan noted.

Speaking on the REIT Report, Tripp said that although inflation had been felt in terms of cost fluctuations for building materials, Nuveen’s view is that inflation is transitory. “Overall, we’re not concerned at this point and continue to see a recovery across the board with some of these supply/demand imbalances expected to rectify over the next two or three quarters.”

Tripp noted that interest rates remain “extremely attractive,” despite expectations of rate rises for the past decade. While the Federal Reserve has indicated it has no plans to increase short term rates anytime soon, long term rates, which are dependent on the market, are not posing a problem either, she added.

Lynn Kawaminami, partner at Deloitte Tax, and Nathan Florio, principal at Deloitte Transactions and Business Analytics, spoke to the REIT Report on July 20.

“All the activity that we’ve seen this year has really underscored the resiliency of real estate…even the sectors that struggled last year are starting to come back,” Kawaminami said. “The fundamentals are good, and I think we’re ready to get back to normal.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Whelan noted that Texas is currently experiencing probably the largest return to the office, despite vaccination rates in some parts of the state lagging the national average. Other markets, such as California and New York, have higher vaccination rates but are returning to the office more slowly because of mass transit dependance, she added.

More focus needs to be placed on getting people comfortable on mass transit again and getting it back to normal schedules and routes. “It’s an essential piece of getting people back to work,” she said. Until that happens, “reduced ridership is really only going to sustain that reduced occupancy in buildings that we’re seeing.”

Whelan said best estimates point to current office occupancy at only a third of what was considered normal pre-pandemic. That is expected to change in the fall, however, as “the leisure of summer is going to abate and we’re going to get back into that normal routine.”

Speaking on the REIT Report, Bodner said property sectors including logistics, multifamily, and life science have all seen increased deal flow. Office assets located in technology-oriented cities have also seen increased activity, while the leisure and hospitality sectors have also experienced a rise in transactions.

“There continues to be an incredible amount of capital on the sidelines” on both the debt and equity side, Bodner said. He also pointed to an “incredible amount” of capital being raised by public non-listed REITs, which topped $3 billion in May.