In 2025, the U.S. real estate sector stands at a pivotal crossroads, with the new year promising a mix of opportunities and challenges. While recent years have brought turbulence, from rising insurance costs to fluctuating interest rates and persistent labor challenges, 2025 offers glimmers of hope alongside continuing complexities.
While new construction has dominated the industry for decades, a significant shift is occurring: Existing industrial and retail buildings are being converted into self-storage facilities. This trend is not only optimizing urban real estate but also meeting the growing demand for storage in densely populated areas.
The fortunes of the commercial real estate sector should be somewhere between status quo and modestly improved over the next year, with housing, industrial, data center and advanced manufacturing among the most dynamic asset classes, according to a cross-section of developers and investors who sit on NAIOP’s board of directors.
Commercial real estate professionals in 2024 were eager to figure out solutions for rising construction costs – a persistent problem in recent years – as reflected in the post’s number one ranking on the Market Share blog. Market Share readers also wanted to learn about shifts in manufacturing from a report on an executive summit on nearshoring and reshoring. Read on for the top 10 and catch up on any pieces you missed.
As we approach the end of 2024, the life sciences space is undergoing a noteworthy transformation. After a sharp post-COVID-19 downturn for the sector, there is a significant revival in venture capital activity, strategic landlord adaptations, and evolving market dynamics on the horizon that may just shape the future of life sciences real estate for the better.
The Buckeye State continues to demonstrate its commitment to economic development and commercial real estate growth through significant actions taken by the DeWine-Husted administration and the state Legislature in partnership with JobsOhio. Strategic budgetary allocations have set a solid foundation for statewide economic growth, providing new opportunities and driving significant investments into our communities. Paired with proactive policy measures, Ohio is not just talking about economic development but actively implementing initiatives that drive results, even amid challenging market conditions.
U.S. cities have experienced massive expansion across all real estate sectors over the past 44 years, according to recent StorageCafe research that looked at residential and commercial construction activity between 1980 and 2023. Along with residential construction, industrial, office, retail and self-storage spaces have grown significantly, although the scale and pace of development differ among regions and asset types.
In a CRE Talk at NAIOP’s CRE.Converge in Las Vegas, Dennis Norton, analytics manager, Wipfli LLP, shared common use cases and success stories of multifamily projects that have best leveraged data for critical decision-making. He explored opportunities for optimizing performance through cost reduction and improved operational efficiencies.
“We’re in a really unique point in history in the sense that we have this huge demand curve for data centers at a time when we also have some constraints in power,” said Elissa Wilson, attorney, Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, LLP, to begin a panel discussion on data center development at NAIOP’s CRE.Converge. “But the reason data centers are so important is they are fundamental to our modern economy. They’re fundamental to our way of life. They’re fundamental to every single transaction that happens online.”
Attendees of NAIOP’s I.CON Cold Storage in Las Vegas had the opportunity to take an exclusive tour of Martin Brower’s 175,000-square-foot development currently under construction, expected to be completed by year-end and operational at the beginning of 2025.
