ULI Fall Meeting 2024

October 31, 2024 1:21 pm Published by admin

Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2025

Every year ULI sends out a survey to members on a variety of market sentiments. Then at the meeting, they have several of the large real estate investment funds comment and make observations on the results of the survey. Here are some of the key takeaways:

Overall, the panel was optimistic on the real estate investment opportunities nationally in 2025.
Dallas was ranked the #1 overall real estate investment opportunity.
There was strong positive consensus that with retail opportunities, particularly with open air retail across the sunbelt and southeast.
Alternative investments such as senior living and data centers were getting lots of positive attention.
Capital started to flow back into the real estate market in May, as investors are usually ahead of the cycle shifts.

Leadership by Simon Sinek

We really enjoyed the inspiring thoughts by leadership expert Simon Sinek.

He provided great reminders on how we can get along better with others. He pointed out how much people are influenced by the community development around them. Here are some notable key points that resonated with us:

We can all do a better job listening. We should consistently practice curiosity. Moreover, replacing judgement with curiosity because we benefit from the learning.
Core values with our teams should be a verb and a behavior.
We should develop an ‘infinite mindset’ and try to find passion somewhere in our domain expertise. The infinite mindset involves progression, a cause, passion, improvement and innovation. Simon points out that we don’t need to love every single part of our work but we should challenge ourselves to find some aspect of passion somewhere in our expertise. Our words should be of a growth mindset and something we talk about regularly with our team.
And the ‘WHY’. We should all have our WHY. These are our origin stories. This is why you are interested in what you are doing. Related to our company, our WHY is to make people happy by helping them find their community with the hope that people grow within that community and human growth is something special to participate in.
Finally, he spoke about friendships and their importance. He noted that friends are the ultimate bio hack and to tell your friends you love them every once and while.

Mixed Use Development Panel

Element-360 works with many mixed-use developments, we enjoyed hearing McKinsey facilitate a conversation on mixed-use trends. Here are some highlights from the panel format:

Continue to think about the magnets of attraction when attracting people.
Unique magnets such as sports stadiums, entertainment venues and activated green spaces with farmers markets are driving consumer visitation and interest.
Innovation districts are reportedly driving 10% higher rents.
Regarding development phasing, many of the components need to be built at the same time such as the activated green spaces, retail/food/beverage and residential. You cant go in half-heartedly.
There is a trend of existing mixed use developments getting remade and revitalized.

Luxury Home Tour

The tours are a really fun part of the conference. We meet new people. We learn about their profession. We had great conversations. And we saw some beautiful properties this time.

We met with the CEO of the real estate division for the University of Virginia only to find out that he knew one of our clients. A example of a small world getting smaller. We discussed who the target market was for that client. This included data scientists, parents of students at UVA and people in finance.
We also met with some experts in the placemaking space. That was an enjoyable meetup because we heard great perspective regarding what makes great placemaking – the overall experience and walkable things to do. Great placemaking resonated with us because we see aspects of experiences and walkability succeeding well on the digital marketing side and have the data to reinforce it. They in turn loved hearing about the data we have to back up their expertise in placemaking.
We ran into long time clients and were able to discuss unique, creative development placemaking ideas and market trends. Developers love investing in creative innovative ideas and to ‘activate’ the communities they are working on. It was great to hear more about how they are planning to accomplish that in planned communities.
The properties we saw were beautiful. One of the most notable we saw was the CEO of Loan Depot’s home selling for $30M. There were 5 infinity pools, incredible indoor-outdoor living, living areas where people naturally gravitated to connect with others and even a safe room! Some of the other custom homes we saw also had infinity pools along with great outdoor living spaces to take in the skyline of Las Vegas. The custom homes left an excellent impression due to the art and furniture staging they implemented. The use of lighting in these homes was really well placed and gave us a sense of comfort.

Overall, we highly recommend people in the real estate development space experience ULI opportunities. There is always someone innovating and doing something new. There are also new trends to learn about and contemplate how they could be leveraged. We hope you consider the opportunity in the future.