Features

Berkadia Partners with NYU Stern for Third Annual Multifamily Investment Case Competition

by Sarah Daniels November 5, 2026

Berkadia recently partnered with the Chen Institute for Global Real Estate Finance at NYU Stern School of Business for the third annual Multifamily Investment Case Competition, held October 15–16. The competition brought together graduate student teams from leading business schools across the country to explore how technology can enhance investment returns in the multifamily sector. Participants were challenged to develop strategies at the intersection of apartment operations, technology and innovation financing — areas that do not often converge in traditional business school curricula. “Berkadia was honored to partner with NYU Stern for the third year in a row, highlighting our commitment to supporting young professionals and future leaders in real estate,” said Justin Wheeler, Berkadia’s CEO. “Engaging with eager, thoughtful participants and judges with deep expertise in the multifamily industry was both exciting and inspiring. This event was made possible by the dedication of university teams, fellow judges and NYU’s sustained support.” This year’s competition included teams from NYU Stern, Columbia Business School, UCLA Anderson, the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Business, the University of Florida Warrington College of Business and the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. An accomplished group of industry leaders served as judges, …

November 5, 2026

Features

Which Aging Building System Gets the Capital This Year?

by Taylor Williams November 3, 2026

By Justin Gill, president, Allied Elevator The roof consultant recommends replacement. The mechanical contractor proposes a plant upgrade. The facilities team wants funding for an aging elevator, while the leasing team has already committed the next available budget to tenant improvements. Each request may be reasonable. The owner still needs a defensible answer to a harder question: which expenditure belongs in this year’s capital allocation plan, and what happens to the others? A useful answer starts with the consequence of deferral, not the persuasiveness of the latest proposal. Building systems compete for capital, but their proposals rarely arrive with the same evidence, assumptions or definition of urgency. Owners and asset managers need a common decision-making process without pretending that a roof, a cooling plant and an elevator fail in the same way. Remove Immediate Obligations Some findings require action before an ordinary budget ranking can be constructive. For example, a documented unsafe condition, an enforceable code requirement or a condition that prevents lawful operation needs immediate evaluation by the appropriate professionals. It should not be scored as merely another discretionary improvement and deferred because a different project has a more attractive financial profile. The owner should distinguish those obligations from …

November 3, 2026

Features Restaurant Retail

Opening on Time: What Multi-Unit Retail, Restaurant Teams Should Demand From Their General Contractors

by Taylor Williams October 27, 2026

By Robert Reid, principal, Corporeal Visions Inc. Every multi-unit retail and restaurant operator knows the math on a late opening. Rent starts on the commencement date whether the doors are open or not. Staff have been hired and trained against a date that is now moving. Marketing has been spent. Equipment is sitting in a warehouse accruing storage fees. A four-week slip on a single restaurant can easily cost tens of thousands of dollars in carried rent, payroll and lost sales, and for a team opening several units a year, those slips compound. What separates the teams that open on time from the teams that don’t is rarely the quality of the finishes or the size of the budget. It is whether the general contractor (GC) was made to own a handful of coordination points that fall between the cracks of a typical bid. Facility and construction managers who put these items on the table before the contract is signed, and hold the GC to them through turnover, tend to open when they said they would. Demand A Written Lndlord-To-Tenant Handoff Most late openings trace back to the first week, not the last. A tenant build-out starts on the assumption …

October 27, 2026

Features Retail

Finish Strong: Building Better Retailer-Contractor Partnerships

by Abby Cox October 22, 2026

By Justin Elder, President, Elder-Jones, Inc., and President, Retail Contractors Association Whether a retailer is opening a new location, refreshing an operating store, converting an acquired property or rolling out a new prototype, construction comes with variables. Permits move at different speeds. Existing conditions do not always match record drawings. Electrical gear, HVAC equipment, storefront systems and owner-furnished fixtures may carry long lead times. Late design or merchandising changes can ripple through procurement, sequencing and store-opening plans. Those conditions may be unavoidable. Cost and schedule surprises often are not. The difference is disciplined preconstruction, clear decision rights, reliable project controls and a contractor who understands that the job site is also a retail environment. During a roundtable discussion at a recent RCA Annual Conference, experienced retail contractors shared lessons from decades of work. Their central message was straightforward: strong relationships matter, but the best partnerships turn trust into a repeatable operating process. Start with a technically complete preconstruction process The most effective time to solve a construction problem is before crews mobilize. Retailers should bring the contractor into the process early enough to test the drawings against field conditions, procurement realities, operating requirements and the proposed schedule. For remodels and …

October 22, 2026

Features Heartland Feature Archive Industrial

Modular Manufacturing, VDC Are Redefining Heavy Industrial Construction

by Kristin Harlow October 15, 2026

By Matt Willson, Holland Construction Services The pipeline of heavy industrial construction in the United States has never been larger or more demanding. Driven by a wave of reshoring, domestic manufacturing investment and landmark federal legislation, companies like Samsung, TSMC, Hyundai, Panasonic and Ford are committing tens of billions of dollars to new production facilities across the country. Samsung alone is investing $17 billion in semiconductor fabs in Taylor, Texas. TSMC has committed more than $65 billion to three fabrication plants in Arizona. Ford and SK On are building a $5.8 billion electric vehicle (EV) battery campus in Kentucky. The scale is extraordinary. And it is exposing a hard truth about conventional construction: The traditional field-built model cannot keep pace. The labor math doesn’t work The construction industry entered 2025 needing 439,000 additional workers just to meet existing demand. This number rose to approximately 500,000 by 2026, according to workforce data tracked by the Associated Builders and Contractors. The shortage is structural, not cyclical. Roughly 41 percent of today’s construction workforce is projected to retire by 2031, and 92 percent of contractors already report difficulty filling open positions. Forty-five percent have experienced project delays in the past year attributable directly …

October 15, 2026

Features Heartland Feature Archive Retail

Investors Are Hungry for Retail Deals, But Not Enough Assets Are for Sale to Satisfy Appetite

by Kristin Harlow October 13, 2026

A lack of quality inventory is one of the prominent factors shaping the retail investment sales landscape. Simply put, there is more capital seeking retail opportunities than there are assets available for purchase, says Michael Marks, executive director of retail capital markets with Cushman & Wakefield in Chicago. Strong leasing activity and rising rents are bolstering investor confidence in the retail market, he adds. Amid historically low vacancy, U.S. retail asking rents grew 2.2 percent year-over-year to $25.65 per square foot triple net, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s second-quarter report. Structural supply constraints continue to support sustained rent growth, as the development pipeline represents less than 0.3 percent of existing inventory. Retail investors are firmly in acquisition mode, according to JLL’s second-quarter U.S. report. In the first half of the year, retail investment sales volume reached $33 billion, up 14 percent year-over-year and the strongest first half since 2022. Evan Lyons, executive vice president with West Bloomfield, Michigan-based Encore Real Estate Investment Services, poses the question — where does the next wave of inventory for transactions come from? “Some will come naturally through ownership transitions, partnership changes, fund lifecycles and other reasons investors need to sell,” predicts Lyons. “Debt maturities …

October 13, 2026

Features Seniors Housing

Healthcare REITs Accelerate Buying Spree

by Hayden Spiess October 6, 2026

By Beth Mattson-Teig Healthcare REITs are well-capitalized, and they’re putting that significant financial muscle to work with big moves to expand their seniors housing portfolios. As the world’s largest healthcare REIT with a market capitalization of nearly $170 billion, Welltower Inc. (NYSE: WELL) continues to dominate the investment market. Year-to-date through mid-August, Toledo, Ohio-based Welltower had a staggering $15.5 billion in new investments that it had closed or under contract, and another $6 billion in deals in the pipeline. A major focus for the REIT has been expanding its Seniors Housing Operating Portfolio (SHOP) platform. SHOP allows REITs to share in the operational upside of properties compared to the fixed rents with traditional triple-net lease structures (see sidebar). Across the industry, there is no shortage of mega-deals. American Healthcare REIT Inc. (NYSE: AHR), based in Irvine, California, recently announced plans to acquire eight seniors housing properties managed by Kensington Senior Living for $873 million. Earlier this year, Chicago-based Ventas Inc. (NYSE: VTR) announced a $540 million deal to acquire a majority stake in an 11-community luxury senior living platform owned by the Wolff Co. It’s no secret that REITs have been active buyers for the past several years. “This external …

October 6, 2026

California Features Restaurant Retail Western Western Feature Archive

The Great Cap Rate Puzzle: Rethinking How Net Lease Real Estate Responds to Interest Rates

by John Nelson October 1, 2026

By Jeff Lefko of Hanley Investment Group Real Estate Advisors For much of the last few decades, commercial real estate investors have operated under a simple assumption: interest rates rise, and cap rates rise with them. It is a straightforward relationship: intuitive, widely accepted and deeply embedded in underwriting models and investment committee discussions across the industry. Yet in the net lease sector, the connection between interest rates and cap rates has been far less direct than many believe. Since early 2022, the Federal Reserve has increased short‑term rates by more than 500 basis points, the fastest tightening cycle in four decades. Longer‑term borrowing costs remain elevated compared to the ultra-low-rate era of 2020 and 2021, even after the Fed’s rate cuts through 2025. Conventional thinking suggests net lease cap rates should have expanded sharply. Instead, cap rates across much of the single-tenant and multi-tenant net lease market have risen only modestly relative to the scale of the rate increases. There has been movement in certain segments, particularly in secondary markets, shorter lease terms and lower credit tenants, but the broader market has moved far less than the headline rate increases alone would suggest. This raises an important question for …

October 1, 2026

Lillard-Drive-Industrial-Portfolio-Sparks-Nevada

Features

Why Capital Markets Have Become the Biggest Story in Commercial Real Estate

by Taylor Williams September 29, 2026

By Cliff Booth, founder, chairman, Westmount Realty Capital For more than 40 years, Westmount Realty Capital has invested through multiple commercial real estate cycles. Each cycle has its own characteristics, but one common theme has remained constant: periods of uncertainty tend to reward discipline. Today’s market is no exception. Commercial real estate continues to operate against a backdrop of elevated interest rates, geopolitical uncertainty and a more constrained capital environment. While these challenges are widely discussed, what is often overlooked is how significantly capital markets conditions are now influencing every aspect of the investment process. In many ways, capital markets have become the story. The Pricing Disconnect Slowing Transactions One of the most significant challenges facing the industry today is the disconnect between buyers and sellers. Many owners remain anchored to valuations that were established during a period of historically low interest rates, while buyers must underwrite acquisitions using today’s cost of capital. The result is a pricing dislocation that has materially reduced transaction volume across many sectors. That slowdown matters because liquidity fuels investment activity. When assets are not trading, investors have fewer opportunities to recycle capital into new acquisitions. Fundraising becomes more challenging, capital deployment slows and transaction …

September 29, 2026

Development Features

Cushman & Wakefield: Materials Pricing Fluctuations Change the Construction Equation

by Abby Cox September 22, 2026

CHICAGO — As employer costs cool down, materials — particularly metals — are emerging as the bigger source of construction costs pressure, according to findings from Cushman & Wakefield’s Construction Insights: Summer 2026 report. For much of the post-pandemic construction cycle, finding people to build was becoming increasingly expensive. Labor shortages, wage growth and competition for skilled trades pushed construction costs higher as developers navigated an already challenging development environment. But now, that equation is beginning to change. The recently published report shows that construction cost pressures are becoming concentrated in materials, as metals and equipment prices rise more rapidly while labor-cost growth steadies. The shift is significant for developers and contractors as the factors influencing project budgets are becoming tied to pricing commodities, which are impacted directly by tariffs and global supply chains. The increase in commodity prices is more than 4.7 times the rate recorded a year earlier, led by aluminum at 40.9 percent, copper base scrap at 39.3 percent and nonferrous metals at 38.5 percent, as reported by Cushman & Wakefield. A Different Kind of Pressure According to Cushman & Wakefield, the ENR Building Cost Index rose 4.7 year-over-year in August 2026, while its skilled labor component …

September 22, 2026

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