Retail

By Spencer Levy, CBRE In the wake of COVID-19, many sophisticated commercial real estate advisors and investors are rejecting the old industry adage to “never fall in love with your real estate.” That’s because commercial real estate — like so many investment decisions — is influenced by basic human emotions. And unlike stocks or bonds, office buildings, shopping malls and warehouse facilities are not traded like a commodity. Commercial real estate decisions by both investors and occupiers can’t be entirely data driven. Of course, deep financial analysis, sophisticated data and powerful algorithms are important. But data is often significantly impacted by human emotion. That’s why psychology can have as much influence on real estate decision-making as cold, hard math. COVID-19 duress At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2020, CBRE’s semiannual Office Occupier Sentiment Survey found that 39 percent of large companies planned to significantly reduce their commercial real estate footprint (meaning cuts of roughly a third or more). But in our latest Spring 2021 survey, as the world began to emerge from the pandemic, that number anticipating significant cuts was down to only 9 percent. What accounts for such a stark difference? Emotion. In 2020, there was …