By Taylor Williams In late October, Raphael Bostic, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, gave a virtual speech in which he carried a glass jar with the word “transitory” labeled on it. Inside the jar were wadded-up dollar bills, deposited by Bostic’s staff members each time they used the word “transitory” to describe the surge in prices of consumer goods and services. The exercise was meant to dispel the notion that the current inflationary environment would be fleeting or short-lived. Based on the results of Texas Real Estate Business’ annual reader forecast survey, commercial brokers and developers/managers in the Lone Star State aren’t likely to be contributing to that fund any time soon. When asked to identify the macroeconomic force that was most likely to impact the commercial real estate industry in 2022, both of these groups selected inflationary pressures over supply chain constraints, pandemic restrictions, the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and employment/gross domestic product (GDP) growth. It’s worth noting that the survey officially closed on Monday, Dec. 13, about a week before the nation began to see a major surge in COVID-19 cases, most of which were classified as the Omicron variant. In the subsequent three-week period, …
