Industry Insights

While the Live, Work, Play concept is vastly appealing to many, research is showing that urban jobs are not necessarily being created as fast, which is contributing to the increased number of people living the reverse commute. Will we ever get to a balanced Live, Work, Play environment?

Published on July 12, 2018 on Connect Media

What’s Driving Uptick in Reverse Commutes?

Go travel, spend time with family and friends and have some fun! Then, it’s time to be an adult, put your quality education to good use and start paying the bills. It can be a daunting time looking for your first real job but also an exciting one. And if done thoughtfully, the decisions you make here will lay the foundation for a successful career doing what you love and doing it well.

I am honored to be conducting a webinar for my college alma mater, Penn State, in September. The dialogue will be around “How to Navigate a Candidate’s Market” and as I begin to prepare for it, I have been thinking a lot about my experience from college student to job candidate to business professional.

Between freshman and senior year, I went from studying marketing to finance to commercial real estate, the latter being my ultimate calling and what, as many of you know, I am immersed in today. I bounced around for a bit but my journey to finding my dream career fortunately came to me relatively quickly. And I think it is because of something I was taught to embrace early in my college and professional life: The power of networking.

Your network is your continuing education and where your professional growth continues

It’s never too early to network and create a community of genuine relationships that will propel you in your professional life. Think of these people you meet and the relationships you nurture with them as your support system. They are the colleagues, mentors, bosses, team members, employees and college friends who will directly and indirectly influence your career path, educate you about your industry and role of choice and ultimately refer you to relevant opportunities. Your network will open doors you may have not even known existed.

When I embarked on the endeavor of creating my own real estate recruitment company, I spoke with anyone and everyone, especially in the commercial real estate world. This curiosity and desire to understand each person’s role in the industry and what motivated them gave me the clarity I needed to confirm it was exactly what I wanted to do for a living.

Your network will help you be your best self

When you spend time with your network, it’s also a check in with you. Where are you in your career and where do you want to go next? Oftentimes we go to college or specific schooling not truly knowing what we want to study and do for the rest of our lives, me included! And unfortunately, some high-potential students graduate with the same uncertainty. You’re not alone if you are one of them.

Around the time of my graduation, my created network suggested I take a personality assessment to identify my personality type and help me validate my interests, aptitudes and quite frankly what I was probably not going to be good at. It was invaluable. My network also referred me to two of my now favorite books: Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath and What Color is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles. I highly recommend both!

Your network is your group of trusted advisors. Follow in their footsteps. Seek their advice. Ask for help when you need it to make a hard decision. Be inspired by them. They will celebrate your successes and hold you accountable to always be the best you can be now and in the years to come. I am grateful for mine.

Congratulations to all of the graduates out there! Your next chapter has just begun. All the best in the endeavors that await you!

The economy, low unemployment, better pay. Why are more people quitting their jobs?

While the Royal wedding may have not had a direct impact on commercial real estate, certain industry sectors did get a boost. Read on to see which areas of the economy were measurably impacted: Royal wedding’s $1.4 billion economic impact

Article published by Victor Reklaitis on May 18, 2018 on MarketWatch.com

I recently heard Hamid Moghadam, CEO of Prologis, speak at Burnham-Moores 22nd Annual Real Estate Conference. He ended the conversation by discussing his company’s policies to increase the number of women across all departments. It was empowering to hear that a company with such a presence on the world commercial real estate stage has specific policies to promote women. Many more companies and countless organizations have pledged to be champions and advocates of women in the commercial real estate space. We are proud to work with a number of clients who make this diversity a focus in order to compliment their already successful businesses with women that can take their companies to the next level.

These changes are even taking place on construction sites. Construction sites and careers have a reputation that has not historically been conducive to women. Read here about the incredible organizations across the country who are working tirelessly to promote diversity in the trades.

The Real Estate Roundtable’s Q1 2018 Economic Sentiment Index shows that executives in the commercial real estate space still anticipate “strong near-term asset values and capital availability.”

Highlights from the report include:

• Survey respondents feel comfortable with where the current 2018 market is, but are concerned about 2019
• Capital sources are making more calculated decisions
• Asset values seem to be peaking
• Competitive and available sources of capital are prevalent

Read the summary and access the full report at Connect.media.

According to NAIOP Research Foundation’s annual report, commercial real estate development and operation of existing buildings generated the following economic benefits:

• Supported 7.6 million American jobs in 2017 (a measure of both new and existing jobs).
• Contributed $935.1 billion to U.S. GDP.
• Generated $286.4 billion in salaries and wages.

Read the full report to understand the full impact that commercial real estate has on the economy. Originally published by Dr. Stephen S. Fuller in January 2018 on NAIOP.org.

Bitcoin’s blockchain technology has revolutionized the way financial markets are thinking. In a nutshell, blockchain technology is a continuously growing list of data that is inherently resistant to modification. How can that be applied to CRE? Connect Commercial Real Estate explored what that technology could mean for commercial real estate in their article What’s Blockchain’s Potential Impact on CRE?

Want to be part of the continued life science boom? Check out our job board for west coast CRE opportunities in that space.

The Connect article sites the below major takeaways from the CBRE report:

“– Employment in U.S. life sciences has risen by 23.5% since 2001, outpacing the overall job-growth rate of 10.2% – Lab-space vacancy rates are tight in primary life-sciences markets, registering at less than 2% in Chicago, 4% in the Bay Area and less than 5% in Boston -Rent growth is robust, including a 50% increase in Boston’s Cambridge submarket since 2013 – Venture capital investment in the U.S. life-sciences industry now is 53% greater than 10 years ago”

Clearly life science and biotech is a hot market, and we are excited to see the economic benefits of the space needs and research results of theindustry.

Read the full article here: U.S. Life Sciences Markets Poised for Outsized Growth

Originally published on Connect on January 22, 2018 from research published by CBRE