Contact: Robin Zellers
717-761-5070
rzellers@naicir.com
Lemoyne, PA – June 30, 2020: Robin Zellers, SIOR, FRICS, CRE, and President of NAI CIR, shared the current and emerging issues expected to have the most significant impact on real estate in 2020 and 2021, as identified by The Counselors of Real Estate. The COVID-19 pandemic ranked as the leading concern of the 1,000-member organization.
“The change wrought by the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath will teach us about priorities, resilience, and demand in ways that we did not dare test before,” said Zellers, a Counselor of Real Estate. “The 2020-21 Top Ten Issues are highly interrelated and are an attempt to overlay this new world onto an already changing real estate environment. In examining real estate markets, we must consider existing fragility, adaptability to new demands, and potential relevance to new markets. Demand will be defined by the extent to which this crisis leads us to abandon old habits and adopt new ones. The duration of the lockdown has been a factor, and so is the confidence with which we emerge.”
Economic renewal ranked second on The Counselors’ list, with the U.S. economy showing signs of decline prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. “There were a number of statistical signals of deceleration for those willing to see them,” said Zellers. “The challenges facing the economy and the real estate industry are deep and persistent, with leisure and hospitality, retail, construction, and air travel seeing slow and partial rebounds into 2022.“ The Counselors cite that the impact of the economic lockdown on state and local tax revenues could reduce non-federal government employment levels and shelve important infrastructure projects, with such risks suggesting an unusual “W-shaped” recession.
“The post-COVID-19 economy will be constrained by long-run potential GDP growth of only 1.5 – 1.6 percent. That is the ‘new normal’ for which we need to prepare,” added Zellers.
Capital market risk rounded out the top three issues of concern for The Counselors, as the last four months have presented not only real time volatility of the capital markets, but also confirmed how quickly debt and equity capital liquidity can stop flowing when risk and returns are difficult to measure.
“One thing we have seen since March is that volatility has spiked which makes pricing debt more challenging,” said Zellers. “Federal intervention helped to limit a complete seizing of the markets, but doesn’t necessarily mitigate the longer-term concern about defaults and loses. While pricing stability and liquidity appear to have somewhat returned, late payments and loan defaults have seen a significant increase.”
The remaining issues identified by The Counselors of Real Estate are Public and Private Indebtedness, Affordable Housing, Flow of People, Space Utilization, Technology and Workflow, Infrastructure, and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), respectively.
“Clients of Counselors seek unbiased, objective advice on the critical factors that will impact all property sectors today, as well as those issues that may affect their decisions over the next ten years. This thought leadership initiative is an invaluable service to those clients and to the real estate industry in general.”
The Top Ten Issues Affecting Real Estate is developed by The Counselors of Real Estate’s External Affairs Committee, with issues identified, debated, and voted on by the general membership. For additional information and perspective on each issue, visit
https://www.cre.org/topten.
About Robin Zellers, SIOR, FRICS, CRE
Robin Zellers, President of NAI CIR, is a member of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (“SIOR”), an elected Fellow of The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (“FRICS”) and an invited member of The Counselors of Real Estate (“CRE”). Zellers is the Broker of Record of NAI CIR, a Past President of the NAI Global Members Leadership Board, current member of the NAI Global Strategic Planning Committee and Past Chair of the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Counselors of Real Estate. Zellers’ clients have included the Commonwealth of PA, UPMC Pinnacle, Morgan Stanley and Cantor Fitzgerald.
About The Counselors of Real Estate
The Counselors of Real Estate is an international consortium of commercial property professionals from leading real estate, financial, law, valuation, and accounting and business advisory firms, as well as real property experts in academia and government. Membership is selective and extended by invitation, although commercial real estate and allied practitioners with 10 years of proven experience may apply.
Among assignments large and small, Counselors have resolved the dispute between the developer of the World Trade Center and its insurers post September 11, led the privatization of U.S. Army Housing, developed a multi-billion-dollar, 10-year master plan for Philadelphia Public Schools, created and endowed the MIT Center for Real Estate, and valued both the Grand Canyon and Yale University. Counselors reside in 20 countries and U. S. territories, with only 1,000 professionals holding the CRE credential worldwide.
About NAI CIR
NAI CIR, based in Lemoyne, is Central Pennsylvania’s oldest and largest exclusively commercial industrial real estate full service brokerage firm. Founded in 1970, the firm is consistently ranked as the top producing commercial industrial sales and leasing firm by the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal and by Real Capital Analytics. The firm has been honored as a Philadelphia Region CoStar Power Broker for 15 consecutive years.
NAI CIR is the Central Pennsylvania representative of NAI Global, an international organization of real estate professionals with connections literally all across the world. Our transaction and management professionals are among the most experienced and successful in the business, and our platform ensures that our expertise directly benefits our clients.