Your One-Stop Shop For End-Of-Year Recaps And 2025 Predictions
2024 was a story of expecting the unexpected.
Commercial real estate waited with bated breath for over eight months this year, hoping the Federal Reserve would provide much-needed relief to the industry and finally cut interest rates. Some companies didn't make it to see that day. When it finally happened, CRE didn't recover overnight, but sectors started showing signs of life — new RTO mandates promised to boost office, multifamily is leveling out and the data center bubble only grew.
As always, Bisnow was there through it all, covering the latest and greatest throughout the tumultuous year. Before we ring in 2025, take a look at everything that happened in 2024: the year of the Fed, power grids and Trump's re-election.
— Kayla Carmicheal, Bisnow Deputy Newsletter Editor
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NATIONAL
Grading 2024 Predictions: How Clear Was The Crystal Ball?
Even the top real estate players knew 2024 would be a bit painful.
This year was transitional. The hope was that interest rates would fall, companies would beckon employees back to their offices and capital would come flowing back into the market.
Well, tick-tock. The end of 2024 has arrived, and many of those dreams have yet to become reality.
To get an idea of what the coming years may bring, we took a look back. Here are some expectations that we, alongside experts, had for the year — and whether they came true.
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'Survive Till '25' Was About Weathering The Storm. Here Are 20 Things That Didn't Make It
Heading into 2024, the mantra for many in commercial real estate was “survive till ‘25.”
But some companies and deals weren’t so fortunate.
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The 12 Deals And Trends That Defined 2024
2024 will most likely go down as the year commercial real estate hit the bottom and ended this cycle.
It was a painful one, with prolonged higher interest rates landing maturing loans in hot water, the clock running out on office investments and vanishingly scarce new deals across any property type.
But some things did happen among the malaise of 2024. Bisnow went back through the archives to find the market-moving deals and the trends that shaped how CRE made — or lost — money this year.
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Editors' Choice: The Very Best Bisnow Stories Of 2024
This year has been anything but predictable for commercial real estate.
From fraud scandals and market shake-ups to the enduring challenges of DEI and housing affordability, 2024 has tested the resilience of CRE professionals everywhere.
It has also pushed our newsroom. In this roundup of our best stories of the year, chosen by our stable of editors from around the U.S. and UK, we revisit some of the defining moments and news coverage of the year — the moments that made our team go deep to bring these stories to the surface.
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Market Gains But Not Without Pain: 6 Predictions On What’s In Store For CRE Next Year
It’s been a tumultuous year for the commercial real estate industry as companies spent months waiting for the interest rate cuts that finally arrived in September, and the market faced uncertainty around an election that is poised to spark a substantial shift in federal policy.
Things may be starting to turn around.
Bisnow spoke to several economists and market experts to hear their predictions for 2025, and they largely see clearer skies ahead, including falling vacancy in office and multifamily and a resurgence of investment.
On the flip side, some banks could see a “reckoning” as distressed assets increasingly become a major strain on balance sheets and lenders come to terms with write-downs. And there may be pain in the retail markets if more mergers lead chains to close stores.
Here are six predictions for the commercial real estate industry in 2025.
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What Captivated CRE In 2024? Bisnow’s 12 Most Popular Reads
A little bit of drama, a lot of pain, a dash of Blackstone and a shot of Ozempic — that’s the recipe for a heck of a lot of eyeballs.
The Bisnow stories that clicked the hardest this year tell the tale of an industry ruminating on an uncertain future. Here’s what you couldn’t get enough of.
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'The Math Isn’t Going To Lie': Lab Real Estate’s Woes To Continue In 2025
With life sciences real estate looking to turn the corner in 2025, developers and landlords will find themselves struggling with the same issue that defined 2024: a surplus of space that’s pulling down rents, stopping new construction and weighing on balance sheets.
“Ultimately, the math isn’t going to lie,” JLL Executive Managing Director Chad Urie said. “Understand what absorption is going to look like from demand, and if you take the supply and divide it out, you have several years in most markets to get back to an equilibrium of, say, 9% vacancy.”
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Handing Out 2024 Superlatives For NYC CRE
2024 has been largely transitional. Sure, it’s brought a few major acquisitions and foreclosure filings, but it has also been disappointing for many who rely on the cost of capital to come down in order to put their plans into action. After all, interest rates have not dropped as much as expected, banks are still not eager to lend and all those funds have yet to deploy most of their dry powder.
From Most Likely To Succeed to Most Likely To Be Your Future Boss, here are the superlatives for NYC CRE's Class of 2024.
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The 7 Biggest Stories Of 2024 In Boston Commercial Real Estate
There have been many close calls this year in Boston. From Mayor Michelle Wu’s controversial property tax proposal being killed in the state senate to the downfall of a hospital system that put several local facilities at risk, the industry was holding its breath at times.
But not all of the news was scary this year. The city's office market saw notable leases that have reminded the industry that tenants are still attracted to Boston.
The state's MBTA Communities Law has continued to keep investors and developers interested as they scope which communities are fully embracing the law and which aren't.
Here are seven stories from this year that have kept the commercial real estate community's heads spinning.
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12 Stories That Defined D.C. Commercial Real Estate In 2024
For D.C., it was a year of blows to the gut: punch after punch threatening to knock the city to the ground.
In 2024, the District nearly lost two of its professional sports teams, large downtown office buildings were foreclosed on in waves, The federal workforce failed to fully return to the office and housing providers contended with historic rent delinquencies.
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The 11 Biggest South Florida Commercial Real Estate Sales Of 2024
As 2024 wraps up its final chapter, we can look back on another big year for South Florida’s commercial real estate market.
While most end-of-year lists keep things tidy with 10 things, we're turning ours up to 11 because it wouldn't be a proper Miami list if it weren't a little over the top.
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The 10 Atlanta CRE News Stories That Defined 2024
From big law firm moves and office buildings selling at steep discounts to developers’ love affair with data centers and a notorious investor getting charged with fraud, there were several big stories that caught the collective attention of Atlanta CRE in 2024.
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The 10 Steepest Drops In SoCal Property Values This Year
Some CRE industry pros think the Los Angeles market has scraped bottom in 2024, meaning there is no way to go but up from here. After a year of steep drops in property valuations, many of the region's highest-profile buildings, especially offices, have a long road to climb to reach their prepandemic heights.
A Morningstar collection of the Los Angeles-area CMBS loans that had the greatest losses from issuance appraisal to the most recent appraisal finds that some properties have seen their values drop by as much as 70%. Retail and hotel properties, while not seeing such dramatic declines in value, also appear on a list of the top value declines.
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The 12 Deals Of Christmas: A Game Of 2 Halves
The top 12 Irish real estate deals of the year tell a story of a year in two acts, with the second half of 2024 dominating the major transactions after the deathly quiet of the first quarter.
As a result, at the end of Q3, total transactions of €1.3B were down at 2013 levels, and €599M of those transactions — nearly half of the three-quarter total — concluded in the third quarter.
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The 12 Deals of Christmas: Where Have All The Office Deals Gone?
The story of big deals in 2024 was the return of retail and the impact of several huge hotel transactions, with the two sectors accounting for more than half of the top 12 UK deals of the year.
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Before The Ball Drops: 12 Stories That Defined NYC CRE In 2024
This year will not be remembered for a flurry of new developments or billion-dollar transactions. And yet, 2024 was a year that may define the future of New York City for decades to come.
The groundwork was laid for big changes, both with the commercial and residential portions of City of Yes changing zoning code and easing restrictions across the five boroughs and the housing deal struck in Albany that brought back some tax breaks for developers of apartments.
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'More Resilient Than Many Folks Predicted': A Countdown Of 2024's 9 Biggest New Philly Office Leases
There’s been a lot of handwringing about the Philadelphia office market in 2024, but JLL data provided exclusively to Bisnow shows there was still demand for new leases this year, particularly in the skyscrapers that tower over Center City West.
Five of the largest leases overall were renewals, JLL Senior Analyst Emily Friedman said. With those taken out of the equation, the nine largest leases inked in the city ranged from 17K SF to 60K SF.
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Houston To Remain ‘A Powerhouse’ In 2025. But In Some Cases, ‘That Music Stops’
Houston brokers and analysts saw a true mixed bag in the commercial real estate industry in 2024. Deal volume exceeded expectations, lenders continued making special exceptions and a vague normalcy returned.
But despite expecting some slowdown of activity in 2025, industry players remain bullish on the Space City for the same reasons they have cited for many years: population and economic growth.
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Chicago’s Biggest Deals Of 2024 Reflect City's 'Innate Optimism'
The dealmaking floodgates haven’t opened quite yet in the Windy City, but 2024 represented the first step toward a return to the good old days for some of the city’s biggest asset classes.
Office sales volume ticked up slightly after an anemic 2023, and user industrial sales increased from last year. Multifamily sales slowed, but asking rents still climbed.
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Tech Companies Accounted For About 20% Of Denver Office Leasing In 2024
Denver has cemented its place as one of North America’s tech hubs, according to CBRE’s 2024 Tech 30 report, but office vacancy rates are still high, and negative absorption plagues landlords and developers.
