ULI Austin will host an Emerging Trends in Real Estate event on Wed., Dec. 1, with timing and location details to be announced later. Guests will hear national evaluation and insights from one of the report’s co-authors, after which a local panel will provide a unique perspective on the high-level results.

The report noted that Austin has long been among the brightest stars in the constellation and a darling for investors and developers alike, first breaking into the Top 10 markets to watch in 2009. Yet, the metro area has not rested on its laurels and continues to power forward with the fastest growth of any metro area in the study’s coverage area.

Austin also found itself moving from the category of “18-Hour Cities” to the status of “Supernova.” Cities in this category are among the fastest growing metro areas and are on a tear in terms of prominence and popularity. Supernovas are affordable smaller markets with between 1 million and 2 million residents. But their defining attribute is their tremendous and sustained population and job growth, which is well above national averages. These are true magnet markets, particularly for educated millennials. Over the past two years, the number of residents in these metro areas has grown by an average of 3.6 percent, more than four times the U.S. population growth of 0.8 percent over the same period. Despite their relatively modest size, all the Supernovas have above-average levels of economic diversity and white-collar employment, factors that explain their strong investor appeal and should help them sustain further high growth in the years ahead.

Other top trends from the report include:

Flexibility and Convenience Drive the Next Decade

• By forcing people to work and live differently, the pandemic revealed hitherto unknown reservoirs of flexibility in how the property sectors could function—and changed expectations of how people will use properties in the future. A renewed emphasis on work/life balance and the importance of convenience and productivity in how people manage time will require physical changes to properties to better align with how they will be used.

Work Anywhere: An Office Reset

• Office buildings have long been the bedrock of commercial real estate portfolios. But COVID-19 has dented that hegemony as remote working becomes a permanent option for millions of office workers. Offices in pricy central business districts are likely to experience greater hits to demand than their suburban counterparts in part because their tenants typically have a higher share of occupations most amenable to remote working.

Work Anywhere, Live Anywhere

• The dramatic rise in working from home prompted by the pandemic and lockdowns amounts to a significant break between work and the traditional workplace, providing workers greater flexibility in deciding where to reside. Workers are moving farther from their workplaces, some simply because they prefer a more suburban or rural environment and others so they can afford more space for a home office, a nursery, or whatever the new demands placed on the home.

Housing Crisis, Redux

• Housing affordability worsened during the pandemic as the rise in both home prices and rents barely paused during the brief recession and then quickly accelerated as the economy reopened. Prices and rents are still climbing at some of the highest rates ever tracked, well ahead of relatively modest wage gains. With housing production falling far short of new household formations, affordability will continue to deteriorate absent significant private-sector and government intervention.

Retrofitting Cityscapes

• Most cities that suffered at least some outmigration during the pandemic are already regaining their vibrancy, but residents are returning to landscapes that have changed both visually and functionally in ways that are likely to endure.

Climate Risks are on Us

• The increasing frequency of natural disasters—as well as more convincing research attributing these events to human- induced climate change—is raising the alarm for greater action. A growing consensus sees the property sector as bearing much of the responsibility for climate change—and uniquely positioned to institute improvements to both mitigate impacts and increase resilience to environmental risks.

Proptech: Changing the Way Real Estate is Done

• The property technology (proptech) industry has reached a level of acceptance usually reserved for a more mature sector. The use of technology to better understand and man- age properties has accelerated sharply.

One Pandemic, Divergent Outlooks

• Unlike the last recession, which hit every region, industry, and property type, the impacts from the COVID-recession have been much more differentiated. Outlooks for U.S. property markets and sectors look to be diverging in ways significantly different than in the last recovery.

Everyone Wants in

• As has been the case for almost a decade, investor interest is especially keen for industrial assets and housing, both multifamily and single family, while demand for hotels, shopping centers, and offices remains weaker. But limited opportunities and record pricing in the favored sectors and markets are pushing more investors into alternative property types like life sciences, data centers, self-storage, and student housing, as well as various forms of debt.

New Age of Uncertainty

• COVID-related uncertainty permeates investor views on property markets, holding back demand for office buildings especially, until more is known about firms’ occupancy strategies. Rising infection levels risk also triggering pullback and shifts in consumer spending, affecting the retail and hospitality sectors.

Now in its 43^nd year, Emerging Trends in Real Estate®, undertaken jointly by PwC and ULI, is one of the most highly regarded annual industry outlooks for the real estate and land use industry. It includes 930 personal interviews and 1,200 survey responses from leading real estate experts, including investors, fund managers, developers, property companies, lenders, brokers, advisers and consultants.

About ULI Austin:

The Austin District Council of the Urban Land Institute was founded in 1994. Today, the Austin District Council includes more than 1,000 Austin-area professionals in the planning, architecture, design, engineering, investor, landscape, lender, legal, construction, communication and government industries, involved in every sector of real estate development, from residential and retail to commercial and hospitality. ULI Austin is known for its topical monthly breakfasts, which feature local and international experts on topics important to the community’s growth and prosperity. For more information, visit Austin.ULI.org.