SIOR Speaker Says Market Should Be Fine Unless Congress Gets Its Act Together

Mark Dotzour speaking at SIOR.

NEW ORLEANS—Real estate economist Mark Dotzour didn’t vote for either of the main presidential candidates last year. “I voted for Gary somebody,” he joked during a presentation he made to an audience last week. On top of that, he has little faith in Congress to adequately support President Trump’s proposal to invest billions in the nation’s infrastructure, which has been one of the main hopes of the commercial real estate industry.

For that Dotzour, who was the chief economist of the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University in College Station for 18 years and now advises the private sector, is thankful. If Washington DC could get it together to give Trump what he is asking for, it would add too much juice to the economy, he told attendees at ​The Society of Industrial and Office Realtors’ 2017 Spring World Conference, held in New Orleans last week. Should that happen, it could usher in a period of high or even runaway inflation.