Energy, Jobs Loom Largest as CRE Issues

CHICAGO—The number one issue affecting commercial real estate in the near and long term? America’s growing energy independence, says the Chicago-based Counselors of Real Estate, which put it at the top of its annual Top Ten Issues Affecting Real Estate list, released Wednesday.

Other issues in the association’s top 10 list this year: jobs, millennials, healthcare, globalization, water supply, the capital markets, housing, manufacturing and agriculture. “The list reflects growing economic and political turmoil, changing demographics and the lifestyle choices of an emerging generation, rising energy independence in the United States and a strengthening job market fueled in part by massive changes in the delivery of healthcare,” Hugh F. Kelly, clinical professor of real estate at New York University’s Schack Institute and 2014 chair of the CRE, said during the opening address at the National Association of Real Estate Editors’ annual conference in Houston.