ORLANDO—Changing demographics and rapidly evolving technology will have varying—but profound—effects on different commercial real estate product categories, real estate analysts said at the Mortgage Bankers Association's Commercial Real Estate Finance/Multifamily Housing Convention & Expo, held here this week.

“What tenants want and what lenders want to lend on changes as landscapes keep changing,” said Kevin Riordan, managing director with Annaly Commercial Real Estate Group.

“Retailers and landlords are competing for time,” said Kristin Mueller, COO of retail and international director with Jones Lang LaSalle. “It's the new commodity. The pace of technology and the adoption of technology is absolutely extraordinary.”

Mueller said the number of electronic devices in the world will likely outnumber human beings sometime this year. “We may have already hit that [milestone],” she said.

Online sales have risen from just more than 1% of total sales in 2001 to nearly 6% in third-quarter 2013, Mueller said. She predicted that e-commerce will grow three times faster than overall sales, and cell phone-based “m-commerce” will grow six times faster than total sales growth.

This has affected new shopping center development, Mueller said. “There is virtually no new supply,” she noted. “Instead we're seeing pickup in the renovation of shopping centers that lost clients during the recession.” She added that contracting retail categories include bookstores, do-it-yourself home stores and mid-price apparel stores. Growing categories include fitness/health/spa concepts, drug stores and discounters such as Target and Wal-Mart, she said.

Generation Y—also known as Millennials—will drive retail trends going forward, Mueller said. “They're urban city dwellers who want to live in medium and large cities, they're ethnically diverse and multicultural and they want to be close to work, school and transit,” she said. “They want their work lives and retail experience to reflect their values.”

Lenny Beaudoin, senior managing director and workplace practice leader with CBRE, Los Angeles, said technology has caused the workplace to evolve just as quickly as the retail sector. Beaudoin said CBRE moved to a “more open and collaborative structure” when it redesigned its Los Angeles headquarters in 2012.

“You look at the traditional office; it provides little space to work together, it's mostly built around individual use,” Beaudoin said. “One mistake we've seen is that many organizations thought that by moving employees into cubicles they would create more collaboration. We reject that notion.” He said employers should instead move to a “shared space” model, because traditional office space has an average utilization of less than 40%.

In addition, office occupiers will deleverage excess capacity in the future, Beaudoin said. “[Consulting firm] Accenture uses 50 square feet per employee,” he said. “Ten or 15 years ago, firms averaged 300 square feet per employee. Today, Google uses 175 square feet. Coca-Cola in Atlanta uses 215 per employee.”

“People value autonomy and choice,” Beaudoin added. “No one including our CEO has his or her own desk; this allows us to give our employees autonomy. The place is a natural expansion of letting each employee design the work experience they want. [The workplace has] become more collaborative. Work is an experience; not just a place.”

Reprinted with permission from MBA NewsLink and the Mortgage Bankers Association.