Are Investors Preparing for the Next Recession

David Shulman is a senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast.

This cycle, it has become commonplace to predict the next recession, but despite the rhetoric—expressions like, “the cycle is getting long in the tooth”—fear of a recession isn’t showing up in investment strategies. According to the latest report from UCLA Anderson Forecast and the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, economic growth is slowing and will likely be down to 2% and then 1% in 2020, increasing the risk for a recession that will significantly impact commercial real estate.

“We aren’t forecasting a recession right now. We are highlighting that when you go down to 1% growth, the risk is rising,” David Shulman, senior economist for the Ziman Center and UCLA Anderson Forecast, tells GlobeSt.com. “You are going from 200,000 jobs a month to 40,000 jobs a month, you are going to have major issues with office absorption, apartment absorption, maybe retail. You are going to have some real issues on the demand side of real estate.”