The Urban Land Institute Fall Meeting, which took place in Los Angeles at the end of October, was better attended than the meeting last year here in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the overall sentiment as far as I could discern was not any better than it was last year.
However, a lack of deterioration is a small win given what we have been through over the last few years, and we’ll take what we can get right now. There are several groups that gauge real estate business sentiment, and none of them are showing much optimism for how the general real estate world will look in 2012 (naturally, there are always exceptions across asset classes and geographies).
For instance, there is the recent report from RCLCO, and the ULI’s Emerging Trends report.
One interesting, totally unscientific way of gauging interest in development of asset types is by comparing the relative percentage of downloads of REFM’s Back Of The Envelope models.
More to come on this topic in our Tuesday post.
For now, what is your take on how 2012 will unfold for the business as a whole?