Things will rebound, lessons for a Real Estate Market coming out of crisis

Many industries are looking towards the future, past COVID-19, to develop a plan. Coming out of this crisis will not be easy for anyone, and this will change the trajectory of businesses for the remainder of our lives. Commerical Real Estate has been one of the many industries affected by this virus. Things will rebound over time for the industry, however it’s important to know how to properly emerge from this lockdown. During a Bisnow webinar, Collin Lau, founder of BEI Capital and former global head of real estate for sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, spoke about the current Real Estate Market and what it will take to rise above all of this. With places like China and Hong Kong slowly transitioning out of the health crisis, we can look to Asia as a whole for a vision of the future. The webinar featured insights from Lau, based on his own experience in the CRE industry recovering from the current pandemic. We can take his perspective and turn it into lessons to follow during our own pursuit in recovery: Wellness in real estate becomes essential • People want to know the places they are visiting are safe. • Properties will need to be properly cleaned and disinfected more often. • Will also need to invest in high quality cleaning systems, air purifying and more. Properties always need value • Each property will need to have specific strategies in place, to add value to its use. Properties will accelerate a multi-use initiative • Properties with just one use will be more vulnerable after this and may take longer to recover. • Real estate owners will need to become more creative when it comes to reinventing properties and adapting them to serve multiple uses. The demand for the “best property” will still be apparent • After this, consumers will have no choice of where to go, so outperformance of the best properties will be even more distinct. Opportunities will arise, but with time • With the current downturn in the economy, it’s likely that opportunities won’t arise right away, but with time it will happen. We should all have a sense of hope. In the long term, properties will need to meet the needs of everyone’s changing behaviors. Once they do, they will be highly profitable in the CRE industry. There’s a lot of necessary strategizing and prep work that will need to be put into place after we are out of this, to ensure there will be a brighter future. We will approach the norm from a different perspective, but these lessons further provide evidence to the connection people have to physical spaces. We need CRE to bring physical spaces to individuals and further enhance the potential of brick and mortar. As a team at SREG, we have already started planning initiatives for a post-COVID world. We will use these lessons along with our own plans to reactivate the retail space in a new light, with safe experiences underway. These plans will include tenant support, family programs and new considerations as a whole to adaptively transform our program, assets and the CRE landscape. Source: Bisnow Webinar 4/9/20, Bisnow Recap 4/12/20 Photo Credit: Bisnow Recap 4/12/20