It can be easy to get caught up in the trees of day-to-day investment work — capital calls and quarterly results, deal making and committee meetings, the movement of 25 basis points — without pausing to look up and see the forest. But there are deep underlying themes that can affect the investment landscape for years to come and sometimes cause seismic shifts in how real estate is used.

One of the most important decisions a real estate investor could make in the past couple of years was their choice of property sector. Different sectors have been affected in different ways by the megatrends pushing change through the industry. In some cases, the trends have been a tailwind supporting a sector, such as the rise of ecommerce and its positive impact on the industrial sector. But the same trend can also have been a headwind dragging against a sector’s performance, such as how the rise of ecommerce has affected the retail sector.

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