Members of Institutional Real Estate Americas’ Editorial Advisory Board set aside the daily grind and forged deeper connections at the most recent board meeting.

Prior to the Editorial Advisory Board meeting, attendees are asked to provide topics and questions that will serve as a basis for two days of facilitated conversations.

After years of being an obscure acronym, ESG (environmental, social and governance) has become a mainstay of the institutional investor vernacular.

The biggest questions top of mind for investors, managers and other industry players are, “Where are we in the current economic cycle, and are the good times coming to an end?”

Commercial real estate has seen a pullback in construction activity, with space under construction falling in recent years across asset types.

A recently released survey of global real estate investors has affirmed a near-consensus view of the importance of weighing environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria as a factor in real estate investment decision making.

The United States is now home to 164 unicorns, private companies valued at $1 billion or more, which has implications for the real estate markets in which these high-performing startups are located.

Obsolescence is one of the main risk factors for commercial real estate, along with the end of the real estate cycle and high prices for all asset types.

After a fourth-quarter slowdown that recorded 27 fund closings and total volume of only $14.9 billion, first quarter 2019 exploded with a record volume of $60.7 billion, based on 25 fund closings.

The total return for institutional investors as measured by the NCREIF Property Index (NPI) was 1.80 percent in first quarter 2019, up from 1.38 percent in fourth quarter 2018.