In this episode, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi joins us to unpack the extraordinary uncertainty facing today’s economy – on par, he says, with the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing from insights shared during his keynote at NAIOP’s National Forums Symposium, Zandi discusses the weakening labor force, volatile economic policy, and growing pressure from tariffs and immigration shifts. He explores how inflation, interest rates, and consumer trends are affecti...
Jun 23, 2025•51 min•Season 3Ep. 9
In this episode, Melinda McLaughlin, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Research at Prologis, discusses the evolving state of global trade and its impact on logistics real estate. She highlights how trade disruptions, starting with tariffs in 2017 and intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, have accelerated supply chain diversification – especially toward non-China Asia and Mexico. Companies are moving away from fragile, hyper-optimized supply chains toward diversified, resilient networks. W...
Jun 04, 2025•28 min•Season 3Ep. 8
Commercial real estate leaders Amy Curry, Chief Strategy Officer of Dermody; Ed Griffin, CEO, Griffin Partners; and Kevin Hardy, Head of Eastern Canadian Office, Oxford Properties; join us for a special episode to discuss the impacts of tariffs on the industry. In this candid conversation they share how uncertainty is increasing scrutiny, moderating deal velocity and complicating risk assessments. They also address how developers are adjusting construction budgets and managing relationships with...
May 28, 2025•37 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Christopher Thornberg, Ph.D., founding partner of Beacon Economics and recent I.CON West keynote, joins the podcast to parse the growing disconnect between economic data and public sentiment. While U.S. households are financially strong and consumer spending drives growth, this prosperity is propped up by an unsustainable government deficit and foreign capital inflows. Thornberg stresses the need for immigration-driven labor growth, explains how current spending is masking deeper fiscal risk, an...
May 05, 2025•39 min•Season 3Ep. 6
Scott Jennings started his political career licking envelopes in a campaign office but went on to work for campaigns at both the local and national level, including four presidential campaigns. The CNN senior conservative political commentator – and keynote speaker at NAIOP’s 2025 Chapter Leadership and Legislative Retreat – joins the podcast to share his views on political strategy, including what it takes today for a candidate to win, the two policy areas he believes drove Donald Trump back in...
Apr 14, 2025•35 min•Season 3Ep. 5
As the national director for office analytics, Phil Mobley leads the development of CoStar's house view of the office market. In this episode, he examines the office sector from every angle, highlighting the misconception of a simple “flight to quality,” explaining that both premium and affordable office spaces are thriving while mid-tier buildings face challenges. Mobley shares what he’s watching with the greatest interest over the next 12-24 months, discusses fragmentation in the sector, and h...
Mar 24, 2025•44 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Artist. Architect. Chairman. Philanthropist. Author. Lawrence Armstrong, chairman of leading international design firm Ware Malcomb, joined the firm nearly 40 years ago and served as CEO from 1992 to 2020. In addition to expanding the company from a Southern California firm to a national and international firm with 28 offices across North America, his tenure as CEO is hallmarked by an unprecedented 40x revenue growth. He talks candidly about the importance of succession planning, navigating econ...
Mar 03, 2025•22 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Is the era of tariff-free goods on the North American continent coming to an end? Shannon O’Neil, Senior Vice President and Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “The Globalization Myth: Why Regions Matter,” joins us for this especially timely episode. Shannon discusses how tariff uncertainty and shifting global trade patterns will impact commercial real estate markets across North America, the potential renegotiation of the USMCA, and Mexico’s growing role in glo...
Feb 10, 2025•22 min•Season 3Ep. 2
Opening our third season of Inside CRE, Christopher Ware, NAIOP’s Vice President for Business Development and Strategic Initiatives, speaks with Alex Thomson, founder of Prevail Consultants and 2025 NAIOP Chair. With two decades of experience in commercial real estate, Alex has gained expertise in every aspect of the business, spanning acquisitions, entitlements, development, financing and dispositions. Notably, he’s also NAIOP’s first Canadian chair. In this episode, Alex discusses his prioriti...
Jan 27, 2025•48 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Aquiles Suarez, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at NAIOP, has the considerable task of overseeing the association’s advocacy efforts at the federal, state and local level, and managing the association’s political action committee, NAIOP-PAC. In his signature candor, Aquiles shares with Marc his take on what Republican control of the White House and Congress means for the country and for commercial real estate, the impacts of tariffs proposed by the Trump administration, and the tax ...
Dec 09, 2024•37 min•Season 2Ep. 16
Generational changes happening now are creating a fundamental shift in our society and the way people live and work, says Nikki Greenberg, a world-leading futurist focused on the trends and technologies shaping cities of the future. She joins NAIOP’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Shaine Anderson talk about the path that led her from licensed architect to futurist; the differences in motivating, training and retaining the next generation of workers; and five principles to h...
Nov 18, 2024•30 min•Season 2Ep. 15
David C. Smith is the head of Americas insights for the Cushman & Wakefield global think tank. He joins the podcast and puts in a pitch for the office sector, which he said is experiencing a reckoning similar to the “retail apocalypse” that made headlines back in the mid-2010s through 2020. David discusses topical office trends including reduced square footage per worker, flexible office configurations and the flight to quality. He explains the cyclical vs. structural headwinds faced by the ...
Oct 28, 2024•35 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Brian Natwick, Chairman and CEO of Crescent Communities, our 2024 Developer of the Year, joins guest host Kathryn Hamilton, NAIOP’s vice president for marketing and communications, for this episode. “At the end of the day, real estate is an experience,” Brian points out – a principle that guides the firm’s approach to creating exceptional development projects. He shares the three definitive points in time that shaped the company; what Disney taught him about the value of creating experiences; an...
Oct 07, 2024•34 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Carey Heyman, CPA and managing principal of the real estate industry at CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen), joins us this time on the NAIOP podcast with guest host Christopher Ware, NAIOP’s Vice President for Business Development and Strategic Initiatives. Carey discusses his background, career journey and insights into the commercial real estate market. He also shares how CLA advises clients on managing cash flow and mitigating risk in their real estate portfolios; tax planning strategies for real estate...
Sep 16, 2024•41 min•Season 2Ep. 12
Get to know two special guests who lead the Cocoziello Institute of Real Estate Innovation at Penn State. Peter Cocoziello is the founder, president and CEO of Advance Realty Investors, a New Jersey-based real estate development, investment and management company, and the founding chair of the Institute. Scarlett Miller is a professor of industrial engineering and of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering at Penn State and serves as the Institute’s inaugural director. Peter and Sca...
Aug 26, 2024•39 min•Season 2Ep. 11
In advance of NAIOP’s largest annual conference, CRE.Converge, Oct. 8-10 at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, hear from two seasoned CRE pros working in the region. Cassie Catania-Hsu, managing director and market leader for Las Vegas, CBRE, and Julie Cleaver, vice chair for NAIOP’s Education committee, discussed the city's unique experience economy; developing in a land-constrained market; the impact of sports and entertainment; trends in the greater Southwest and more. Recorded on July 23, 2024....
Aug 19, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Erin McDannald, CEO of Elevated, started working with data centers back in 1998 during the dot-com boom, so she’s seen the sector evolve over decades. She joins podcast guest host Jennifer LeFurgy, Ph.D., NAIOP’s vice president of knowledge and research and executive director of the NAIOP Research Foundation, to share why she believes data centers are a critical piece of infrastructure. With construction spending on data centers up 69% year over year according to the Census Bureau, Erin explains...
Jul 15, 2024•28 min•Season 2Ep. 9
An author, futurist and senior advisor to the Arizona State University Threatcasting Lab, Greg Lindsay guides institutions such as NATO and the United States Secret Service in identifying, disrupting, and mitigating future threats. He joins the podcast with guest host Shaine Anderson, NAIOP’s EVP and COO. Lindsay shares what’s up next for AI and automation – not Skynet or HAL 9000, but software that can act on its own and interface with real world systems. He discusses the massive data center bu...
Jun 24, 2024•30 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Spencer Levy is global client strategist and senior economic advisor at CBRE, the largest commercial real estate services firm in the world. He studies statistics in his free time, so he was happy to offer his analysis on the ripple effects coming with a new era of deglobalization, share a Tom Petty quote, and discuss two specific opportunities that have come with the recent devaluation of the office sector. With the U.S. presidential election looming, he drove home the point that while global p...
Jun 03, 2024•42 min•Season 2Ep. 7
As CEO of Cityview, named the most active multifamily developer in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal for the past four years, Sean Burton stays busy. He joins the podcast with our guest host, NAIOP Vice President of Knowledge and Research Jennifer LeFurgy, Ph.D., to share market fundamentals for multifamily development, the buzzy sub-sectors with the biggest momentum, and how Cityview is working to address the extreme housing shortage in L.A. He also explains his personal passion f...
May 06, 2024•31 min•Season 2Ep. 6
As managing director and chief U.S. economist at CoStar Group, Christine Cooper, Ph.D., provides insights and analysis of national and regional macroeconomic conditions across the nation. She joined the podcast to share CoStar’s near-term forecast for the industrial sector, discuss the risk factors still out there with the supply chain, and why the Fed’s interest rate cuts haven’t materialized so far this year. Christine predicts that we haven’t seen the end of office delinquencies this cycle, t...
Apr 15, 2024•35 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Can we stick the “soft landing”? Rebecca Rockey, Deputy Chief Economist and Global Head of Forecasting at Cushman & Wakefield, joins the podcast to catch us up on the current state of the economy with an eye to commercial real estate. She pinpoints the areas of the economy under significant pressure, defines “rolling recession,” and addresses the disconnect between public perception of the economy and what the data demonstrates. The good news? She’s feeling confident about her forecast for t...
Mar 25, 2024•43 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Political commentator and journalist Chris Cillizza spent four years as an editor at large at CNN and regularly appeared as a political analyst on the network’s airwaves. He joins Aquiles Suarez, NAIOP’s senior vice president for government affairs, to talk about the upcoming presidential election, including his predictions for the hot-button issues prioritized by each candidate, the kitchen-table concerns that will drive Americans’ view of the economy, and how journalists can regain the public ...
Mar 04, 2024•29 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Nearshoring expert Rafael McCadden joins the podcast to share his outlook on how industrial real estate in Mexico has evolved and continues to expand. Projected to attract $35 billion in foreign investments over the next five years, Mexico is now the premier trade partner for the U.S. McCadden has more than 30 years’ experience as an industrial and logistics strategist representing corporations in multiple markets throughout Mexico. McCadden talks with guest host Shaine Anderson on the advantage...
Feb 12, 2024•26 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Our 2024 NAIOP Chair Brian Walker, president of Pittsburgh-based Burns Scalo Real Estate, kicks off season two of the Inside CRE podcast. Brian shares his goals for the year (and the headwinds to fight through), why “operating brilliantly” can be more critical than savvy deal-making, and how to prioritize communication in a confusing market. He and Marc discuss the renewed importance of creating value and opportunity throughout a project lifecycle, how climate change is working its way into valu...
Jan 29, 2024•42 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Nicholas Pell sees the big picture – he has to. As president and chief investment officer for Link Logistics, formed by Blackstone in 2019, he is responsible for managing the company’s immense U.S.-based industrial real estate portfolio spanning over 500 million square feet, which a full 5% of U.S. GDP flows through. In this episode, Nick talks to Marc about operating in the current choppy capital markets, why he expects a strong leasing environment in 2024, and the challenges inherent when focu...
Dec 18, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Peter Zeihan has an uncanny ability to predict tomorrow's headlines. The geopolitical strategist talked with guest host Christopher Ware, NAIOP’s vice president for business development and strategic initiatives, on current U.S. demographic shifts, how the labor force is changing, and why he thinks now is the best time for businesses to hire and borrow. He explains China’s precipitous population decline, how the cost of manufactured goods will increase, and why we need to double the size of the ...
Nov 20, 2023•56 min•Season 1Ep. 11
Dave Harrison, president of VanTrust Real Estate, our 2023 Developer of the Year, joined guest host Kathryn Hamilton, NAIOP’s vice president for marketing and communications for this episode. Harrison – who proudly describes his company as a “small-ball baseball team” – shares his favorite project to date (he still lives there), why he prefers whiteboards over spreadsheets, and the bold declaration the company made in the Wall Street Journal during the pandemic. Harrison explains how VanTrust’s ...
Oct 16, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Marc sits down with Julie Whelan, CBRE’s Global Head of Occupier Thought Leadership, whose team is tasked with identifying major trends impacting occupiers across all industries. As many organizations adopt a hybrid model for their workforce and office utilization needs continue to change, you can imagine Julie has plenty to discuss. She dives into the rightsizing happening today; draws parallels between the office sector’s current uncertainty and retail (remember brick-and-mortar’s predicted de...
Sep 18, 2023•34 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Mark, meet Marc. Mark Rose, chair and CEO of Avison Young, joins Marc on the podcast for a discussion about building a workplace culture that matters; what his experience tells him about challenges in the current economic climate; the rumor he’s heard about the Fed; and why he “couldn’t be more optimistic” about the office sector. Mark shares recent data about longer-term leases that may surprise you, talks about actively mentoring 14 professionals, and why he believes office space will return t...
Aug 21, 2023•39 min•Season 1Ep. 8
