Six Themes We're Watching for 2024

AI, multifamily starts, shelter CPI, alternative financing sources, and more will shape real estate in 2024

There are no crystal balls. I cannot tell you where rates will be at the end of 2024. Nobody can. And if they could, they’d be trading bonds, not writing a Substack newsletter.

But real estate is about making educated predictions of the future. This trend will continue, that neighborhood will get hot, this rezoning will pass. And people make good predictions of the future not by being better at the art of prognostication but by watching the right things. The best people in real estate know where to pay attention.

If I do nothing else for our Thesis Driven readers, I hope I point out things that are worth watching: asset classes that haven’t yet drawn institutional interest, technologies still early on the growth curve, and consumer trends that could shape the future of the built world. (We’re must be doing something right, as we’re now the 14th largest business newsletter on Substack after a little over a year.)

As we open 2024, I’d like to share six big themes I’ll be watching closely in the new year: