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Four executives in housing and commercial development shared thoughts on the demand for multi-family housing, retail, warehouse and distribution developments on Thursday, January 14, with students in Auburn University’s Master of Real Estate Development program. The event was held live at the Auburn University Hotel and Dixon Conference Center and virtually via Zoom.

Part of the program’s CityBuilders series, where panel experts discuss trends and opportunities in the real estate and development market, “Real Estate Outlook 2021” shed light on coming challenges and opportunities in commercial real estate and housing. 

The complete presentation can be viewed in the video to the right.

Panelists offered a variety of thoughts:

• “Housing affordability will require a better alignment of three policy tools: reforming land use regulation to allow smaller and more compact housing, increasing taxes on expensive or underused land and expanding housing subsidies to low-income households.” -- Damon Duncan, President & CEO of the Montgomery Housing Authority and graduate of Auburn’s MRED program
• “If I had to characterize the key demand drivers of the Atlanta industrial market, the first two are obvious. One is the growing consumer base. The population in the 29-county MSA is six million and it keeps going up. The second big driver is job growth. Over the previous two or three years, Atlanta was second only to Dallas-Fort Worth and among the 12 largest cities in the U.S. in job growth. More jobs equals more paychecks, more stuff and you've got to have warehouses to distribute.” – Andrew Taylor, President, Taylor & Mathis
• “I think there's going to be a design revolution that's going to be realized before spring.” -- Randy Osborne, Director and Senior Advisor, Flournoy Construction Group and graduate of Auburn's Building Construction program 
• “On the healthcare front, I'm seeing a trend away from the big hospitals. People don't want to fight the parking decks and use a map to find where they need to go. Everything is a specialized clinic somewhere.” – Allan Chandler, Executive Vice President, Doster Construction Company, and graduate of Auburn's Building Construction program

Auburn University’s Master of Real Estate Development program is a joint effort of the Harbert College of Business and Auburn University’s College of Architecture, Design and Construction.