Each year PwC and the Urban Land Institute publish the Emerging Trends in Real Estate report, which gauges the sentiments of significant real estate investors and highlights investment and development prospects by property type and market, and shines a light on important themes influencing the real estate investment landscape.
The 2026 report highlighted five key themes amid an overarching fog of uncertainty hanging over commercial real estate, driven by questions around tariffs, immigration and interest rate policy.
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Half Full or Half Empty? Capital Markets in the Fog: “Liquidity and sales volume have improved, but real estate industry leaders have varied expectations for capital market conditions in 2026 and beyond. For commercial real estate investors, the glass is half full—fueled by lower interest rates, abundant debt and pent-up equity demand. The glass is half empty, with higher long-term rates, sidelined equity and less foreign investment.”
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Niche to Essential Real Estate: “Sectors identified as niche two decades ago are the new essential property types. Data centers attract the most attention for moving to essential quickly, but regardless of individual views on the fog of uncertainty, the industry shift into multiple niche sectors and subsectors is prominent enough to reduce allocations away from primary property types.”
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Back to Basics: Where Analytics Meet Operations: “Dynamic changes to real estate demand add new challenges and opportunities beyond sector allocation and market selection to detailed assessments of demand at the asset level.”
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Demographics Will Define Demand: “Dynamic changes to real estate demand add new challenges and opportunities beyond sector allocation and market selection to detailed assessments of demand at the asset level. Dynamic changes to real estate demand add new challenges and opportunities beyond sector allocation and market selection to detailed assessments of demand at the asset level.”
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AI Moves into Real Estate: “Dynamic changes to real estate demand add new challenges and opportunities beyond sector allocation and market selection to detailed assessments of demand at the asset level.”
In addition, the report highlights how respondents ranked the investment outlooks for each of the major property sectors. Sectors are ranked on a scale from one to five. (1-Abysmal, 2-Poor, 3-Fair, 4-Good, 5-Excellent). The following gallery includes the ranking for each property type, how the score compares with 2025, and some insights from the report.
