• Hurt by higher interest rates, commercial real estate should see a modest rebound in 2025.
• Lingering inflation, however, could complicate the recovery by pushing up long-term interest rates.
• Industrial warehouses, a star of the sector, is poised to stand out in 2025.

The commercial property sector has had a bruising few years as rising interest rates pushed down values, complicated refinancing deals for hundreds of billions of dollars of expiring mortgages, and stymied investment.

In the office market, the situation was even more severe as hundreds of millions of square feet of space across the nation face accelerated obsolescence. Employees have embraced hybrid and remote work as a permanent offshoot of the pandemic, sapping demand for lesser quality space.

In recent months, however, the industry has felt relief from three successive rate cuts by the Federal Reserve that have shaved a percentage point off the fed funds rate — a benchmark for short-term lending rates. More cuts are expected in 2025. Resilient economic growth, meanwhile, has propelled demand for commercial space, including apartments, warehouses, retail stores, and hotel rooms. Some developers have even grown bullish on top-tier office projects as tenants flock to high end space.

In 2025, commercial real estate experts have signaled cautious optimism that the sector's rebound will continue, while also highlighting the challenges that could stymie growth.

Here are three trends for the industry to watch in 2025:

While the Fed has cut rates, relief hasn't arrived for the majority of loans

Of the roughly $4.7 trillion of total outstanding commercial real estate debt, about two-thirds is tied to long-term interest rates benchmarked against the 10-year Treasury yield, according to an estimate by the Mortgage Bankers Association. After dipping in the third quarter, long-term interest rates have jumped back up to the mid-4% range, close to where rates were before the Fed began cutting and far higher than where the 10-year was in recent years. The 10-year Treasury rate dipped below half a percentage point in 2020, its lowest level ever.

In 2025, observers expect long-term rates to hold steady, even if the Fed continues to trim short-term rates.

"The 10-year Treasury yield, that's really driven less now by anticipation of what the Fed might do and more by long-term expectations about economic growth and inflation and federal budget deficits," Jamie Woodwell, the MBA's head of commercial real estate research, said.

That could continue to complicate commercial real estate sales and refinancing deals.

The MBA projects that $570 billion of commercial real estate loans will mature in 2025, with banks holding about 38% of the overall inventory of outstanding debt in the sector.

Tomasz Piskorski a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School, said that 14% of commercial loans overall are tied to distressed assets that are now worth less than their debt and that 43% of commercial real estate loans "may face significant cash flow and refinancing issues." He has warned there could be tens of billions of dollars of potential losses for the banking sector and other lenders.

The real estate services giant CBRE, meanwhile, has forecast a modest 7.5% increase in investment sales activity, predicting about $410 billion of transactions in 2025. More sales would help buyers and sellers discover asset pricing and is considered a positive sign for a market recovery.

Richard Barkham, CBRE's chief economic economist, warned of lingering higher long-term interest rates that could dampen the rebound.

"Over the next four or five years we're likely to get upside shocks in inflation," Barkham said. "That points to an era of interest rates higher for longer."

Incoming Trump administration has generated optimism

Some of President-elect Donald Trump's campaign promises to enact tariffs on foreign goods, pressure the Fed for lower short term interest rates, and deport undocumented immigrants from the labor supply could spur inflation, reigniting problems in the commercial real estate financing market.

Nonetheless, the industry has been largely positive on the incoming administration.

Investors "expect better tax issues, they expect less regulation, they expect some real estate specific stuff like opportunity zones will get a bit of a boost," said Jim Costello, the co-head of real assets research at the data firm MSCI, referencing the opportunity zone program from President Trump's first term in office. Opportunity zones allowed real estate investors the chance to defer and avoid capital gains taxes if they reinvested investment proceeds in property projects in designated zones around the country.

President Trump has also sought to hire real estate executives in his administration, meaning that top officials could have an familiarity with the real estate business and its priorities. Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street billionaire who is also chairman of the large commercial real estate services firm Newmark Group, for instance, has been picked by Trump to lead the Commerce Department.

After a rocky 2024, industrial is still a darling

Industrial warehouse space boomed during the pandemic as American shoppers migrated online, boosting the need for logistics spaces that served e-commerce and also to onshore storage for a disrupted global supply chain.

A record total of roughly a billion square feet of industrial space was absorbed on balance by occupiers in 2022 and 2023, according to Craig Meyer, president of JLL's industrial leasing group in the Americas. That activity was enough to fill a vast pipeline of new space that was being added to the market. In 2022 and 2023, 1.1 billion square feet of new industrial space was delivered, according to JLL — also a record.

In 2024, however, demand could no longer keep pace with surging supply – stalling rental growth and pushing up vacancy.

About 375 million square feet of new space was added to the industrial market in 2024 – the third highest year on record after 2022 and 2023. But only about 111.3 million square feet of space has been absorbed on net, the lowest year of absorption in more than a decade. Vacancy has jumped to 6.8% from 4.9% a year ago. In the second quarter of 2022, vacancy had fallen as low as 3.3%.

Meyer said that the first half of 2024 was the nadir of the dip and expects a resurgent 2025.

"We had a contentious election coming up," Meyer said. "People were uncertain where interest rates were going."

In 2025, Meyer and other experts, including Barkham, CBRE's economist, see a strengthening industrial market as new supply dwindles and demand picks back up.

"The sectors that are big and improving and likely to lead investor interest are multifamily and industrial," Barkham said.

Some 268.9 million square feet of industrial space is presently under construction, according to JLL, the smallest pipeline since 2019. E-commerce, one of the biggest drivers of warehouse demand, continues to grow. According to CBRE, online sales are expected to absorb 30% of consumer spending by the end of the decade, up from 23% today, adding tailwinds to the segment.

• Howard Lutnick opened his wallet and Rolodex to turn Newmark into a commercial real estate success.
• Lutnick now plans to head to Washington to take a position as President Trump's commerce secretary.
• "I'll miss Howard," Newmark CEO Barry Gosin tells Business Insider. "But the day-to-day business runs."

Howard Lutnick, chosen by President-elect Donald Trump to be commerce secretary, has had a winning streak that extends beyond Wall Street and his investment banking firm, Cantor Fitzgerald.

In 2011, the billionaire arranged for his affiliate financial company, BGC Group, to purchase the New York-based commercial real estate services firm Newmark for an undisclosed sum.

In the ensuing years, BGC pumped in capital to buy up talent and acquire smaller rivals, brought Newmark public in 2017, and played a role in its management, with BGC executives taking posts at the firm and Lutnick chairing its board of directors.

The results have turned heads in the ultra-competitive real estate business.

The company, once focused on New York City's office market, is now mentioned alongside global powerhouse rivals like JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, and CBRE.

"Howard helped Barry transform transform Newmark from a regional player to now a global one," said Alexander Goldfarb, an analyst at Piper Sandler who covers Newmark, referencing Barry Gosin, Newmark's CEO.

"It's one of the best positioned real estate players today," Goldfarb added, noting that he has an "overweight" – or buy – rating on Newmark stock.

Now, Lutnick's move to Washington would leave Newmark – along with Cantor and BGC – without one of the architects of its success.

Lutnick has said he will divest his shares in Newmark and BGC, which is also public, and step from his leadership roles at the companies and also Cantor, which is privately owned.

Newmark executives say the firm has the talent and momentum to continue its path without Lutnick in the boardroom.

"I'll miss Howard," Gosin, who is 74, said. "But the day-to-day business runs."

Nonetheless, Lutnick has played a direct hand in the company's rise, observers said, using his Rolodex in corporate America, for instance, to help its executives open doors and win business.

"A lot of big tenant representation assignments, a lot of capital markets stuff came out of BGC and Howard's relationships," a former New York broker at the company told Business Insider. The person did not want to be identified because their past employment agreement with Newmark prevented them from speaking publicly about the company or its executives.

From $60 million to $3.8 billion

Newmark's performance has added to the lore of Lutnick's 40-year career, during which he built BGC and Cantor, where he is also CEO, into major players in the financial industry.

Before the BGC acquisition, Newmark was owned by a handful of the firm's top producing brokers, CEO Gosin, and the Gurals, a New York real estate family that owns a large portfolio of office properties.

BGC paid a little more than $60 million in cash and stock, according to reports at the time – a fraction of its roughly $3.8 billion market capitalization now.

Lutnick "saw a great opportunity to apply scale and professional management to a business and capitalize on a very fragmented industry," said Mark Weiss, a former Newmark broker who left the company in 2016 to head to rival Cushman & Wakefield. "And he did just that."

Lutnick's involvement bankrolled the business. The famously charming executive could also soften Gosin's bluntness.

Scott Panzer, a prominent commercial real estate leasing broker who left Newmark two years before BGC's acquisition for competitor JLL, bumped into Gosin and Lutnick together at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in around 2012.

"Oh my god you're here?" Panzer remembers Gosin telling him. "I think I'm going to have to rethink my membership to this."

"Howard and I both looked at one another, and we both started laughing," Panzer recalled.

Panzer said he is now cordial with Gosin and that he admires the transformation of Newmark that he and Lutnick were able to accomplish.

Gosin would not comment on the incident.

Not everyone is a fan of Howard Lutnick

Early in his tenure at Newmark, Lutnick drew ire from some dealmakers at the company for rejiggering its employment contracts. The new terms required brokers to accept about 10% of their commissions on deals in Newmark stock that would vest over time.

In 2014, Newmark purchased Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate services firm, out of bankruptcy. Some brokers from Grubb chose to leave in the merger. One former Grubb broker said that the employment contract he was offered contained onerous provisions, such as a sweeping non-compete restriction should he eventually leave the new company.

"You wouldn't even be able to drive a taxi cab," he said.

While the changes that Lutnick initiated may have ruffled some brokers, they eventually proved prescient, helping to retain talent and yielding profits for those who remained at the firm as Newmark's stock rose.

"Howard was helpful in setting up the business, in giving me the backbone and the foundational knowledge of how to do it differently — how to innovate, how to create a partnership, how to build a business for the long term," Gosin said.

More recently, Lutnick attracted shareholder outrage when he was awarded an enormous $50 million bonus from Newmark in 2021.

"There are some people who will not invest in Newmark because of that," Piper analyst Goldfarb said.

That anger has faded as Lutnick's vision of an ascendant Newmark has come to fruition.

"We are well in the conversation," Gosin said, referring to Newmark's increasing competitiveness in the top tier of the commercial real estate services and brokerage businesses.

David Falk, the president of Newmark's New York region and a leading leasing broker at the company, agreed. He said that Lutnick and Gosin had effectively built up other service lines at the company in ways that impressed clients and helped Falk – and other brokers at the firm – win assignments. The company's deep bench of talent, he said, is a far cry from the past when Newmark lagged major competitors in ancillary areas such as financing, property management, and investment sales.

"I hated the fact that 15 years ago, I would go to a meeting and I was maybe bringing someone I thought could handle an assignment, but I didn't feel great about it," Falk said. "Now we have stars everywhere."