The CRE Trends With Staying Power in 2026
Fads come and go—but which CRE ideas have real staying power heading into the new year?
It’s hard to know which trends will stick around.
This year, my younger daughter begged me for a Labubu—those really ugly mystery box purse charm monster things. Everyone at school had one. But they’re super expensive. (And, again, ugly. So, so ugly.) I ended up caving and buying her one. Immediately, I felt like a sucker. Would kids even care about them in a few months?
Then I got some reassurance by way of the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Those dumb furry monsters had their own float! My investment (and hopefully my daughter’s interest) is safe, at least for a little while longer.
When it comes to CRE, what trends will follow the path of the Labubu and stay relevant in 2026? According to the experts, some surprising ones. And not just a few. For the article “18 CRE Trends We’re Taking Into 2026,” reporter Jeffrey Steele found 18 CRE trends that experts predict will carry into the new year.
Take, for example, AI adoption. Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm and is currently used in many areas across different industries. (Actually, at the time of publication of this column,AI is the top contender for TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year.) It’s so prolific, in fact, that many are wondering if the bubble is set to burst.
But it’s not going to burst anytime soon, at least for commercial real estate applications.
“The difference in 2026 won’t be who uses AI,” Lukas Krause of SVN International told Steele. “It will be who uses it well. Like any tool, the advantage lies not in access but in the skill and integration behind it.”
Interested in what else will stick around next year? Check out Steele’s article in the magazine. You can also see what some of our CRE insiders said in a recent CPE Executive Council article about CRE issues for 2026. I’d love to hear your thoughts, as well! You can email me at jessica.fiur@cpe-mhn.com. (And let me know if you’re interested in joining the Executive Council and being featured in a future article.)
I hope everyone has a nice holiday season and a Happy New Year! I’ll see you in 2026, with a Labubu proudly by my side.
You must be logged in to post a comment.