230: Post-Pandemic Demand Boomerangs Back to Cities, What Should Investors Do? w/Richard Barkham

“Super cities” are seeing a massive comeback in demand—one that most investors thought was impossible. With work-from-home being scaled back by many major companies, returning to downtown is a no-brainer for high-paid employees. With more amenities than the suburbs, younger workers are being enticed back into the office. And who’s winning with all this boomeranging demand? You guessed it—office investors. We brought CBRE’s Richard Barkham back to give us the latest update on how cities and office investors are faring. Office investing has been heavily criticized over the past few years as vacancies exploded and tenant turnover became increasingly common. Office space was an easy target as remote work became the new norm. However, trends change, and Richard sees a massive investing opportunity in certain office space sectors. But which cities are worth investing in and around? What type of office investments are faring the best? And will we continue to see downtown demand rebound? We’ll get into it all in this episode of On the Market. Plus, stick around to hear Richard’s predictions on interest rate cuts, whether or not we’ll achieve a “soft landing,” and what investors must be looking at NOW to make significant gains over the next few years. In This Episode We Cover The cities seeing the biggest influx in demand and why Americans are moving back to downtown Why the “doom loop” scenario never came true, even though so many forecasters predicted it The one type of office investing that could see a massive surge in demand over the next two years Richard’s “number one investment strategy” of 2024-2025 that investors MUST look into How residential real estate investors can take advantage of the rising demand for downtown housing And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Agent BiggerPockets Bootcamps Join BiggerPockets for FREE On The Market Join the Future of Real Estate Investing with Fundrise Connect with Other Investors in the “On The Market” Forums Subscribe to The “On The Market” YouTube Channel Dave's BiggerPockets Profile Dave's Instagram Property Manager Finder Hear Our Past Episodes with Richard: On the Market 141 - The “Doom Loop” That Could Crash Commercial Real Estate On the Market 179 - A “Year of Opportunity” to Come for Multifamily, Says CBRE’s Richard Barkham Read CBRE’s Latest Reports: Analysis of US Prime Office Buildings Shaping Tomorrow’s Cities Jump to topic: (00:00) Intro (01:24) Cities See Returning Demand  (05:41) The "Doom Loop" Scenario  (07:16) Offices Are Filling Up Fast (11:24) #1 Investment Nobody is Thinking About (15:37) Investing In and Around Cities  (22:31) Rate Cuts and Economic Predictions  (26:06) Investors MUST Do This Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/on-the-market-230 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices