LOS ANGELES - More opportunities for real estate development and investment will be found outside the traditional commercial and residential markets in 2005 and beyond, according to real estate experts from the USC Lusk Center for Real Estatecolor> at the Lusk Harvard Aspen Real Estate Summit.
"Historical trends are not necessarily a reliable predictor of future demand for real estate," said Stuart Gabriel, Ph.D. director of the Lusk Centercolor>.
Stan Ross, chairman of the board at the Lusk Centercolor>, predicts that developers and investors with stable cash flows from their core businesses and portfolios will be able to expand into fast-growing, specialized markets such as building biotechnology or healthcare facilities, converting obsolete properties to new uses or constructing housing for immigrants.
"These markets have high barriers to entry because they require specialized knowledge and skills such as designing and engineering biotech facilities or navigating local zoning and building codes for adaptive-reuse projects," Ross said.
Gabriel advised developers and investors to pay more attention to comprehensive and detailed demographic, economic and property-market research to know how mega-trends such as the rapid growth in the nation's Latino population or the increasing numbers of baby boomers nearing retirement age will play out in local markets.
