Chicago Chapter Key Take Aways!
Adrian Brizuela, CoStar: CoStar recently released their Q2 forecast and, as always, closely monitoring multifamily properties as a lens into trends as well as population fluctuations, job growth, and wage growth. Overall, things are going well but in Chicago, the market has been very supply constrained since 2023. 130,000 residents were added from 2023 to 2025 (mostly due to foreign immigration). Looking ahead, they are still forecasting to stay above 3.5% in 2026 but anticipate a slight softness in 2027 and 2028 (2.5% to 3.5%).
Behrnt Aabert, Aptus: Busy doing a lot of RFPs and RFQs mostly out west in the Las Vegas area. Some of the overall trends (such as the influx of data centers) have an impact on other sectors (e.g., electrical costs, water, etc.), causing price increases and presenting additional challenges.
Paul Larkin, BEAR Construction: Seeing a lot of positive momentum across all business lines (including more banking and financial institutions) with much of their work in buildings that are in foreclosure or receivership. Technology work (i.e., AI) is increasing as well as solar groups (i.e., anything with power). On the negative side, there is a critical shortage of labor in the trades, and a great majority of the senior level trade professionals are retiring in the next few years. That all said, everything is positive, albeit slower. Footnote: If you are an electrician or want to become an electrician, you will be employed for life!
Chris Perrotta, BEAR Construction Company: Shared that we are losing more workers in the construction industry then gaining yet an increasing demand for projects. There is a huge gap between the retirees and the current workforce, so construction costs are increasing. When high schoolers were asked, “Where will you be in ten years?” the great majority said, “Down south where it is warm in a nice house.” It will be interesting to see what that means for the future of Chicago’s workforce. Those who stay in Chicago may have a lot of opportunities longer term (no one to replace you) if everyone retires to south, but certainly, a TBD situation to monitor.
Lauren Zangl, Partner Engineering and Science, Inc.: Elevator inspections have been on the forefront of her workflow of late and is realizing the complexity and maintenance elevators require to support the valuation of a building. She has a client buying a property in Louisville and the elevator inspection results thus far are not positive and may ultimately kill the deal. Geographically, seeing a lot happening in the Midwest – particularly Wisconsin and Michigan.
Sidney Joseph, J2C Valuation: Busy working on “digital twins” for real estate property (e.g., like a Google map for property) but lost their funding so working on building it themselves.
Cali Verkamp, Wheeler Kearns: Two-thirds of their work is institutional, community focused and non-profit. There is a huge discrepancy between the perception of what things cost and the perception gap is problematic for a lot of their clients – especially the institutional clients. As a result, it is taking longer for people to get the funding resulting in a bifurcation of which projects can keep moving forward because of the reliance on grant funding and/or underwriting form wealthy organizations.
Edgar Leon, JLL: As Director of Research (Industrial and Life Science) at JLL, they have seen a 9.7% growth in leasing vs. 6.7% last year on the office side in Chicago yet need to watch the 6.2 million square feet of space where most have lease expirations between now and 2030. Sixty-three percent of the leases last year went to the West Loop and in Q1 of 2026, 70% went to Fulton Market and West Loop. Positive momentum slowly continues since the pandemic with 82% of the space now occupied. The Google headquarters in the loop will hopefully see other offices getting occupied. The “Google impact” usually take about a year to take effect. The West Loop will ultimately max out so, hopefully, businesses will start coming back to the loop.
Kevin, Kramer, Village of Hoffman Estates: The key targets for their village are workforce development and data centers. Data Centers are so much in demand that the tech firms are willing to pay and just want it to get the job done. The challenge is people are spreading so much fake information via social media about data centers. Reframing how data centers are referenced is being addressed (e.g., referring to them as a manufacturing center or warehouse). The demand and growth are so high they are hiring staff to dedicate to these projects while encouraging the surrounding schools to embrace programs that promote the trades as a career path.
Patrick Clancy, Dinsmore & Stohl: Getting deals and getting them done has been challenging mostly due to ignorance and social media (i.e., not a lot of truth and a lot of fabrication of information). 2025 was a busy year, but several deals got delayed for a variety of reasons so focusing on getting those deals back on track even with the various challenges presented such as zoning and the false information in social media.
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