Commercial Corner

By Samantha DeKoven, Director of Public Service Initiatives, The Counselors of Real Estate (CRE)

The CRE Consulting Corps is seeking additional opportunities to deliver strategic real estate guidance to nonprofits and government organizations. Leverage this trusted resource to benefit your community.

For more information or to suggest a project, contact Samantha DeKoven by email at sdekoven@cre.org or phone, 312-329-8431. Or visit the CRE® Website at

Downtown Fairborn, Ohio Credit: The Counselors of Real Estate

A strategic plan to rejuvenate a community in decline. A new vision for a closed medical campus or retail space. Creative partnerships to monetize a former school or church. Market-based solutions to repurpose brownfields.

These are just some of the strategic real estate challenges addressed by the CRE® Consulting Corps, the public service program of The Counselors of Real Estate (CRE).

The Counselors of Real Estate is a 67-year commercial affiliate of the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) that brings together leading real estate practitioners known for their expertise, achievement and creative problem-solving skills.

But did you know that CRE members volunteer their time and knowledge to the CRE Consulting Corps, offering ideas and strategies to bring new life to underutilized properties? These industry experts provide real estate analysis, objective counsel and strategic action plans for municipalities, nonprofit organizations, government entities, educational institutions and other owners of real property.

As community stakeholders, REALTORS® are aware of nonprofit organizations and governmental entities that may need help resolving

real estate challenges. REALTORS® can access this resource to benefit their communities, introducing the Consulting Corps to organizations wrestling with large or small real estate dilemmas.

Past projects include advising municipalities and redevelopment agencies on how to generate jobs by repurposing former hospitals and shopping centers; assisting schools, colleges and universities with adaptive reuse or disposition of unneeded acreage; repositioning and growth planning; and assisting churches and affordable housing providers to maximize their real estate holdings.

The city of Fairborn (pop. 30,000, east of Dayton in southeast Ohio) engaged the Consulting Corps to create a revitalization strategy focused on redevelopment of a functionally obsolete and largely deserted shopping/office plaza. In addition to recommending a vision for the Skyway Retail Center, the team identified action steps to enhance Fairborn’s central business district, create a “destination” there and leverage other assets (a nearby university and an air force base).

Implementing the Consulting Corps team’s recommendations, Fairborn hired a downtown revitalization strategist, invested more than $2 million to remove blighted property and purchased and renovated a vacant restaurant to serve as a kitchen incubator. The city also began an aggressive branding and marketing campaign, expanded community event offerings and partnered with Cincinnati Bell to provide free Wi-Fi throughout the downtown corridor. These investments led to business growth and development, increased numbers of people visiting downtown, reduced the number of vacant buildings and strengthened relationships between the city and downtown business owners.

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in Bon Air, Virginia Credit: The Counselors of Real Estate

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, encompassing approximately 12 acres in historic Bon Air, Va., requested the Consulting Corps assistance to address an aging church and school buildings. As the school prepared to relocate, the church faced a loss of income, necessitating a workable exit strategy, viable transition agreement and a longterm plan to reposition the property. They also sought additional community and economic development to create a viable revenue stream that would complement Bon Air priorities.

The Consulting Corps team served as a vital, neutral entity in developing an acceptable schoolchurch transition agreement, after considering issues raised by both church and school representatives. The team also considered various disposition alternatives, developed potential configurations for reuse of the buildings, and presented a matrix identifying the risks and benefits of various approaches. The team outlined key elements of a strategic plan for the property.

In the words of the client: “The CRE team approached the assignment with great sensitivity and awareness of the relationship between the church and school. The team exhibited the highest level of professionalism in the performance of the assignment and boiled down the range of possibilities to sensible and realistic options, including some options we had not considered before. The team also structured and recommended a very concise and fair transition agreement between the church and school.”

The Illinois housing market has been on a wild ride this year but expect home sales to shift into more normal territory through the end of 2021, according to a mid-year forecast from the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois.

The outlook, “Housing Forecast for the Next Six Months: Chicago and Illinois,” calls for low inventory to continue to push median home prices higher than a year ago, albeit at a lower pace than earlier this year. Home sales, however, are expected to stabilize and return to 2020 levels, which still outpaced recent years.

“Over the next six months, the housing market is expected to sustain higher price increases than a year ago and moderating sales changes reflecting very tight inventories,” said Geoffrey J.D. Hewings, emeritus director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the University of Illinois. “While employment growth has been very robust for the last two months, there is some concern about the potential impact of the spread of the Delta COVID19 variant dampening activity during the rest of the year.”

Download the forecast at www. IllinoisRealtors.org/MarketStats, but here are trends to watch: u Forbearances and foreclosures – Many forbearance agreements will expire, raising concerns about properties moving into foreclosure if owners are unable to negotiate new mortgage repayment agreements. Foreclosure inventory has started to build again but because the process must go through the courts in Illinois, it could take years to see the full impact. u Available housing supply is still historically low and continues to affect price appreciation and inventory. u More new housing construction is needed but increased material costs and difficulty hiring workers are increasing construction costs by double-digits amounts. u There is an increasing gap between the housing sentiments of owners who think it is a good time to sell and buyers who think it is not a good time to buy. Overall, consumers seem reasonably positive about the general trajectory of the economy. u Price escalation is affecting affordability and the inventory of homes in the lower price ranges has seen the biggest decline.

For the last 14 years, the University of Illinois has provided housing market forecasting and analysis for Illinois REALTORS® under the direction of Dr. Geoffrey J.D. Hewings and the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at the Urbana-Champaign campus.

With Hewings’ retirement, those forecasting duties now transition to Dr. Daniel McMillen, Professor of Real Estate and Head of the Stuart Handler Department of Real Estate at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Business Administration.

Dr. McMillen is a distinguished fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and is a consultant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He has published extensively in leading real estate journals, is a former president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association and is a recipient of the Regional Science Association’s prestigious Walter Isard Award for Scholarly Achievement.