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Only 29% of S&P 500 companies could put a number on what AI actually did for their business this earnings season, and most of those numbers were about cutting costs, not making more money. Bisnow’s own reporting found 92% of CRE firms are running AI pilots right now, but just 5% say they’ve hit most of their goals. Reeves Davis, President of Technology Solutions at JLL, thinks the industry is asking the wrong question. At Dreamforce, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued that the real value ahead isn’t new AI capability — it’s getting the tools that already exist into wider use. Davis sees that playing out inside the brokerage business, too: as AI makes it cheap for clients to build their own tools, JLL is betting its edge is still the expertise and data behind those tools, not the tools themselves. His answer comes down to one idea: someone still has to be held personally accountable when the outcome doesn’t hold up, no matter who built the tool. Davis joins First Draft Live this week to talk through where client self-service actually threatens the brokerage model, where it doesn’t, and what JLL is willing to bet the difference is worth.

Clarion Partners Managing Director Jason Glasser joins First Draft Live to break down what OZ 2.0's smaller, more competitive map means for where capital moves next.

More than $875B in commercial and multifamily loans come due this year, and for the first time since the wall started building, the pile is actually shrinking instead of growing. Fewer extensions are getting granted, which means more owners are finally being forced to answer the question they've been dodging since rates started climbing: refinance, sell or hand back the keys? Vik Uppal has built a business around that question. The founder and CEO of Mavik Capital Management just closed a $1B fund, VS3, aimed squarely at the situations the rest of the market has mispriced or missed entirely, an owner who can’t refinance or a lender who doesn’t want to foreclose. It’s the stuck middle of the maturity wall, the part everyone else walks past because they don’t have the underwriting discipline to price it right. He's also steering clear of the trade everyone else is chasing, passing on AI-adjacent assets because he thinks the valuations don't hold up. Uppal joins First Draft Live this week to walk through where the real distress is hiding beneath the default numbers, why sellers still haven't blinked on price and what he's seeing that the rest of the market isn't.

CBRE Global Client Strategist and Senior Economic Advisor Spencer Levy returns to First Draft Live to say how 2026 has — and hasn’t — played out to his expectations.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act just became the most significant federal housing legislation in decades — and it became law without President Donald Trump's signature.  This week on First Draft Live, Bisnow Editor-in-Chief Mark F. Bonner sits down with Sharon Wilson Géno, President of the National Multifamily Housing Council, who was literally on her way to the signing ceremony when Trump pulled out at the last minute.  They dig into what almost got stripped from the bill, whether the law's headline provision has any real teeth and what NMHC is fighting for on Capitol Hill this week as implementation questions pile up at the U.S. Treasury Department.

With only a few weeks to go until her retirement, CREFC CEO Lisa Pendergast sat down with Bisnow for a wide-ranging interview that spanned fresh data on lender sentiment, where opportunity is today and how CRE has evolved during her decades in the business.

Affinius Capital closed a $3.4B take-private of Veris Residential last month, one of the largest multifamily transactions in years. The deal  represents a change in thesis for Affinius and perhaps for the industry, Affinius partner Ryan Krauch said on this week’s episode of First Draft Live. In the cycle of zero interest rates and constant rate compression, multifamily investment had moved away from “what it is supposed to be,” he said. “[Housing] is not meant to be tactical, opportunistic, high-yielding plays,” Krauch said. “Multifamily, from its origins, has really been more about income producing, downside protection, diversified income, inflation hedge, all the traditional things. So for us, when we looked at Veris, this was a great opportunity to really reset that framework.”

The 10-year Treasury rising past 4.5% has taken the wind out of real estate’s recovery sails. Momentum gained in Q1 is already reversing as the war in Iran pushes on inflation. MSCI Chief Economist of Real Estate Research Jim Costello said the volatile bond market is “a new wrench thrown into the works.” And while he believes the CRE recovery is still underway, it’s tenuous.“[Investors] need to do more scenario planning these days, because that’s how you can deal with the growing uncertainty in the market,” he said.

Global volatility hasn't pushed commercial real estate investing into a crisis — it's having the opposite effect, Chad Lavender, Newmark's president of capital markets in North America, said on this week's show. Optimism around economic growth is keeping borrowers optimistic that income streams will grow, even if interest rates don't sink. There is no wave of distress on the horizon because debt markets are “almost insatiable,” Lavender said. Despite private credit continuing to grow, bank lending opening up at pre-Covid levels and investors increasingly drawn to hard asset in uncertain times, that doesn't mean windfalls are around the corner or sales activity is about explode. “We know where stuff's going to price, that doesn't mean a seller wants to sell it there,” Lavender said.

Only 0.5% of U.S. land works for large-scale data center development. On this episode of First Draft Live, Tract President and Tract Capital managing director Graham Williams, whose firm is behind some of the biggest data center developments in the country, breaks down why power, water, a shrinking skilled workforce and rising regulation and public backlash are making viable sites surprisingly difficult to find.

Multifamily is under pressure from every direction, and yet it is still expected to fix America's housing crisis. A record wave of new supply has hit the market, pushing vacancy higher and rent growth flat or negative in several Sun Belt metros. At the same time, Washington is turning up the heat, with voices like Sen. Elizabeth Warren targeting institutional ownership and the Federal Trade Commission applying new scrutiny to rental fees. But with the bulk of the supply tsunami behind us, could 2026 be the turnaround year? Or will it be just another step in a longer reset? On this episode of First Draft Live, Bisnow sits down with Bob Hart, president and CEO of TruAmerica Multifamily, to break down where the market actually stands, where capital is flowing and how investors are making the math work in a sector caught between rising pressure and uncertain recovery.

This was supposed to be commercial real estate’s year.  The industry entered 2026 expecting interest rates to fall, liquidity to rise, and for long-stalled transactions to finally put the pedal to the metal. For a while, it seemed as though CRE would finally be experiencing a true recovery from the massive hit it took during the pandemic. But today, things are looking a little shakier.  Global instability surrounding the escalating conflict between the U.S. and Iran has escalated tariff and trade tensions. Meanwhile, $1.2T in real estate loans are expected to mature by 2027, a significant amount of which were originated when borrowing costs were much lower. On this episode, Greg Friedman, CEO of Peachtree Group, one of the most active private credit platforms in CRE, breaks down the impacts as it stands today.

This episode of First Draft Live is presented by Agora. The meteoric rise of artificial intelligence has impacted every industry, including the notoriously tech-adverse commercial real estate world.Scores of new AI-driven tools have left brokers sweating over their commissions and wondering if they will be replaced by software that can automate underwriting and surface buyers instantly. And shareholders have been ditching their brokerage stock over concerns the entire business model is at risk. Are their fears overblown, or should brokers be preparing themselves for a future where AI could take their jobs?Both can be true, Kyle Matthews, CEO of Matthews CRE, said on this week’s episode.“I absolutely think there is an overreaction happening,” Matthews said. “And I think there are 100% vulnerabilities, and the nature and the shape of how these services are performed in the next three, five and 10 years, fundamentally, will change.”

This episode is presented by Agora.The federal government is poised to enact legislation to make housing development easier.But federal desire does not always translate to local action — and that is where construction actually happens, said Continental Properties Chairman and CEO James Schloemer, who just concluded a two-year term as chairman of the National Multifamily Housing Council.“There are a lot of issues at the local level,” he said. “Between NIMBYs, ... issues regarding building codes and being [too] short-staffed to expedite the necessary permitting and inspections, there are a lot of challenges not correlated to things that the federal government influences.”

This episode of First Draft Live is presented by Agora. Venezuela, Greenland, Canada’s prime minister calling the death of America as global leader. Interest rate watching, Fed independence under question, tariffs. There’s a lot of noise out there in the macroeconomy that can make it hard for CRE to tune into a good deal. And yet Abbe Franchot Borok, BGO managing director and head of U.S. debt, said she is optimistic the year ahead will be a good one for property investment. Sure, it has gotten more complicated and the industry has had to turn to new inputs and data sources. The normal supply vs. demand dynamic is changing as consumer use of commercial real estate has shifted. And yes, she said, Canadian and European investors are not liking what they are seeing out of the U.S. government. But the U.S. continues to be the most liquid and active market in the world, and she doesn’t see a sustained lack of investment in the cards. Good deals are out there for those willing to double down on income generation and executing the business plan on the ground.