Our Market: Overview

At CRELIX, the commercial real estate marketing and public relations firm, we live and breathe real estate. In fact, we celebrate it:

• The people who are the movers and shakers
• The places they create, which provide the settings in which we live, learn, work, travel and play
• The experience of using real estate, and making it work for people and businesses
• The architectural and engineering marvels that are today’s modern buildings

Real estate is in our agency DNA. CRELIX’s founder is a former CBRE marketing and communications executive with deep experience and understanding of all aspects of commercial real estate, finance/investment and technology. He is joined by partners with experience in construction, architecture, energy and more.

Our knowledge and appreciation of commercial real estate means we know and see things others miss or don’t understand intuitively. That gives you a powerful edge.

Real Estate in All Dimensions

Real estate is a dynamic, multi-dimensional industry. It’s impossible to name all the markets, sectors, segments, verticals and tranches. In the main, we think of real estate, apart from single-family housing, as:

• Commercial real estate, including office, industrial, retail, hotel and lodging, and more
• Multifamily real estate, including apartments, condominiums and more
• Real estate finance and investment, including all manner of debt and equity as part of the capital stack
• Real estate technology, including information services and software that empower people and decision-making, and ensure the operations of buildings
• Energy and environment, including building energy efficiency and sustainability
• Building construction and engineering — the builders!
• Building architecture and design — the designers!
• Real estate market research and trends, including the number-crunchers who track and analyze the industry and the prophets who see where it’s headed

Real Estate Is an Economic Engine

The commercial real estate market in the U.S. is so vast that researchers have a hard time quantifying it.

Most physical assets are privately owned, though a significant slice of the market is publicly held. Individual and institutional investors can participate in the highly liquid public market for real estate ownership and operating companies, as well as the market for private real estate.

All in, we estimate the market value of U.S. commercial real estate to be approximately $18 trillion. (Another source on the size of the U.S. commercial real estate market is Nareit.)

There’s no disputing real estate’s massive contribution to the nation’s GDP:

• The jobs
• The income, property and sales taxes
• The wealth created that is widely held by investors and owners of all sizes, including small businesses that leverage real estate equity to fuel their own growth

The most authoritative report on real estate's contribution to the U.S. economy is from the NAIOP Research Foundation.