HOUSTON—At the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) recent NAR NXT conference, real estate industry leader John Hentschel—global chair of The Counselors of Real Estate, a global organization of real property advisors—presented the top issues facing the real estate industry today.
What was initially meant to be a “2026 Top Ten Issues Affecting Real Estate” was cut short due to a fire alarm during the event, but here are five—of the 10—top issues that offer critical insight into the forces reshaping the industry.
Flow of people: The demographic slowdown
Everything in real estate ultimately comes down to people. But, this fundamental driver of real estate demand is slowing dramatically, shared Hentschel, particularly with the declining pace of migration and population growth.
“That decline has significant implications for both residential and commercial real estate—higher home prices, higher mortgage rates, limited ‘For Sale’ inventory,” he said. “These are things you deal with everyday—are all contributing to slowing domestic migration, pretty tough to move when you’re locked in with a 3% or 2.5% mortgage rate, confronting a 6.5% mortgage rate.”
This is all creating a lock-in effect, with more constrained home sales and mobility—all affecting the bottom line, Hentschel added.
Pricing risk: The lingering debt bomb
The commercial real estate sector is nearing the “peak and problem loan maturities,” but recovery will take several more years. Hentschel added that there is a sizable volume of maturities across all property sectors, and private capital holds nearly 22% of 2025 maturities.
“Why does this matter to you if you’re going into residential practice?” he asked the audience. “Well, it matters a big deal because capital is a finite resource, and it’s limited, and if they cannot recover—if banks cannot recover private lenders, cannot recover the capital that they extended—then that makes less capital available for you and for residential mortgage practitioners.”
Housing attainability: No longer just a low-income problem
Housing affordability has transcended the low-income problem label, with more cohorts struggling in both the rental and ‘For Sale’ markets. Today, the average first-time homebuyer is about 40 years old.
“Hurdles range from higher interest rates, construction costs, home prices, the scarcity of land and restrictive zoning and permitting. There is no single solution,” said Hentschel. “However, for the first time in a long time, the focus is on municipalities, counties and states to reform their land use policies, zoning practices and entitlement requirements to make it less arduous to build housing. That’s where you guys come in, because you’re on the ground, you’re the front line troops in all this.”
Global chess: A crisis of confidence and uncertainty
Uncertainty permeates today’s economy. Hentschel observes that policy shifts are creating unpredictability. “Rapidly shifting policy positions, announced and then subsequently reversed, with little advance notice” can undermine stability and cloud decision-making.
“While clarity, stability and transparency instill confidence, the lack thereof can undercut it, resulting in a crisis of confidence, and worse, decision paralysis…Even though you may be dealing locally, what’s happening globally is affecting everything that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis,” Hentschel told the audience at NAR NXT.
The future of real estate
Real estate is experiencing a technological awakening that many thought impossible just years ago. According to Hentschel, we are now in the golden age of real estate, where we have data, computational power and a means to think about combining those two to make better decisions.
“The real estate industry no longer has the luxury of just beating the drum: Location, location, location…Real estate decisions are more complex today,” Hentschel told the packed audience. “We have so much more data, more analytical tools, but we must be disciplined in their use.”
