Cushman & Wakefield
1,803,333 followers
March 20, 2026
🏠 The world’s most complicated fixer-upper
Much like this week’s U.S. air travel meltdown, the housing market’s problems don’t have a single villain, and they don’t have a single fix. Pick a city, pick a government, pick a policy lever—and somewhere right now, some government is pulling it.
In the span of two weeks, the U.S. housing market became the subject of three sweeping, contradictory interventions: the White House signed executive orders to bulldoze federal regulatory barriers blocking new construction; the Senate moved to force large institutional investors out of single-family homes within seven years; and New York City’s new mayor pushed aggressive rent caps that economists warn could accelerate the very corporate landlord dominance he’s campaigned against.
But what might seem like an American ailment is representative of a much more global housing affliction.
Australia is in the middle of its worst rental crisis on record—advertised rents up more than 5% YOY in January 2026, with its own housing advisory body forecasting that population demand will outpace new supply through at least 2028. There’s also a growing dissonance between the product supply and what the market’s expanding, vulnerable groups actually need. George Housakos breaks down the investment opportunity in Australian affordable housing.
Canada watched the same film a few years earlier but made a different call: aggressive immigration cuts. It’s a lever most governments won’t pull, but the result was 17 consecutive months of falling rents—down almost 8% from peak.
🎛️ Every government is pulling a different lever
The U.S. housing market is as counterintuitive as the Buffalo Wild Wings Espresso Proteini—record vacancy (9.3%) and high demand all crammed into the same glass. Multifamily absorption last year ranked as the third-strongest year in a quarter of a century. The market looks soft today and tight tomorrow, which makes it nearly impossible to calibrate policy in real time.
In the end, every country is reaching for a different tool from the same broken toolbox. The Whac-a-Mole problem is that every fix has a catch: deregulate supply, and you’re fighting decades of local zoning inertia. Cap rents, and you may push out the small landlords who actually kept rents lower…restrict immigration, and you cool the housing market but also your workforce. The only thing every government agrees on: the problem is urgent. What to do about it is another story.
👔 The glass keyboard
AI’s workforce impact is landing unevenly. Occupations dominated by women are almost twice as likely to be exposed to generative AI as male-dominated ones, and women are disproportionately concentrated in clerical, administrative and business support roles where tasks are susceptible to automation.
The entry-level hiring slowdown, borne of companies choosing AI deployment over expanding junior headcount, hits women entering the workforce particularly hard. That matters because those first-rung roles have historically been the on-ramp to everything bigger. The more hopeful read is that AI could also have real potential to compress structural disadvantages women have faced in knowledge work for decades, opening access to higher-value work that was previously gatekept by seniority and proximity. Whether the reshaping happens to women or with them remains to be seen. The AI Impact Barometer is tracking it.
🚢 Water finds its own level Tariffs scrambled the U.S. import playbook. Port-proximate industrial markets are absorbing the whiplash; our ports analysis shows the long-term rent outlook through 2029 stays healthy regardless of where the tide comes in.
🏆 Statuette of limitations Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar sweep last weekend was a referendum. When the night’s biggest winner centers his speech on generational responsibility for environmental crises, institutional investors take note. The same ESG pressure reshaping Hollywood’s conversation is reshaping how capital allocates to real estate—buildings with a credible sustainability story are easier to finance, lease, and exit. Read our sustainability how-to guides.
🌴 Proximity as policy Cuba entered an island-wide blackout this week—its third in four months—as a U.S. oil blockade leaves its energy grid increasingly unable to keep the lights on. For Miami, Caribbean instability isn’t a foreign affairs story: over 1,200 multinational corporations have anchored in Miami-Dade drawn by its gateway-to-Latin-America identity, and Miami-Dade recorded more than $1 billion in retail property sales in the first half of 2025.
