Geoffrey Woodward, NAI Global Chairman & C-III Capital Partners Senior Managing Director, recently spoke with NAI Global President Jay Olshonsky, SIOR, FRICS on the State of Commercial Real Estate before a full ballroom at the Hilton Austin Hotel with over 625 attendees. The following are excerpts from that discussion.

With Amazon’s push on brick-and-mortar retail, it makes the company’s acquisition of Whole Foods even more important, with Whole Foods currently representing nearly 80 percent of the Amazon-owned storefronts throughout the country. This acquisition allowed Amazon to put even more pressure on traditional retailers, many of which have shuttered a number of stores in recent years.

Today’s tenants have spoken and landlords are listening, partnering with technology companies to invest in or create tech to help build better experiences for their tenants while also streamlining internal operations within their companies.

Earlier this year, Katerra, a Silicon Valley company, began announcing its acquisition of a number of architectural firms, including Michael Green Architecture (Vancouver, British Columbia) and Lord Aeck Sargent (Atlanta, GA). With the industry ripe for disruption, Katerra is on a mission to streamline what has always been a notoriously unwieldy and frustrating process.

Have you ever wondered why smartphones took off the way they did? Chances are good that you really haven’t given it much thought… but the chances are even better that you have one of these (now ubiquitous) devices within your reach. But the answer is simple: smartphones rolled all of the most essential everyday tools, such as GPS maps, your calendars, and your camera and phone into one easy access point -- that fits in the palm of your hand. And if society is so easily able to embrace this life-changing convenience, surely adopting other life-changing innovations would be just as simple, right?

NAI Global announced the annual winners of its Of the Community Awards for a single office as well as an individual this week at its Global Convention taking place at the Hilton Austin Hotel in the Texas capital.

Access to talent. Less regulation. Lower operational costs. High quality of life.These are the common factors expressed to the Opportunity Austin team from companies that select the Austin region as a place to relocate and/or grow their business operations. Since 2004, that represents about 1500 companies.

Recently, Forbes made a point about how, not too long ago, the Apple iPhone completely disrupted Nokia’s long-standing dominance in the cell phone industry -- and then goes on to compare that to the way that WeWork and other new coworking models are changing literally everything about the ways in which we work. And they do mean literally everything -- the types of places in which offices are located, the way that offices are targeting workers and new talent, and even the very ways that offices are being designed.

NAI Global has added commercial real estate services in Slovenia and Croatia with the addition of NAI Significa, according to Jay Olshonsky, SIOR, FRICS and President of NAI Global, a leading global commercial real estate brokerage firm.

More than 6,000 retail stores closed their doors for good throughout the United States in 2017, according to research conducted by Business Insider. Among those on the list are plenty of big names in the retail industry that have been in business a long time, such as Macy’s, Sears, Radio Shack, and more. In the face of declining sales year after year and less traffic from customers, many retailers are faced with no other choice.

We’ve released a slew of new feature sets dedicated to optimizing the broker workflow and helping brokers be much more efficient as they find, win, and execute business.

Choosing a commercial real estate broker can be a daunting task, particularly for those unfamiliar with the process or for companies entering a new market. Real estate costs typically make up 20-25 percent of the operating expenses for any business, so making informed real estate choices is crucial to the profitability of your company.