Bianca Barragán, Southern California | February 26, 2025
Commercial real estate leaders are unsure of what’s coming in a Trump presidency, but they are looking forward to some changes the president has telegraphed, from fewer regulations to the return of tax cuts that benefit business owners and those in the CRE industry.
“What are we looking for on the real estate side?” said Paul Rahimian, CEO of Parkview Financial, a national debt fund that provides bridge and construction financing to CRE projects. “We're looking for less regulation. We're looking for clarity in terms of banking regulation. We're looking for tax cuts.”
Rahimian and others were hopeful that this attitude would trickle down to the local level, though many on the panel at Bisnow's Los Angeles Commercial Real Estate Outlook at the Omni Hotel and Resort Los Angeles noted that California is a longtime stronghold for regulation.
“When you talk about policy and administration, you’ve got to think of the national level and what this administration is going to do, but how's that going to trickle down, if possible, to a local level, so that we can actually build things in an appropriate time?” Rahimian asked at the event on Feb. 25.
Rexford Industrial Realty co-CEO Howard Schwimmer said deregulation in his industry has already presented itself, pointing to the showdown over electric trucks playing out in California right now.
Earlier this month, state regulators rolled back a plan to require some of the tens of thousands of trucks that move cargo through the ports to use emissions-free trucks. They did so because the requirement would have needed a federal waiver to go into effect, and California officials anticipated the Trump administration would not sign off.
Schwimmer said that while emissions-free trucks sound like a good idea, the requirement might have pushed smaller trucking companies — which might not be able to bear the high costs of electric trucks — to go out of business. This about-face might help those people and industrial owners in the long run, he said.
“There's a lot of people that will stay in business, and that will help constrain some of the increases in transportation costs, which is certainly good for real estate and good for our tenants,” Schwimmer said.
Some were hoping or expecting to see interest rates come down slightly, either as a result of pressure on the Federal Reserve from Trump or, for long-term rates, as a result of a reduction of the national deficit through extensive cuts to various federal departments.
There has been some rate relief in the last six months, but long-term debt remains expensive and many of the distressed asset deals that companies expected have been slow to materialize.
“We’ve just got to do what we do,” Worthe Real Estate Group CEO Jeff Worthe said. “I don't think the opportunities have presented themselves that we all thought were coming. I think the good real estate has found a way to hold on, whether the lender wants to work with the current borrower or, like we just did, a bigger refinance that involved a significant pay down. So if it's good real estate, you want to keep it.”
Worthe said that among the benefits he anticipates for the commercial real estate industry are the reinstatement of tax cuts that benefit commercial real estate owners and people who own traditional LLCs.
Others said they're not able to know what's coming down the pike, so they don't think about it.
“I never know what I'm going to wake up to,” Primestor’s Arturo Sneider said. “I try not to predict it.”
Bianca Barragán
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