Smart technology is improving all the time, incorporating machine learning and artificial intelligence to handle more and more complex tasks. Now more than ever, all commercial buildings have to get Smart out of necessity – it is no longer a luxury. Particularly, there are 5 ways that CRE buildings continue to advance and change the industry.

Just as it is for men, ask four women how they chose careers in commercial real estate and you will get four different answers. Andie Edmonds was a stock broker in the 1990s before moving to a small city in Central Oregon where she wanted to reboot her career after her kids were all in school. In Bend, she got hired by the first company she interviewed with but only after the principal of the firm encouraged her to interview with all the other brokerage shops in town.

NAI Commercial Montreal and Terramont Real Estate Services Inc., two of Montreal’s top commercial real estate firms, will join forces and beginning March 1 will operate as NAI Terramont Commercial. With the merger, the official NAI Global office in Montreal enters the top 5 firms serving the office, industrial, retail, tenant and investor market in Canada’s second biggest city.

Shockwaves but not a lot of surprise rippled through the news in March when it was announced that Toys R Us would be closing all of its U.S. stores. For some, it was one more sign of retail’s struggles in the face of a changing consumer environment. For others, more vacant space in a tightening CRE market is good news.

There are dozens of reasons to join the CRE conversation on Twitter. If this is your first attempt at using the platform to promote yourself or your business, here are 5 ways to jump in.

In commercial real estate, the main product is service and sometimes it is hard to tell one company from another.  For these firms and their supply chains, differentiation based on quality of service is essential and impacts the bottom line.  That is why developing reliable business relationships that are more like collaborative partnerships is also so critical.

“Leverage works until it doesn’t,” said Michael Litt during his Saturday keynote at the shiny new Fairmont Hotel in Austin to the 400+ remaining SIOR attendees at the society’s Spring World Conference. While Litt said that in reference to the 1998 collapse of hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, he might as well have used that as the title for his speech.

Most people have little idea what blockchain even is as it relates to cryptocurrency. Now that the same technology behind virtual currency is being adapted for use in many other industries, firms in the CRE sector are bracing for its impact.

Bryce Custer, SIOR, CCIM, MRICS and Managing Director of NAI Ohio River Corridor announced the establishment of a new commercial real estate services firm focused on serving the site selection and commercial real estate requirements associated with the emerging petrochemical and energy services industries in West Virginia, Southwestern Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.

Perhaps, the grocery anchor is more relevant now than ever. Every mall smattered across the U.S. is anchored by one big name store that is expected to be the biggest draw – the other stores are there to sop up the traffic going to the anchor. Retailers are attracted to new mall developments based on how strong a draw they think the anchor will be.

Last year, e-commerce brought in close to a half a trillion dollars, growing by over 10% from year-to-year. In order to meet that demand and the projected 10% increase over this year, retailers will need to acquire at least 50 million more square feet of industrial warehouse space.