Anybody who reads this publication regularly should carefully review the first question that Commercial Observer posed to the top developers and landlords in this year’s Owners Magazine:

“Are you going to buy in `25?”

Of the 36 men and women polled, with one or two exceptions, everybody gave us some version of yes.

This was a telling response. While there were plenty of disagreements about where to buy (some said New York, others said Florida — one landlord said he hated Florida), what their biggest expenses would be, the future of the City of Yes, and all the other rabbit holes we invited them down, on this topic the owners were united:

The distress in the system is finally poised to work itself out. The dry powder is going to be put to use. The finance market might not be hot, exactly (closer to “lukewarm” as several respondents put it), but it’s no longer stuck in the deep freeze like it was just a year ago.

Given that these are the men and women who are going to be making the purchases, one doesn’t need to have the same doubts that Americans have grown accustomed to in other polls. We are learning it straight from the buyers themselves, so the margin of error is zero. And they are explaining their thinking along the way.

Prior to our owners survey going out, we had already seen the purchases start. The market has been on a definite upswing. Office, once a reviled asset class, has suddenly seen a turnaround. Questions of “return to office” seem to have been put to bed.

Our survey went out several weeks before publication, and events are changing rapidly, but this year’s edition offers a telling portrait of where owners’ heads are at, what’s important to them, and what they’re going to care about in 2025.

We broke out some of these questions into longer features examining whether they’re going to be pivoting into different asset classes, what they expect of the new Trump administration, what their biggest expenses will be in the coming year, and more. But it should give industry observers a great deal of optimism that these 36 seem almost to be champing at the bit for 2025 to arrive.