What are the markets that commercial real estate investors are focused on in 2025? Will markets even matter this year? And which markets are best positioned to outperform?

Sabrina Unger is the managing director and the head of research and strategy at American Realty Advisors—and one of the people AFIRE turns to for nuanced commentary on what’s really going on in commercial real estate.

“Market selection as a driver of relative over- or under-performance may actually be reduced relative to some of the other levers that we have to pull when it comes to making geographic selection within a sector,” says Unger.

“When we look back over history . . . the dispersion between the best and worst multifamily markets—that dispersion is the widest during periods of adjustment.” So, Unger says, dispersions were widest during the 2008 global financial crisis, the supply surge in 2016 and during the pandemic. “But outside these periods, market fundamentals… tend to cluster much closer together.”

Consequently, the market narrative may actually be disguising really strong sub-market opportunities. Which is why her team has implemented a new sub-market targeting strategy. Or, in her words, “There’s a way to take advantage of that arbitrage.”