Architects and designers anticipate more projects in 2014, which is a good leading indicator of the commercial real estate sector, says PricewaterhouseCoopers real estate research director Andrew Warren at ULI's emerging trends in real estate event Tuesday at the Westin Galleria. Some of the issues bugging us now are the same ones that will nag us next year, like availability of capital. (Isn't there a cream for that?) Andrew thinks 2014 could see more transactions, because investors are getting more comfortable with a variety of asset classes including value-add, opportunistic, and development. They're more willing to move up the risk spectrum to look for higher returns, he says.

Here's Stewart Title's Kate Alpert Cavanaugh and Kelly Ansley bookending Stewart SVP and chief economist Ted Jones. Ted talked about the North Texas real estate outlook, noting that the massive uncertainty in DC is a mega-theme for the coming year. There's also 1.9M fewer jobs in the US today than there were on Jan. 1, 2008, while DFW is seeing more jobs than ever and in a wide variety of markets. And while the economy is on the road to recovery, it's been the slowest to come out of a recession since the Great Depression. Why? Ted says it's because the stimulus bill failed with nothing slated to benefit small businesses, which drive the economy.