BOMA International president and COO Henry Chamberlain is certainly an optimist, as was the whole crowd at this morning's general session. Henry says despite fantastic growth in the US office market, now at about 15.6% vacancy, there's still a long ways to go. With pre-recession numbers around 13%, the recovery is not complete. What's more, he says the future is somewhat uncertain, though that's heavily attributed to outside factors, such as the economic hardships in Greece we've all been reading about, and more recently, the talk that Puerto Rico may default on its debts.
One thing Henry is extremely bullish on is the rise of Millennials. "I really like Millennials," he said, joking to the crowd. "We need to invest in these folks. They're bright, they're energetic and they're our future." Henry challenged those still living with pre-conceived notions of the age group as lazy and disloyal to embrace Millennials. As far as the biggest change coming to the industry, Henry says its more and more technology. He says we should expect to see more change in the next five years than we saw in the previous 20, including more growth in robotics and even artificial intelligence.
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