Originally published on January 15, 2025, by Toby Burke for NAIOP.

State lawmakers have started to return to their respective state capitols to begin the lawmaking process following the 2024 election. While the election resulted in a few political control shifts in some chambers between Republicans and Democrats, the “status quo” was essentially maintained according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This would imply a more predictable and business-as-usual session within state capitols on the issues with one exception: the return of President-elect Trump to Washington, D.C.

Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill have pledged to cut government bureaucracy, lower government spending, and restructure the federal government. This initiative includes less federal oversight of public health and education, including the closure of the U.S. Department of Education, a reduced federal workforce, and ending many environmental regulations enacted under the Biden Administration. The unofficial “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has been tasked with identifying opportunities to achieve this through either executive order or federal legislation.

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Originally published on December 18, 2024, by Aquiles Suarez for NAIOP.

Congress is expected to close the year this week by agreeing to pass a continuing budget resolution to avoid a government shutdown before Christmas. That will push the funding debate to at least March 2025, when NAIOP will again advocate for its members in the biggest tax reform fight of the last decade. But a strong year for advocacy in 2024 prepares us well for the future.

NAIOP’s End-of-Year Federal Legislative and Political Update Webinar, held on Dec. 6, detailed strides made on our top public policy and legislative priorities for 2024 and previewed what NAIOP would be working on in 2025. Positive news on the public policy front was also a feature of an earlier NAIOP podcast held shortly after the November elections, which focused on the election results and what Republican control of the White House and Congress would mean for commercial real estate.

The bottom line is...

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Originally published on November 20, 2024 by Toby Burke for NAIOP.

The 2024 U.S. election has ended with President-elect Donald Trump returning to the White House and Republicans securing majorities in both legislative chambers on Capitol Hill. The national media may be focused on the consequences for the balance of power in Washington, D.C., but it’s important to look at the down-ballot races for state and local offices and ballot initiatives that impact the commercial real estate industry.

While Republicans obtained the trifecta of government at the federal level, the “status quo” was primarily maintained between the two political parties at the state legislative level, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Republicans did slightly better, but both political parties are claiming election-night victories and successes. Republicans increased their number of overall seats to 55.25% from 55% of the 7,386 state legislative seats.

Republican State Legislative Committee President Dee Duncan issued a memo outlining their successes through investing early and improving Republican turnout, particularly early and absentee voting, in maintaining control of a majority of the state legislatures. To mention a few battleground states, Republicans flipped control of the Michigan House and defended their majorities in both chambers of the Wisconsin legislature. In Nevada, Republicans gained enough seats to break Democrat supermajorities in both the Senate and Assembly that will now prevent the legislature from overriding Republican Governor Joe Lombardo’s vetoes.

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Originally published on November 6,2024 by Eric Schmutz for NAIOP.

Donald Trump’s victory in Tuesday’s presidential election makes him the first candidate in over a century to reclaim the White House after losing a re-election bid, and we expect his second term to have a significant impact on federal tax policy. 

Republican tax priorities also received a boost on Tuesday when, for the first time since 2018, they regained control of the Senate after picking up seats in West Virginia, Ohio and Montana and overcoming challenges in Florida, Nebraska and Texas. With races yet to be called in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada, the only questions left are the size of the Republican majority and the identity of the next Senate majority leader. 

The first of those questions could take a few days to answer, but Senate Republicans are scheduled to meet next week to choose their next leader. At the time of this writing, Senators John Thune (R-SD), John Cornyn, (R-TX) and Rick Scott (R-FL) are the declared candidates, but because the race is determined by a secret ballot, it is too early to predict a front runner. 

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Originally published on October 1, 2024, by the IRS.

The Internal Revenue Service announced today tax relief for individuals and businesses in the entire state of North Carolina that were affected by Hurricane Helene that began on Sept. 25, 2024. These taxpayers now have until May 1, 2025, to file various federal individual and business tax returns and make tax payments.

Following the disaster declaration issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), individuals and households that reside or have a business in the entire state qualify for tax relief.

Affected taxpayers with returns and payments with due dates postponed until Feb. 3, 2025, due to Tropical Storm Debby in North Carolina (NC-2024-07) will also now have until May 1, 2025, to file and/or pay.

Originally published on August 13, 2024 by Brielle Scott for NAIOP.

From John Oliver to CNN to the Wall Street Journal, everyone seems to be talking about PFAS. PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a family of manmade chemicals that have been used in manufacturing everything from apparel to cosmetics to food packaging.

In April, the federal government issued the first enforceable national PFAS regulations, and rather than just a problem for manufacturers of products with PFAS, this is now an immediate issue for owners and developers of all types of commercial real estate, and anywhere where PFAS may have been created or used.

In a recent NAIOP webinar, experts from Arnall Golden Gregory LLP, including Beth Davis, partner, and co-chair of the firm’s environmental practice; Morgan Harrison, litigation partner; and David Marmins, litigation partner; joined Patrick McKeown, business development manager for ECT2, a provider of solutions for removing difficult-to-treat contaminants from water and vapor, to discuss how developers can prepare for PFAS regulations.

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Laura Boorman Truesdale
Mary Katherine H. Stukes
Moore & Van Allen

Early preview of the article to be featured in the NAIOP Development Magazine this fall.

If you have read the news lately, you have likely heard about “forever chemicals” and the dangers they may pose. While you might be familiar with the potential impacts on human health and the environment, the implications of these chemicals on the commercial real estate industry may be less obvious.

The term “forever chemicals” refers generally to per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, also known as “PFAS.” PFAS are man-made and have been manufactured in the United States for over 70 years. They are used in a wide array of consumer and commercial products and processes across industry sectors and have achieved popularity and success in large part because of their unique resilience to degradation. While the chemical makeup of PFAS has made them critical to certain industries, it has also allowed them to persist widely in the environment (and potentially in humans and animals).

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Originally published on July 17, 2024 by Aquiles Suarez for NAIOP.

Just prior to leaving for this week’s congressional recess, and before the tragic events of this weekend which unfortunately served to highlight our current political polarization, Republicans and Democrats in Congress worked together to introduce bipartisan legislation furthering one of NAIOP’s top legislative priorities. The Revitalizing Downtowns and Main Streets Act (H.R. 9002) was introduced last Thursday with 12 original cosponsors: six Republicans and six Democrats, all members of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

H.R. 9002 would incentivize the conversion of underutilized commercial properties to residential use, helping to address the historically high office vacancy levels resulting from hybrid work patterns that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic and which have become a persistent feature of our labor markets. At the same time, the adaptive reuse of these structures would help alleviate the lack of housing supply, including of affordable housing, in many localities. The welcome show of bipartisanship underscores the importance of the issue, which NAIOP has made a priority since last year.

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Originally published on July 10, 2024, by Aquiles Suarez for NAIOP.

The Supreme Court has certainly garnered its share of attention for several of its rulings this last term, but none is likely to have more of an impact on business, including commercial real estate, than its opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, issued on June 28. In that case, the Court overturned a 40-year legal standard it had first established in 1984 in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., which stated that courts would defer to federal agency determinations on policy matters if the relevant statutory language was ambiguous.

The so-called “Chevron doctrine,” or “Chevron deference,” as the practice became known, began initially as a practical means of allowing federal regulatory agencies tasked with implementing aspects of legislation that called for scientific or highly technical determinations. It came into play when an agency determined that an area or matter not explicitly authorized in a statute was within the reach of their regulatory authority, as long as their determination was reasonable. Thus, if Congress passed a law requiring the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate a certain broad class of chemicals, then the EPA could not be challenged for including substances that the agency stated it reasonably believed were covered by the statute.

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A bill that NAIOP and its members spearheaded was introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives. The “Revitalizing Downtowns and Main Streets Act” establishes a new 20% tax credit to convert many underutilized or vacant commercial properties to residential use.

The bipartisan bill is sponsored by U.S. Representatives Mike Carey (R-OH) and Jimmy Gomez (D-CA).

“This legislation will spur the conversion of vacant spaces that can stimulate local economies and begin to address the housing crisis in communities across the U.S.,” said Marc Selvitelli, CAE, president and CEO of NAIOP. “This important bill allows Congress to begin rectifying many of the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that are still affecting the lives of Americans and impacting local tax revenues.”

The proposed legislation includes:

Originally published on April 17, 2024, by Eric Schmutz for NAIOP.

With national and swing state polls indicating support between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump is fairly even, casual political observers could be forgiven for not realizing that House and Senate races are also tight; there could be a historic switch in the House and Senate majorities this November. 

In the Senate, where Democrats currently hold a two-seat majority at 51-49, Republicans are projected to pick up the West Virginia seat from retiring Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, which would make it a 50-50 Senate, with the next vice president casting the deciding vote. Adding to their challenges, two Democratic senators in states projected to go for Trump (Ohio and Montana) are likely to face serious challenges in their reelection efforts.

In Ohio, three-term Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown will face Republican businessman Bernie Moreno. Polls taken before the primary favored
Brown; however, Biden lost the state in 2020, and has trailed in state polling by more than 10 percentage points. 

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Originally published on April 3, 2024, by Aquiles Suarez for NAIOP.

On March 11, President Joe Biden submitted his FY 2025 Proposed Budget to Congress. Like the budget he proposed last year around this time, it contains a number of tax policy changes that, if enacted, would have an outsized negative impact on the commercial real estate industry. But unlike last year’s proposal, this is an election-year proposal intended as the administration’s statement on the economic agenda Biden will pursue if re-elected this November.

That does not mean, however, that this budget proposal should be seen as simply a rhetorical document with little chance in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Unlike prior year budget proposals, this one is a setup for an unavoidable tax debate in 2025, when many of the tax provisions enacted during the Trump administration in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 will expire. As a result, many lower and middle-income Americans, not just businesses, will face tax increases if Congress fails to renew a number of provisions. Democrats and Republicans will be forced to negotiate and pass tax legislation because both sides of the political aisle will need it.

If reelected, Biden will of course claim that the voters agree with his economic vision, and he will have enormous negotiating leverage in the tax debate because of the scheduled tax increases that will go into effect.

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Originally published on March 26, 2024, by NAIOP.

Six months into the 2024 fiscal year, Congress passed a final $1.2 trillion funding agreement and President Joe Biden signed it into law. The package was approved by the House (286-134) and Senate (74-24) before going to the White House on Saturday. It will keep the federal government operating until Sept. 30, 2024.

On the eve of the spring Congressional recess, Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) officially resigned from the House and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) announced that his resignation will be effective April 19. These developments will leave House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) with a slim 217-213 majority, but that may not be the worst of his problems, as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed a motion to “vacate the chair” (remove the speaker) just before she left town. If the Democratic minority supports Greene’s motion, Johnson will have to secure unanimous opposition from the rest of the Republican Conference to save his leadership role.

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Originally published on January 17, 2024, by Eric Schmutz for NAIOP.

Iowa Republicans held their 2024 presidential caucus on Jan. 15, and as expected, former President Donald Trump won with 51% of the votes cast. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis placed second with 21.2% and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley placed third with 19.1%. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, after receiving 7.7% of the votes, suspended his campaign and promptly endorsed Trump. Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson received less than 200 votes and also suspended his campaign, but has yet to endorse another candidate. 

The current delegate totals among the candidates stand at Trump with 20 delegates, DeSantis with 8, Haley with 7, and Ramaswamy with 3. A candidate needs 1,215 delegates to win the party’s nomination. The action now moves to New Hampshire where Republicans will hold their first presidential primary on Jan. 23, and then to South Carolina where the first Democratic primary will be on Feb. 3 and the Republican primary will be on Feb. 24.

Unless a major shakeup occurs, we will likely see a repeat of the 2020 race between President Joe Biden and Trump. If so, it will be the first time a former president has run as his party’s nominee for a non-consecutive presidential term since 1892, when former President Grover Cleveland (D) defeated incumbent President Benjamin Harrison (R) in a rematch.

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Originally published on December 20, 2023, by Aquiles Suarez for NAIOP.

As 2023 comes to a close and we look ahead to the challenges facing commercial real estate in 2024, it is clear that persistent advocacy on the public policy front will be more important than ever to ensure that the interests of NAIOP members are protected. This is true of course at the state and local level, but it is at the federal level, where government gridlock has been most on display, that maintaining our strong advocacy will be critical.

As some media reports have already noted, this Congress will be one of the most unproductive since the Great Depression. Just 20 pieces of legislation have been signed into law. Narrow partisan majorities in the House and Senate, and continued dysfunction in the House Republican conference in particular, have made advancing legislation in this Congress an even bigger challenge than usual. For three weeks, Congress lost valuable time while the drama surrounding Speaker Kevin McCarthy unfolded, with Republicans finally settling on the fourth candidate to vie for the spot. While the House did manage to pass debt-ceiling increases and government funding measures that were “must-pass” bills, the only other bills that Congress seemed able to digest were those renaming post offices and those with no opposition at all.

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Originally published on January 3, 2024, by Toby Burke for NAIOP.

The political battle over the presidency and the control of both chambers on Capitol Hill is expected to garner most of the attention of the national media this year. While the outcome of these campaigns will have significant implications on policy debates at the national level, they should not overshadow or minimize the important political races for control of state legislatures and gubernatorial offices across the country. The outcome of these more grassroots races in comparison to control of state capitols may be more reflective of the policies of importance to the American people.

Republican governors currently hold a 27 to 23 advantage over Democrats heading into 11 gubernatorial elections later this year. The 11 states holding gubernatorial races in the fall are Delaware, Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington and West Virginia. Except for Montana, North Dakota (to be determined), Utah, and Vermont, the incumbents are either term-limited, not seeking re-election or seeking another elected office. North Carolina is expected to be one of the most competitive this year because Democrat Rory Cooper is unable to seek reelection based on term limits and the recent Republican successes for statewide and presidential offices.

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The list is complete!  Candidates who filed are competing for important seats on the County Commissions, the State Legislature, and the U.S. Congress.  Click the links below to familiarize yourself with the candidates:

• North Carolina Board of Elections - State and Federal Candidate List
• Mecklenburg County Board of Elections - Candidate List
• Iredell County Board of Elections - Candidate List
• Cabarrus Board of Elections - Candidate List
• Gaston County Board of Elections - Candidate List
• Union County Board of Elections - Candidate List

This is big news when it comes to the impact on growth and real estate development strategies.  According to a recent article, featured in Axios Charlotte, North Carolina is receiving a 1.09 billion dollar federal grant, the largest ever received by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), toward the S-Line, a passenger rail line from Raleigh to Virginia.  Additional dollars will be allocated to plan and develop rail corridors between other cities, including "high-speed" rail linking Charlotte and Atlanta.  Other corridors to be studied and planned are those between the following cities:

• Charlotte and Kings Mountain
• Fayetteville and Raleigh
• Wilmington and Raleigh
• Winston-Salem and Raleigh
• Salisbury and Asheville

For additional details, read the full article here: 

Mega federal investments will revolutionize
passenger rail out of Charlotte

Your future leaders are coming into view!  Candidate filing for elected office opened at noon on Monday, December 4th and remains so until noon on Friday, December 15th.  Candidates who decide to run will be competing in 2024 contests for positions from County Commissioner, to State Legislator, U.S. Congress, and all the way up to U.S. President.  Click the links below to see who has filed so far and begin to familiarize yourself with the candidates:
 
Mecklenburg County Board of Elections - Candidate List
 
Iredell County Board of Elections - Candidate List
 
Cabarrus Board of Elections - Candidate List

Gaston County Board of Elections - Candidate List

Union County Board of Elections - Candidate List

Originally published on November 20, 2023, by Rob Nanfelt for REBIC.

A coin toss is a reasonable way to determine who will receive first possession of the ball in overtime during a football game. It’s been the standard and accepted practice for years at every level of the sport. Now we’re learning that the outcome of elections can be determined in a similar manner. The outcome means someone wins and someone loses. But our low voter turnout this season means we are all losing!

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