Connect LA 2025: Industry Leaders on a Year That Hasn’t Gone as Expected

Setting the stage for a discussion of a year in which the macroeconomic environment for commercial real estate zigged when everyone thought it might zag, Allen Matkins partner Alain R’bibo summed up, “I think we all started the year with some different expectations: maybe lower interest rates, maybe some kind of economic normalization. But we’re now six months into the year and things have not gone exactly as expected.” 

The industry leaders brought together for the annual “View from the Top” discussion at Connect Los Angeles 2025 concurred with moderator R’bibo that the current year hasn’t brought the relief from uncertainty that was hoped for. Jamison CEO Jaime Lee noted that the popular catchphrase “survive until ‘25” would need to be updated to reflect a more stable environment a year or two into the future. 

“Capital has been sidelined for so long that maybe this consistent psychological pressure, anxiety and stress is just the new normal,” she said. “So now people do seem to actually be coming out and saying, ‘well, I guess we should make a deal at some point.’ And so we’re starting to see some nominal activity.” 

Evan Kinne, managing director at George Smith Partners and CEO of AXCS Capital, took up the theme. “It’s definitely not risk-on for most of the market,” he said. “I think people have been afraid to go out there and really reprice their assets.” 

Yet the current aversion to risk does create pockets of activity, as principal Jim Dillavou of Paragon Commercial Group pointed out. The company’s focus on retail real estate meant that for years people wouldn’t return his calls “and now everybody wants to talk… All of a sudden, neighborhood grocery-anchored centers are everyone’s darling. Why? Because they’re totally risk-off.” 

Especially in the middle market, Bill Frame, CEO of Kidder Mathews, has been seeing an uptick in transaction volume thus far in 2025. ”Our revenue’s up 20% in all divisions, led by brokerage,” he said. “Our transaction count’s up about 10%” on a year-over-year basis. 

“If we can get some of this noise out of the market and specifically in LA, because that’s where this room is from, I don’t think it will take much for it to turn,” said Frame. 

The discussion also focused on the availability of capital, where that capital is coming from and where it’s going. “We’re not seeing much, if any, competition from the institutional side” on deals, said BH Properties president Jim Brooks. “There are others that do what we do. We’d like to believe we do it best. We’ve been doing it for 32 years.

“But private capital is having its moment in the sun right now and we acknowledge that’s not going to last forever. Institutional capital tends to run like the herd. And so once one goes, the next goes and before you know it, they’re all in.” 

Click on the video below for highlights from this year’s Connect Los Angeles event.