“It has been uneven and of course all of this has been incredibly impacted by specific property type fundamentals,” she said. “There’s still a lot of concern about what’s going to happen, especially with some of the expirations this year of loans that were placed on a five-year plan in 2007, generally we are not nearly as bad off as we thought we would be.”

Favorable demographics—such as the movement from sales to rentals—will also continue the positive trend in the multifamily space. “It is pent-up demand,” Dixon said. “It is people who can’t afford to buy a house. It’s the new generation that doesn’t want to buy a house that is making all the difference in this sector. And we are talking about new development here in ways that we probably did not imagine two to three years ago.”

But even as new apartments continue to rise in top urban markets, limitations on how much development can occur will depend on access to capital and site selection.

“You have to get financing, you have to find the equity and the equity is 25% to 35% of the budget up front and you’ve got to find the site,” she said. “There seems to be a lot of land out there, but there are still a number of communities that aren’t quite ready to let that go and become multifamily land when they thought it would be for-sale housing land, which is a very different impact on their community.”

With interest rates at historically low levels, single-family home affordability is high, but Dixon said a hidden downside exists. “Anyone who has invested or has their retirement fund in some money market account or other investment vehicle is actually suffering from the low interest rates, and that can have a dampening impact on consumer confidence and enthusiasm and consumer spending,” she said. “And the United States is nothing, if not driven by consumer spending and consumer confidence.”

Dixon said low interest rates have been the boon to the commercial real estate industry for the past year, but obtaining a loan still remains difficult for many. “The problem is you have to get the money,” she said. “If you can get it, that’s great, but not everybody is going to get it.”

Much of that success depends on job growth. Dixon said corporate America is sitting on $1.3 billion in cash, but is holding off on hiring due to concerns about Wall Street, the upcoming election and the Eurozone crisis.

“They are sitting on it, waiting for some comfort that the economic recovery has some legs,” she said. “Once we get further into the year, assuming that gas prices don’t ultimately trip us up or there’s nothing bizarre that happens in Iran or something that happens with the European debt crisis, if we have all these things really go according to where most people are expecting, meaning no major surprises, if businesses finally make that commitment to investment and hiring, it will be a huge impact on what happens with the growth and the economy in the next year or so.”

In addition to overseas woes, fiscal restraint in the public sector here in the US could present challenges for the future—and further a fragile consumer confidence. “The bouncing around—one day we are happy, one day we are not, gas is up, we’re upset, gas is down, we’re happy, debt crisis seems good, we’re OK with that—but it’s all over the board,” Dixon said. “And it’s important to have a strong consumer confidence. It is important to have a strong, consistent improvement in consumer confidence in order for our economy to really take hold and grow.”

On the business side, strong export growth, a rebound from the drop in exports during the downturn, is “great “for the prospect of manufacturing in the United States, Dixon said. The challenge of manufacturing in the United States, she added, is finding skilled labor to take the jobs. “It is all a really interesting circle of life here,” she said. “The rebound in exports is a great thing, and the weakening of the dollar in some markets has also been a very positive opportunity to grow export growth.”