The two exceptions will be California and New York. California has already started to ramp up their rules and regulations almost like a petulant child, to prove they will hold out and be even more the regulatory capital of America. Pollution control rules, cap and trade and similar rules for cars and trucks will become an even more costly burden. I am experiencing this now for a brown field site we are developing where the water board has made the delays and costs unnecessarily onerous and costly and it has delayed our ability to proceed by six months. In the end the site will be cleaned to the same level we would have done, but we had to do more tests, and more reports and more costs. The interesting part if the tests they required showed the site was not as bad as they had said, but we still had to incur the excessive costs to perform the tests and the delays, just to reprove it to them. My view is there will be many more opportunities out side of California to develop for companies that will continue to move to other locations where the cost of operating will be materially less and labor and other regulations will be far less onerous.

Cuomo will also try to put more regulation into place, but he will be stymied to some degree by the Republicans who do have some level of control in the State Senate. DeBlasio is very likely on his way out, and he needs money to run. That means he needs the real estate community which he does not have now. He is likely to be less difficult this year for CRE than he may have been.

Overall there is a very likely probability now that the general deregulation across the board which will be occurring in Washington, despite the efforts of the Democrats to stop it, will be very favorable to CRE, and we will see and expanding economy and an easier situation in which to thrive.

The views expressed here are the author's own.

Although it will be a major battle with Democrats, and especially Elizabeth Warren and her band of resistors, there will be changes to Dodd-Frank, and they will be good for CRE. The primary changes which will be approved will be the ability of regional and community banks lenders to actually make loans to CRE. Right now the regulations are so onerous that it is costly and time consuming, and an approval is far from assured. It is not just CRE that suffers.

Small- and medium-sized commercial enterprises also are very constrained and unable to borrow, or to borrow what they require to expand or in some cases to go into business. If the businesses cannot get the capital to expand, then they do not have any demand for space, and that means less rents, less development needs, and less for CRE.

Trump began the day with an order to cease all new regulations and it is expected this week that he will rescind hundreds of the Obama era rules and regulations that make doing anything so much harder and more expensive for nil benefit, and in many cases a negative for economic growth. The follow on key is for the CRE community to now push for states and cities to follow suit and roll back many of the excessive zoning and fee requirements that have arisen in the past several years to onerous levels. There is a real opportunity now in many locations to make headway on these things as the Republicans have swept into power and will hopefully be agreeable to also mitigate the onerous rules and regulations on a local level, but it will require local developers and owners to lobby for these changes.

The two exceptions will be California and New York. California has already started to ramp up their rules and regulations almost like a petulant child, to prove they will hold out and be even more the regulatory capital of America. Pollution control rules, cap and trade and similar rules for cars and trucks will become an even more costly burden. I am experiencing this now for a brown field site we are developing where the water board has made the delays and costs unnecessarily onerous and costly and it has delayed our ability to proceed by six months. In the end the site will be cleaned to the same level we would have done, but we had to do more tests, and more reports and more costs. The interesting part if the tests they required showed the site was not as bad as they had said, but we still had to incur the excessive costs to perform the tests and the delays, just to reprove it to them. My view is there will be many more opportunities out side of California to develop for companies that will continue to move to other locations where the cost of operating will be materially less and labor and other regulations will be far less onerous.

Cuomo will also try to put more regulation into place, but he will be stymied to some degree by the Republicans who do have some level of control in the State Senate. DeBlasio is very likely on his way out, and he needs money to run. That means he needs the real estate community which he does not have now. He is likely to be less difficult this year for CRE than he may have been.

Overall there is a very likely probability now that the general deregulation across the board which will be occurring in Washington, despite the efforts of the Democrats to stop it, will be very favorable to CRE, and we will see and expanding economy and an easier situation in which to thrive.

The views expressed here are the author's own.