5 must reads for the AEC industry today: July 6, 2020

1. A new report predicts significant demand growth for mass timber components (BD+C)
"The 156-page mass timber report—produced by The Beck Group, Forest Business Network, Treesource, and Kaiser + Path, a real estate developer/builder and architect—takes a deep dive into current and possible future supply and demand for mass timber components and panels for the U.S. and Canada."

2. Fall in US construction spending in May shows weakness of country’s construction industry, says GlobalData (GlobalData)
"Dariana Tani, Economist at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers her view on the situation."

3. NMHC Rent Payment Tracker finds 92.2 percent of apartment households paid rent as of June 20 (National Multifamily Housing Council)
"The National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC)’s Rent Payment Tracker found 92.2 percent of apartment households made a full or partial rent payment by June 20 in its survey of 11.4 million units of professionally managed apartment units across the country. This is unchanged from the share who paid rent through June 20, 2019 and compares to 90.8 percent that had paid by May 20, 2020."

4. Brookfield says office demand has increased as workers return (Bloomberg via National Real Estate Investor)
"Company CEO Bruce Flatt says companies are leasing great amounts of space to accommodate social distancing."

5. The pandemic might have broken the office market's supply-demand dynamic. For now. (Bisnow)
"You sell apples. Suddenly everyone wants oranges. What do you do?"

The Architectural Billings Index measures the general sentiment of U.S. architecture firms about the health of the construction market by measuring 1) design billings and 2) design contracts. Any score above 50 means that, among the architecture firms surveyed, more firms than not reported seeing increases in design work vs. the previous month.