The Rise of Human Energy as the Next Great Real Estate Innovation

• People power: Human energy is emerging as the built world’s next frontier, where buildings learn, adapt, and elevate the people inside them.

• Deal heat: Bidding wars are heating back up in global real estate, with JLL data showing investor appetite rising across nearly every asset class.

• Big D: Dallas is about to get another billion-dollar data center, and it hints at just how fast the region is becoming one of America’s AI power hubs.

• Smart building trends webinar: Smart buildings are evolving as AI and connected systems redefine how properties think, adapt, and perform. Sign up

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Perspectives

The Rise of Human Energy as the Next Great Real Estate Innovation

Buildings have always run on electricity, but the real power inside them has never been mechanical. It’s human. Attention, creativity, comfort, and well-being drive more value than any watt or BTU ever could. A shift is underway in the built world as organizations recognize that even small gains in human performance can outperform traditional efficiency upgrades by orders of magnitude.

This idea—human energy—is emerging as the next frontier. The smartest buildings are beginning to learn, respond, and adapt around the people inside them, tuning air, light, and space to support focus and cognitive performance. As these capabilities scale, buildings stop behaving like static assets and start participating in human productivity.

And what happens when those buildings connect? A new class of intelligent, interdependent environments comes into view—places that share data, balance energy, and amplify human vitality as a system rather than a series of isolated parts. It’s the early stage of a much larger evolution toward built environments that don’t just reduce consumption, but elevate the people who inhabit them.

Overheard

Global Investors Return as Bid Intensity Climbs Across Property Sectors

Bidder competitiveness is rising across global real estate markets, according to JLL’s Global Bid Intensity Index, which tracks real-time shifts in liquidity and investor appetite. After a turning point in July, momentum strengthened through the fall, with October posting one of the strongest monthly gains in a year. JLL attributes this renewed activity in part to the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts in September and October, which helped thaw capital deployment after a prolonged period of hesitation.

Sector trends show a clear hierarchy. Living and multifamily assets remain the most hotly contested, fueled by deep capital reserves and persistent housing shortages. Industrial and logistics bidding also rebounded as trade-policy uncertainty eased, while retail is seeing improving liquidity across more subtypes. Even the office sector—long the outlier—has seen a sharp improvement from its late-2023 lows, with larger bidder pools and more lenders returning to the table as sentiment stabilizes.

For the broader CRE market, the shift carries real implications. Rising bid intensity signals capital moving off the sidelines, supported by strong debt markets and a growing investor tolerance for risk. If this momentum holds, 2026 could see materially stronger liquidity, firmer pricing, and more active transaction pipelines across asset classes, reversing the stagnation that defined the post-pandemic capital cycle.

Dallas Lands Another Equinix Giant as Data Centers Surge Nationwide

A new Equinix data center is set to rise in western Dallas, with state filings showing more than $835 million committed across construction and interior work. The four-story, 372,000-square-foot facility, known as DA12, is planned for 1550 W. Mockingbird Lane and would add to the company’s already sizable North Texas footprint. Construction is expected to begin in early 2026, with phased interior work extending into 2028, although timelines could shift as filings remain preliminary.

The project underscores Dallas-Fort Worth’s position as one of the nation’s most important colocation markets. JLL data shows that colocation vacancy is near zero and that half of U.S. absorption in early 2025 occurred in just two places: Northern Virginia and Dallas. Equinix’s continued expansion, paired with massive investments by Google, BlackRock, Nvidia, and others, reflects a region where demand for power, cooling, and secure compute space continues to outpace supply. The surge is also tied to broader AI infrastructure needs, including the proposed $500 billion Stargate Project, which would further anchor Texas as a national hub.

For the commercial real estate industry, the implications are hard to ignore. Data centers are becoming one of the fastest-scaling asset classes, generating record valuations, driving land competition, and reshaping power and zoning debates in major markets. As absorption funnels into a handful of metros and AI workloads grow exponentially, data center development is no longer a niche—it is becoming a central force influencing pricing, utility planning, and investment strategy across the entire CRE landscape.

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Propmodo Daily is written and edited by Franco Faraudo with contributions from readers like you and the Propmodo team.

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