Navigating Uncertainty: Exploring black swan events and their possible impacts on the real estate market environment

Real estate market actors are navigating in an increasingly challenging market environment where volatility of changes, interconnected drivers and ambiguity of impacts are typical characteristics. As one crisis after another has followed, the traditional probability-based and narrow scoped risk management has been found to be inadequate to cope with the constantly changing landscape of possible risks. Therefore, there is an urgent need to recognize not only the most probable future threats born in the real estate market environment itself but also shed light on the underlying and creeping drivers originating from the different domains of society that can cause crises and lead to a variety of negative impacts on real estate, space and land use. The aim of this study is to increase the understanding of the black swan type of events and their impacts on the real estate market environment. Black swans possess low probability, but their impacts are considered highly significant when realized. Our focus is on the identification of both direct and indirect impacts. We employ a futures-oriented research approach to reveal the possible black swans of the future and utilize the futures wheel method to analyze their impacts in multidisciplinary workshops, together with experts representing academia and practice. The findings of this study contribute to understanding what the low probability events are that hold the potential for significant impacts in the real estate market environment. Our findings serve as a starting point for developing more holistic risk management and resilience building in the field of real estate.