Real Estate Investment
The Return of the Operator-Led Fund
LPs are backing teams that run buildings, not just buy them.
OPENSQFT
Find clear answers across real estate.
Search evidence-backed analysis, expert Q&A, and sector guides for the built world.
The news
The latest from our analysts
Real Estate Investment
Underwriting in a Higher-for-Longer World
Most pro formas built between 2015 and 2021 carried one silent assumption: exit cap rates at or below entry. That assumption is gone, and the models that still lean on it are producing fiction. Three Inputs to Re-Examine Start with the exit cap — underwrite it flat to entry at…
Real Estate Investment
The AI-Powered GP Report
Two years ago, the median emerging manager ran their entire acquisitions pipeline out of spreadsheets and a shared inbox. Today, the best of them have something closer to a quant desk: automated comp pulls, AI-drafted investment memos, and underwriting models that update…
Paul StantonPremium
Real Estate Investment
Secondaries Come for Real Estate
Private equity normalized the secondary sale of LP stakes years ago. Real estate is finally catching up, and the discounts on offer are reshaping how patient capital thinks about entry timing. Who Is Selling, and Why Denominator-effect pressure, fund-life expirations, and LPs…
Real Estate Investment
The Case for Boring Assets
Self-storage, infill industrial, manufactured housing, grocery-anchored retail. None of them headline a conference. All of them have quietly outperformed flashier sectors through the repricing. Durability Beats Narrative Boring assets share a profile: sticky demand, low capex…
Real Estate Investment
How to Read a Sponsor's Track Record Honestly
Every sponsor's deck shows a wall of green. The job of a serious LP is to figure out how much of that green the sponsor actually created versus inherited from a decade of falling rates. Attribution Is Everything Ask for realized deals only, with gross and net side by side, plus…
Dom BeveridgePremium
Proptech
Deep Dive: WithCoverage
Ask any multifamily operator about their biggest expense surprise of the past three years and you will hear the same answer: insurance. Premiums on coastal assets have doubled, and even inland portfolios are seeing 30 to 40 percent renewals. Flipping the Insurance Model…
Brad HargreavesPremium
Research-backed analysis across every real-estate sector.
The headline
One report says the office market is dead. The next says it has never been a better time to buy.
Every quarter brings a fresh wave of conflicting takes on where real estate is headed.
From the Q&A
Real questions, answered by experts
PS
Paul Stanton
Partner at PTB Capital
Warm intro or nothing — cold-emailing a family office is the fastest way to get filtered out permanently. They invest in people they (or someone they trust) already know. So do the unglamorous work: publish your thinking consistently, show up where they gather, and get one trusted mutual connection to vouch. And know…
Read more →Asked by Liam O'Connor01 expert answer
DC
Daniel Cho
Chief Economist, Cobalt Real Estate Partners
Underwrite the exit cap flat to entry as your base case, and wider in your downside. If a deal only clears the hurdle with compression baked in, you're not winning a deal — you're buying optionality on rates, and that's a different (worse) business. The way to stay competitive without lying is to find the return in…
Read more →Asked by Noah Bergman01 expert answer
EV
Elena Vasquez
Managing Director, Meridian Housing Group
Very realistic — engineering is an asset, not a handicap. You already understand the physical asset better than most finance hires ever will, which matters enormously in value-add and development. Close the gap on the finance side visibly: underwrite a few real deals on your own, learn to build and defend a model, and…
Read more →Asked by Yuki Tanaka01 expert answer
Have a real-estate question? Get answers from vetted industry experts.
Ask a question →From our expert contributors
The people decoding the built world
OUR MISSION
Independent research for the
built world.
- Independent
- Evidence-Backed
- Data-Driven
opensqft exists to cut through the noise of real-estate media. We publish evidence-backed analysis, expert Q&A, and sector guides that hold up to scrutiny. No sponsored takes, no hype cycles.
Every article is reviewed by practitioners who actually build, finance, and operate across the sectors they cover, so you can act on signal instead of speculation.
The future of real estate, in your inbox
Independent, expert-reviewed analysis. One issue a week, no sponsored takes.
FAQ
Questions about opensqft, answered.
What we cover, how we vet it, and where the lines are. Still curious? Reach out and we will get back to you.
Contact Usopensqft is an independent publication and directory for the built world. We pair evidence-backed news with an expert Q&A and sector guides spanning multifamily, office, industrial, retail, hospitality, proptech, and capital markets, so investors, operators, and policymakers can find clear answers in one place.
