Topic
Rates, demographics, and the macro forces shaping property markets.
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…
Autonomy is no longer a research project. In the metros where robotaxis run at scale, two changes are already measurable: parking demand at retail centers is softening, and the trade area of a successful store is widening. Parking Is the First Domino Strip centers were sized for…
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 →There are thousands of proptech startups and a finite number of operator software budgets. The math has only one outcome, and the cycle has started. Buy, Bundle, or Die Platforms with distribution are acquiring point solutions to become suites. Operators, exhausted by…
The curve has spent two years sending mixed signals, and real estate has spent two years over-interpreting each wiggle. Stepping back, the message is steadier than the headlines. Cost of Capital, Not Prophecy For property, the curve matters less as a recession oracle and more as…
National housing statistics are nearly useless for an investor. Real estate is local, and the local variable that dominates everything is net migration into a submarket. Follow the Movers, Not the Headlines Domestic migration into the Sunbelt and Mountain West has reshaped rent…
Insurance was a rounding error in most underwriting for a generation. It is now, on coastal and wildfire-exposed assets, large enough to swing a deal's viability on its own. From Expense to Investment Thesis When premiums double, basis matters more, geography matters more, and…
Hard costs spiked, partly retraced, and settled into a new normal that is neither the old baseline nor the peak. Underwriting either extreme gets you a wrong number. Labor Is the Sticky Part Material prices are volatile but mean-reverting. Skilled labor is the structural…
Markets price rate moves instantly. Real estate digests them slowly — leases roll, loans mature, and renewals reset on their own schedule, not the Fed's. The Maturity Wall Is the Calendar The real transmission of higher rates into property is the loan-maturity calendar. A deal…
As premiums spiked, large owners stopped treating insurance as a bill and started treating it as a capital allocation problem — self-insuring layers, forming captives, and underwriting their own risk. Owning Your Own Risk Operators with strong loss histories and real maintenance…
Treat insurance like a structural cost, not a cyclical one. We underwrite +12-15% annually for at least the first three years and assume no reversion. Then we pressure-test the year-three DSCR at that elevated number against the refi rate the curve implies. If the deal only works on insurance reverting, it doesn't…
Read more →Every few months another new-city project announces a raise. Is there a sane way for a non-billionaire to get exposure, or is this purely a vanity asset class?