CPE Podcasts

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, CPE's podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in, and Happy Earth Day!

To mark the occasion, Executive Editor Therese Fitzgerald interviewed Marta Schantz, co-executive director of the ULI’s Randall Lewis Center for Sustainability, regarding CRE's progress on environmental sustainability and the long road ahead. 

The theme of this year's Earth Day is "Investing in the Planet." According to Schantz, the business case for sustainability is so strong that "investing in your planet is investing in your business." 

Here is a sample of topics covered:

Committing to net zero (1:43)
Blackstone joins the struggle (5;49)
The existing building challenge (7:15)
Sustainability in a tight economy (13:20)
Backlash against ESG (18:50)

For more on the state of real estate sustainability, read ULI's Global Sustainability Outlook 2023.

Andrew Joblon, founder & managing partner of Turnbridge Equities, makes it a goal to look ahead of the competition. Among his company's signature development projects is New York City's largest current logistics developments, which features a multilevel design that is still uncommon in the sector.

In this episode, he also comments on a key market whose potential he compares to that demonstrated by Austin a decade ago. Joblon offers insights into the competitive value of building during a slowdown with the next cycle's demand in view.

Since starting Turnbridge in 2014, Joblon has pursued a strategy that is eclectic by asset category and varied by location. Geographically, the company's investments focus on carefully selected markets that range from coast to coast. In this conversation, Joblon discusses the value of combining an opportunistic outlook with cautious execution.

Joblon suggests that his perspective was influenced by an early job in structured finance. That experience, he says, "(helps) you understand everything from a risk perspective." However, this month's guest is himself no stranger to taking calculated risks; he calls leaving a secure position to start his own company both "an incredibly scary moment" and "probably the best decision I ever made."

Episode highlights:

1:16 Turning point: launching Turnbridge

3:59: Finding opportunity while proceeding with caution

6:16: Taking the long view in supply-constrained markets

8:10: Perspectives on the office sector

10:55 Why industrial is really two asset classes

14:12 Lasting lessons from an early job

16:20 Giving credit to mentors

17:42 Inside a massive NYC logistics project with an unusual twist

23:01 An East Coast market with Austin-caliber potential

27:02 Off the clock: playing the world’s fastest-growing sport

As a diversity ambassador leader for her local office in Roseland, N.J., FTI Consulting Managing Director Asha Shettigar is involved in several initiatives that are geared toward helping women and other under-represented groups progress in their careers. FTI's various programs and resources aim to create an inclusive environment for all employees, empowering them to reach their highest potential through career training, professional development courses, mentorship opportunities and networking. In this episode, Shettigar expands on how all these initiatives help build a strong, diverse team that will ultimately push for growth.

Fiona Cousins, chair of the Americas for global engineering firm Arup, was part of the 16-member advisory board tasked with helping turn New York City's behemoth Local Law 97 into a set of decarbonization procedures and performance standards that buildings owners could comply with. The board, along with a number of working groups, met for hundreds of hours over three years.

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in. In this episode, host CPE Executive Editor Therese Fitzgerald and Cousins discuss Local Law 97, the role of regulation vs. incentives in meeting carbon reduction goals, and the critical role that engineers have to play in public policy.  "All these problems are at the root engineering problems," Cousins observed.

Here’s a sample of the topics covered:

Investors, advisers and lenders are looking for answers to crucial questions about the real estate capital markets. Interest rate hikes, together with conflicting economic signals, are stalling activity in the market. In this episode of Investment Matters, Crescit Capital Strategies Founder & Managing Partner Joe Iacono offers perspective on what’s ahead at this challenging time.

Iacono brings the perspective of a real estate career that started when he was a teenager. He bought his first property when he was still in high school, and went on earn degrees from Rollins College and Columbia University, where he earned his master’s in real estate.

Over the course of his 30-year career, Iacono has held hold senior positions at a series of blue-chip companies, with special expertise in securitization. As a managing director at JP Morgan Chase, he directed the nationwide CMBS origination and securitization team. He developed the CMBS conduit lending platform at PaineWebber, helped to create one of the industry’s first securitization programs at Daiwa Securities America and was a co-founder of the commercial real estate business at Credit Suisse First Boston.

Highlights of this episode include:

· Learning the ropes of CRE finance (1:35)

· Capital flows and securitization amid volatility (4:00)

· Debt and deal dynamics (8:50)

· Making sense of cap rates (14:22)

· CMBS, CLO outlook (16:55)

· Career turning points (20:16)

· Lessons of the Great Financial Crisis (23:08)

· Investing opportunistically (26:18)

· The bid-ask gap (28:55)

· Off the clock: a man of many interests (33:24)

· How will the market adjust to volatility? (35:31)

To amplify the sound of women’s demands beyond the corner office, two female CRE leaders joined forces: Kaitlin Kincaid, principal & founder of search and advisory firm Keller Augusta, and Wendy Mann, CEO of CREW Network. Both of them talked to Commercial Property Executive Senior Editor Laura Calugar about the job market today, why women need to express their professional demands, and the active role that company leaders play in advancing an equitable workforce.

With a $30 billion development pipeline, the Trammell Crow Co. is in a position to innovate on sustainable construction, building electrification, and energy efficiency—both here and abroad. James Murray-Coleman has been tackling that challenge head-on since becoming Director of Sustainability 10 months ago.

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in. For this episode, CPE Executive Editor Therese Fitzgerald interviewed Murray-Coleman about how the company is tackling the challenges of embodied carbon, operational carbon and onsite renewables. Here's a sample of the topics covered:

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ latest research shows that the higher borrowing costs are really weighing on buyer activity, with the investment market bearing the brunt of the impact of tighter monetary policies across many parts of the world. However, the overall message stemming from the Q4 Global Commercial Property Monitor is that we’re seeing a period of adjustment or a bit of a shakeout in aggregate across global markets, as Economist Tarrant Parsons puts it in Commercial Property Executive’s latest podcast. Press play to hear what Parsons told CPE Senior Editor Laura Calugar in this podcast episode about the CRE sentiment in each world region. 

Most properties built today use as little energy and as much renewable energy as possible. But there is a huge inventory of existing properties that must be retrofitted in order to improve their energy efficiency and reduce their carbon emissions.

Without a significant retrofit push in the commercial real estate space, the U.S. will not reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Meanwhile, a large swath of underperforming buildings may no longer be acceptable to sustainability-minded investors and tenants.

Welcome back to Sustainability Street, our podcast on the intersection of commercial real estate and the world we live in. For this episode, host CPE Executive Editor Therese Fitzgerald chats with Chris Gray, chief technology officer of RENU Communities, a subsidiary of Taurus Investments, about the importance of and strategies for retrofitting existing buildings. 

Here’s a sample of the topics covered:

It's fitting that Kairos Investment Management gets its name from the Greek word for "opportunity." Carl Chang, the firm's co-founder & CEO, has decades of experience creating opportunity and then making the most of it. In his current role he oversees a diversified multibillion-dollar portfolio of commercial and multifamily assets. Yet few commercial real estate executives have achieved such a high level of success in such varied fields. 

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Chang had a distinguished career in professional tennis well before launching his business career. He was named coach of the year by Tennis magazine for, among other contributions, coaching his brother Michael, the tennis Hall of Famer and Grand Slam tournament champion. The rigors of that experience, among other factors, provided a strong foundation for his business success. Alongside his real estate career, Chang has also founded a thriving national restaurant franchise.

In this conversation, Chang reveals how these eclectic experiences continue to inform his approach to running his investment company. He discusses key industry issues as what's ahead for the real estate capital markets, adjusting strategy post-pandemic and the challenge of bringing workers back to the market. And he even offers a few words about playing such tennis legends as Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras (and winning matches with them).   

In this episode, you'll hear about: