Technology can be enormously disruptive to commercial real estate. Remote work is responsible for the global devaluation of office properties. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing the way we live and work.

So what will be the effect of AI on institutional investment strategies?

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202402cast/

To get at some answers, AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson talked to one of his favorite futurist investors, Jeffrey Kanne, president and CEO of National Real Estate Advisors, an AFIRE member firm and investment manager specializing in a build-to-core strategy, developing and managing large-scale, urban commercial and multifamily projects for its institutional client accounts.

“The advent of AI as a technological tool is going to greatly increase the rate of change,” Kanne tells Branson. “I’m very nervous about where you can place money and think it’s safe.”

The best opportunity for investment, Kanne believes, is in data centers that provide consistent power and temperature-controlled environments for the Googles, OpenAIs and Microsofts of the world.

With that in mind, Kanne and Branson discuss how investors can enter the data center market.

“It’s not rocket science,” Kanne says, while outlining potential pitfalls and barriers to entry for new operators. “It’s incumbent on all of us as investors to think about what the world will be like in five years, ten years, fifteen years,” Kanne says. “When I look ahead, data centers are a good place to focus on.”