The AFIRE Podcast

For the first time ever, New York City Economic Development Corporation is staging a special Investor Summit in collaboration with AFIRE for international institutional capital that's focused on US property investing. With the summit in mind, AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson sat down with chief operating officer of NYCEDC, Melissa Román Burch, for a pulse check on New York City’s CRE environment.

“New York City is an engine that is always thinking about growth,” says Burch. Currently, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has set a goal of creating 500,000 housing units over the next 10 years, with roughly 30,000 units expected to come from office-to-residential conversions. Meanwhile, two new trophy office skyscrapers have broken ground, totaling about 2 million square feet of new infrastructure. Looking ahead, the city projects 400,000 green-collar jobs by 2040, underscoring New York’s commitment to both economic growth and sustainability.

The conversation covers the key sectors driving momentum—office, housing, energy, and transportation—while also asking the bigger questions: Where are the opportunities hiding? How will office-to-residential conversions reshape neighborhoods? And what will New York look like in five years?

LINKS

Register for the 2025 AFIRE Annual Member Meeting Sept. 9-10 in NYC

https://www.afire.org/events/amm25/

Learn more about NYCEDC’s Business Development team

https://choose.nyc/

Register for AFIRE/NYCEDC Investor Summit

https://www.afire.org/uncategorized/amm25summitreg/

Watch the AFIRE POV series of investor interviews

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrtO-j6M9aS8Hr7DHeg562A8-HQrxi8o

Read the latest articles from Summit Journal Issue #18

https://www.afire.org/summit/

Access the episode webpage featuring links to audio-only platforms here:

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202514cast/

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson intro

01:23 Welcome back, Melissa Román Burch, COO of NYCEDC

01:48 AFIRE/NYCEDC Investor Summit Invitation

03:37 Pulse check: what’s happening in NYC?

06:51 How is NYC handling housing shortages?

12:57 How much will NYC change in the next 5 years?

16:14 What’s most exciting for institutional investors?

19:46 Is NYC just a financial center?

23:45 Connecting Brooklyn to the mainland

28:31 How are people reacting to the congestion pricing system?

33:17 What’s happening with green energy?

37:11 What can investors expect in NYC over the next decade?

41:30 Final remarks

Geopolitics is rewriting the rules for commercial real estate investors. Can understanding history’s patterns be the key to figuring out what’s coming next?

Who better to answer the question than Chair of War Studies at the U.S. Army War College, Michael Neiberg, who uses his expertise of Europe and the U.S. from 1914-1945 to offer valuable insights into today’s global challenges by drawing parallels with the early 20th century.

“What we're dealing with now is not the same as other time periods,” Neiberg explains when discussing some of the economic parallels of the 1930s, which can “lead you down some pretty terrifying places, if you let them.” Instead, Neiberg shares some comforting news: “We are in some ways reverting to the norm.”

This episode of the AFIRE podcast helps investors and strategists rethink their approaches amid a world that’s far less predictable than it once was.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

LINKS

Take the AFIRE H2 2025 investor survey www.afire.org/survey/h22025invite/

Register for the AFIRE Annual Member Meeting www.afire.org/events/amm25/

Watch the AFIRE POV series of investor interviews www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO…DHeg562A8-HQrxi8o

Read the latest articles from Summit Journal Issue #18 www.afire.org/summit/

Access the episode webpage featuring links to audio-only platforms here:

www.afire.org/podcast/202512cast/

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson intro

01:23 Meet Michael Neiberg, Chair of War Studies, US Army War College

02:23 How does today’s pullback compare to the 20th century?

05:52 How should investors handle less free global trade?

09:13 How have politics and economics connected?

11:38 Important lessons from early 20th-century tech

12:59 How is governance changing?

15:45 Does history show that communication is key?

We’ve entered a new era of geopolitics. From globalization and free trade stabilized by American soft power, we’re now in a more transactional period characterized by nation states weaponizing their economies with tariffs, a global leadership vacuum and greater competition among the superpowers. So should this affect cross-border investment strategies? And can earlier periods in history teach us lessons about what to expect in future?

Yes to both, says Jonathan Boff, who may be the perfect person to turn for guidance. Boff has a CV that straddles the domains of business and history, as a former investment banker who is now a professor of military history at the University of Birmingham.

“My instinct is that we need to be aware of over-catastrophizing too soon,” says Boff in conversation with AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson. Boff suggests looking for lessons in the period immediately after the First World War, when the world transitioned from global free trade to another era of tariffs and trade barriers. In addition, Boff and Branson discuss the dangers represented by a weaker, more politically-beholden Federal Reserve, the need for more positive economic strategies; and the ways investors can prepare for highly unpredictable global events.

LINKS

Jonathan Boff’s book, Haig’s Enemy: Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany’s War on the Western Front https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9780199670475&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs

Take the AFIRE H2 2025 investor survey https://www.afire.org/survey/h22025invite/

Register for the AFIRE Annual Member Meeting https://www.afire.org/events/amm25/

Watch the AFIRE POV series of investor interviews https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrtO-j6M9aS8Hr7DHeg562A8-HQrxi8o

Read the latest articles from Summit Journal Issue #18 https://www.afire.org/summit/

Access the episode webpage featuring links to audio-only platforms here:

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202512cast/

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson intro

00:53 Meet Jonathan Boff, Professor of Military History, University of Birmingham

01:46 What should investors focus on amid global conflicts?

05:11 How do we connect politics and global economic interests?

15:34 What can we expect from US-implemented tariffs?

20:38 What should investors know about unpredictable international markets?

26:35 How should investors go about trusting the Fed?

32:43 What most get wrong about military conflicts’ economic impact

Despite geopolitical uncertainty and trade tensions, the US economy remains strong, says our latest guest on the AFIRE podcast: Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi, the recipient of the Consensus Economics 2024 Forecast Accuracy Award. “So far, the data shows yellow flares everywhere,” Zandi observes. “But no red flares yet.”

In conversation with AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson, Zandi shares his views on the way trade tensions will affect the broader economy, as well as US commercial real estate specifically. The pair also discuss a forthcoming Moody’s study on the housing shortage, hotspots in the US CRE market and how ESG and DEI discussions are evolving under the new administration. The conversation concludes with Zandi worrying that the dissolution of Fed independence could set the stage for much higher inflation.

“I do think the economy is resilient,” Zandi says. “We should be able to navigate through and, you know, we could be in a very different place a year or two down the road.”

Access the episode webpage featuring links to audio-only platforms here:

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202511cast/

The US needs nearly 4 million homes. That’s a deficit that’s been decades in the making. Years’ worth of zoning restriction pile-ups, underbuilding, and policy interference have hindered the ability to plan, build, and maintain affordable homes across America.

“We're putting requirements in place before we have the foundational infrastructure in place to provide it,” says CEO of Up for Growth Mike Kingsella during the latest episode of the AFIRE podcast.

At the same time, the country’s energy infrastructure is straining to keep pace, not only with the increased demand in data centers to fuel AI, but also to supply energy at home.

So to solve the affordability and energy problem, AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson and Kingsella discuss how to untangle the legacy decisions that got the U.S. where it is in housing, and how to prevent the same pattern in energy.

Neville Rhone, Jr. is the co-founder and managing partner at Arc Capital Partners, a leading institutional real estate owner and investment manager. Arc is focussed on converting mixed-use properties instead of tearing down and building new. Rhone also is someone who’s poised to find opportunities in challenging environments.

So where are these opportunities hiding? ”Everything that we do is in the middle market,” says Rhone, who goes on to explain that the middle market is often overlooked. “Blackstone is not paying attention to it; Brookfield is not paying attention to it.” The middle market often is “too complicated for the smaller investors,” so they also miss out on great opportunities.

In Neville Rhone, Jr.’s compelling conversation with AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson, the two men discuss where the best investment opportunities are hiding in 2025—and why a fresh perspective on investments in this upcoming cycle is so beneficial.

Key Moments

00:00 AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson intro.

01:02 Branson introduces Neville Rhone, Jr. Managing Partner at Arc Capital Partners

02:12 Where are the best opportunities for attainable housing?

06:12 How does Arc approach infill urban areas and create more attainable market-rate housing?

11:07 How does Arc encourage thinking about unconventional investment opportunities in a challenging environment?

15:42 How does Rhone help investors understand that this middle-market approach is a wise, risk-adjusted approach?

26:24 Why should building owners care about sustainability in their investment approach?

29:43 Where are the opportunities hiding in 2025?

Brian Klinksiek thinks we’re turning a page to a new market in 2025. “Even with what’s happened with long interest rates, there’s so much other stuff,” says Klinksiek, the global head of research and strategy at LaSalle Investment Management. “We’ve got prices more in line with where bond markets are… we have valuations that have caught up with prices, the denominator effect that is resolved, you’ve got property market fundamentals improving for the beat-up sectors.”

The new market makes real estate investing more complex, according to Klinksiek. The task in 2025 involves selecting from a more extensive breakfast menu of options, similar to that of a New York diner—so-called, Klinksiek says, because while there’s a lot of choice, some of them are a little dodgy, and you certainly don’t want all of them. Making the correct selections on where to invest is more difficult when more sectors are returning to investability.

Take office, Klinksiek says. During the pandemic, the link broke down between office-using job creation and occupied square footage. “And what we see now is the beginning of it starting to reassert itself—the link is coming back.” Which means that Klinksiek expects people returning to office “will start to eat away at the mound of vacancies” in 2025. He also likes data centers in the short term, although he believes that innovation will limit the sector’s growth at some point in future.

Listen or watch the episode on your favorite platform at:

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202508cast/

Key Moments

00:00 AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson intro

01:24 How should investors approach CRE trends in 2025?

05:02 Will office surprise investors in 2025?

08:52 Will data centres continue to be the star player in CRE in 2025 despite scarcity?

The next five years are expected to bring groundbreaking tech advancements in augmented (AR) and virtual (VR) reality. Real estate—a traditionally unhurried adopter of new tech—isn’t immune to this shift, and while this could bring about new revenue streams for property owners, it also creates potential liabilities. Are real estate owners prepared?

To learn the answer, we consulted with Neil Mandt. In addition to being a speaker at the AFIRE Winter Conference, Mandt is a five-time Emmy winner and the founder & CEO of Digital Rights Management, a tech platform offering property owners risk analysis and licensing opportunities from digital media companies. Mandt warns real estate owners to start thinking about securing the digital rights of their property.

"Buildings are not the only real estate in the world," Mandt says on this episode of the AFIRE podcast, signalling the approach of a new age for property owners as augmented and virtual reality applications become more prevalent through society. AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson sat down with Neil Mandt to discuss digital media rights licensing and what that could mean for real estate owners and investors.

In 2024 commercial real estate investors were confronted with tremendous changes. What’s the biggest change that will surprise us in 2025—and how should the investment community adjust to those changes? That’s just one of the topics we tackle in the latest episode of our podcast series talking with commercial real estate experts about the year ahead.

Jim Costello is the Chief Economist for MSCI Real Assets—and someone who always has a measured and data-driven forecast of what’s going to happen in the US real estate market, especially as it pertains to cross-border investment.

“If people are not taking a dispassionate point of view…and taking a full look at the range of potential changes, they’re going to be shocked and surprised,” explains Costello. How will the new administration’s policies affect trade? Tariffs? Tax policies? Will they decrease regulatory burdens? And how will that affect inflation? “Those are real concerns,” says Costello. “But any policy change can cut two ways… there are other things that other types of investors are excited about”—and both Branson and Costello describe them in detail in this special mini-episode of the AFIRE podcast.

Other themes:

What are the surprising bets Jim Costello would make in 2025?

Why office could surprise us in the year ahead

How will migration patterns change in the US in 2025?

How will we get out of the problems in the office sector in the US? How will we solve the housing crisis? Will we see an escalating environment of global trade tensions getting in the way of cross-border investing? What do you do if you can’t count on dropping interest rates?

Spencer Levy is the global client strategist and senior economic advisor at CBRE—and someone who’s never afraid to tell you what he thinks. In the latest mini-episode to post in our series about commercial real estate in 2025, he answers these questions and more.

“I think the big thing is that for the last ten years, a lot of people in our business did a lot of successful, profitable deals because cap rates were compressing,” Levy says. “Cap rates have now expanded… so next year, and probably for the next several years, we’re going to see who are the really good real estate operators.”

Other themes:

- Why it’s going to be more of a sub-sub-market selection game

- Why office will surprise us in 2025

- Why appraisers and regulators need more love in 2025

Watch the video or listen to the audio episode for answers.