The AFIRE Podcast

A range of fundamental change is forcing real estate investors to closely examine how, where, and why they are investing. The change is not complete and investors have to learn how to adapt even as they don’t have a clear formula for how it might be done.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202309cast/

On this episode of the AFIRE Podcast, Mandi Wedin, Founder and CEO of Feroce Real Estate Advisors, draws on her experience growing up in Alaska to help investors learn a “frontier mentality” to navigate and thrive in an unpredictable environment.

She sat down on May 5, 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to explore how leaders in real estate can surf the waves of change coming from ESG, Demographics, AI, and the Metaverse. Not unlike dealing with bears in the wild, preparation, flexibility, and acceptance are crucial to surviving and thriving the challenges to come.

Hans Nordby, the Head of Analytics and Research for Lionstone Investments, explains how demographic changes are transforming the construction, location, and value of commercial real estate across the board.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202308cast/

The challenges of inflation, interest rates, and back to the office can be overwhelming, but changing demographic forces may be the biggest story of our time.

How will downtowns like San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, DC recover from their considerable challenges? What will become of the preponderance of obsolete office buildings? How will people house themselves?

It’s all changing in real time—and so is what people want.

According to Nordby, mixed-use will generally outperform—because that’s what people want.

He sat down on May 4, 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to discuss how real estate will navigate the waves of demographic change in the years ahead.

Matt Pomeroy, Director of Valuation, Reporting, and Analytics for Chatham Financial, discusses the challenge of determining accurate valuations when the market is essentially frozen in place. Without comparable trades, how can investors know what they have?

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202307cast/

Fast rising interest rates and fast shrinking demand for office space is a significant challenge for real estate portfolios. Bid/ask spreads have widened to the point that only the most distressed sales can take place. Valuation of real estate values has always depended on comparable trades but what happens when there are almost no trades?

Public real estate markets suggest that values have dropped by more than 20%, but in private markets, it is difficult to determine exactly what a portfolio may be worth at this point in time. What is an investor to do then, besides wait?

According to Matt Pomeroy, Director of Valuation, Reporting, and Analytics for Chatham Financial, it’s “ill-advised” to simply do nothing.“

Pomeroy sat down on April 11, 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to discuss how the industry can find new and better ways to adjust values without comparable transactions.

Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR Realty and Board Member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, discusses how 20% of extant office buildings may now be obsolete in the post-COVID era and how investors can transition to a new “regime” of real estate investing.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202306cast/

Real estate is going through a significant transition beyond the usual ups and downs of the economic cycle. The risks are changing. The opportunities are changing. And office buildings in particular—historically favored by institutional investors looking for safe, long-term investments—are changing, too.

When it comes to office: How can investors transition their investment asset management strategy to cross the chasm from where we were just a few years ago to where we will be over the next decade?

Scott Rechler, CEO of RXR Realty and Board Member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, sat down in April 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to talk about how he is working through his own portfolio to find ways to meet the future on its own terms.

Depending on the asset, Rechler says, everything from conversion to disposition must be considered, and whether an office remains an office, or becomes something else altogether, crossing the chasm to the future will not be easy. But success will start with transparency and meaningful leadership.

Bill Ferguson, President and Carrie Nowicki, COO of the Ferguson Charitable Foundation Centers for Leadership Excellence, discuss how real estate can bring an entire generation of racially and ethnically diverse students into the industry.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202305cast/

The Centers for Leadership Excellence (CLE), sponsored by the Ferguson Charitable Foundation, has developed partnerships with fourteen colleges nationwide to provide scholarships, mentoring, and internships while developing real estate related curriculums in those colleges.

The real estate industry as it stands today is not as diverse as it could be, and companies are missing out on powerful potential talent. The program is focused on historically black colleges and universities as well as those with highly diverse student bodies such as Howard University, University of Virginia, Baruch College, and Arizona State University.

Bill Ferguson, President, and Carrie Nowicki, COO, of the Centers for Leadership Excellence sat down in March 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson, discussing their conviction that diversity in real estate is essential for the future.

Parag Khanna, Founder & CEO of Climate Alpha and international bestselling author of seven books, including Move and Connectography, discusses how climate change, migration, and sophisticated data science can and should change investment strategy.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202304cast/

Beyond the immediate crisis of inflation, interest rate increases, and even bank failures, are far more impactful threats to investment strategy. Where people are going thanks to increasing climate pressures will impact asset values not just in the far future but within the timeline of existing investments. What should investors do to better invest and better protect their existing portfolios?

Parag Khanna, Founder and CEO of Climate Alpha, an AI-powered analytics platform that drives future-proof real estate strategies, recently with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to discuss how climate change, migration, and sophisticated data science can—and should—change investment strategy for years to come, as the world now faces some of the most drastic climate challenges seen in this epoch.

Ethan Penner, CEO of Mosaic Real Estate Investors, reflects on the current landscape of real estate dislocation and how investors need to change their understanding of risks and opportunities.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202303cast/

How should I invest now—in this market?

Will distress create meaningful discounts?

If I buy now, am I catching a falling knife?

Is the conservative deal of the past still conservative today?

As real estate investors, we all face an interesting, uncertain—and perhaps even weird—real estate market right now, and there are a lot of questions.

Ethan Penner, CEO of Mosaic Real Estate Investors, sat down on March 7, 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson, challenging conventional thinking based on what has worked on the past—and presenting practical insights about how investors can avoid thinking mistakes and navigate the more challenging aspects of the current (and coming) real estate cycle.

Michael Mandel, Co-Founder and CEO of CompStak, a marketplace for CRE data, discusses how the use of data is (and is not) changing the practice of global investing.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202302cast/

When it comes to big data, alternative data sets, data science, and analytics—how do we know if real estate investors approaching new data resources in the right way?

How is data changing the game and how can organizations make better use of it? Can we better understand the value of any given asset by counting the number of trees nearby? Can that replace the data fundamentals around leasing and sales that we have relied on for decades? Or is this simply an expansion of augmentation of what we already do?

Michael Mandel, Co-Founder and CEO of CompStak, sat down in January 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to talk about how investors need to combine a strong grasp of fundamental data with the more exotic new sources of insight coming to market.

How should investors better discern the quality and the meaning of data as they compete in a fast moving and volatile real estate landscape? Listen now for more insights.

Jim Costello, Chief Economist for MSCI Real Estate, discusses the state of real estate investing in 2023 and the challenges of a very different economic climate.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/ep202301/

Optimism seems to be rising in real estate firms despite the considerable economic and geopolitical headwinds investors face in 2023, but is that justified?

Even if the Federal Reserve lets up in the next few months, it is difficult to believe that the world will return to “normal” this year.

Jim Costello, Chief Economist for MSCI Real Estate, sat down on February 2, 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to talk about how the environment investors face in 2023 is fundamentally different than 2022. COVID may be less of an issue, but serious challenges remain, whether it’s inflation, supply chain issues, dramatic change in the use of office properties, and housing shortages—2023 will not be an easy ride.

How will climate change affect the continued growth of the sun belt? What kind of distress are we likely to see? What are the opportunities and what are the costs?

While the real estate industry has long understood the need for data, it still struggles with connecting information to decision making. New strides in data science could change that.

https://www.afire.org/podcast/202222cast/

According to Brian Biggs, Vice President of Research for Grosvenor Americas, advances in data availability and data science techniques are bringing new transparency to historically opaque real estate markets.

On this episode of the AFIRE Podcast, recorded in November 2022, Biggs joins podcast host and AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson to talk about how a data science approach to real estate analysis can reveal fundamental relationships between building-specific features, amenities in the built environment, sociodemographic factors, and real estate pricing at a scale previously unthinkable.