April 8, 2024 3 min read
(NOT) Predicting Interest Rates?
This is a quick article – very quick but maybe useful nonetheless…. And to be super clear at the outset, I am NOT trying to predict interest rates, which I believe is a fool’s errand. Here is my thinking: The ten-year treasury is at 4.416% as of today when I wrote this.
Read MoreFebruary 20, 2024 5 min read
PB&J = Bridge Lending and Private Equity
Everyone – and I do mean pretty much everyone – likes peanut butter and jelly (unless, of course, they’re allergic to peanuts). There is something about the way these two foods go together that is just pleasing. My sense is that bridge lending and private equity – at least right now – go together as easily as PB&J.
Read moreJanuary 3, 2024 6 min read
Predictions for 2024
Artificial Intelligence – despite all the hype -- will be close to irrelevant, except as a useful tool that saves time. People will start to realize that it is not a game-changer. It is not a new business; it is just a new way of doing business. I called it a Glorified Spell Check in a prior article, i.e. it can catch errors but will not create value for you. I do caution that even though AI won’t give you a competitive advantage, not having it at your fingertips when your competition has it will hurt you since it will provide some cost-savings and other internal benefits. Notably, Bill Gates’s famous quote is apropos here; namely, that people tend to overestimate what will happen in one year but underestimate what will happen in ten years.
Read MoreDecember 26, 2023 8 min read
Predictions -- How Accurate Have I Been?
I have some predictions about 2024 coming to you next week, but before I serve up that article I thought I would take a moment to assess how accurate I have been in my past predictions, as that would be relevant whether you would be open to considering my future predictions.
Read MoreOctober 30, 2023 4 min read
Equity (Not Debt) Is The Place For Equity Players
Over the past year-ish, many equity players are moving – or have moved – into debt. Generally, the view is something like this: Why should I do equity, when I can do equity returns with less risk in debt? Yet this point of view is, in my opinion, significantly flawed for several reasons:
Read MoreFebruary 7, 2023 5 min read
Dear Mayor Adams
I am one of the last lonely bulls on NYC office. (Almost) everyone else thinks I don’t have a clue or that I have just lost my marbles. In addition, I am proud that New York always finds a way to not only survive but to thrive and reinvent itself for greater success, now for close to 500 years. Finally, I love New York – just like you do. All of this, I believe, entitles me to suggest to you that allowing government employees to work from home would be a mistake.
Read More About Our Letter to Mayor AdamsJanuary 23, 2023 10 min read
Predictions (and Recommendations) for 2023
We all know what clickbait is, and it usually (almost always) relies on a prediction of a dramatic calamity or, the opposite, a dramatic updraft of wonderfulness. In financial markets, the goal is to exacerbate fear until people get bored with that, and then switch to greed (when the bottom is reached), and then go the other way. Indeed, how many articles are titled with words like ‘record,’ ‘largest,’ ‘highest,’ ‘lowest,’ ‘biggest,’ etc? I am going to do the opposite and, as always, say what I think is accurate rather than entice with dramatic predictions, and in a nutshell, my prediction is that for real estate in general:
Read Our Predictions and Recommendations for 2023November 30, 2022 10 min read
A Suggestion Regarding Interest Rates & Inflation
To state something up front, I am NOT predicting interest rates or inflation here. I like to think I am pretty smart – but only smart enough to know I have no more insight into that than anyone else. I mean, even that genius guy Nicholas Taleb got his head handed to him when he predicted that interest rates were going to rise in 2010, and boy did he get that wrong. My thinking here is, therefore, not a prediction, but instead a suggestion of how to handle the current situation if you are in the real estate industry
Read Our Suggestions for Interest Rates and InflationSeptember 2, 2022 6 min read
Rumors of the Demise of Office Are Greatly Exaggerated
Don’t ask me why I was doing this, but I was recently comparing the market capitalization of WeWork to SL Green. WeWork’s is a little over $3B, and SL Green’s a shade under $3B – they are getting close to equal as time goes on.
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