December 5, 2020    10 min read

2021 Will be a Boom Year for Real Estate

Here is a thought piece from your Real Estate Philosopher that I am confident you will “like” even if you think I am dead wrong. In brief, I will stick my neck out to say: 2021 Will Be A Boom Year for Real Estate.

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November 19, 2020

Time to Look Seriously at Retail! | Announcing our Win/Win Retail HUB

Retail to many is a location where the retailer takes products from a producer of the products, puts them on a shelf, marks them up 50%, and customers come in and buy them at the higher price. The retailer gets the markup (less its costs). I would call that business "Old Retail." But then there is a completely different kind of Retail, a location where the owner of a brand, or something that people need or desire, has a competitive advantage. The most obvious is an Apple Store, but there are many more, and you know it when you see it since it was packed with customers (before COVID) and will be again (after COVID). Technically this kind of business is also Retail, isn't it? But it is hardly struggling. I have coined the phrase, which you have seen in my prior writings, "Power Niche" to describe businesses that derive their competitive strength from a niche that they have ownership of. I would call this business "Power Niche Retail."

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May 24, 2020

Distressed Debt Acquisitions? Not So Fast…

My point was that anyone could "find" a deal, and it hardly leverages your skills or talents to look at the same stuff everyone else is looking at – and do you really think you can outperform on a long-term basis when you are looking at the same screen that everyone else is seeing at the same time.

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April 19, 2020

Why This Will be a “Big V Recovery”

I am old enough to have been in a relatively senior position in the real estate world during the Global Financing Crisis (the “GFC”) and the pandemic today (the “COVID Pandemic”). In my position – then as Managing Partner of Adler & Stachenfeld – and now as Chairman -- I have friends, clients, contacts, and relationships with many of the highest level players throughout every corner of the real estate world. This extremely wide lens allows me a unique composite view into what everyone is doing, thinking, wondering about, planning, etc.

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January 19, 2017

The End Game for Co-Working

I have been watching – and our firm has been participating in – the co-working trend. It started with Regus when it was founded in 1989 but didn’t really go anywhere until WeWork captured everyone’s imagination with its trendy platform. Since then, numerous competitors have entered the market, each with its own twist to appeal to different parties.

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September 1, 2015

Peter Drucker: Creating Customers

Peter Drucker - one of the great intellectual thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries - asks a question: "What is the purpose of a business" Have you ever stopped to ask yourself that question? Or, perhaps more importantly, have you ever asked yourself what is the purpose of "your" business?

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