Just finished work on the deck for our new fund*, and thought I’d share a “philosophy” slide of which I’m particularly proud. Veteran investors / sponsors will notice that our way of thinking about deals differs dramatically from those of most real estate private equity shops. For example, as you will see below, we refuse,

If you have a lot of capital, you should mostly ignore conventional retirement advice. Your standard retirement planner assumes that you are going to build up a portfolio of assets over your working life, then liquidate that portfolio to fund your retirement. Because you will need to begin to liquidate at a certain date (say,

Lately, have seen a bunch of vacant apartment buildings come on the market for sale. Normal investors don’t buy vacant buildings, because banks generally won’t lend on them. So, these vacant buildings are being marketed to cash buyers who would presumably renovate and re-tenant them. Since a sale strategy that dramatically limits the pool of

One of the mysteries of the present growth cycle is how rents have continued to grow at a rate exceeding wages. One partial / possible explanation is that, in contrast to previous growth cycles, the advent of US-based fracking has kept energy prices surprisingly low, leaving more cash in the pockets of potential renters. So,

As we look at making deals late in this expansion phase, I have been doing a lot of thinking about what, exactly, we risk by buying high. After all, we are (effectively) permanent holders, so it’s not exactly clear why we should care about prices going down after we acquire an asset. But I am