Many leaders believe this is the key to becoming fully immune to all future risks—but evading risk forever is just unrealistic. Risk plays a big part in commercial real estate. To thrive, it’s crucial to adopt a proactive approach to manage risks effectively. So how can commercial real estate investors thrive in a time of such incredible volatility, change and blindness? How do we thrive amid constant uncertainty and exposure to risk? On this new episode of the AFIRE Podcast, AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson sits down with General Stan McChrystal (Ret.), CEO and Chairman of the McChrystal Group, to discuss the risks facing investors during this time of heightened uncertainty in commercial real estate. As a retired four-star general in the US Army, General McChrystal translates his military training to educate leaders in commercial real estate on how to employ a proactive approach to managing risks instead of steering clear of possible failures. There’s this “unwillingness to be realistic about risk,” says McChrystal. “As a consequence, when you try to mitigate risk to zero, it takes so long that you’ve priced yourself out of the option.” In this riveting conversation about risk, General McChrystal walks us through what’s considered effective communication, how avoiding mistakes amounts to the first blunder, and how to fight back against our inclination to avoid risk. https://www.afire.org/podcast/202403cast

Technology can be enormously disruptive to commercial real estate. Remote work is responsible for the global devaluation of office properties. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already changing the way we live and work. So what will be the effect of AI on institutional investment strategies? https://www.afire.org/podcast/202402cast/ To get at some answers, AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson talked to one of his favorite futurist investors, Jeffrey Kanne, president and CEO of National Real Estate Advisors, an AFIRE member firm and investment manager specializing in a build-to-core strategy, developing and managing large-scale, urban commercial and multifamily projects for its institutional client accounts. “The advent of AI as a technological tool is going to greatly increase the rate of change,” Kanne tells Branson. “I’m very nervous about where you can place money and think it’s safe.” The best opportunity for investment, Kanne believes, is in data centers that provide consistent power and temperature-controlled environments for the Googles, OpenAIs and Microsofts of the world. With that in mind, Kanne and Branson discuss how investors can enter the data center market. “It’s not rocket science,” Kanne says, while outlining potential pitfalls and barriers to entry for new operators. “It’s incumbent on all of us as investors to think about what the world will be like in five years, ten years, fifteen years,” Kanne says. “When I look ahead, data centers are a good place to focus on.”

Cognitive dissonance abounds in commercial real estate. On the one hand, the Fed is citing strong employment figures and predicting a soft landing. https://www.afire.org/podcast/202401cast/ And yet, the commercial real estate industry is navigating serious issues in the office sector. Will office distress trigger bank failures? Will those bank failures affect the broader economy? When will interest rates go down? And when they do, will the Fed cut enough to benefit commercial real estate?  In his conversation with AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi sounds off on all these topics and more. “If I was at the Fed, I would argue: let’s cut rates now,” Zandi says. “Obviously there’s a lot of uncertainty, but I think the most likely scenario is June.” Plus: Zandi talks AI, China and other geopolitical risks, and how he expects the upcoming US election will affect market volatility. Listen now on your favorite podcast platform, or watch on the AFIRE YouTube channel.

On the tail end of the hottest year on human record, it’s clear that climate change is already here—and not slowing down. In the years ahead, the effects of climate change will pose real hardships for billions of people around the world. The challenge of climate change is clear, especially for real estate, as explained in the first of this special two-part series. Now, in this second and final entry of the latest AFIRE Podcast—inspired by the special climate change section featured in the most recent issue of AFIRE’s award-winning Summit Journal, and sponsored by the global ESG consultancy, AccountAbility—AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson and Summit Journal Editor-in-Chief Benjamin van Loon propose that climate change can also represent opportunity for forward-thinking investors. Climate migration will require new housing in resilient geographies, creating demand for fast and efficient construction methods. Extreme weather and other disasters will highlight the need for more robust building techniques. And an historically hotter world also could usher in carbon markets that use Web 3.0 to better reflect the actual cost of assets that contribute to global warming. (Watch the video version of this episode on the AFIRE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Hxizapwf0&ab_channel=AFIRE) Featuring interviews with: Jacques Gordon, Executive in Residence, MIT Center for Real Estate Bob Geiger, Executive Director, Partner Engineering & Science Parag Khanna, Founder and CEO, Climate Alpha Zhengzhen Tan, Research Scientist, MIT Center for Real Estate

The year 2023 has been the hottest year in recent record—and it will likely be the coldest year for the rest of our lives. In the face of these record-breaking numbers and climate events, 2023 also proved to be a year that real estate investors lead the charge in confronting the constantly evolving challenges of climate change—including insurance rate hikes, migration and population changes, and the irrational implications derived from “the tragedy of the horizon.” In this, the first of a special two-part episode—inspired by the special climate change section featured in the most recent issue of AFIRE’s award-winning Summit Journal, and sponsored by the global ESG consultancy, AccountAbility—AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson and Summit Journal Editor-in-Chief Benjamin van Loon take viewers and listeners through a conversation with the industry’s top thought leaders to explore how investors can prepare for the impending intersection of climate change, global investment, and the future of real estate. (Watch the video version of this episode on the AFIRE YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWYO08tKnZA&ab_channel=AFIRE) Featuring interviews with (in order): Bob Geiger, Executive Director, Partner Engineering & Science Hans Nordby, Head of Research and Analytics, Lionstone Investments Jacques Gordon, Executive in Residence, MIT Center for Real Estate Parag Khanna, Founder and CEO, Climate Alpha

Despite the overwrought headlines and apocalyptic economic forecasts, office buildings still matter. At the same time, the use of office is changing and an increasing need for sustainability requires all office owners and developers to alter their approach. https://www.afire.org/podcast/202311cast/ According to Anthony Malkin of Empire State Realty Trust, the altered approach won’t be easy or business-as-usual, but there is a compelling future. Office buildings matter, including the ones that are already built. The use of office is changing dramatically, and office owners are now required to alter their approach to the business. Sustainability and decreasing carbon is now a given. Flexibility for tenants no longer just part of a wish list. Anthony Malkin, President, Chairman, and CEO of Empire State Realty Trust, joins the AFIRE Podcast to discuss how, despite the overwrought headlines and challenge of changing existing office buildings to fit the times there is a compelling future, even if it isn’t easy or business-as-usual. As Malkin explains, if you can make it with the century-old Empire State Building, you can make it anywhere.

Every headline suggest that our cities are in serious trouble. How will that impact real estate investors, what can be done about it, and what is the future of our cities? https://www.afire.org/podcast/202310cast/ In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Ed Glaeser—the Fred & Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at Harvard University—wrote of the future of New York following the pandemic, stating: “The economic future of the city that never sleeps depends on embracing this shift from vocation to recreation and ensuring that New Yorkers with a wide range of talents want to spend their nights downtown, even if they are spending their days on Zoom. We are witnessing the dawn of a new kind of urban area: the Playground City.” Glaeser, the author of New York Times best-selling books Triumph of the City and Survival of the City, recently down with AFIRE Podcast host Gunnar Branson to discuss how the state of cities in America has changed dramatically and what leaders need to do now to face and overcome the challenges of today.

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.

AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson recently sat down with Jacques Gordon of LaSalle Investment Management at a partner event for Informa’s Global Property Market Forum for a candid conversation about the future of global real estate investment. https://www.afire.org/podcast/202221cast/ As Global Strategist for LaSalle, Gordon has a long tenure of leadership and strategy for global institutional investment. This discussion, hosted by LaSalle and designed for institutional investors, will likely be one of Gordon’s last public conversations before he retires from LaSalle in January 2023 to become the first “Executive-in-Residence” at MIT beginning in Spring 2023. The wide-ranging conversation, a special year-end episode of the AFIRE Podcast cast, covers the current state of the real estate market and future strategies as the global real estate investment industry rewrites some of its best practices for the years ahead. “Real estate isn’t something you do quarter-by-quarter,” Gordon says. “It generally is a five- to ten-year bet.” In this context, smart money wins, especially as many countries move to a highly-leveraged approach to cash flows.

Neil Shearing, Group Chief Economist for Capital Economics, joins the AFIRE Podcast with Gunnar Branson to talk about how global economics are “resetting” CRE markets. https://www.afire.org/podcast/202220cast/ The most recent quarter of 2022 has been a constant process of downgraded expectations for commercial real estate investors and managers. War in Europe, persistent inflation, and supply chain challenges are only part of a perfect storm that is totally disrupting the global balance of the past 3 decades. If the volatility of the present continues, what global forces will investment leaders need to track for the months ahead? Neil Shearing, Group Chief Economist for Capital Economics, an independent economic research business based in London, sat down in November 2022 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson to discuss his latest insights on how global economics are forcing a reset of CRE markets.

(Featuring Michael Cooper, President, Dream Unlimited) https://www.afire.org/podcast/202219cast/ The practice and expectations of investing across all industries is undergoing major upheaval and the key to stability will mean looking beyond profit for profit’s sake. While most think of disruption as an effect of technological change, this one is a product of environmental and social concerns. In the face of imminent threats from climate change, income inequality, and increasingly unaffordable housing, real estate investors and developers are being forced to think beyond mere profit to the roles their organizations can play in addressing these challenges. In this episode, Michael Cooper, President and Chief Responsible Officer of Dream Unlimited, joins AFIRE CEO Gunnar Branson on the AFIRE Podcast to discuss impact investing and how it can provide a disruption-proof strategy. Findings are based on the recent article Mr. Cooper wrote for AFIRE Summit Journal.