i read this afternoon that henry paulson is talking about creating another RTC (Resolution Trust Corporation) type entity. I was a consultant to the RTC and started and ran what was called a SAMDA (Standard Asset Management & Disposition) office. while i was happy to be involved, as a taxpayer, it was an insult. that agency made things up as they went along and the absolute waste of money was incredible; that coupled with the fire sale mentality of trying to solve the problems quickly...well, i know that there were some who benefited but again the U.S. taxpayer footed the bill for the problems created by, at that time, poor underwriting and too aggressive lending. i for one am getting tired of the government bailing out business failures in the name of the 'greater good.' if you and i owned a business and we lost money, well, we'd just have to go out of business, it seems pretty simple to me. and maybe, that is what is going on. but there must be a better way.
i don't know about you but i feel that the U.S. government is using my tax dollars in ways that i don't approve of. they're desperate actions designed to 'save the U.S. economy from complete disaster." but the U.S. economy is a free market system where anyone can 'make it' (especially in NY) and it think that too much interference is not a good thing. from those people that i've talked with, it's likely that this week, while a triple play is not the end of the 'marquee' news in the financial community because we still don't know all the bad things that are behind closed doors and secret balance sheets. to have your job pulled out from under you without any real warning is not a pleasant experience, especially if you've been doing a good job over as much as 10 years or more. seeing people stream out of their offices carrying no more than a single box or a backpack which represents their personal effects was a sad but vivid reminder that nothing really is as it seems and that we need to always prepare ourselves for the unexpected. it's why building your own network, your own community is just as important (maybe more so) during 'normal' times so that if something should happen you're not starting from scratch. that, plus the good feeling one gets from helping others. that is what linkedin and other communities are all about to me, helping each other, but maybe i'm naive. anyway, sometimes being naive is a blessing.
Henry Z. Steinway, the last Steinway to run the piano-making company his family started in 1853, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan. he was 93. i've never owned a Steinway (the baby grand that I bought in 1987 and is now living with my son in Chicago is a Tokai). i always wanted to have a Steinway. i remember first playing one and feeling the heavy action. but the one Steinway experience I'll never forget was walking into Steinway Hall on 57th Street in New York and a very kind salesperson took me downstairs to the place where they keep the big boys, the pianos that visiting concert players can choose from for their gig. there they were, just all together in one big room, some with covers on them and some just naked. the salesperson directed me to a few, saying "Try this one, so and so uses this whenever he performs in New York." but the one that really shook me up was the piano that Arthur Rubenstein used. it was a Hamburg Model D. i asked, "Are your sure it's okay?" and he just smiled. I opened up the cover, sat down and hit a full C chord with octave bass. i almost jumped off the bench. it was such a powerful sound and feel. I played just that one chord and close the cover and got up and just walked away feeling that this was a spiritual moment. Steinway is one of those 'category killer' brand names that have lasted over time. it was a family business, run with quality control and integrity: Henry started in the factory, building pianos, just like the other members of the Steinway family. on our industry, starting in the 'factory', on a building site and learning the real estate business, brick or beam by beam is the old-fashioned way. but there's no substitute for knowing the essence of what makes the 'real' real estate business tick. i think it must hold true for almost any industry.
the news that the engineer of the train involved in the Los Angeles area train wreck that killed at least 25 people was texting and missed signals is horrible. it's unconscionable and it's unacceptable (and very sad). of course, now the authorities have enacted immediate rules prohibiting such things. but the damage, oh such waste of lives, is done. but several years ago, a good industry friend of mine, died in a car accident when it's reported that he was using his blackberry while driving. please, people: there is nothing that important that cannot wait until you're in a safe place and just like the advice I gave to my sons about not riding with someone who has been drinking, I'd make the same recommendation about someone who sends or checks emails while they're driving. more and more places seem to be enacting legislation forbidding use of mobile phones while driving unless they're 'hands-free' but, as we all know (and can see) there are a lot of people who don't believe rules are made for them. it's one thing that they are willing to put their own life at risk (and those of their passengers) but they're also putting our lives at risk. defensive driving has never been more important.
Private Equity International is hosting is annual Emerging Managers Forum in London
on November 4-5. Feedback from their events has always been very positive
i must admit that i have never read the 'terms and conditions' that i agree to when i'm doing certain things on the web. do you know anyone who has? i'm sure they contain language that you agree to have them or others that they sell or trade their lists with barrage you with stuff, solicitations or whatnot. i had somewhat of a similar experience this past summer. after many years of happy motoring with T-Mobile i got a new phone/blackberry with AT&T. i started getting unsolicited phone calls soliciting me for something; i started getting phone calls from Aunt Minerva trying to find someone (i could never understand what she said in her messages) who evidently recently had had the same mobile phone number as me. i called AT&T and complained. they said they were sorry (why can't people just do the right thing instead of falling back on apologizing) and click some button so people who were calling Minerva (including some lawyers) would not bother me anymore. as far as the solicitation calls: they said i had not asked to have the "No Call" capability turned on. btw, when i bought the phone, no one even mentioned this. so after asking them how could they operate like this i just said, 'turn it on." so that didn't work and i had to call them back again and the next person i spoke with said that it had not been turned on. so much for customer service. but what i'm really talking about here is disclosure and transparency in marketing. there are firms that operate in a sneaky type way. let's say you buy something from them or sign up for an online publication. they add you to their solicitation lists and you start getting regular emails, sometimes as many as two per week offering you another one of their products or services. clearly lists are big business as they always have been and junk mail, whether it's paper in your mailbox or what amounts to spam in your inbox are just, to me, unacceptable ways of doing business. do companies that barrage you with emails think that you'll hold them in higher esteem? i just don't get it.
I was cleaning out some old business card binders this week, from 2000 and saw a number of them were commercial real estate and other tangentially related technology companies. i know some are still operating but haven't taken the time to check them out. thought those of you who were in the business then would enjoy a little stroll down tech-boom lane:
1. propidex.com
2. jobsite.com
3. darwin.net
4. teligent.com
5. workspeed.com
6. avidexchange.com
7. managestar.com
8. electricstreets.com
9. enn.net (elevator news network)
10. virtualpremise.com
11. ebuyxpress.com
12. realwired.com
13. captiger.com
14. zethus.com
15. netfish.com
16. offices2share.com
17. capitalengine.com
18. rescapgroup.com
19. monsterdaata.com
20. servicechannel.com
21. workspeed.com
22. dreamlogik.com
23. corrigo.com
24. auctionwatch.com
25. ibuilding.com
26. therealm.com
27. cypresscommunications.com
28. nextlink.com
i remember in those days i heard a friend, chris hartung, say at a conference, "there goes another company that claims they can boil the ocean." i don't know if chris originated that saying but i've always attributed it to him. chris and others, as well as myself with creol.com were passionate about how technology could and would make us more efficient and change the CRE landscape. clearly, most of us were ahead of the curve or as they say, on the bleeding edge. but as i run into those who experienced that period of time, trying to gain traction, users and subscribers if believe we all feel better for having tried it. now, both those survivors and those new companies who are taking advantage of both the adoption of applications and the younger generations in our industry, are contributing greatly to more transparency, more efficiency, more connectivity and more news, just the way it was supposed to be.
some notes forwarded to me by Norm Kranzdorf from the ICSC Capital Markets Seminar in New York last week that was attended by 400 people:
-MetLife is still doing whole loans in the 50-60% LTC – Loan To Actual Cost – not to value.
-Most speakers did not see a turn around until the 2nd or 3dr Quarter of 2009 and into the 4th.
-Bank of Ireland was the only one admitting to making large construction loans with lots of conditions such as to a well-know developer with a substantial balance sheet.
-Mezz loans are being priced as if they were equity with a due date. Pro-formas are being used with a very conservative exit cap rate.
-Most participants are focused on primary markets only and many are sticking to the northeast from Boston to DC and Texas and the northwest.
-All pro-formas are using lower rents than todays and lowering renewal rates under the option rents.
-Many buyers are concentrating on buying B notes as they can get a higher return than on a new hard asset deal. It is paper vs. hard assets. Returns range from 285 bps above treasuries to 1200 above depending on risk tolerance. Sellers are allowing long due diligence when you look at these.
-Many people are talking to the “special servicers” for deals.
-There are some bargains if you can get to the “kick out bucket” of the issuers that had to hold them when they did a CMBS.
-One JV participant said that his latest apartment JV was for $36.5 MM which required him to invest 30% of the equity using 70% debt. Pari-passu on the 30% on the pref but profits over that started at 90/10.
-Ground up deals are the hardest to get done because the construction loans are hard to find and all have very difficult terms and guarantees. Permanent loans now have more carve outs with some personal guarantees required depending on the developer. Potential construction lenders should be consulted before getting involved in to-be-built projects.
Where will I be?
Sept. 22-30: New York
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference
(t) Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real
Nov. 12-13: New York to moderate a panel on "Asset Transformation Case Studies) at the fourth annual PERE Forum (Private Equity Real Estate).
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sunday Update
Hi. Sorry for sending this out again. I got some feedback that the font was too big and the CREOPoint link didn't work. I've tried to fix both. Thanks for bearing with me as I learn how to use this service.
Steve
There were no less than six commercial real estate events going on in New York this past week. I guess organizers saw it as a window of sorts or tried to create a window. Other than the proven or niche events, from reports I received, the others struggled to attract numbers and calibre of people they promoted being able to do. But, notwithstanding, I had a great week. The Investment and Finance seminar that RealShares ran was well attended. When I took the 'attendance' of the audience prior to starting the session I was moderating it indicated about 45% to be owner/operator/developers, another good chunk were brokers and finance types and then there were a few 'others' (which I didn't have time to inquire about). We got good feedback on our panel and it was due to preparing for it and having knowledgeable panelists who answered questions directly. I have to blow my own horn here just a little as the success of any panel also has to do with the moderator and if there's one thing I know how to do it's moderate a panel. I ran into a lot of people I knew and hadn't seen in a while both at this event and at Real Capital Analytics rooftop reception at their building at 139 Fifth Avenue. So it's clear that everyone is 'back to school'.
Here are some of the things that I heard this week:
1. "We're sitting on a lot of cash right now. Our biggest challenge is deciding when we should start deploying in scale. We just don't know." Mike Fascitelli, Vornado Realty Trust.
2. "Terrorists are not going to do anything against the U.S. before the election. They don't want a woman in office and they don't want to give the Republicans more reason to play the "terrorism" card."
3. The diversity of cities around the world that are seeing global capital investment in real estate are expanding.
4. The U.S. is the biggest exporter of commercial real estate property capital worldwide.
5. In 2007, the number of commercial property transactions in Asia surpassed the U.S. for the first time.
6. Seller financing is coming back in a big way.
7. U.S. office buildings bought by foreign investors has almost doubled in 3Q08 compared to 1Q and 2Q 2008.
Seven years ago on Thursday, I was driving to work in California. My father who lives in Florida called my wife and asked her where I was, knowing that I might be anywhere. She told him and then called me. I turned on the radio and heard that two planes had flown into the World Trade Towers. I don’t know if I’m alone but to a New Yorker like me when I heard those words I thought, “Oh, some small planes hit the TV/Radio towers on top of the WTC One and/or Two. It was only when I got to the office that I saw on a fuzzy TV that had been set up what had really happened. To this day, it is hard to believe that this could and did happen. The loss of life and the injuries that were suffered too tough to think about. But we cannot forget. Sadly, the long, drawn-out process by which a decision was made to rebuild on that site has been embarrassing for the U.S. If this had happened in London, how long do you think it would have taken to build: my guess is 18 months. But we had led a sheltered life in the U.S. for so many years and even now I get a sense that day in and day out we may consider ourselves safe again. On Tuesday I had a meeting at 195 Broadway which was the former HQ of AT&T (which which used to be called The American Telephone and Telegraph Company). I got there early and walked around the block which puts one right at the World Trade Center site. I stood off to the side for a few moments thinking back to August 2001 when my son and I saw a concert one beautiful evening on the stage in the WTC plaza. Prior to the music starting I elbowed Kevin and said, "Look up. Can you believe how big these buildings are. It's an amazing feat." That recent and vivid exposure to the buildings was why it was, and in some ways is, difficult for me to fathom their crumbling so quickly. I don't know why I'd never explored it but I stopped in to St. Pauls Chapel. They have some very moving exhibits and was also where the Sept. 11 workers took naps, got counseling, and restored themselves while working. If you're in the area I encourage you to visit it.
It’s interesting. Principal Global Investors and UBS announce reducing their real estate staffs l due to the slowdown in real estate activity but there continue to be hirings going at other firms. Perhaps it’s just a function of companies having built up larger teams over the past years when things were booming and now they just don’t need all those people. I was part of a downsizing once but I took that job (Workout officer at a large commercial bank) knowing that the best job I could do for them was to work myself out of a job. It lasted three years and it was a great experience. One thing I’ve learned from these type things along the way is that you have to keep an eye on the future, your own future. Only you are in charge of your life, whether you work for a company or not and even if you are blindsided by your employer, if you’ve taken the time to build your own visibility in the industry, nurtured your network and kept your nose clean, you’ll be able to find your next adventure whether it be a job or starting your own firm.
I don’t know about you but when I visit companies and am sitting in the reception area I like checking out the publications that they have on the table. Some companies have the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times or industry specific publication. Sometimes there’ll be a publication, it doesn’t matter if it was four years ago, that featured said company in their cover story. For those companies that have real art in their office there may be an art book or an architectural book (most often about the city in which they’re located). But sometimes there are product research related publications, especially in the larger firms. Not long ago, I was in the office Morley (now Aviva Investors) office in London and a brochure caught my attention. On the cover it said “Peoplebuilding: A place that builds people builds business.” It's a project brochure for a site in in the London suburbs. Much of the content is accompanied by cartoon type graphics but here’s some of the language that interested me about how they’re thinking about (and marketing this concept): A place that builds people builds business. An office building shapes the people who work in it. Years of experience has taught us that if a workplace is built with people in mind, it can actually help build the people working there. If these people become more fulfilled and more energized, that has to be good for business.
What makes a building a Peoplebuilding? There are a number of things which help people work better, such as good light, good air, and attractive design and a good buzz. These things keep people happier and they encourage people to stick around-not just in the working day, but in the number of years they work with you.
Without trying to reproduce the entire brochure here, I’ll just give you some of the ‘headlines’:
Huge floor plates that allow you to be more flexible
Light: lots of glass. (Bright places, bright people).
Air: Good air puts people in a better mood.
Life Beyond Work: bar/brasserie, health and fitness club including day care center (Energy breads energy).
Spirit: a change of environment can raise peoples’ energy levels, clear their heads or give them an idea they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
Peoplebuilding is designed to make people feel good. The buildings and landscape encourage visitors to be inquisitive and sociable. The sounds of a meandering stream, people chatting and the wind in the trees encourages people to be more community minded-proud of their workplace.
Yes, this is a suburban location but I feel that these are the kinds of things that many workers can be attracted to because it talks to their needs and likes as human beings. Yes, the ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ movements are very important and good and are incorporated into this particular project as well. But mostly, as society changes in ways that perhaps Dr. Schweitzer was way ahead of happening, things more than money are starting to mean a lot to a lot of people around the world. The world consciousness is raising and it’s the young people, who are concerned about their future and the future of planet earth, that are leading the charge. We in the real estate industry can never lose sight of the future.
From Seth Godin’s Blog this week:
Fixing the one big thing
If your 'one big thing' is a key part of what makes you successful, how dare you change it.
On the other hand, if momentum or laziness or lack of will (or focus) is the thing holding you back, it's time to get serious. When you remove the one big thing from people's list of objections, your career and organization will take off.
Joe Biden can carry a timer in his pocket. He can become reticent in public. He can, in just one day of hard work, solve his problem. Verizon can invest focus and and money and solve their problem. AT&T can invest and fix their wireless network. It just takes commitment, not a miracle.
I met with Jean-Claude Goldenstein, the founder of CREOpoint. He went through a thorough explanation of how the site works now and what additional features and opportunities it will have. He is one of the most passionate guys I've run into in a long time and I respect what he's doing. And, while I've been spending more time on Linkedin and Facebook and have gotten some idea of how people are using them (you need to decide to allocate a part of your week to these things), CREOpoint is looking to take the best of those sites and aggregate them. In a similar but different way, Reutersrealestate (http://www.reutersrealestate.com) has launched their own community (Disclaimer: I have been doing some advisory work for Reutersrealestate). It seems like our industry, one of the slowest to adopt technology, is finally catching up.
I was walking past the MTV store on Broadway in New York and stopped in to see some kids playing with the 'video game', "Rock Band". You don't have to be a musician to thoroughly enjoy it. It is very cool. Rock on!
Thanks for signing up for my blog. Thanks for your notes. If you have the time, please pass along the url to others who you think may be interested in reading this (http://stevefelix.blogspot.com).
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Where will I be?
Sept. 9: New York
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference
http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854
() where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real
Nov. 12-13: New York to moderate a panel at The PERE Forum (Private Equity Real Estate). http://www.peimedia.com/Product.aspx?cID=5496&pID=174808&contType=2.
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition.
Steve
There were no less than six commercial real estate events going on in New York this past week. I guess organizers saw it as a window of sorts or tried to create a window. Other than the proven or niche events, from reports I received, the others struggled to attract numbers and calibre of people they promoted being able to do. But, notwithstanding, I had a great week. The Investment and Finance seminar that RealShares ran was well attended. When I took the 'attendance' of the audience prior to starting the session I was moderating it indicated about 45% to be owner/operator/developers, another good chunk were brokers and finance types and then there were a few 'others' (which I didn't have time to inquire about). We got good feedback on our panel and it was due to preparing for it and having knowledgeable panelists who answered questions directly. I have to blow my own horn here just a little as the success of any panel also has to do with the moderator and if there's one thing I know how to do it's moderate a panel. I ran into a lot of people I knew and hadn't seen in a while both at this event and at Real Capital Analytics rooftop reception at their building at 139 Fifth Avenue. So it's clear that everyone is 'back to school'.
Here are some of the things that I heard this week:
1. "We're sitting on a lot of cash right now. Our biggest challenge is deciding when we should start deploying in scale. We just don't know." Mike Fascitelli, Vornado Realty Trust.
2. "Terrorists are not going to do anything against the U.S. before the election. They don't want a woman in office and they don't want to give the Republicans more reason to play the "terrorism" card."
3. The diversity of cities around the world that are seeing global capital investment in real estate are expanding.
4. The U.S. is the biggest exporter of commercial real estate property capital worldwide.
5. In 2007, the number of commercial property transactions in Asia surpassed the U.S. for the first time.
6. Seller financing is coming back in a big way.
7. U.S. office buildings bought by foreign investors has almost doubled in 3Q08 compared to 1Q and 2Q 2008.
Seven years ago on Thursday, I was driving to work in California. My father who lives in Florida called my wife and asked her where I was, knowing that I might be anywhere. She told him and then called me. I turned on the radio and heard that two planes had flown into the World Trade Towers. I don’t know if I’m alone but to a New Yorker like me when I heard those words I thought, “Oh, some small planes hit the TV/Radio towers on top of the WTC One and/or Two. It was only when I got to the office that I saw on a fuzzy TV that had been set up what had really happened. To this day, it is hard to believe that this could and did happen. The loss of life and the injuries that were suffered too tough to think about. But we cannot forget. Sadly, the long, drawn-out process by which a decision was made to rebuild on that site has been embarrassing for the U.S. If this had happened in London, how long do you think it would have taken to build: my guess is 18 months. But we had led a sheltered life in the U.S. for so many years and even now I get a sense that day in and day out we may consider ourselves safe again. On Tuesday I had a meeting at 195 Broadway which was the former HQ of AT&T (which which used to be called The American Telephone and Telegraph Company). I got there early and walked around the block which puts one right at the World Trade Center site. I stood off to the side for a few moments thinking back to August 2001 when my son and I saw a concert one beautiful evening on the stage in the WTC plaza. Prior to the music starting I elbowed Kevin and said, "Look up. Can you believe how big these buildings are. It's an amazing feat." That recent and vivid exposure to the buildings was why it was, and in some ways is, difficult for me to fathom their crumbling so quickly. I don't know why I'd never explored it but I stopped in to St. Pauls Chapel. They have some very moving exhibits and was also where the Sept. 11 workers took naps, got counseling, and restored themselves while working. If you're in the area I encourage you to visit it.
It’s interesting. Principal Global Investors and UBS announce reducing their real estate staffs l due to the slowdown in real estate activity but there continue to be hirings going at other firms. Perhaps it’s just a function of companies having built up larger teams over the past years when things were booming and now they just don’t need all those people. I was part of a downsizing once but I took that job (Workout officer at a large commercial bank) knowing that the best job I could do for them was to work myself out of a job. It lasted three years and it was a great experience. One thing I’ve learned from these type things along the way is that you have to keep an eye on the future, your own future. Only you are in charge of your life, whether you work for a company or not and even if you are blindsided by your employer, if you’ve taken the time to build your own visibility in the industry, nurtured your network and kept your nose clean, you’ll be able to find your next adventure whether it be a job or starting your own firm.
I don’t know about you but when I visit companies and am sitting in the reception area I like checking out the publications that they have on the table. Some companies have the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times or industry specific publication. Sometimes there’ll be a publication, it doesn’t matter if it was four years ago, that featured said company in their cover story. For those companies that have real art in their office there may be an art book or an architectural book (most often about the city in which they’re located). But sometimes there are product research related publications, especially in the larger firms. Not long ago, I was in the office Morley (now Aviva Investors) office in London and a brochure caught my attention. On the cover it said “Peoplebuilding: A place that builds people builds business.” It's a project brochure for a site in in the London suburbs. Much of the content is accompanied by cartoon type graphics but here’s some of the language that interested me about how they’re thinking about (and marketing this concept): A place that builds people builds business. An office building shapes the people who work in it. Years of experience has taught us that if a workplace is built with people in mind, it can actually help build the people working there. If these people become more fulfilled and more energized, that has to be good for business.
What makes a building a Peoplebuilding? There are a number of things which help people work better, such as good light, good air, and attractive design and a good buzz. These things keep people happier and they encourage people to stick around-not just in the working day, but in the number of years they work with you.
Without trying to reproduce the entire brochure here, I’ll just give you some of the ‘headlines’:
Huge floor plates that allow you to be more flexible
Light: lots of glass. (Bright places, bright people).
Air: Good air puts people in a better mood.
Life Beyond Work: bar/brasserie, health and fitness club including day care center (Energy breads energy).
Spirit: a change of environment can raise peoples’ energy levels, clear their heads or give them an idea they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
Peoplebuilding is designed to make people feel good. The buildings and landscape encourage visitors to be inquisitive and sociable. The sounds of a meandering stream, people chatting and the wind in the trees encourages people to be more community minded-proud of their workplace.
Yes, this is a suburban location but I feel that these are the kinds of things that many workers can be attracted to because it talks to their needs and likes as human beings. Yes, the ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ movements are very important and good and are incorporated into this particular project as well. But mostly, as society changes in ways that perhaps Dr. Schweitzer was way ahead of happening, things more than money are starting to mean a lot to a lot of people around the world. The world consciousness is raising and it’s the young people, who are concerned about their future and the future of planet earth, that are leading the charge. We in the real estate industry can never lose sight of the future.
From Seth Godin’s Blog this week:
Fixing the one big thing
- Joe Biden is long winded. His voters say so, so does the press. And now his new boss does as well. The feedback couldn't be more clear. So why not fix it?
- Verizon has mind-numbingly bad customer service. People hate to call them. People switch providers just to avoid this problem. So why not fix it?
- DiFara's makes the best pizza in New York. But it takes 90 minutes or so to get a pizza. Everyone complains, so why not fix it? In the case of DiFara's, the answer is easy: because fixing it would make it normal. It would take away what makes the place special. People wouldn't complain any more, but people wouldn't go, either.
If your 'one big thing' is a key part of what makes you successful, how dare you change it.
On the other hand, if momentum or laziness or lack of will (or focus) is the thing holding you back, it's time to get serious. When you remove the one big thing from people's list of objections, your career and organization will take off.
Joe Biden can carry a timer in his pocket. He can become reticent in public. He can, in just one day of hard work, solve his problem. Verizon can invest focus and and money and solve their problem. AT&T can invest and fix their wireless network. It just takes commitment, not a miracle.
I met with Jean-Claude Goldenstein, the founder of CREOpoint. He went through a thorough explanation of how the site works now and what additional features and opportunities it will have. He is one of the most passionate guys I've run into in a long time and I respect what he's doing. And, while I've been spending more time on Linkedin and Facebook and have gotten some idea of how people are using them (you need to decide to allocate a part of your week to these things), CREOpoint is looking to take the best of those sites and aggregate them. In a similar but different way, Reutersrealestate (http://www.reutersrealestate.com) has launched their own community (Disclaimer: I have been doing some advisory work for Reutersrealestate). It seems like our industry, one of the slowest to adopt technology, is finally catching up.
I was walking past the MTV store on Broadway in New York and stopped in to see some kids playing with the 'video game', "Rock Band". You don't have to be a musician to thoroughly enjoy it. It is very cool. Rock on!
Thanks for signing up for my blog. Thanks for your notes. If you have the time, please pass along the url to others who you think may be interested in reading this (http://stevefelix.blogspot.com).
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Where will I be?
Sept. 9: New York
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference
http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854
() where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real
Nov. 12-13: New York to moderate a panel at The PERE Forum (Private Equity Real Estate). http://www.peimedia.com/Product.aspx?cID=5496&pID=174808&contType=2.
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Indian Summer
Today I’m proud to announce that PERE (Private Equity Real Estate) has published a short piece by me on their website http://www.pere.com. I’m also working with them on their third annual PERE Forum (http://www.peimedia.com/pereny08) which takes place in New York on November 12-13. They have some excellent sessions which dig in to the global private equity real estate world including one-on-one interviews with Apollo’s Lee Neibart and JER’s Michael Pralle.
Reuters Real Estate is offering FREE access to their premium membership through 10/31/08. To check it out log in at http://www.reutersrealestate.com. There is a lot of news and are some powerful research tools including a social network (Community tab).
Some of you know that in the winter of 2006 I went to Liberia with The MacDella Cooper Foundation (MCF) who work with needy children. It was a life changing experience for me. Each year, MCF holds a couple of fund raisers. Their biggest one is coming up soon, October 23 to be exact. It’s in New York and you can find out how to attend or simply how to make a donation here: http://www.macdellacooper.org. This group does terrific work for kids who otherwise may never get a chance.
When I read I either highlight, underline or make notes of things that are important to me or that I want to remember. I’ve found that taking those things and writing them in a central place (or typing them and saving them) reinforce them and make them more accessible to me. This past week I found this item and want to share it with you. “The things he stood for were the things for which the new generation stands-a return to the earth and a respect for nature; peace; simplicity; spontaneity; the stripping away of the false values of a materialistic civilization to rediscover the true values of human relationship-relationship with other people and the whole of creation.” This is from a biography of Albert Schweitzer (January 14, 1875 – September 4, 1965, a German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of "reverence for life".
Given all that is going on in the world today, perhaps we need more thinking like Dr. Schweitzer.
This summer, on a small plane from Montreal to New York I sat amongst some guys that I knew were a band. It wasn’t too difficult to guess especially as it was during the Montreal Jazz Festival. Anyway, I learned that they were Tabou Combo, the Worlds # 1 Konpa Band http://www.taboucombo.com. I had never heard of Konpa and found out that it’s heritage is from Haiti. Anyway, they’re celebrating their 40th anniversary so they must be doing something right. Nice guys too.
Sarah Cooper, Director of Real Estate Equities for Merrill Lynch in London sends out an info chocked email to her clients. She also includes some fun stuff from time to time. This week she noted “With so many of us traveling this week to EPRA, we looked at some ''Lost in Translation'', interesting translations of signs found in hotels.”
• Berlin Cloakroom - Please hang yourself here
• Lobby of a Moscow hotel opposite a Russian Orthodox Monastry - You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian & Soviet composers, artists & writers are buried daily except Thursdays.
• Eithiopia - To call room service, please to open dorr and call Room Service. Please call quiet, people may sleep.
• Tokyo - Is forbitten to steal hotle towels please. If you are not person to do such thing is pleasen ot to read notis.
• Seoul - Measles not included in room charge
• Bankkok - Please maintain termperature at 1 degree from 25, any higher or lower will only make the room hotter or colder.
• Qatar - Please do not use the lift when its not working
• France - Please leave your values at the front desk
• Romania - The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
• India - The Old Ladakh Guest House (hospitalising since 1974)
• Italy - This hotel is renowned for its peace & solitude. In fact, crowds from all over the world flock here to enjoy its solitude.
• Tel Aviv - If you wish breakfast, lift the telephone and out waitress will arrive. This will be enough to bring up your food.
• Zurich - Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite s#x in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.
• Finland - If you cannot reach a fire exit, close the door and expose yourself at the window.
• Florence - Fire! It is what we can be doing, we hope. No fear. Not ourselves. Say quickly to all people coming up down, everywhere, a prayer always is a clerk. He is assured of safety by expert men who are in the bar for telephone for the fighters of the fire come out.
• Madrid - our wine list leaves you nothing to hope for.
• Ankara - You are invite to visit our restaurant where you can eat Middle East Foods in a European ambulance.
• Spain. There's a beach which has underground springs running underneath it. It is a little unsturdy as a result. The sign says: Beware - beach of irregular bottoms
• Poland - As for the trip served you at the Hotel Monopol, you will be singing its praises to your grandchildren on your deathbed.
• Athens - Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11am daily.
• Mexico - The manager has personally passed all the water served here.
• London - All fire extinguishers must be examined at least five days before any fire.
This is the kind of stuff that you just can’t make up ☺
Whether it’s a real address book or your electronic database it’s always difficult when you have to remove someone’s name. Many years ago I started using a pencil for the address portion of my daily book. Things change. The most difficult ones are removing a name of someone who has died. Over the years I found myself keeping them there maybe not wanting to believe or accept that someone has passed away and I could no longer pick up the phone and call them and would never see them again except in photos. Others, while not as final, are equally difficult like when someone has moved and you don’t know where to find them or someone has changed or left a job and it’s only when you send them an email and get back the dreaded “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently” message that you realize you’re not in contact with them. It happened to me this week and it made me sad, again, knowing that I would not be able to maintain contact while this particular person, who I considered an industry friend, even though they had not passed away. A long time ago I felt that if people didn’t call or write me they weren’t interested in me (B.E.=Before Email). Then I found out that there are certain people who are more gregarious with their outreach and their connectivity and there are those that are less. So when I found out that just because people weren’t calling me, they were happy to hear from me and that regardless of what insecurity I felt, there was nothing wrong. I’ve always appreciated and respected the connectivity I have with friends and acquaintances and technology has made it imminently easier to stay in touch. But one must maintain a respect, a reverence, as it were, for your ‘network’. It’s like having a relationship with one person but hundreds of time over and it takes nurturing and care and respect. Over the summer I’ve gotten into exploring more about the online networks/communities such as Linkedin.com, Plaxo.com (which someone told me crashed his computer), Facebook.com and now more recently Creopoint.com and the community on Reutersrealestate.com. I’ve even started my own community (so far it’s just me and the friend who told me about the site). I’m finding that they do serve a purpose, each one in its own way but I hope that they don’t become a substitute for people talking and visiting with each other only a vehicle for making those ‘real’ connections (vs. real-time) happen.
P.S. I had signed up for Skype when it first came out but didn’t really use it. I’m starting to use it more and it really works.
Where will I be?
Sept. 9: New York
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference
http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854
() where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker.
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real
Oct. 31-Nov.3: Boston to attend the CRE Annual Convention.
Nov. 12-13: New York to attend The PERE Forum (Private Equity Real Estate). http://www.peimedia.com/Product.aspx?cID=5496&pID=174808&contType=2.
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition.
Reuters Real Estate is offering FREE access to their premium membership through 10/31/08. To check it out log in at http://www.reutersrealestate.com. There is a lot of news and are some powerful research tools including a social network (Community tab).
Some of you know that in the winter of 2006 I went to Liberia with The MacDella Cooper Foundation (MCF) who work with needy children. It was a life changing experience for me. Each year, MCF holds a couple of fund raisers. Their biggest one is coming up soon, October 23 to be exact. It’s in New York and you can find out how to attend or simply how to make a donation here: http://www.macdellacooper.org. This group does terrific work for kids who otherwise may never get a chance.
When I read I either highlight, underline or make notes of things that are important to me or that I want to remember. I’ve found that taking those things and writing them in a central place (or typing them and saving them) reinforce them and make them more accessible to me. This past week I found this item and want to share it with you. “The things he stood for were the things for which the new generation stands-a return to the earth and a respect for nature; peace; simplicity; spontaneity; the stripping away of the false values of a materialistic civilization to rediscover the true values of human relationship-relationship with other people and the whole of creation.” This is from a biography of Albert Schweitzer (January 14, 1875 – September 4, 1965, a German theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of "reverence for life".
Given all that is going on in the world today, perhaps we need more thinking like Dr. Schweitzer.
This summer, on a small plane from Montreal to New York I sat amongst some guys that I knew were a band. It wasn’t too difficult to guess especially as it was during the Montreal Jazz Festival. Anyway, I learned that they were Tabou Combo, the Worlds # 1 Konpa Band http://www.taboucombo.com. I had never heard of Konpa and found out that it’s heritage is from Haiti. Anyway, they’re celebrating their 40th anniversary so they must be doing something right. Nice guys too.
Sarah Cooper, Director of Real Estate Equities for Merrill Lynch in London sends out an info chocked email to her clients. She also includes some fun stuff from time to time. This week she noted “With so many of us traveling this week to EPRA, we looked at some ''Lost in Translation'', interesting translations of signs found in hotels.”
• Berlin Cloakroom - Please hang yourself here
• Lobby of a Moscow hotel opposite a Russian Orthodox Monastry - You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian & Soviet composers, artists & writers are buried daily except Thursdays.
• Eithiopia - To call room service, please to open dorr and call Room Service. Please call quiet, people may sleep.
• Tokyo - Is forbitten to steal hotle towels please. If you are not person to do such thing is pleasen ot to read notis.
• Seoul - Measles not included in room charge
• Bankkok - Please maintain termperature at 1 degree from 25, any higher or lower will only make the room hotter or colder.
• Qatar - Please do not use the lift when its not working
• France - Please leave your values at the front desk
• Romania - The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
• India - The Old Ladakh Guest House (hospitalising since 1974)
• Italy - This hotel is renowned for its peace & solitude. In fact, crowds from all over the world flock here to enjoy its solitude.
• Tel Aviv - If you wish breakfast, lift the telephone and out waitress will arrive. This will be enough to bring up your food.
• Zurich - Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite s#x in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.
• Finland - If you cannot reach a fire exit, close the door and expose yourself at the window.
• Florence - Fire! It is what we can be doing, we hope. No fear. Not ourselves. Say quickly to all people coming up down, everywhere, a prayer always is a clerk. He is assured of safety by expert men who are in the bar for telephone for the fighters of the fire come out.
• Madrid - our wine list leaves you nothing to hope for.
• Ankara - You are invite to visit our restaurant where you can eat Middle East Foods in a European ambulance.
• Spain. There's a beach which has underground springs running underneath it. It is a little unsturdy as a result. The sign says: Beware - beach of irregular bottoms
• Poland - As for the trip served you at the Hotel Monopol, you will be singing its praises to your grandchildren on your deathbed.
• Athens - Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11am daily.
• Mexico - The manager has personally passed all the water served here.
• London - All fire extinguishers must be examined at least five days before any fire.
This is the kind of stuff that you just can’t make up ☺
Whether it’s a real address book or your electronic database it’s always difficult when you have to remove someone’s name. Many years ago I started using a pencil for the address portion of my daily book. Things change. The most difficult ones are removing a name of someone who has died. Over the years I found myself keeping them there maybe not wanting to believe or accept that someone has passed away and I could no longer pick up the phone and call them and would never see them again except in photos. Others, while not as final, are equally difficult like when someone has moved and you don’t know where to find them or someone has changed or left a job and it’s only when you send them an email and get back the dreaded “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently” message that you realize you’re not in contact with them. It happened to me this week and it made me sad, again, knowing that I would not be able to maintain contact while this particular person, who I considered an industry friend, even though they had not passed away. A long time ago I felt that if people didn’t call or write me they weren’t interested in me (B.E.=Before Email). Then I found out that there are certain people who are more gregarious with their outreach and their connectivity and there are those that are less. So when I found out that just because people weren’t calling me, they were happy to hear from me and that regardless of what insecurity I felt, there was nothing wrong. I’ve always appreciated and respected the connectivity I have with friends and acquaintances and technology has made it imminently easier to stay in touch. But one must maintain a respect, a reverence, as it were, for your ‘network’. It’s like having a relationship with one person but hundreds of time over and it takes nurturing and care and respect. Over the summer I’ve gotten into exploring more about the online networks/communities such as Linkedin.com, Plaxo.com (which someone told me crashed his computer), Facebook.com and now more recently Creopoint.com and the community on Reutersrealestate.com. I’ve even started my own community (so far it’s just me and the friend who told me about the site). I’m finding that they do serve a purpose, each one in its own way but I hope that they don’t become a substitute for people talking and visiting with each other only a vehicle for making those ‘real’ connections (vs. real-time) happen.
P.S. I had signed up for Skype when it first came out but didn’t really use it. I’m starting to use it more and it really works.
Where will I be?
Sept. 9: New York
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference
http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854
() where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker.
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real
Oct. 31-Nov.3: Boston to attend the CRE Annual Convention.
Nov. 12-13: New York to attend The PERE Forum (Private Equity Real Estate). http://www.peimedia.com/Product.aspx?cID=5496&pID=174808&contType=2.
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition.
Friday, August 29, 2008
End of the Innocence
Well, I’ve checked out all the commercial real estate news sites today and no one mentions the long weekend we’re having in the U.S. and Canada this weekend. But then again, they don’t usually. The news knows no holidays although summer, especially August is still a little slower than the rest of the year. I’ve found that a number of people in the U.S. have taken this week off (God forbid that they take two weeks off) which dovetails into this three day weekend. Those with school age children will probably return from their holiday over the weekend or at least on Sunday to get ready for the first day of school, which in many areas is September 2, but in others, especially the Sunbelt, have started already. The biggest story today is about a New York developer/owner who built up an $8mm square foot portfolio of office buildings in partnership with Richard Kalikow. When Kalikow and he split, Kalikow sued him for misrepresentation and fraud. Seems like young Adam Hochfelder has attracted more interest as he has been as been arrested and indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney for "stealing more than $17 million from a panoply of banks and individuals." But that’s more of the real estate tabloid news. The end of the summer is not like the end of the year when deals just have to close and perhaps we were all hoping that by the time the summer had ended that things would be better. Unfortunately, they’re not. It’s not that they’re bad (unless you’re trying to sell your home) it’s just that they’re not as good as they were and still no end in sight to the troubles that are stifling us.
When I read that Leroy had passed away recently I have to admit that I didn’t know who he was. (Leroy Sievers. A journalist for more than 25 years, Leroy has worked at CBS News and ABC News, where he was the executive producer at Nightline). But I read that he had been writing a blog and decided to bookmark it and go back and read/scan it sometime (http://www.npr.org/blogs/mycancer/2008/08). I did that last Sunday morning. The blog continues to be written by Leroy’s wife Laurie and it’s obvious that she gets some comfort out of both having that outlet and the dozens, sometimes hundreds of comments posted in response to each blog posting. It’s a beautiful, sad and sobering documentary but it’s also inspiring. If you have a few minutes, you may want to take a peek.
There’s a piece in this week’s The New Yorker magazine called “A Greenwich of the Mind: Old money and new, in the age of foreclosure.” This is Greenwich, Connecticut USA which is a relatively short commuter train ride into midtown Manhattan and which has become one of the wealthiest and from a real estate standpoint priciest towns in the nation. Greenwich, like Short Hills, NJ (where I used to live amongst the “MacMansions”, when perfectly good homes are torn down in favor of ginormous new houses, many on undersized lots) and a select number of other communities attracted the wealth and nouveau riche which for many years has included Wall Street, private equity and corporation C-suite people. This article focuses on some residential builders who did very well building spec mansions but have come on some difficult times, as have some of the homeowners themselves. But there was one section that caught my eye and it’s part of the narrative (vs. a direct quote). “In real estate, the only thing more important than location is optimism. Rosy projections create a kind of fog that can make it all but impossible to measure the prospects of a project, or of a privately held real-estate firm.” Well, it’s clear to me that the writer, Nick Paumgarten, is truly a novice at the real estate industry. Yes, those of us that have been around the block and some more than once have seen developers build things that just don’t seem to make sense and that’s because they don’t. The market sometimes bails out these developments, not necessarily in the negative sense of ‘bailout’ but because the momentum in the market is such that the greater fool theory works (a developer builds something and there’s a tenant (s) or a buyer who is ready to pony up). And, while I’m sure The New Yorker is read by a number of real estate types, it’s read by more who are not. Yet, those people may be investors, as the demographics of the readership of magazine suggests, who are possibly current and future investors in real estate funds. So, while the writer’s story can’t really be considered the type of “Headline News” that has required the management and maintenance of those of us in the institutional real estate community (which, if you want to last isn’t built on deals made in a fog, although over the past 10 years, some deals were made in a different, somewhat altered state of mind) it is a misnomer that professional real estate investment fund managers just don’t do. Anyway, the real story here is that it’s not just the sub prime market that is in dire straights; it’s the prime mortgages too and the economic conditions right now are showing deeper, wider and more far reaching negative impact on the U.S. than anyone wanted to believe in August 2008. In our move to Montreal we bought a house in June. We still feel that we got a fair deal, as do the sellers. We also got a very good mortgage rate, as our credit score is pretty good. But we also still own our home in California (Anyone want to buy a nice house in the Napa Valley?), which we have not put on the market. We have a friend/tenant living in the house and for the time being we’re going hold on to it. Prices in Napa have declined about 15-20% in the past 15 months or so. But, the real problem as I see it is that there are too many buyers who feel that every house for sale is a distressed sale and feel they can pick it up for a song. Sorry but while I may be a little stressed, I am not distressed and contrary to what some loud-mouthed authors of get rich in real estate espouse, I’ve got a pretty good asset in that house. However, we have no need for the Napa house and probably 1Q or 2Q09 it’ll be sold.
Last week I wrote about whether there’ll be a type of website, not unlike Linkedin.com just for the commercial real estate industry. I have some inside knowledge that one is being built and will be launched very soon. But thanks to Scott Perkins of NAI Hanson (http://www.squarefootwarehouse.com) I now know of CREOPOINT (http://www.creopoint.com). It’s fairly new but it’s looking to become “the meeting point where CRE professionals learn, share and connect better, further and faster.” I like how they’ve set it up and signed up as a member. But I still wish things were easier. Perhaps it’ll just take time, like when VHS and BETA were slugging it out or more recently when Blu-Ray and HD-TV battled to be the successor to the DVD (BTW, we don’t watch much TV but after selling our 19” TV at our garage sale we went for a state-of-the-art system including a Blu-Ray player. It is unbelievable! Now it’s just a matter of waiting for more of the movies that we’d like to see come out in that format. For now, there are a lot of action films).
People Stuff
1. There were rumors about this and now it’s official:
Joseph Azrack, the former president and CEO of Citi Property Investors, will join Leon Black’s new real estate arm, Apollo Global a separate entity from the veteran real estate firm named Apollo Real Estate. Apollo Global's operation will focus, initially, on distressed debt and recapitalizations. Joe was also former CEO of AEW.
2. Industry Mentors. I was looking at IIR’s list of Rising Stars: Real Estate for 2007. Included are each person’s mentors and a summary of the mentor list. The commercial/institutional real estate industry has sometimes been criticized for not providing enough mentoring but it’s rewarding for me to see that some of the mentors’ listed are people that I consider industry friends:
a. Charlie Lowery, Prudential; Terry Ahern, The Townsend Group; Greg Vorwaller, CBRE; Steve Quazzo, Transwestern Investment Company; Robert Duncan, Transwestern Commercial Services; Doug Abbey, AMB; Chuck Leitner, RREEF; Carl Schwartz, Herrick Feinstein. Giving something back to the industry via being a mentor is priceless.
Thanks again to everyone who has reached out to me to congratulate me on launching this blog. I sincerely appreciate hearing from you (steve@simplicate.com).
Where will I be?
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference (http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854) where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA (http://www.cityscape.ae/index.html).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference (http://www.prea.com).
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real (http://www.exporeal.net).
Oct. 31-Nov.3: Boston to attend the CRE Annual Convention (http://cre.org).
Nov. 12-13: New York to attend The PERE Forum (Private Equity Real Estate). (http://www.peimedia.com/Product.aspx?cID=5496&pID=174808&contType=2).
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition. (http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu) and if the weather cooperates play some golf.
When I read that Leroy had passed away recently I have to admit that I didn’t know who he was. (Leroy Sievers. A journalist for more than 25 years, Leroy has worked at CBS News and ABC News, where he was the executive producer at Nightline). But I read that he had been writing a blog and decided to bookmark it and go back and read/scan it sometime (http://www.npr.org/blogs/mycancer/2008/08). I did that last Sunday morning. The blog continues to be written by Leroy’s wife Laurie and it’s obvious that she gets some comfort out of both having that outlet and the dozens, sometimes hundreds of comments posted in response to each blog posting. It’s a beautiful, sad and sobering documentary but it’s also inspiring. If you have a few minutes, you may want to take a peek.
There’s a piece in this week’s The New Yorker magazine called “A Greenwich of the Mind: Old money and new, in the age of foreclosure.” This is Greenwich, Connecticut USA which is a relatively short commuter train ride into midtown Manhattan and which has become one of the wealthiest and from a real estate standpoint priciest towns in the nation. Greenwich, like Short Hills, NJ (where I used to live amongst the “MacMansions”, when perfectly good homes are torn down in favor of ginormous new houses, many on undersized lots) and a select number of other communities attracted the wealth and nouveau riche which for many years has included Wall Street, private equity and corporation C-suite people. This article focuses on some residential builders who did very well building spec mansions but have come on some difficult times, as have some of the homeowners themselves. But there was one section that caught my eye and it’s part of the narrative (vs. a direct quote). “In real estate, the only thing more important than location is optimism. Rosy projections create a kind of fog that can make it all but impossible to measure the prospects of a project, or of a privately held real-estate firm.” Well, it’s clear to me that the writer, Nick Paumgarten, is truly a novice at the real estate industry. Yes, those of us that have been around the block and some more than once have seen developers build things that just don’t seem to make sense and that’s because they don’t. The market sometimes bails out these developments, not necessarily in the negative sense of ‘bailout’ but because the momentum in the market is such that the greater fool theory works (a developer builds something and there’s a tenant (s) or a buyer who is ready to pony up). And, while I’m sure The New Yorker is read by a number of real estate types, it’s read by more who are not. Yet, those people may be investors, as the demographics of the readership of magazine suggests, who are possibly current and future investors in real estate funds. So, while the writer’s story can’t really be considered the type of “Headline News” that has required the management and maintenance of those of us in the institutional real estate community (which, if you want to last isn’t built on deals made in a fog, although over the past 10 years, some deals were made in a different, somewhat altered state of mind) it is a misnomer that professional real estate investment fund managers just don’t do. Anyway, the real story here is that it’s not just the sub prime market that is in dire straights; it’s the prime mortgages too and the economic conditions right now are showing deeper, wider and more far reaching negative impact on the U.S. than anyone wanted to believe in August 2008. In our move to Montreal we bought a house in June. We still feel that we got a fair deal, as do the sellers. We also got a very good mortgage rate, as our credit score is pretty good. But we also still own our home in California (Anyone want to buy a nice house in the Napa Valley?), which we have not put on the market. We have a friend/tenant living in the house and for the time being we’re going hold on to it. Prices in Napa have declined about 15-20% in the past 15 months or so. But, the real problem as I see it is that there are too many buyers who feel that every house for sale is a distressed sale and feel they can pick it up for a song. Sorry but while I may be a little stressed, I am not distressed and contrary to what some loud-mouthed authors of get rich in real estate espouse, I’ve got a pretty good asset in that house. However, we have no need for the Napa house and probably 1Q or 2Q09 it’ll be sold.
Last week I wrote about whether there’ll be a type of website, not unlike Linkedin.com just for the commercial real estate industry. I have some inside knowledge that one is being built and will be launched very soon. But thanks to Scott Perkins of NAI Hanson (http://www.squarefootwarehouse.com) I now know of CREOPOINT (http://www.creopoint.com). It’s fairly new but it’s looking to become “the meeting point where CRE professionals learn, share and connect better, further and faster.” I like how they’ve set it up and signed up as a member. But I still wish things were easier. Perhaps it’ll just take time, like when VHS and BETA were slugging it out or more recently when Blu-Ray and HD-TV battled to be the successor to the DVD (BTW, we don’t watch much TV but after selling our 19” TV at our garage sale we went for a state-of-the-art system including a Blu-Ray player. It is unbelievable! Now it’s just a matter of waiting for more of the movies that we’d like to see come out in that format. For now, there are a lot of action films).
People Stuff
1. There were rumors about this and now it’s official:
Joseph Azrack, the former president and CEO of Citi Property Investors, will join Leon Black’s new real estate arm, Apollo Global a separate entity from the veteran real estate firm named Apollo Real Estate. Apollo Global's operation will focus, initially, on distressed debt and recapitalizations. Joe was also former CEO of AEW.
2. Industry Mentors. I was looking at IIR’s list of Rising Stars: Real Estate for 2007. Included are each person’s mentors and a summary of the mentor list. The commercial/institutional real estate industry has sometimes been criticized for not providing enough mentoring but it’s rewarding for me to see that some of the mentors’ listed are people that I consider industry friends:
a. Charlie Lowery, Prudential; Terry Ahern, The Townsend Group; Greg Vorwaller, CBRE; Steve Quazzo, Transwestern Investment Company; Robert Duncan, Transwestern Commercial Services; Doug Abbey, AMB; Chuck Leitner, RREEF; Carl Schwartz, Herrick Feinstein. Giving something back to the industry via being a mentor is priceless.
Thanks again to everyone who has reached out to me to congratulate me on launching this blog. I sincerely appreciate hearing from you (steve@simplicate.com).
Where will I be?
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference (http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854) where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA (http://www.cityscape.ae/index.html).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference (http://www.prea.com).
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real (http://www.exporeal.net).
Oct. 31-Nov.3: Boston to attend the CRE Annual Convention (http://cre.org).
Nov. 12-13: New York to attend The PERE Forum (Private Equity Real Estate). (http://www.peimedia.com/Product.aspx?cID=5496&pID=174808&contType=2).
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition. (http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu) and if the weather cooperates play some golf.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Close to the Edge
Well, the summer is rapidly slipping away from us and another quick one it was. But vacations and holidays have not slowed down one bit the business machines all over the world. Used to be that people would say, “oh, it’s slow over the summer, we won’t be able to get that deal done until early September.” But as we all know, while vacations do slow some things down, it’s really business as usual in most of the world. Sadly, and I know I’ve written about this before, too many people are working on their vacations but I’ve done enough preaching about work/life balance and it took me a long time to find if for myself so I’ll just leave it at that.
A couple of months ago I started reaching out to people via Linkedin.com suggesting they register. I got a number of replies and some asking me to let them know when I figure out what the value proposition is. I’m here to report that even though I have not made much progress in mining this service I keep getting updates about who that’s in my linkedin.com network is connecting with whom. It’s pretty interesting for a guy who has spent his whole life connecting people, for years in the old fashioned way and for the past 12 years or so through “eTroductions.” Anyway, I wish that there was just one of these services that we all could join and be connected but as in a free economy (couldn’t anything be freer than the Internet?) there is never just one of anything. So we have Linkedin.com and Plaxo. Those are the two that I see most. It would be interesting if someone could come up with a similar service just for the global commercial real estate industry. Actually, in a garage somewhere in the world someone is working on just this and it may be closer to leaving the garage than you may think. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.
People Stuff:
1. Glen Esnard has joined Grubb-Ellis as President, Capital Markets and is their capital markets capabilities (http://www.grubb-ellis.com).
2. Adelaide Polsinelli has joined Marcus & Millichap in their New York office. Adelaide is considered one of the top investment sales brokers in that market (http://www.marcusmillichap.com).
3. Ione Permisson has joined Quilvest Group, a global private equity/wealth management office to grow their global real estate fund of funds business (http://www.quilvest.com/rubrique/contenu.php?idr=114).
4. Jim Valente has joined Kennedy Associates (and moved from NJ to Chicago) as SVP of Research (http://www.kennedyusa.com/james-valente.aspx).
5. Mark Rose has joined Riisnet as Chairman of the Board (http://www.riisnet.com) and also been named CEO of Avison Young, a pan-Canada real estate services company.
6. Peter Slatin has joined Real Capital Analytics as Editorial Director and Associate Publisher (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
7. Doug Harper has joined UBS Global Asset Management-Real Estate in a senior marketing/client relations role (http://www.ubs.com/1/e/globalam/gre.html).
8. John Ross, former Appraisal Institute CEO has joined the RICS Americas team as Senior Advisor. Ross will work with RICS Americas to expand membership in diverse real estate industry segments, develop research programs, and implement training programs for real estate professionals affiliated with RICS Americas member firms. As a FRICS (Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) I welcome John to the group.
I picked up a bookmark somewhere and may have written about this to you before but while unpacking stuff in our new house I found it and felt that I wanted to share it with you (again?):
Eight Matters of the Heart
1. Take time for repose: It is the germ of creation
2. Take time to read: It is the foundation of wisdom.
3. Take time to think: It is the source of strength.
4. Take time to work: It is the path to patience and success.
5. Take time to play: It is the secret to youth and constancy.
6. Take time to be cheerful: It is the appreciation of life that brings happiness.
7. Take time to share: It is in fellowship and sound relationships one finds meaning.
8. Take time to rejoice for joy is the music of the soul.
Eight Matters of the Heart was the inspiration for the book Voices of the Heart written and illustrated by Ed Young in 1997.
Some stuff I heard or read this week:
1. “Every Manhattan office investment can be considered value-add because the difference between the rents in place and market rents have been so wide.” Commercial Real Estate Direct Weekly (http://www.crenews.com).
2. CREW Network (Commercial Real Estate Women) have two excellent publications available for downloading on their website (http://www.crewnetwork.org). One is called “Introduction to Compensation” and the other “Minding the Gap”. If you’re a woman in commercial real estate or thinking of joining this great industry I suggest you check these out.
3. Funds continue to be launched and I would guess that this fall we’ll see more of them. European money is still quietly watching the U.S. property markets. Actually, the fact that many people take holidays over the summer is a good thing as when you return from a holiday or in the case of someone who has taken the whole summer off, the “Back to School” time, they tend to look at things a little differently. And maybe that’s just what we need; is just to look at things a little differently and just maybe we’ll be surprised at what we see.
For those of you who are SWF (Sovereign Wealth Fund) followers, here are some interesting stats from the April 2008 issue of Morley’s Investor Journal (http://www.morleyfm.com) which credits the following sources: IMF, World Factbook and Morley estimates:
Sovereign Wealth Funds (Assets)
1. U.S. (Various): $3 trillion
2. Japan: $1.093 trillion
3. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority: $875 billion
4. China: two each with $200 billion
5. Norway: Government Pension fund: $328 billion
6. Saudia Arabia (Various): $$250-300 billion
7. The Netherlands: ABP: $274 billion
8. South Korea: National Pension: $203 billion
The rest are all less than $200 billion so why even mention them, right? ☺ It is staggering to me when I can remember as a kid talking with my friends about what comes after a million. Now we know, it’s a billion and then a trillion but what’s after that? I cheated and looked it up; it’s ‘quadrillion’ but I think we have some time for that one don’t we?
With so many real estate events in New York the week of September 8th I expect to bump into more than the usual number of real estate friends both at the conferences and, well, on the street. If any of you are planning to be in the city that week maybe we can meet up for a little celebration. Of what, you ask? Who needs any reason to celebrate. We’ll celebrate life!
Where will I be?
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference (http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854) where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA (http://www.cityscape.ae/index.html).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference (http://www.prea.com).
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real (http://www.exporeal.net).
Oct. 31-Nov.3: Boston to attend the CRE Annual Convention (http://cre.org).
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition. (http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu) and if the weather cooperates play some golf.
A couple of months ago I started reaching out to people via Linkedin.com suggesting they register. I got a number of replies and some asking me to let them know when I figure out what the value proposition is. I’m here to report that even though I have not made much progress in mining this service I keep getting updates about who that’s in my linkedin.com network is connecting with whom. It’s pretty interesting for a guy who has spent his whole life connecting people, for years in the old fashioned way and for the past 12 years or so through “eTroductions.” Anyway, I wish that there was just one of these services that we all could join and be connected but as in a free economy (couldn’t anything be freer than the Internet?) there is never just one of anything. So we have Linkedin.com and Plaxo. Those are the two that I see most. It would be interesting if someone could come up with a similar service just for the global commercial real estate industry. Actually, in a garage somewhere in the world someone is working on just this and it may be closer to leaving the garage than you may think. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.
People Stuff:
1. Glen Esnard has joined Grubb-Ellis as President, Capital Markets and is their capital markets capabilities (http://www.grubb-ellis.com).
2. Adelaide Polsinelli has joined Marcus & Millichap in their New York office. Adelaide is considered one of the top investment sales brokers in that market (http://www.marcusmillichap.com).
3. Ione Permisson has joined Quilvest Group, a global private equity/wealth management office to grow their global real estate fund of funds business (http://www.quilvest.com/rubrique/contenu.php?idr=114).
4. Jim Valente has joined Kennedy Associates (and moved from NJ to Chicago) as SVP of Research (http://www.kennedyusa.com/james-valente.aspx).
5. Mark Rose has joined Riisnet as Chairman of the Board (http://www.riisnet.com) and also been named CEO of Avison Young, a pan-Canada real estate services company.
6. Peter Slatin has joined Real Capital Analytics as Editorial Director and Associate Publisher (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
7. Doug Harper has joined UBS Global Asset Management-Real Estate in a senior marketing/client relations role (http://www.ubs.com/1/e/globalam/gre.html).
8. John Ross, former Appraisal Institute CEO has joined the RICS Americas team as Senior Advisor. Ross will work with RICS Americas to expand membership in diverse real estate industry segments, develop research programs, and implement training programs for real estate professionals affiliated with RICS Americas member firms. As a FRICS (Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors) I welcome John to the group.
I picked up a bookmark somewhere and may have written about this to you before but while unpacking stuff in our new house I found it and felt that I wanted to share it with you (again?):
Eight Matters of the Heart
1. Take time for repose: It is the germ of creation
2. Take time to read: It is the foundation of wisdom.
3. Take time to think: It is the source of strength.
4. Take time to work: It is the path to patience and success.
5. Take time to play: It is the secret to youth and constancy.
6. Take time to be cheerful: It is the appreciation of life that brings happiness.
7. Take time to share: It is in fellowship and sound relationships one finds meaning.
8. Take time to rejoice for joy is the music of the soul.
Eight Matters of the Heart was the inspiration for the book Voices of the Heart written and illustrated by Ed Young in 1997.
Some stuff I heard or read this week:
1. “Every Manhattan office investment can be considered value-add because the difference between the rents in place and market rents have been so wide.” Commercial Real Estate Direct Weekly (http://www.crenews.com).
2. CREW Network (Commercial Real Estate Women) have two excellent publications available for downloading on their website (http://www.crewnetwork.org). One is called “Introduction to Compensation” and the other “Minding the Gap”. If you’re a woman in commercial real estate or thinking of joining this great industry I suggest you check these out.
3. Funds continue to be launched and I would guess that this fall we’ll see more of them. European money is still quietly watching the U.S. property markets. Actually, the fact that many people take holidays over the summer is a good thing as when you return from a holiday or in the case of someone who has taken the whole summer off, the “Back to School” time, they tend to look at things a little differently. And maybe that’s just what we need; is just to look at things a little differently and just maybe we’ll be surprised at what we see.
For those of you who are SWF (Sovereign Wealth Fund) followers, here are some interesting stats from the April 2008 issue of Morley’s Investor Journal (http://www.morleyfm.com) which credits the following sources: IMF, World Factbook and Morley estimates:
Sovereign Wealth Funds (Assets)
1. U.S. (Various): $3 trillion
2. Japan: $1.093 trillion
3. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority: $875 billion
4. China: two each with $200 billion
5. Norway: Government Pension fund: $328 billion
6. Saudia Arabia (Various): $$250-300 billion
7. The Netherlands: ABP: $274 billion
8. South Korea: National Pension: $203 billion
The rest are all less than $200 billion so why even mention them, right? ☺ It is staggering to me when I can remember as a kid talking with my friends about what comes after a million. Now we know, it’s a billion and then a trillion but what’s after that? I cheated and looked it up; it’s ‘quadrillion’ but I think we have some time for that one don’t we?
With so many real estate events in New York the week of September 8th I expect to bump into more than the usual number of real estate friends both at the conferences and, well, on the street. If any of you are planning to be in the city that week maybe we can meet up for a little celebration. Of what, you ask? Who needs any reason to celebrate. We’ll celebrate life!
Where will I be?
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference (http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854) where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA (http://www.cityscape.ae/index.html).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference (http://www.prea.com).
Oct. 6-8: Munich for Expo Real (http://www.exporeal.net).
Oct. 31-Nov.3: Boston to attend the CRE Annual Convention (http://cre.org).
Feb. 19-20, 2009: Chapel Hill, NC to attend the Kenan-Flagler Center for Real Estate Development’s Annual Conference and Real Estate Challenge Case Competition. (http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu) and if the weather cooperates play some golf.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Vacation
Early this morning, I did something that I usually don’t do: I sent out two large group emails letting people know about this new column that I’m writing. I had thought about waiting until September to send it out, realizing that many people are taking vacations now but thought that I would at least get it in their inbox and hope they don’t delete it before reading it. The interesting thing that came from this is reading the “Out of Office” messages that people use. Here are some samples:
1. I will be out of the office from August 14 to 18, returning to the office on August 19. Please contact _____________ if you require immediate assistance on August 14 or 15, or ___________on August 18.
My comment: It is good to know who to contact but it would have been even better if we knew how to contact those people (email or phone info).
REMINDER: Please make sure you give people the contact info (email/phone) that they need.
2. I will traveling out of state August 11th and will return to my office August 18th.
If this is an emergency and cannot wait until my return, please contact _______________at (phone number).
My comment: Maybe, coming from New York I’m too wary but I don’t think it’s good to tell people you’re ‘out of state.’ Also, coming from a journalism background, it’s always good to take the time to edit what you write (“I will be traveling…”).
3. I am currently out of the office, returning on Monday, August 18th. I will be checking voicemails and emails periodically. Please contact ______________ at (Phone number) (email address) if you require immediate attention.
My comment: This is pretty good. “Checking voicemails and emails periodically” just struck me. I hope this person was on vacation and if so, as you know, I’m a strong proponent of unplugging completely otherwise it’s not really a vacation.
4. “I am away from the office until 26th August, please contact ____________ on (phone number) or _______________ on (phone number) if you require urgent assistance.
Save money, energy and the environment - do you really need to print this email?”
My comment: I like that we’ve been given two people to contact. That’s very thoughtful. The phrase “urgent assistance” is what jumps out at me. Many of these “Out of the Office” messages contain a similar phrase “For urgent matters”, “For immediate assistance”, “If this matter is urgent and cannot await my return, please contact”, “If this is an emergency and cannot wait until my return, please contact.”
I also like the ‘protect the environment message.’
5. “I am currently on vacation and will be back on Wednesday August 27, 2008. I have no or limited access to my e mail, therefore, if the matter is urgent, do not hesitate to contact the reception desk at (phone number) or to call me on my mobile at (phone number).
Rather than getting on a soapbox about this (you’ve heard me before) I offer only this:
I think we all need to begin to respect each other’s ‘down time’ people. I go back to the days before I owned a Blackberry. I was at an industry event and asked someone who was using his how he liked it. “I love it”, he said with a big smile. “But”, said I, “I don’t have that many urgent things going on where I need to be in constant touch with people.” And his tongue-in-cheek (I think) response, “I never knew how many urgent things I had going on until I started using a Blackberry. Most of us can relate to it, right?. Believe it or not, things can go on without you. It’s not that you’re not needed and not important and that people in your office don’t miss you. It’s just, like, ‘Get a Life’. And, what is urgent?
1. calling for immediate action or attention
2. showing earnestness or the desire for something to be done quickly
Okay, so we have a frame of reference. Is it something that needs immediate action or attention? If not, it can wait. It makes me think of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Anyway, you get my drift. If we all have a little more consideration for one another, we can reduce stress, increase productivity and life a more peaceful life in this crazy world.
As I’ve done for the past few years, I’m taking the month of August to recharge my batteries. Some people have asked me how I’m able to travel so much and I guess it’s due to being resilient and also not letting anything bother me (what can you do about airline travel problems anyway?). But this August is a little different, as I’ve left the job I’ve had for 10 years and am thinking about what my next real estate adventure will be. Having recently moved to Montreal, this is good time to explore the area and learn where the important things are (and how to get there): the farmer’s market for fresh fruit and veggies (Quebec is famous for it’s blueberries and corn); the gym and tennis club (signing up today); the train station (found it, used it, pretty easy); a good local restaurant that has good food, nice ambiance, decent prices and a friendly/professional staff (found that too and it’s Italian!). It’s also time to reflect on what I’ve accomplished in the past 10 years and where I take whom I know and what I know next. Anyway, sitting in my home office, looking out on the river flow and watching the ducks is helping me keep things in perspective: the river will always be flowing and it’s just up to us to decide whether we want to go with the current or against it. A good friend of mine once told me, “There are seasons of life. Go with them, not against them.”
Today is the 39th anniversary of the start of the legendary Woodstock Music & Art Fair as it was officially called. In that summer of 1969, my brother and I were counselors at a summer camp in upstate New York, about a two-hour drive to where the festival was happening. We didn’t have TV so we didn’t know what was going on. But, having attended the first Miami (Florida) Pop Festival the year before I thought it would be similar and we planned to go on the Sunday, in particular to catch “The Band.” But our father called us and said, “Don’t go. You can’t get near the place.” For once, we listened and then started hearing about the 200,000 or so people that showed up (even though only 125,000 tickets were sold). By the way, I’m sure that there are more than 200,000 people who claim they were there, maybe in spirit more than body.
Where will I be?
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference (http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854) where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA (http://www.cityscape.ae/index.html).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference (http://www.prea.com).
Steve Felix
Montreal, Quebec
Friday, August 8, 2008
Rain
I hope, when I get really old, that I don’t become addicted to the Weather Channel although I’m finding that even younger people talk about the weather, especially if it’s bad. Well, it seems we moved to Montreal just in time to catch the rainiest summer in quite some time. And, it’s not just drizzles. I love the rain; I love walking in it (provided it’s not accompanied by low temperatures and blustery winds) but I can assure you that I have not once this summer had to water my lawn or shrubs it’s just that it’s hard to find a window of opportunity when the lawn is dry enough to mow (I use an old-fashioned hand push variety referred to on some websites as “classic.”) I guess I just realized that classic and old have synonymatic connections.
I get a number of industry newsletter and news blasts. All offer value and are mostly focused on the deal side of the business. Over the years I’ve periodically asked people “what is a must-read industry publication for you?” and, as new publications surface each year, sometimes those answers change. I have not had a chance to do one of my unofficial surveys recently (although I think if I did, many would say that the Financial Times has become a must-read as the real estate industry has become more global and as the Wall Street Journal has become more tabloid-like (probably an exaggeration but certainly under their new ownership experiencing a sea-change of sorts).
For the record, I read the New York Times Online every day. I can’t find a place near me that sells it and although I must admit I like holding and folding the paper while I read it, this is a fair substitute (even if I don’t get to see the whole paper). Not that you asked me but I also read The Economist and The New Yorker. As far as industry media, here’s what I either scan or read (some are publications and some are email news summaries):
1. PERE Daily Digest
2. IPE Real Estate
3. Commercial Real Estate Direct
4. Reuters Real Estate Monitor Alert
5. INSIGHT - THE GLOBAL COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE NEWS REVIEW
6. Europe Real Estate News
7. Globest.com Alerts
8. CPN Daily Alert
Last week I had my first Skype experience with a call from London. While I had signed up for Skype when they first launched I never got around to using it or encouraging the group of people that I speak with regularly to engage. That changed yesterday when one of my sons called me using Skype. It was amazing how clear the connection was. Skyper-Skyper calls are free. If you use Skype to call a non-Skyper there’s a charge but a friend of mine in London says that by using Skype their company saves 35% on their telephone bill. Not too shabby. Today I buy a good headset and start encouraging certain friends and business colleagues to sign up (P.S. Skype also has a camera feature and as my new MacBook Pro has a built-in camera it’s easy for people to see me through the Skype connection). Now, if I choose to use that feature I better be sure that I’ve combed my hair first!
Follow up: I’ll be moderating an timely panel called: The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today's Market at the RealShares Investment & Finance Conference in New York on September 10. Joining me on the will be Doug Harmon, RBS and Andy Cooper, Westdeutsche ImmobilienBank AG. We’ll be adding one or two more panelists by show time all of whom are ‘in the game’.
A number of months ago, my friend Jean-Guy Talbot of Presima (http://www.presima.com/en/index.html) recommended a book called “Blue Ocean Strategy.” I read it this week and it is very stimulating. I’ve done up a summary (a rather comprehensive one as I think I would like to try to implement their plan in the future). If you’d like a copy please email me at: (steve@simplicate.com). The other book I recently finished (even though I started skipping over sections towards the end is Alan Greenspan’s autobiography, The Age of Turbulence. Learning that he grew up in New York, is a musician and a tennis player (all three which relate to me as well) gave me some new perspective on him. However, while many of his anecdotal stories were interesting I found it too heavy (for me anyway) on the economic analysis; maybe I’m just too simple and really want to learn about the person. There are 226 reader reviews on Amazon.com. Here are some of the ‘headlines’ from the reviews that are really all over the board (star rating):
1. Pulls No Punches
2. Intelligent and Fascinating
3. It's Not My Fault!
4. Blinded by his own arrogance
5. Greenspan: Architect of the Next Great Depression
6. Worth it just for the stories
BTW, this is about only the second time in my whole life that I’ve looked at Amazon.com reader reviews. There seems to be a culture of people who use that platform as a place to postulate but if you take stuff with a grain of salt it could be a good barometer of a book. I don’t know how you find books you read. For me, it’s either a referral (I’ve had good luck reading some of the books shelved under “Staff Recommenations” at bookstores or just the mood I’m in. I have a bunch of classics that I’ve either never read or don’t remember that I’ve been starting to work my way through. Because I’ve been seeing Ayn Rand’s name (Einstein and she were friends) I’m thinking of re-reading Atlas Shrugged but I don’t think I’m ready just yet). Anyway, I found the biography of Albert Einstein much more engaging.
What I’ve been hearing/reading is:
1. It’s not easy to raise institutional money, but…
2. Boring is good today (referring to raising money by those companies who in many cases have “boring” stories: they’ve stayed focused on a single strategy, have been relatively conservative, with stable management teams, provided true transparency and solid returns and have been through some industry cycles).
3. In a market like today, there’s no substitute for experience.
4. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, other than feeling that this is far from over.
5. The single-family home market in much of the U.S. just plain sucks.
6. Banks continue to restrict draws on home equity loans.
7. Asset valuations are difficult to calculate. The value is set when someone buys a property.
8. CMBS issuance is very slowly rebuilding itself.
9. Retail bankruptcies are fracturing CMBS portfolios and CMBS delinquencies continue to climb.
10.
Some headlines from this past week:
1. Chicago’s Retail Spaces Still Hold Global Allure
(SF Comment: Upper Michigan Avenue is one of the most visually pleasant shopping streets in the world. I love the flowers and fountains). P.S. Rockefeller Center in New York has made some wonderful additions to it’s visual esthetics as well).
2. JLL and Centurion announce largest deal in history of Russian commercial real estate.
(SF Comment: There are still a lot of folks that are gun-shy about investing in Russia but deals like this are bound to turn some heads).
3. AIG CEO to take scalpel soon to big insurer
(SF Comment: One phrase in the article says a lot: ““A less complex AIG will be a better competitor”).
Mike Myatt’s Blog in CPN’s Daily E-Mail News Alert this week was about Six Mistakes Real Leaders Avoid
I want to share it with you:
1. Poor Character
2. Little or No Track Record
3. Poor Communication Skills
4. Self-Serving Nature
5. One Size Fits All Leadership Style
6. Lack of Focus and Follow-Through
The moral of this story is leaders need to be honest, have a demonstrated track record of success, be excellent communicators, place an emphasis on serving those they lead, be fluid in approach, and have laser focus and a bias toward action. If these traits are not possessed by your current leadership team you will be in for a rocky road ahead.” Read the full story here (http://cpnmhn.typepad.com/management_matters/2008/08/six-mistakes-re.html).
In one of my recent jobs, while there was no company policy, I initiated a 360 review of myself to present to top management. It was very interesting, although I must admit, rather positive. Here’s a good overview of the process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback
Musician of the Week: Steph Shaw (http://www.stephshaw.com).
Where will I be?
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference (http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854) where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA (http://www.cityscape.ae/index.html).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference (http://www.prea.com).
I get a number of industry newsletter and news blasts. All offer value and are mostly focused on the deal side of the business. Over the years I’ve periodically asked people “what is a must-read industry publication for you?” and, as new publications surface each year, sometimes those answers change. I have not had a chance to do one of my unofficial surveys recently (although I think if I did, many would say that the Financial Times has become a must-read as the real estate industry has become more global and as the Wall Street Journal has become more tabloid-like (probably an exaggeration but certainly under their new ownership experiencing a sea-change of sorts).
For the record, I read the New York Times Online every day. I can’t find a place near me that sells it and although I must admit I like holding and folding the paper while I read it, this is a fair substitute (even if I don’t get to see the whole paper). Not that you asked me but I also read The Economist and The New Yorker. As far as industry media, here’s what I either scan or read (some are publications and some are email news summaries):
1. PERE Daily Digest
2. IPE Real Estate
3. Commercial Real Estate Direct
4. Reuters Real Estate Monitor Alert
5. INSIGHT - THE GLOBAL COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE NEWS REVIEW
6. Europe Real Estate News
7. Globest.com Alerts
8. CPN Daily Alert
Last week I had my first Skype experience with a call from London. While I had signed up for Skype when they first launched I never got around to using it or encouraging the group of people that I speak with regularly to engage. That changed yesterday when one of my sons called me using Skype. It was amazing how clear the connection was. Skyper-Skyper calls are free. If you use Skype to call a non-Skyper there’s a charge but a friend of mine in London says that by using Skype their company saves 35% on their telephone bill. Not too shabby. Today I buy a good headset and start encouraging certain friends and business colleagues to sign up (P.S. Skype also has a camera feature and as my new MacBook Pro has a built-in camera it’s easy for people to see me through the Skype connection). Now, if I choose to use that feature I better be sure that I’ve combed my hair first!
Follow up: I’ll be moderating an timely panel called: The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today's Market at the RealShares Investment & Finance Conference in New York on September 10. Joining me on the will be Doug Harmon, RBS and Andy Cooper, Westdeutsche ImmobilienBank AG. We’ll be adding one or two more panelists by show time all of whom are ‘in the game’.
A number of months ago, my friend Jean-Guy Talbot of Presima (http://www.presima.com/en/index.html) recommended a book called “Blue Ocean Strategy.” I read it this week and it is very stimulating. I’ve done up a summary (a rather comprehensive one as I think I would like to try to implement their plan in the future). If you’d like a copy please email me at: (steve@simplicate.com). The other book I recently finished (even though I started skipping over sections towards the end is Alan Greenspan’s autobiography, The Age of Turbulence. Learning that he grew up in New York, is a musician and a tennis player (all three which relate to me as well) gave me some new perspective on him. However, while many of his anecdotal stories were interesting I found it too heavy (for me anyway) on the economic analysis; maybe I’m just too simple and really want to learn about the person. There are 226 reader reviews on Amazon.com. Here are some of the ‘headlines’ from the reviews that are really all over the board (star rating):
1. Pulls No Punches
2. Intelligent and Fascinating
3. It's Not My Fault!
4. Blinded by his own arrogance
5. Greenspan: Architect of the Next Great Depression
6. Worth it just for the stories
BTW, this is about only the second time in my whole life that I’ve looked at Amazon.com reader reviews. There seems to be a culture of people who use that platform as a place to postulate but if you take stuff with a grain of salt it could be a good barometer of a book. I don’t know how you find books you read. For me, it’s either a referral (I’ve had good luck reading some of the books shelved under “Staff Recommenations” at bookstores or just the mood I’m in. I have a bunch of classics that I’ve either never read or don’t remember that I’ve been starting to work my way through. Because I’ve been seeing Ayn Rand’s name (Einstein and she were friends) I’m thinking of re-reading Atlas Shrugged but I don’t think I’m ready just yet). Anyway, I found the biography of Albert Einstein much more engaging.
What I’ve been hearing/reading is:
1. It’s not easy to raise institutional money, but…
2. Boring is good today (referring to raising money by those companies who in many cases have “boring” stories: they’ve stayed focused on a single strategy, have been relatively conservative, with stable management teams, provided true transparency and solid returns and have been through some industry cycles).
3. In a market like today, there’s no substitute for experience.
4. No one knows what tomorrow will bring, other than feeling that this is far from over.
5. The single-family home market in much of the U.S. just plain sucks.
6. Banks continue to restrict draws on home equity loans.
7. Asset valuations are difficult to calculate. The value is set when someone buys a property.
8. CMBS issuance is very slowly rebuilding itself.
9. Retail bankruptcies are fracturing CMBS portfolios and CMBS delinquencies continue to climb.
10.
Some headlines from this past week:
1. Chicago’s Retail Spaces Still Hold Global Allure
(SF Comment: Upper Michigan Avenue is one of the most visually pleasant shopping streets in the world. I love the flowers and fountains). P.S. Rockefeller Center in New York has made some wonderful additions to it’s visual esthetics as well).
2. JLL and Centurion announce largest deal in history of Russian commercial real estate.
(SF Comment: There are still a lot of folks that are gun-shy about investing in Russia but deals like this are bound to turn some heads).
3. AIG CEO to take scalpel soon to big insurer
(SF Comment: One phrase in the article says a lot: ““A less complex AIG will be a better competitor”).
Mike Myatt’s Blog in CPN’s Daily E-Mail News Alert this week was about Six Mistakes Real Leaders Avoid
I want to share it with you:
1. Poor Character
2. Little or No Track Record
3. Poor Communication Skills
4. Self-Serving Nature
5. One Size Fits All Leadership Style
6. Lack of Focus and Follow-Through
The moral of this story is leaders need to be honest, have a demonstrated track record of success, be excellent communicators, place an emphasis on serving those they lead, be fluid in approach, and have laser focus and a bias toward action. If these traits are not possessed by your current leadership team you will be in for a rocky road ahead.” Read the full story here (http://cpnmhn.typepad.com/management_matters/2008/08/six-mistakes-re.html).
In one of my recent jobs, while there was no company policy, I initiated a 360 review of myself to present to top management. It was very interesting, although I must admit, rather positive. Here’s a good overview of the process.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/360-degree_feedback
Musician of the Week: Steph Shaw (http://www.stephshaw.com).
Where will I be?
Sept. 10: New York for RealShares Investment & Finance Conference (http://www.almevents.com/conf_page.cfm?pt=/CustomerFiles_sri/agenda/detailed_agenda.cfm&web_page_id=9491&web_id=1147&instance_id=28&pid=758&iteration_id=854) where I’ll moderate a panel called “The Influence of Foreign Banks on Today’s Market.”
Sept. 10-11: New York to attend CityScape USA (http://www.cityscape.ae/index.html).
Sept. 11: New York for FIABCI-USA UN Luncheon (http://www.fiabci.com) where Bob White, Founder of Real Capital Analytics will be the keynote speaker (http://www.rcanalytics.com).
Oct. 1-3: Chicago for PREA’s 18th Annual Plan Sponsor Real Estate Conference (http://www.prea.com).
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