Longer-form thinking on where the market goes.
31 white papers
Artificial intelligence-only searches of public records aren’t enough to provide reliable title decision-making at scale, according to a new study by DataTrace, a national provider of property and ownership data and title automation solutions. The company’s analysis, “AI Title Search Tested in the Real World: What…
For years, nearly every conversation about New York City multifamily has centered around one shortage: housing. We don’t have enough apartments. We don’t build fast enough. Vacancy remains tight, construction is expensive, and the regulatory environment makes adding new supply increasingly difficult. But there is…
Since joining Kennedy Wilson following the firm’s $347 million acquisition of Toll Brothers’ apartment living platform in 2025, John McCullough has been serving as president of the real estate investment company’s multifamily development group, where he oversees every aspect of the firm’s U.S. development business.…
Trent Johnson and Brian Landrum are senior managing directors and co-heads of the seniors housing team at Harbert Management Corporation, an $8 billion alternatives asset management firm founded in 1993. The group has been investing in the seniors housing space for 15 years, raising a $210 million investment fund…
The multifamily market is entering a new phase defined less by broad national narratives and more by local realities, operational discipline, and selective opportunity. In a recent conversation on “Inside the Deal, a CRE Podcast by Berkadia®,” host Ernie Katai, executive vice president – head of production for…
Artificial intelligence can now produce work that looks remarkably finished. It can summarize a lease, review a rent roll, draft an investment committee memo and explain a change in occupancy in polished language. That creates a new problem for commercial real estate firms: A document can look ready long before it…
CRE firms have now moved through three technology cycles that each asked the same question at the wrong altitude: business intelligence in the 2000s, RPA in the 2010s, and generative AI now. Each time, the industry asks what the license costs. Two decades of watching these cycles play out says the license was never…
Jose Tur owns two rent-stabilized rental buildings in Manhattan’s Washington Heights with a total of 45 units. The properties have been in his family for over 30 years, and the mortgages are fully paid off. But Tur tells Commercial Observer that despite this, while he’s reluctant to give an exact number, “more than…
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and Mayor Zohran Mamdani are considering high tech options to transfer heat out of subway stations and into the buildings above, in what would likely be a complicated and pricey infrastructure project. Still, city officials and the MTA believe it could be worth it to…
When equity for ground-up development disappeared in 2022, Opportunity Zone capital didn’t. Four years later that dynamic is largely the same. But Congress has now rewritten the Opportunity Zone (OZ) program, and New York has just over 60 days to decide where the next decade of OZ capital can go. The reason…
There is little doubt at this point that widespread adoption of AI, when used wisely, can lead a company to greater growth and profitability. But the difference between the companies enjoying massive gains from this and those that are not is shocking, and comes down to one factor: full buy-in. A 2026 study by…
Even as some of the biggest commercial real estate companies shoulder the challenges and massive costs of developing proprietary artificial intelligence-powered tools, this shift marks not so much an inflection point for proptech as a sign that the commercial real estate industry has never embraced technology more…
Every data center project generates an enormous amount of information: engineering reports, environmental filings, utility dockets, tax incentive applications, economic impact studies and public statements. What it rarely generates is a single place where all of that information comes together. A recent dispute in…
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which was enacted earlier this month, promises to greatly impact U.S. real estate when it goes into effect in January. The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate passed the legislation — without President Donald Trump’s signature — with the intention of boosting…
Much of the conversation around artificial intelligence and commercial real estate leasing has focused on whether AI will bring people back to the office. I think that’s the wrong question. The more important one is where AI companies are choosing to invest, hire and build because those decisions tell us far more…
For Dedeaux Properties, California’s infamously arduous development environment can be both a hurdle and a competitive advantage. CEO Brett Dedeaux spoke with Commercial Observer about why the firm sees Tejon Ranch as such a compelling alternative to Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire, as well as how the…
It’s become fashionable in New York City commercial real estate to bash the state’s 485-x program, which provides tax incentives for new residential development in certain areas of the five boroughs in exchange for including affordable housing. The criticism revolves around 485-x’s higher construction wage…
The World Cup’s excitement may be over, but one of the most fascinating sports phenomena hasn’t been visible on fields or courts. A cadre of athletes has been channeling their professional star power to develop commercial real estate projects. And some of those ventures are happening in those athletes’ hometowns.…
The hit television series “Landman” stars Billy Bob Thornton as a West Texas oil executive who mines distant plains and deep oceans for the petroleum that powers modern life. If showrunner Taylor Sheridan is looking for a sequel, he won’t have far to turn. A new breed of businessmen termed “wildcatters” is shaking…
The real estate version of the “butterfly can flap its wings in Peking, and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine” goes something like this: Eli Lily introduces a GLP-1 for weight loss — the local Pizza Hut becomes a Pilates studio. At least that’s the takeaway for retailers from the barrage of […]
New York City is relying, in part, on more than 16,000 units planned via office-to-residential conversions to ease its enduring housing crisis. So, when the country’s largest conversion, sitting in the heart of Midtown, starts to buckle, it’s not taken lightly. The startling structural emergency at MetroLoft and…
The New York City Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) recently voted to freeze rents on both one- and two-year rent-stabilized lease renewals, fulfilling one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s signature campaign promises. For the approximately 2 million New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments, the decision was…
The myriad headwinds facing New York City hotel investors just got even stiffer. The Big Apple’s hospitality industry confronted rising operating and borrowing costs from persistent inflation in recent years that was further compounded by a big drop in international tourism since President Donald Trump assumed…
For a few days last week, two buckling steel columns at the Pfizer Building became the biggest real estate story in America. If you only read the headlines, you might conclude that office-to-residential conversions are suddenly in trouble. The opposite is closer to the truth. Quietly, New York has become the…
Not many proptech companies have been able to scale their technology to take advantage of the data center construction boom, but one that has cracked the code in servicing the sector’s gargantuan growth is OpenSpace. The San Francisco-based visual intelligence platform has worked on more than 1,000 data center…
When he isn’t home tending to his alpacas — yes, he has alpacas — Craig Deitelzweig, the chief executive officer of owner Marx Realty, is working out ways to beautify the company’s office portfolio, intent on making where people go to work a destination, not a chore. Deitelzweig, a former lawyer who graduated from…
Few names are as engrained in Southern California industrial real estate — or baseball — as Dedeaux. The family business traces its roots to legendary University of Southern California baseball coach Rod Dedeaux, who led the Trojans to 11 national championships and coached U.S. Olympic teams after founding trucking…
Ben Brown, co-president and head of real estate in the Americas for Brookfield, discusses the company's aggressive acquisition and disposition activity, noting that Brookfield has executed approximately $9 billion in credit originations, $21.5 billion in equity dispositions, and $32.3 billion in acquisitions over the past 18 months while raising $13.2 billion in new capital. Brown highlights Brookfield's strategic focus on logistics and housing investments, including major acquisitions like Peakstone, and emphasizes that despite high financing costs making new office development difficult to underwrite, strong fundamentals in sectors like luxury hospitality and rental housing continue to create investment opportunities as public market valuations lag underlying real estate recovery.
The article presents an interview with Allen Féliz, vice president of innovation for affordable and public housing at MRI Software, discussing the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act's impact on real estate and proptech. Féliz describes how the legislation aims to increase housing supply by removing regulatory barriers and modernizing housing programs, which he argues will drive increased demand for proptech solutions in compliance management, workflow automation, asset management, and data visibility, while also expanding public-private partnerships in affordable housing development.
More commercial real estate owners, including RXR and SL Green, are establishing special servicing platforms to manage distressed CMBS loans, leveraging their operational expertise in asset resolution while creating potential conflicts of interest when servicing loans of competitors. Rating agencies and pooling and servicing agreements provide oversight to mitigate conflicts, though Fitch has previously flagged concerns about affiliate influence, and industry experts remain divided on whether these arrangements ultimately benefit or harm bondholders despite structural post-2008 protections limiting special servicers' ability to acquire distressed assets.
REITs are outperforming the S&P 500 by more than 5 percentage points year-to-date as of late June 2026, driven by sector diversification including data centers (up 27 percent), hotels and lodging (up nearly 40 percent), and senior housing, while traditional sectors like office have declined to roughly 3 percent of the REIT market index. The article attributes the valuation gap between REIT stock prices and their underlying real estate values to factors including earnings-focused investors with short time horizons, interest rate cycles, management quality and strategy, and market sentiment that has been slow to shift despite improved fundamentals in certain sectors.