Leading Voices In Real Estate

This week’s podcast guest is Chris Merrill, the co-founder and CEO of Harrison Street, a $55 billion family of real estate funds focused on demographically-driven real estate niche sectors such as student housing, senior housing, life science, self-storage and infrastructure throughout the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. He talks about their strategy as a break out from the four main real estate “food groups” and how their strategy is “de-risked” both by focusing on these multiple niche sectors and through working through multiple operating partners in each business.

This week’s podcast guest is Kevin Marchetti the co-founder of Bay Grove, a real estate private equity firm that has built the world’s largest portfolio of cold-storage warehouses, and its operating company, Lineage Logistics, that runs the business. The company has scaled up by acquiring different businesses and portfolios, and now Lineage employs over 25,000 people globally.

This week’s podcast guest is Wemimo Abbey, a 30-year-old entrepreneur already making waves in the apartment business as Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Esusu. Esusu allows lower income renters to use their rental payments to help build their credit scores to create a pathway to their personal financial health.

As a holiday treat, this rebroadcast episode from January 2021 features Paul Saffo, forecaster and Head of Future Studies at Stanford University. He forecasts the future of city development in light of historic patterns of change, economic shifts, and the role of real estate post pandemic.

MacArthur Foundation Genius Award Winner and internationally recognized leader in the field of homelessness, Rosanne Haggerty, President and CEO of Community Solutions, dives deep into the challenges of the homelessness crisis and talks about how the problem is indeed “Solvable”. Rosanne puts the homelessness crisis in context as a symptom of broader systemic failures rather than as the fault of individuals experiencing homelessness.

This week’s podcast guests are Michael Van Konynenburg, President of Eastdil Secured, and Chris Hartung, Executive Director of Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics at Berkeley and Co-founder of the Terra Firma REIT investment funds. Mike and Chris provide their perspectives on how the downturn is affecting both the public and private commercial real estate markets particularly given the near lockdown in the real estate capital markets.

Ross Perot Jr., Chairman of Hillwood and real estate developer, talks about his varied businesses, inside and outside of real estate, including the development of the giant Alliance project in Fort Worth, developing public private partnership projects in the US and abroad, and about his father’s legacy.

This week’s podcast guest is Byron Carlock, the U.S. real estate leader with PwC and the primary author of the ULI/PWC annual survey, “Emerging Trends in Real Estate”. The podcast centers on the current market downturn in the real estate transaction market within the context of the longer term, very positive, fundamentals and trends for the real estate business.

Tyler Morse, CEO of MCR Hotels, discusses travel and the hotel business, experiential hotels, and business versus leisure travel.

This week’s podcast guests are Carl Shannon of Tishman Speyer and Larry Baer of the San Francisco Giants. The pair discuss the opportunities in the land surrounding the Giants’ stadium. Together, Tishman and the Giants are building the Mission Rock mixed-use project, a new neighborhood adjacent to the Giant’s Oracle Park. The space is 28 acres with 1.6 million square feet of office and retail, 1,100 residential units, and eight acres of public open space — all on the waterfront.Larry explains that the baseball kedInMission RockTishman SpeyerBaseball Reference

Matt speaks with Mark Preston, Executive Trustee and CEO of Grosvenor, on this week’s episode. Grosvenor is a 340 year-old family office and commercial property business in the UK, owned by the Grosvenor family. Their young patriarch and Chair, Hugh Grosvenor, is the Duke of Westminster. Matt reflects that this kind of business longevity is nearly unrelatable in the real estate investment business, where the time horizon is so often three, five, or at max, fifteen, year holds.Mark delves into what long-termism means from Grosvenor’s perspective, particularly around the issues and responsibilities surrounding carbon and community benefits for property owners.He emphasizes that while there is growing opportunity to invest in environmentally sound real estate, it is imperative to do so, if investors and developers are going to be responsible citizens. These long-term real estate investments and developments have the potential to make a significant impact socially and environmentally — as well as financially. Mar

This week Matt sits down with Alex Robinson, CEO and co-founder of Juniper Square, a real estate technology company that is providing major backbone infrastructure for real estate investment managers and how they interface with their LPs. Juniper Square has gained tremendous market share over a short six years. Now that it has significant scale, it has the opportunity to play a major role in helping to create a more transparent and low-friction marketplace for GPs and LPs to bring capital and investment opportunities together in the real estate investment business. Juniper Square’s next level of work in its capital marketplace could be truly transformative for the industry.Alex’s success with Juniper’s Square’s resonates deeply with Matt on a personal level. Matt shares that years ago, when real estate was still the domain of the mom-and-pops and the deal cowboys, he was the Executive Director of the Multifamily Housing Institute. One of his jobs was to compile and share property and loan-level data and creat

This week’s guest is Tim Schoen, President and CEO of BioMed Realty, a Blackstone company and an industry leader in life science and technology-focused real estate. Tim is a deeply experienced real estate and capital markets professional, and he is a true business leader within the biotech field. In this episode, Tim drills into the dynamics of the biotech real estate space, which has such a different business model, unique customer base, and range of specialty skills within the team to make it a market leader.Tim shares his passion about the real estate business overall as well as the intellectual engagement in focusing on the biotech field. Tim is fascinating to listen to because he is “always learning,” as evidenced by his leadership at BioMed, serving on the Salk Institute Board, and the challenges and opportunities for both the bio tech and real estate businesses to contribute to carbon reduction. ResourcesBioMed Realty

Mikael Colville-Andersen | Author & Founder of Copenhagenize Design CompanyThis week Matt’s guest is Mikael Colville-Andersen, speaker, TV host, author of “Copenhaganize”, and founder of Copenhagenize Design Company, a global consultancy firm that helps cities understand best practices and implementation of bike infrastructure for their communities. Mikael has a Canadian public TV show called “The Life-Sized City” and also hosts a podcast of the same name. Mikael and Matt talk broadly about urban bicycle infrastructure in-person from Copenhagen, one of the most bicycle friendly cities on the planet, in which 60% of commuting is done by bicycle.Matt is an avid cyclist, often cycling 30-50 miles on a given weekend morning. He reflects that bike culture in Denmark is not so much about riding for exercise as it is transport. Riding a bike in Copenhagen is casual — seeing people in suits coming home on their bikes, moms and dads bringing their kids to school, bikes with full baskets of groceries, people young,

Matt’s guest this week is Sara Neff, Head of Sustainability at Lendlease Americas, a globally integrated real estate and investment group specializing in creating strong cities and connected communities. Sara dives into all aspects of sustainability in real estate, emphasizing that materials, construction practices, and management need to support carbon-neutral goals.Sara inspires business leaders to raise the bar in their companies on decarbonization and encourages young people interested in sustainability to join the real estate business. There is huge work to be done and this is an opportunity to move the needle on carbon not just in the industry, but nationally and globally.Sara believes that a business’ level of commitment to sustainability is a good indicator of its overall management quality. Leadership that cares about sustainability has a long-term vision for their company and can see that carbon-neutral, sustainable buildings are the future of the market.August kicks off a month of podcasts dedicate

Matt converses with Doug Bibby of the National Multifamily Housing Council and Ed Walter of the Urban Land Institute this week. Doug and Ed are retiring soon from their respective roles, and both are stalwart leaders, especially through how they have pointed their organizations and, by extension, the industry as a whole toward responsible citizenry for the next generation of the business.Matt believes that as real estate development has become more scaled and institutional, responsible long-term thinking and stability are becoming more important industry behaviors than maximizing profits — it is a smart business practice that protects both individual companies as well as the reputation of the overall industry. Doug and Ed remind the listener that in this interconnected world, anyone can fall victim to the behavior and opinions of their neighbors or competitors. Yet, it is the real estate industry’s responsibility — especially through its investors and developers — to set a high bar for its reputation.Resource

Matt sits down this week with Mark Parrell, President & CEO of Equity Residential, one of the largest and most respected public companies in the real estate world and one of the long term leaders in the apartment space. Their conversation is a deep-dive through the different aspects of what is truly one of the best-run long-term hold real estate businesses in the country.Mark homes in on themes that are familiar on Leading Voices that merit repetition: Great operations, efficient technology, customer service, investment savvy, disciplined capital strategy, transparency, and the impact of political risk on the business. Mark emphasizes political risk in the business goes beyond rent control to assess whether jurisdictions are proactively investing in infrastructure or general pro-business policies. With EQR’s target affluent renter profile, their business needs to be in high functioning, exciting urban environments.Mark dives deeply into the operational aspects of the business, including using EQR’s size a

This week Matt’s guest is John McLaren, President and Chief Operating Officer of Sun Communities, a REIT and the largest owner/operator of manufactured housing communities. John and Matt explore the different facets of the manufactured housing business in general, as well as a deep dive into Sun Communities’ business. John lends particular insight to manufactured housing as part of the affordable housing toolkit and its ability to address the financial and social needs of people from a variety of income levels. On the subject of manufactured housing providing different options for housing affordability, we also refer you to a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post from a friend of Matt’s, Daniel Weisfield, from Three Pillars Communities, about misperceptions about the manufactured housing industry, its overall impact on housing affordability for its residents as well as having inevitable rent increases in the business. Here is a link to Daniel’s post via LinkedIn…..Before Matt and John went on air for th

This week’s podcast guest is Majora Carter, a real estate visionary, developer, and author who is dedicated to revitalizing communities through talent retention. Her new book “ Reclaiming Your Community: You Don’t Have to Move Out of Your Neighborhood to Live in a Better One,” pulls from her deeply personal experience in her own community, the South Bronx.The belief that they have it within themselves to succeed is the cornerstone of the culture that communities must establish to keep their best and brightest asset: their people. Persistent poverty is a problem that is self-replicating for low-status communities, but Majora says the solution lies in reimagining the measuring stick of success. Instead of success being defined by how far away you can get from your hometown, it should be defined by how you can transform it and impact it. This is a critical shift. While this conversation highlights the tangible benefits and opportunities that exist for today’s neighborhoods and homegrown entrepreneurs, the real t

This week Matt is joined by Bjarke Ingels, Roni Bahar, and Nick Chim from Nabr, a real estate development company specializing in sustainable, customizable apartments. Nabr’s mission is to address the housing crisis with a unique approach: a business platform that creates, at scale, well designed, attainably-priced apartment units on a homeownership model.Its founding team comes well-qualified for the task. Bjarke is one of the world’s leading architects and the founder of BIG, the Bjarke Ingels Group architectural firm; Roni came to Nabr via his role as WeWork’s Director of Development; and Nick boasts a background with Sidewalk Labs and Google.The trio reveals that the secret to Nabr’s business model and designs is that they are inspired by consumer productization. Too many developers build cookie-cutter housing that is not consumer-friendly in terms of technology, delivery, and design. Nabr is breaking the mold by pulling inspiration from consumer companies like Lego, Tesla, and Apple. Matt highlights a th