There’s an old story about an economist who sees a $20 bill lying on the street but won’t pick it up. Relying on his academic training he explains that the market is efficient and if there really were a $20 bill in the street, someone else would have already snatched it. Well… having spent nearly 30 years investing in stocks, you can guess that I don’t believe in the strong form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis. I believe that exceptional opportunities exist both in the stock market and in real estate, but it’s important to consider why that might be

I was struck by this statistic highlighted in the Wall Street Journal’s Commercial Real Estate Weekly email. Putting aside my petty satisfaction in spotting a typo in the Journal’s infographic, the imbalance here struck me as fascinating. The implication here is that roughly 1/3 of all residential brokers have no listings. And if we assume that the 80/20 rule probably applies, then a smaller number of brokers have the bulk of the listings, so it’s even worse than it appears. Or is it? After a bit of thought and some digging around, the eye-catching stat probably doesn’t mean much as

Given the dramatic move we’ve seen in interest rates in recent weeks, I thought it was important to revisit some of my own assumptions around how my chosen strategy, value-add multifamily real estate, might be affected. There’s no better way for me to organize my thoughts than through writing and sharing, so here goes. There’s no denying that we’ve seen a massive move in global bond yields recently. Having troughed at 0.5% in August, the benchmark 10 yr US Treasury yield finally broke above 1.5% this week before settling just below that level. What’s the problem?  A 1.5% 10yr yield

Investing in private equity real estate and publicly traded stocks are similar. How do I know? I’ve invested in more than 2,000 apartment units following a 25+ year professional career in institutional equities (stocks).   It turns out, the valuation framework, tools, and basic skills required to analyze businesses apply to stocks and real estate. Experience with accounting, spreadsheets, strategy, and finance certainly come in handy. This shouldn’t be surprising when we consider first principles. What is any equity investment worth? The present value of the future cash flows of a business, net of any obligations due (debt). That’s true for