Note from the Editor: Issue #16

WELCOME TO ISSUE #16

Between presidential election races, interest rate cycles, geopolitical tensions, emerging technologies, and evolving finance trends (and philosophies of space use) across commercial real estate sectors it’s more important than ever for investors to separate signal from noise.

For the most recent issue of Summit Journal, we tried something different, by asking specific contributors at work across all real estate sectors to provide a “summary state of the market at mid-year 2024.” This resulted in our first ever Almanac issue, which we now plan to produce annually. It proved to be a winning formula.

But the real strength of Summit over the past few years has come from the diversity of topics we cover across the board—even going beyond traditional real estate to pull in interdisciplinary insights that both enlighten our readership and serve AFIRE’s core historic mission: to help each other become better investors, better leaders, and better global citizens.

With this mission in mind, we’re excited to present this latest issue of Summit Journal, in correlation with our Annual Member Meeting in September 2024.

At this time of year, as we wrap up the summer and ramp into Q4, our contributors have both the benefit of retrospection as well as the invitation to informed prognostication as we’re all now squarely in planning mode for the multiple futures offered in the year ahead.

As it affects our future-focused thinking, there are perhaps more questions than answers: A contentious US presidential election, just around the corner. Unpredictable interest rate cycles and inflationary pressures. Active warfronts in Eastern Europe and the Mideast. Familiar political tensions in the Asia Pacific region. Disruptive technologies and ongoing workforce changes (and related pressures on the energy grid and infrastructure systems). And a rapidly accelerating tidal wave of climate change, already affecting migration, consumption, and economic plans around the world.

The selections we’ve made for this issue are equally as diverse, raising critical questions, and offering useful ideas, for everything from reimagined value-add strategies and asset trends to AI and infrastructure.

At the back of the journal, we’ve also included a new section on legal/regulatory issues—a section we expect to see grow over the coming years, as experts from all sides of the industry work together to understand (and stay in front of) our most pressing challenges.

We’re incredibly grateful to welcome back Yardi as a sponsor for this issue. Many AFIRE members and the broader Summit readership count on Yardi for the type of insights we’ve collected here.

We’re also grateful to our contributors, who are pushing the conversation—and the overall AFIRE platform—to the cutting edge of thought leadership in commercial real estate.

But most importantly, now that we’re at Issue #16, we’re grateful to you for making this conversation real.

– Benjamin van Loon, CAE, Editor-in-Chief, Summit Journal

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: ISSUE #16

Benjamin van Loon, CAE | AFIRE

GLOBAL CONSUMPTION: APAC DATA CENTER INVESTMENT STRATEGIES IN THE AGE OF DIGITIZATION

Michelle Lee, Eugene Seo, and Wayne Teo | CapitaLand Investment

DISTINCT VERTICALS: AI IS CHANGING THE REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY ON TWO DISTINCT PATHS

Daniel Carr and Andrew Peng | Alpaca Real Estate

DIVERGING FORTUNES: ARE COMPARISONS BETWEEN OFFICE AND RETAIL STILL WARRANTED?

Brian Biggs, CFA and Ashton Sein | Grosvenor

OCCUPYING FORCE: INSTITUTIONAL OFFICE PROPERTIES FEELING THE PAIN

Nolan Eyre, Scot Bommarito, and William Maher | RCLCO Fund Advisors

VALUE-ADD VS. CORE: COMPARING CORE AND NON-CORE STRATEGIES WITH NEW DATA

Yizhuo (Wilson) Ding | Related Midwest and Jacques Gordon, PhD | MIT Center for Real Estate

FAVORABLE CONDITIONS: STRUCTURAL CHANGES TO THE MARKET FAVOR NONBANK CRE LENDERS

Mark Fitzgerald, CFA, CAIA, and Jeff Fastov | Affinius Capital

INFRASTRUCTURE VIEWPOINT: INTEREST RATE CHANGES COULD UNLOCK NEW INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENTS

Tania Tsoneva | CBRE Investment Management

MISSING MIDDLE: WORKFORCE AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN THE US

Jack Robinson, PhD and Morgan Zollinger | Bridge Investment Group

NARROW SPACES: CHOKED STRAITS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GDP, INFLATION, AND CRE

Stewart Rubin and Dakota Firenze | New York Life Real Estate Investors

OPCO-PROPCO OPPORTUNITY: EMERGING MODELS AND THE KEYS TO STRUCTURING PARTNERSHIPS

Paul Stanton | PTB and Donal Warde | TF Cornerstone

TRANSFORMING LUXURY: UNLOCKING VALUE IN LUXURY HOSPITALITY REAL ESTATE

Alia Peragallo | Beach Enclave and AFIRE Mentorship Fellow, 2024

SOLAR VALUATION: IS SOLAR ENERGY A VALUATION GAME-CHANGER?

David Wei and Michael Conway | SolarKal

GROUND LEVEL: THE CASE FOR GROUND LEASES AND LONG-TERM CAPITAL

Shaun Libou | Raymond James

LEGAL UPDATE / DRIVING FORCE: UNDERSTANDING SYNDICATED LOANS AND MULTI-TIERED FINANCING

Gary A. Goodman, Gregory Fennell, and Jon E. Linder | Dentons

LEGAL UPDATE / ENHANCED PROTECTION: LEVERAGING THE SAFETY ACT FOR ENHANCED LIABILITY PROTECTION IN REAL ESTATE

Andrew J. Weiner, Brian E. Finch, Aimee P. Ghosh, Samantha Sharma, and Sarah Hartman | Pillsbury

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