Real Perspectives Podcast

In the world of commercial construction, it is not often that we encounter a female CEO, but for Skyline Enterprises , this transformation is not new and Jessica Carps is not a usual candidate for a role like this. With its roots in the Bay Area, Skyline has now expanded to Washington, Texas, Illinois and Southern California, but its focus remains steadfast toward its clients, which is what has be...

There has been a lot said about the impact we are making on our environment, and the commercial real estate industry is at times at the forefront of that. This is why we wanted to talk to someone who really understands the impact we’re having on our world and who can help us navigate these issues better. Our guest today is Leslie Moulton-Post, the President and CEO of ESA - Environmental Science A...

If you work in commercial real estate, you will have heard of Prop Tech recently, and it is likely that either you or one of your friends has an idea of how to improve commercial real estate through an innovative product or service. RET Ventures will likely be the firm you’ll meet if this is your goal, because they are solely focused on Prop Tech and look for ways to bring these innovative compani...

Today’s conversation takes us to the back yard! Not necessarily my back yard, but a place where some cities across the country are allowing homeowners to build free-standing structures, accessory dwelling units, or more colloquially known as granny units or in-law units. The world of ADUs had grown over the last decade, and some big cities have enacted laws allowing for speedier development of the...

Today’s conversation is with Steve Glenn, the founder and CEO of Plant Prefab , the first prefabricated home factory in the nation dedicated to sustainable construction, materials, processes, and operations. Plant manufactures custom and single/multifamily homes that are high-quality, healthy, and durable. With their patented building system, Plant delivers low cost homes in half the time and with...

The Swig Company is a privately owned real estate investor operator based in San Francisco with a venerable +80-year history of investment, development, partnership and management of commercial properties in major U.S. markets. Today’s conversation with its CEO Jim Carbone and President Connor Kidd takes us through a period that the firm experienced over the last two years and how those times have...

Bryan McLaren is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Zoned Properties , a strategic real estate development firm whose primary mission is to provide real estate and sustainability services for the regulated cannabis industry. Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., Bryan helps shape the industry across the country and brings an understanding of what cannabis can mean for the commercial real estate ind...

I have not worked in construction, but I can imagine the difficult task of having to redesign or reorient something during the design phase in order to meet new criteria or requests made by the development team. Finally, Alice Technologies has a solution that helps transform the industry through its generative construction simulation.  Our conversation today is with Rene Morkos, the founder and CE...

Today, we head down to Southern California, where are met with Jodie Poirier and Amanda Spangler . Jodie is the executive managing director of Colliers’ Greater Los Angeles region - she essentially runs the show for Colliers there - and Amanda’s role as managing director of Orange County and Inland Empire extends the group’s coverage into these two important Southern California submarkets .  The c...

Rebecca Rockey is an economist and the Global Head of Forecasting at commercial real estate brokerage and advisory firm Cushman & Wakefield. In her role, she studies how economies, demographics, financial markets and commercial real estate interact— both at the macro and micro level. Today’s conversation covers some of the recent changes the Biden Administration enacted with the first phase of...

In 1986, Scott Knies and a few of his colleagues set out to create a business-oriented organization that would help raise awareness of downtown San Jose. Over the next few decades, the San Jose Downtown Association would come to symbolize not only great dynamism in California’s third-largest city but also help promote the good work the city and its corporate citizens were doing to enhance the life...

Mark Anderson is the founder and president of MGAC , a Washington, DC-based owner’s representation, and project and cost management consultancy that was born our Mark’s focus on three simple concepts: have fun, do interesting work, and make money doing it. Since 1996, the company has developed and delivered full life cycle solutions for its clients from site selection, program development, cost an...

In a recent webinar that we held online, we took a deep dive into the drivers of the construction industry across the Bay Area and how it is evolving in light of global challenges affecting every aspect of development. I sat down with leaders at Clark Construction, Pankow Builders, Nibbi Brothers and Gidel & Kocal to ask how their businesses are doing, what challenges they’ve encountered over...

Bill Galipeau is BKM Capital Partners ’ new Chief Financial Officer. Joining the organization from his role as EVP and Head of Investment Operations at PIMCO, Bill brings 25 years of institutional-grade commercial real estate investment and operations experience that will help BKM in its new trajectory to be the leading industrial investment and operations platform in the Western United States. Th...

The life science industry has been on everyone’s mind since the start of the COVID-19 global pandemic. We all became experts in epidemiology and have been anxiously awaiting vaccines to help us get back to some semblance of normalcy. As a result, life sciences have been on a vertical trajectory, and the commercial real estate industry could not provide enough lab space for all the innovation and i...

Today’s conversation takes us back to the hospitality industry, and I have the great pleasure of speaking with Greg Kennealey, the CEO of Denver-based Mission Hill Hospitality . Greg’s tenure in the industry has taken him from managing groups of hotels for KSL, which helped him springboard into a partnership with this firm to form Mission Hill. The company today is looking to grow its portfolio in...

In mid-2020, as the global COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to make its way across the globe, the hotel industry was anticipated to be extinct in the near future. And it very nearly came to be! However, just a year later, the swing has been one of the most remarkable in the commercial real estate industry, and today’s guest, Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group , will tell us just how th...

Today’s guest is Vancouver, British Columbia-based Tom Rossiter , the president and CEO of RESAAS , a business network platform that real estate agents across the globe can utilize to communicate, exchange ideas and information and ideally close deals faster.  Tom’s company is well known within the residential brokerage community, however, the company recently discovered a group of commercial brok...

There are few people who understand better what makes the Bay Area tick than Jim Wunderman . He is the CEO of the Bay Area Council, an organization that is fully focused on making the region the most globally competitive and economically productive in the world! The Bay Area Council is a public policy and advocacy organization that was formed in 1945 in an effort to shape the future of the region...

Ofer Avnery took a slightly different route to real estate. He created a technology company, sold it and then embarked on the path of easy life in real estate. Well, that’s what he hoped to achieve but quickly found himself trying to transform one of the biggest business innovation laggards by building intelligent software that allowed him to see development opportunities where others may not. And...

In today’s conversation, we sit down with Jerry Zevenbergen and TR Hazelrigg, co-founders of Seattle-based Avatar Financial . As CEO and President, Jerry and TR, respectively, run an organization focused on bridge lending across the commercial real estate spectrum, and they give us a sense of where the industry is today and some of the challenges that their clients are facing. Bridge lending can b...

Understanding the state of the commercial real estate industry today requires a global perspective, and RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) is one place to get that. In today’s conversation , we sit down with Ann Gray, the Pasadena-based President-elect of this organization and also Principal of Gray Real Estate Advisors . Ann will lead the global organization in the fall of 2022, but...

Today’s conversation takes us outside of the office and toward art. The art that you usually see in front of buildings and airports and apartment complexes. Gordon Huether is a Napa, Calif.-based artist whose specialty is this type of art, and we talk about the need for more of it across the world. We also discuss his early days and how he got introduced to it, what got him to create and how like...

In a world that is often laden with uncertainty, one company looks to make things simpler and a little more predictable. Reali is a company that is vertically integrating the home buying experience, trying to make the process as smooth as possible and frictionless to one of the parties under most stress - the home buyers. We sit down today with Reali’s CEO, Tyler Baldwin, to talk about how his com...

In today’s conversation, I sit down with Anthony Romano, the CEO of CREtelligent , a company that powers the commercial real estate space by providing an innovative approach to gather a number of due diligence data. Anthony’s prior experience in commercial real estate and technology prepared him well for this role, but it’s the opportunity to transform an industry not known for innovation that mot...