Leading Voices in Real Estate

In part two of our series on real estate services platforms, Justin Wheeler, CEO of Berkadia, talks about the focus of his firm on multifamily finance and investment sales and how that focus defines their strategy and culture. This conversation is the flip side of the coin from our prior conversation with Brett White, who talked about the strategy and strengths of the global, full service real est...

Brett White, Executive Chair of Cushman & Wakefield and prior CEO of Discovery Land Company, discusses the evolution of today’s global giant real estate services platforms. As the first of this month’s two part series on the real estate brokerage and services platforms, Brett tells the story of the growth and evolution of the giant real estate services platforms.

Antonio Marquez, Principal and Managing Partner at Comunidad Partners, talks about his firm’s focus on workforce housing and their community oriented, impact investment business model. This is the second of a two part series this month on Leading Voices focusing on the housing crisis in our country.

I’m trading places this week, and I’m the guest! Enjoy this rebroadcast of my interview on Juniper Square’s The Distribution podcast with Brandon Sedloff.

Ismael Guerrero, President and CEO of Mercy Housing, dissects the housing affordability crisis, subsidized housing, and stewardship of public dollars. Founded in 1981, Mercy Housing has grown into the nation’s largest nonprofit owner of affordable housing.

Christopher Hawthorne, Senior Critic at the Yale School of Architecture, discusses why collective spaces deserve intentional design and public support. After over a decade as the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times, Chris took a position as the first Chief Design Officer of the City of Los Angeles, working under Mayor Eric Garcetti...

Jordan Slone, Chairman and CEO of Harbor Group International, shares the secret sauce behind the company’s $20 billion, diversified, but apartment-sector heavy portfolio. With 58,000 units of apartments, Harbor Group International came in 15th on last year’s NMHC top fifty list of apartment owners.

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...

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 i...

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...

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,...

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 busines...

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 help...

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 dif...

Mikael Colville-Andersen | Author & Founder of Copenhagenize Design Company This 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 calle...

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 leader...

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 bel...

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 the...

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...