Lusk Perspectives

Richard K. Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) moderates a discussion on the growing opportunities PropTech brings to the real estate industry. Travis Putnam (Founder and Managing Partner, Navitas Capital) provides perspective on the overall momentum of venture capital in the space while Ashley Colella (Senior Product Manager, HqO) and Tyler Scriven (Founder and CEO, Saltbox) offer o...

Rachel Elias Wein (Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Wein Plus) joins Richard K. Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) to discuss the retail sectors returning as states continue to reopen and vaccine rates climb. Wein traces the pandemic's impact on retail, including growth in grocery delivery, pet stores, and ecommerce as well as areas that struggled like malls and mid-sized brands....

Richard K. Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) delivers new data from the Casden Spring 2021 Multifamily Forecast Report. Despite outmigration, California housing prices are still climbing, indicating that the state remains a desirable destination for many. However, California's lack of multifamily housing production remains concerning as sunbelt states with more robust construction...

Neha Nanda, MD (Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Antimicrobial Stewardship, Keck Medicine of USC) is joined by Scott B. Laurie (President and Chief Executive Officer, The Olson Company) and Richard K. Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) to discuss the ongoing recovery efforts from COVID-19, how organizations might manage returning to the office, and when everyday life has...

The State of California's Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) estimated that 70,000-110,000 new housing units are needed per year to keep housing prices from rising faster than the national average. What are the most important barriers to new housing construction and what can be done about them?   Scholars Evgeny Burinskiy (Ph. D. in Urban Planning and Development, USC Price), Lois Takahashi (Houst...

Claudia Sahm (Senior Fellow, Jain Family Institute) joins Richard K. Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) to outline the changes in economic policy as the Federal Reserve and Congress have reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sahm, who was inside the Federal Reserve during the Great Recession and recovery, has since devised the Sahm Rule Recession Indicator to help policymakers and econo...

Originally recorded for "The Bigger Picture" podcast by the USC Bedrosian Center with host Oliva Olson. Falling is the number one cause of injury and the seventh leading cause of death in adults ages 65 and older. In the newly published "Breaking Down Silos to Improve the Health of Older Adults," Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center), Patricia Harris (MD and Geriatric Medicine Specialist, UCLA...

Lois Takahashi (Houston Flournoy Professor of State Government and Director, USC Price in Sacramento) moderates a panel of public and private stakeholders on the roadblocks and success stories of rebuilding housing after fire in California, including Dave Sanson (CEO, DeNova Homes), Geoffrey Ross (Deputy Director, Financial Assistance -- Federal Programs, California Department of Housing and Commu...

Though the end of the pandemic may seem in sight, many questions remain regarding which trends of the past year are permanent. Edward Glaeser (Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University) and Richard Florida (Professor, School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and Co-Founder and Senior Editor, Bloomberg CityLab) joi...

Brad Hargreaves (Founder and CEO, Common) joins Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) to discuss how COVID-19 has impacted product typologies of co-living and the role tech plays in managing multifamily properties.   As it varies across the industry, Hargreaves lays out Common's definition of co-living that distinguishes itself from visions of student housing or roommate matchi...

William A. Witte (CEO, Related California and Chair, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) and Nadine Watt (CEO, Watt Companies and Vice Chair, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) joins Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate), to discuss their perspective on the broad trends and challenges facing real estate and urban economics in 2021. The leadership offers viewpoints on California outm...

Dana Goldman (Interim Dean, Price School of Public Policy and Director, USC Schaeffer Center) hosts Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) and Thomas Mitchell (Macarthur Fellow and Co-Director, Program in Real Estate and Community Development Law, Texas A&M) in a conversation about Mitchell's work on attempting to rectify the many ways that Black and other disadvantaged American...

Rodney Ramcharan (Professor of Finance and Business Economics, Marshall School of Business) joins Richard K. Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) to look back at 2009 and the quantitative easing used to inject money into the US economy during the financial crisis. Ramcharan shows that the effects of government intervention in the economy can last a long time, up to six years, with ref...

An excerpt panel from the Casden 2020 State of the Market conference. John W. Loper (Associate Professor, USC Sol Price School of Public Policy) hosts a discussion with industry practitioners George Koiso, MAI (Director, Los Angeles Multifamily Practice Leader, CBRE Valuation & Advisory Services), Jaime Lee (Chief Executive Officer, Jamison Realty, Inc.), and John Pawlowski (Senior Analyst, Reside...

Sean Armstrong (Managing Principal, Westport Capital LLC) joins Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) to discuss highlights from his career, his views on acquiring distressed debt, and how COVID could impact the industry. Though the K-shaped recovery will likely be a general trend going forward, Armstrong sees the recovery playing out in very focused markets with multiple inter...

Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) is joined by Michael Lens (Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs), Michael Manville (Associate Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA Luskin), and Paavo Monkkonen (Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, UCLA Luskin) to discuss their joint study on renter distress during th...

Roy March (CEO, Eastdil Secured) discusses the ins and outs of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) with Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate). Starting with the history of how CMBS was born out of the Savings and Loan Crisis in the late 1980s and how it gained ground after the 2008 crisis by providing much-needed liquidity, the conversation covers a wide range of the m...

Radio host and fourth-generation Angeleno Larry Mantle and policy experts Gary Painter and Richard Green provide an overview of CA Proposition 21 followed by a discussion on their opposing views of supporting or opposing the initiative for local rent control. If approved, it allows local governments to establish rent control on residential properties that have been occupied for over 15 years. Addi...

Larry Mantle (Host, AirTalk, KPCC) hosts a discussion regarding California Proposition 15. If passed on November 3rd, this will generate an estimated $6.5 billion to $11.5 billion annually for local governments and K-14 public education by creating a "split roll" property tax system that increases taxes on large commercial properties by taxing them at market value, without changing the assessed va...

Diane Swonk (Chief Economist, Grant Thornton) discusses where we've been and possibly where we're going as the economy braces for more impacts from COVID-19 with Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center). Tracing the line back from January 2020 to the Fall, she overlays her concerns about COVID's long term impacts on Millennials, Gen Z, Women in the workforce, and the ever-widening gaps in racial...

Laurie Goodman (Co-Director, Housing and Finance Policy, Urban Institute) sits down with Richard Green (Director, USC Lusk Center) to discuss all things mortgage market including her success and key takeaways from analyzing asset classes in the 2008-2009 financial crisis, how she and her team created the housing credit availability index, the impact of both Dodd-Frank legislation and COVID-19 on t...

Amy Cutts (President, AC Cutts and Associates LLC) details how credit scores are built, what factors and variables may contribute to how they are evaluated, how credit scores from FICO and others have evolved, and the limits to the formulas and data used in building the models that provide credit scoring. Richard Green (USC Lusk Center for Real Estate) asks questions about how debts differentiate...

Nela Richardson (Principal, Investment Strategist, Edward Jones) outlines the factors to consider in determining investment strategy and evaluating the economic outlook as the US continues to navigate impacts from COVID-19. Richardson covers how management of COVID-19 will shape the recovery, the shape of the overall recession, how past and likely future government stimuli help bridge gaps, and wh...

Lois Takahashi (USC Price Sacramento) moderates a discussion on how COVID-19 is impacting state and local budgets with Tracy Gordon (Urban Institute) and Carolyn Coleman (League of California Cities). Gordon outlines the nationwide declines in revenue are dramatic and could take up to 10 years for unemployment to fully recover. Coleman's focus on the local picture illustrates that across the board...

William Spriggs, Professor in, and Former Chair of, the Department of Economics at Howard University and Chief Economist for AFL-CIO Richard Green, Director and Chair of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate and Chair of the Department of Real Estate Development Dana Goldman, Interim Dean, USC Sol Price School of Public Policy and Leonard D. Schaeffer Director's Chair, USC Schaeffer Center The USC S...