Real Perspectives Podcast

Today, we have the honor of speaking with Virginia Maggiore, a principal at RDC . Since joining the firm in 2019, Virginia has built the firm’s practice focused on Retail Store Rollout and Planning, adding notable clients to the firm’s roster and garnering accolades for her work from colleagues and clients. Virginia is a licensed architect, responsible for developing the in-store experience and wh...

Today’s guest is William Sankey , the founder and CEO of Northspyre , a company that was created from Sankey’s experience working on complex design and development projects and that has led him to apply AI and predictive analytics in order to de-risk those same developments and improve the overall project management workflow and significantly reduce costs. This conversation takes us on a personal...

Today, we sit down with Zachary Streit , founder and managing partner of Los Angeles and Nashville-based Way Capital, where he has arranged and closed in excess of $2 billion and has underwritten in excess of $6 billion of debt and equity financings for a broad array of real estate transactions. Zachary has significant experience arranging and closing construction loans, CMBS loans and private/har...

Our next guest is Kevin Donahey , who earlier this year was promoted form CEO of North American operations for Willow , a global technology company working within the real estate and infrastructure industries, with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Seattle, New York, London, Manila and Amersfoort, to its Vice Chair and Global Head of Corporate Development. Kevin’s background, like that of so ma...

Ted Jung is the Chief Credit Officer with Parkview Financial, which is headquartered in Los Angeles and he lives and breathes lending across a broad spectrum of commercial real estate transactions. Ted’s background has prepared him well for this position, and he brings to his role 17 years of institutional life insurance and banking experience in the commercial real estate lending industry on a na...

Today’s conversation is with Adir Levitas, the founder and CEO of Faropoint , an Israeli-founded company that identified a remarkable opprotunity in the last-mile space of the industrial sector. The company has emerged from its entry into the US market to be one of the fastest-growing industrial investors in the country.  Our conversation focuses on the inception of the company and how it evolved...

Since the start of COVID, the mortgage industry has been on a tear, once it picked up from a couple of months of relative quiet. But the tide may be turning now, and Thomas Yoon , the CEO of Excelerate Capital, will tell us how things are going in this very dynamic part of the industry. Thomas is an entrepreneur, so he’s seen his share of ups and downs in this space, but it is his entrepreneurial...

Sustainability is close to my heart. I strive to live in a way that reduces energy consumption, I’m aware of my carbon footprint, and when I can, I try to bring the best of the sustainability in commercial real estate to light in order to motivate others and provide some inspiration for our industry and beyond. Today’s guest will do exactly that. Joe Rozza has recently been hired by Ryan Companies...

Sooner or later, analytics and artificial intelligence were going to make a splash in the real estate industry, and today’s guests, Archer Co-Founders Thomas Foley and Fred Canney, will tell us how their company is looking to accomplish that. Thomas, who comes from the commercial real estate space, met Fred, who worked in gold mining and the two decided to mine data for their next venture and help...

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...