Leading Voices in Real Estate

Matt is joined by Dan Doctoroff, Chairman and CEO of Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet/Google subsidiary, dedicated to urban innovation, on this latest episode of Leading Voices. Sidewalk Labs tackles “cities' greatest challenges by creating products and solutions, investing in new companies, and helping developers build more sustainable, innovative, and equitable places around the world”. Dan is a testament to what it means to be a leader in our industry.

Ned Spieker joins Sam Zell, Gerald Hines, Art Gensler, Ron Terwilliger, and Leonard Wood as part of our industry legends series on Leading Voices in Real Estate. Like many of our guests, Ned came out of the Trammell Crow Company, where he had been then their youngest partner, and established and built their West Coast Division. He spun his team out in 1987, founding Spieker Properties and taking the company public as a REIT in 1993.

On the latest episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate, Matt is joined by Julia Boyd Corso and Marshall Boyd, Co-Presidents of Interstate Equities Corporation. Founded in 1981 by their parents, IEC is a value-add investor and manager of multifamily properties across California and now Seattle, with a niche of acquiring dated apartments and transforming them into attainable, updated, boutique-style assets for the current resident demographic. Julia and Marshall took over the organization in 2007 following the passing of their father when they were 27 and 29 respectively.

Jodie McLean, CEO of the retail owner, operator, and developer EDENS, joins Matt on Leading Voices in Real Estate. Founded over 50 years ago in South Carolina, EDENS, now headquartered in Washington, D.C., has a portfolio of 110 properties consisting of mixed-use, shopping centers, grocery-anchored retail, and unique historic retail redevelopments.

In Leading Voices' inaugural "back to school" episode, Matt interviews Sam Chandan, the Larry & Klara Silverstein Chair and Academic Dean of NYU's Schack Institute of Real Estate, one of the largest real estate graduate and undergraduate programs globally. In a wide-ranging conversation, Sam shares the value of an education in real estate and how it prepares future leaders for their careers in the multi-disciplinary business of real estate. In the episode, they discuss the complex issues addressing our industry, including climate change, urbanization, social equity, diversity in leadership, and public health issues.

In the second part of Leading Voices in Real Estate's discussion surrounding sustainability in the built environment, Matt is joined by Elena Alschuler, Head of Americas Sustainability for LaSalle Investment Management, and Marta Schantz, head of ULI’s Greenprint Center for Building Performance. While much of the global conversation surrounding carbon emissions centers on transportation issues the built environment is responsible for about 40% of global emissions, while transportation is just 20%. Directly after recording this episode, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new report going further than any previous statement indicating that climate change is “a code red for humanity”.

In the first of our two-part episode series on climate change and the built environment, Greg Smithies, Partner of Fifth Wall where he leads the Climate Technology Investment team, joins Matt to discuss sustainability in the real estate sector. Our industry, the built environment, is responsible for about 40% of total global carbon emissions, about 3/4 of which comes from existing buildings and about 1/4 from construction and deconstruction. Addressing our industry’s carbon footprint in addition to finding adaptation strategies to cope with climate change will be a large global investment in real estate over the coming years.

In our 100th episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate, Matt speaks with David Radcliffe, the head of real estate at Google, and the first corporate real estate guest on the podcast. David is responsible for managing all aspects of Google’s global real estate portfolio, industry-leading workplace services, and physical security services that enable the company to thrive. Through his leadership, David and his team create inspiring environments where 130,000+ employees in over 170 cities spanning more than 60 countries can do their best work every day.

As everyone tries to make sense of the next cycle of the real estate industry post-pandemic, Matt is joined by Richard Barkham, Global Chief Economist & Head of Americas Research at CBRE, to discuss how COVID has affected various sectors of CRE. Richard provides his outlook sector-by-sector, including high-growth for both multi-family and industrial. He shares a balanced view on retail, given the need for various retail products like grocery and entertainment, and discusses the continued uncertainties and transitions in the office sector. Following, Richard shares his career journey in his unique senior-leadership position of real estate research and how his insights provide strategic direction for the largest global commercial real estate services company.

During this week’s episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate, Gunnar Branson, CEO of AFIRE, speaks with Matt about current issues facing the CRE business, including his thoughts on what is driving foreign capital into U.S. real estate right now as we are moving forward from the Covid crisis. As CEO of AFIRE, the Association for International Real Estate Investors, Gunnar leads the trade group with nearly 200 leading global institutional investors, investment managers, and supporting partners from 24 countries representing approximately $3 trillion in real estate assets under management in the U.S. Prior, Gunnar was CEO of NAREIM, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers. Gunnar is also the host of The AFIRE Podcast where he deep dives with business leaders on specific topics, strategies, and issues in the global real estate business.

Long-term colleagues Chaz Mueller, CEO of Progress Residential, and Dana Hamilton, Head of Real Estate of Pretium, jointly speak with Matt on this week’s episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate to talk about the single-family rental business. Progress Residential, a portfolio holding of Pretium, is the country’s largest privately held owner and operator of single-family rental. Dana and Chaz share the dynamics and drivers of the single-family rental business, which has only recently emerged as a significant real estate asset class, institutionalizing a heretofore wholly “mom and pop” business. Dana and Chaz were among the founding leadership team at Archstone, which in the late ’90s, along with the other apartment REITs, were similarly institutionalizing a non-institutional business. They talk about the parallels between the early days at Archstone and this still-emerging business in single-family rentals as a new and permanent institutional asset class.

Neveo Mosser leads a fascinating second generation family business that operates mostly in the multifamily space. His father founded the company in the 1960s; they have owned many of their generational assets now for decades. Mosser specializes in owning and managing rent stabilized apartments in the Bay Area and now also in Southern California. Mosser is one of a handful of sharpshooter companies that operate in this niche in the business. As he will explain, there are two sides of the Mosser business: the owner-operator side and a relatively new business, Mosser Capital, which invests in this asset class for third party capital. Neveo and Matt discuss the dynamics and drivers of his business, how they have fared through COVID in San Francisco, a market that overall saw some of the largest rent drops in the country, and the dynamics of his career path as a second generation business leader.

On Tuesday, May 10, the real estate community lost one of its great thinkers and leaders, Art Gensler, the Founder of Gensler, the world’s leading design firm. This is a re-release of our November 19, 2018 Leading Voices interview with Art Gensler, who founded the eponymous-named design firm in 1965, which has grown to become the largest design firm in the world. For a fuller appreciation of Art’s life and work, visit www.gensler.com/art-gensler-legacy on the Gensler website. This original interview was sponsored by JLL and featured a joint conversation with Art and Riki Nishimura, then a Director with Gensler. This re-release is timely given the current depth of thinking, in which Gensler is one of the world’s thought leaders, around reimagining the workplace and the future of our cities in a post-pandemic world. For a more current discussion on the topic, please also revisit our July, 2020 interview with current co-CEO of Gensler, Andy Cohen.

Matt spoke with Jim Risoleo, President and CEO of Host Hotels & Resorts, during this week’s episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate. Host Hotels is the largest hospitality REIT with over 46,800 hotel rooms worldwide and the largest owner of high-end hotels in the United States with brands including Marriott, Ritz Carlton, Westin, and Hyatt. Given today’s COVID environment, much of the conversation revolves around the pandemic's impact on the hospitality sector, how Host Hotels has weathered the storm, and his predictions for business resumption coming out of the pandemic. Additionally, Jim shares his insights as a leader within the real estate industry as the chair of NAREIT, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts.

This week on Leading Voices in Real Estate, Mitchell Silver, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and a global leader in urban planning, joins Matt to discuss his work for the city and his long career in city planning. With his appointed role as Parks Commissioner, Mitchell has been responsible for the management, planning, and operations of nearly 30,000 acres of public space in New York. Matt and Mitchell talk about bringing greater equity to the city’s investment in its parks, particularly in neighborhoods of color, and about the challenges brought by COVID to New York’s public places. Mitchell also shares many of his successes throughout his career and current role, including how to make parks and communities more equitable and his experience as a leader of color in urban planning.