Articles

Aerial view of Central Park in New York City

Is Public Space the New Anchor Tenant?

Public parks improve communities’ social and physical health worldwide according to Public Parks and Wellbeing in Urban Areas of the United States by Larson and Rethinking Urban Space in Cities — A Study of Parks in Hyderabad, India by Shrinagesh and Markandey. Parks and urban trails also attract users to surrounding real estate. Park visitors [...]

Illustration of blockchain secure tokens, a city skyline, and a building hovering in a cloud

Real Estate Tokenization

Illustrations by Ben Simons. Since the early 2000s, blockchain technology has evolved into a widespread wave of innovative efforts that reached all corners of the financial industry and real estate is no exception. The traditional transfer of real property involves several key elements including title, deed, mortgage, and leases that must be organized, filed, and [...]

A building in Infinity Park, Orlando

Infinity Park: Redefining Industrial

McCraney Property Company developed Infinity Park as a Class A+ state of the art business park that combines warehouse, office, and retail uses. Located on Southpark Center Loop in Orlando, Florida, the site is incredibly accessible with access to the Florida Turnpike, Beachline Highway (SR-528), and John Young Parkway. Its buildings have all of the [...]

Modern building with a unique architectural design

Sustainable Buildings

Understanding the relationship between buildings, pollution, and climate change requires simplifying the components. The first step is to define sustainability from the investors’ perspective. To do this, we consulted environmental engineers, professors from the University of Florida’s School of Design, Construction, and Planning, and the Director of Campus Sustainability. One key takeaway is that there [...]

Florida State Capitol with the state of Florida overlayed on it and dollar signs with up and down arrows

From Sale to Assessment

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago sent the country into a recession, leaving millions of Americans unemployed. At the same time, perhaps surprisingly, it marked the beginning of a significant boom in the housing market. The median sales price of houses sold in the US went up from $330,000 in 1Q2020 to [...]

New white Volkswagen car in a showroom

Member Perspectives: August 2022

Bergstrom Survey – Early 2022 Perhaps 2022 will be the year that our market perceptions stabilize. Following a wildly uncertain 2020 and a surprisingly high-growth 2021, our survey is showing some signs of balance. We will discover over the course of the year if this is the beginning of a return to normalcy or a [...]

Wayne Archer teaching a class in Hough Hall

Location, Location, Location

After 50-plus years teaching real estate at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business, Wayne Archer shares his career-long revelations. Growing up on the plains of Kansas, Wayne Archer once thought that he would like to spend his life working the land as a farmer. As a youngster, he spent several summers at the [...]

One hundred dollar bills transposed over the sky with city skyscrapers silhouetted along the bottom

New Perspectives on Inflation Shocks and Public Real Estate Equity Returns

Introduction Inflation has again reared its ugly head in the United States. The December 2021 CPI inflation rate, 6.8%, was the highest recorded in 39 years, and producer prices were 9.8% higher than a year earlier. Relative to the past several decades, inflation is rising and survey evidence shows that actual inflation exceeds the expected [...]

Hallway with server computers or mainframe computers on both sides

The Path to Becoming Mainstream

Historically, institutional investors have favored companies that own and operate traditional property types — office, retail, industrial, apartments, and lodging/resort. These “core” real estate assets are attractive investments for providing greater diversification, reliable income, and predictable yield. Today, market sentiment remains bullish, despite the major economic disruption in 2020. In 2021, the industry experienced record-high [...]

Building with retail shops on the ground floor with apartments above them

Retail Under Apartments

Mixed-Use History Mixed-use real estate has been a central theme in urban development since the reign of the Roman Empire, where apartment units were built over city marketplaces. Mixed-use is not a new planning or development option. Before industrialization, mixed-use property was common throughout the United States. Since walking was the primary means of transportation [...]

The pool and clubhouse at the Retreat at Lakeland

Multifamily Investment Roundtrip: The Retreat at Lakeland

The Retreat at Lakeland is a 464-unit apartment community located in Lakeland, Florida. Covenant Capital Group is an expert at finding communities in need of attention and turning them into quality institutional assets. The experience at Retreat at Lakeland highlights both Covenant Capital Group’s expertise and the current market opportunities. The property was acquired in [...]

New home framed up on a construction site

Significant Digits: March 2022

Single-Family Homes – Build to Rent The distinction between rented and owner-occupied residences has typically been that apartments are rented and single-family houses are owner-occupied. Despite this generalization, individuals and small private investors have rented single-family homes forever. Until recently, this has occurred at a small scale with individuals and private investment groups acting as [...]

Looking up at the side of Heavener Hall in the courtyard with palm trees filtering the sun

Member Perspectives: March 2022

Bergstrom Survey – From ’21 to ’22 Real estate performance should have carried a bigger headline during 2021 but there were a few distractions. With so much discussion about viruses, the CDC, global travel limitations, masks, and general anxiety, there was too little space to realize that the real estate market was performing extremely well. [...]

Two people walk through a modern office with glass partitions and computer stations

Has the Office Market Changed Forever?

When the unexpected pandemic shocked the country in March 2020, strict quarantine mandates and shelter-in-place orders forced businesses to transition out of office space and restructure operations to a remote working platform. The office market and its users felt an immediate impact. The second quarter of 2020 marked the sharpest downturn in office market activity [...]

Federal Reserve Bank Building Philadelphia

Experts on Interest Rates

In the United States, the Treasury yield curve is the driver of all domestic interest rates — as all other domestic bond categories rise and fall with Treasuries. Equally as important as the current interest rates, investors everywhere pay close attention to predictions about where rates will go in the future. Virtually every investment calculation [...]