Resources & Blog

Office-to-residential conversions have been discussed for years, but the conversion era is now real for one reason: policy has started to match the economics.  Conversions are not a feel-good reuse story. They’re a feasibility puzzle: building physics, zoning permissions, and financing terms must all line up. When they do, conversions can deliver housing faster than ground-up construction in constrained markets. 5 Times Square . Photo by Michael Young. New York City’s 467-m p

For more than a decade, cheap bank debt did most of the work. Sponsors underwrote deals to a low-cost senior loan, layered in modest equity, and let cap-rate compression do the rest. That era is over. Higher policy rates and tighter credit standards have pushed commercial real estate borrowing and lending sharply lower, with 2023 volumes dropping as higher interest costs and asset repricing froze large parts of the market.    Bank CRE loan growth has slowed to its weakest pac

Zoning used to feel local: a planning commission calendar, a few community meetings, a long entitlement runway. In 2026, zoning is increasingly macro . Not because every city adopted the same rules, but because the market has learned something simple: the fastest, broadest way to change a city’s investment map is not a megaproject—it’s a text amendment.  When a city rewrites baseline assumptions (parking, height, floor-area rules, conversions, mixed-use permissions), the repr

In 2025–26, the world is generating on the order of 181 zettabytes of data a year.  Every market participant has more dashboards, feeds, and “insights” than they could ever read. At the same time, the United States is in the teeth of a historic infrastructure and energy capital cycle: a $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, included roughly $550 billion in new spending, began reshaping transportation, broadband, water, and grid investments. The Inflation Reduc

Transit-oriented development as most people still talk about it—“put more housing near a station”—is already outdated. In 2026, the most interesting projects are no longer just about proximity to rail or bus. They are about where housing, high-capacity transit, and energy infrastructure actively converge, and how that convergence shows up in cap rates, debt costs, resilience, and political support. That is the territory Oliver Bennett Agency calls Transit-Oriented Development

A portfolio of rent-stabilized apartments usually trades on boring math: regulated rent rolls, predictable churn, and capex that can be scheduled building-by-building. The Pinnacle Group situation is the opposite—a reminder that in New York City, multifamily outcomes are increasingly decided by policy and enforcement leverage , not just interest rates and debt maturities. In late 2025, Summit Properties USA agreed to buy Pinnacle Group’s portfolio of more than 5,000 apartment

New York City’s “City of Yes” is the closest thing the market has to a live zoning supercycle. It is not an abstract policy conversation; it is an active three-part rewrite of the city’s zoning DNA that is already changing where and how value is created. Over 2023–2024, the City advanced three linked initiatives: City of Yes for Carbon Neutrality to remove barriers to clean energy and high-performance systems, City of Yes for Economic Opportunity to modernize rules for small

Place-based investing has matured. Early Opportunity Zone (OZ) enthusiasm sometimes chased the wrong thing—headline tax benefits rather than durable district economics. By 2026, the market will be more disciplined. Investors want long-hold cash flows, infrastructure adjacency, and political durability. And importantly, several OZ-related timelines are now front and center in underwriting. The IRS’ Opportunity Zones FAQ notes that the deferral of eligible gain lasts until the

For years, resilience was treated as a design preference. In 2026, resilience is underwriting. Insurance markets, building performance standards, and regulatory compliance now show up directly in net operating income and valuation. Nowhere is this more visible than New York City, where Local Law 97 (LL97) requires large buildings to meet greenhouse-gas emissions limits beginning in 2024, with stricter limits in 2030 and a long runway toward net-zero ambitions. LL97 is not sim

Zoning used to feel local: a planning commission calendar, a few community meetings, a long entitlement runway. In 2026, zoning is increasingly macro . Not because every city adopted the same rules, but because the market has learned something simple: the fastest, broadest way to change a city’s investment map is not a megaproject—it’s a text amendment.  When a city rewrites baseline assumptions (parking, height, floor-area rules, conversions, mixed-use permissions), the repr