Resources & Blog

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

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 pace

Transit-oriented development as most people still talk about it—“put more housing near a station”—is already outdated.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

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 repric

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