Good morning. It's Sunday, August 30th, and in this week's edition, we're covering why commercial property prices barely moved in July while apartments and office headed in opposite directions, what the Fed minutes reveal about how many officials actually wanted a hike, and the one tool that gives me back ten minutes a day.
First time reading? Sign up here.
And, as always, send us feedback at [email protected].
Inside our Pipeline | Webinar | Thursday, September 3 | 2:00 pm Central
For investors and private lenders.
Last week's webinar covered one specific property, and it was oversubscribed before we did it. So this week I'm going to present our broader pipeline: the deals we're chasing and the ones already in due diligence. High level strategy and thesis, without sharing what we can't share yet.
The point is to walk you through our value-add thesis on these deals now, so when one is fully under contract or passes due diligence and is ready for capital partners, you already understand the deal and I can send it to you first.
That said, it will be educational, not a pitch-a-thon. I'll present for 30 min and then Q&A at the end.
If you want in, save your seat here.
US commercial property prices barely budged in July, up 0.2% year over year - the slowest annual gain since January 2025, according to MSCI, which tracks what buildings actually sell for. Go back three years and prices are up 0.7% in total. That headline number hides what is actually happening underneath. Apartments are down 4.1% on the year and sit 22% below their July 2022 peak, the ninth straight month of declines. Industrial slipped 1.0% after posting a 4.4% gain a year ago. Downtown office put up the best number of any property type, up 9.9%, and is still 41% below where it traded five years ago. The six largest metros lost ground while smaller markets kept climbing. This is not a recovery. It is buyers and lenders picking their spots one sector and one market at a time while the headline number goes nowhere.
"Real Estate Just Became Ridiculously Cheap": Ken McElroy argues pricing has fallen far enough that this is a buying window and not a falling knife, walking through where cap rates and financing costs are turning back toward buyers. 34 minutes. Worth the time if you are still deciding whether to be active this fall. Watch here
"Your Loan Matures in 18 Months. Now What?": Tyler Cauble takes apart the assumption that a refinance is just today's value times an LTV, and lays out what lenders are actually underwriting to now. If you have debt coming due in the next 12 to 24 months, 20 minutes here is cheaper than finding out at the deadline. Watch here
Fed minutes show rising concern over inflation, with more officials favoring a hike than the three who formally dissented at the July 28-29 meeting. The FOMC held its benchmark at 3.5%-3.75%, the first three-way dissent in one direction since 2016, and several non-voting bank presidents signaled they would back an increase if inflation does not cooperate. Chairman Kevin Warsh's argument was that the Fed is not standing pat: market rates have climbed since June and already tightened conditions without a formal move. Inflation has now run above the 2% target for five years. Futures put the odds of a September 15-16 hike below 50%.
CRE Impact: More people at that table want rates higher, not lower. If your plan for a refinance next year assumes cheaper money, build the version that still works if money costs the same or more.
One tactical tool that saves me ten minutes a day. No affiliation, I just use it. If you run a team, this one is for you.
Context. We sign up for two to five new online tools a week. Logins, passwords, all of it. We don't touch 95% of them daily, and there's no point buying a team member their own seat on something they open twice a month. So they end up on my login.
Same with credit cards: separate cards for separate projects, multiple people on each. Now add API keys, too sensitive for a chat thread.
For years I was the quarterback for all of it, and it lived on a Google Sheet. It broke constantly. Someone changes a password, forgets to update the sheet, I can't log in, ten minutes gone.
Two years ago we moved to 1Password. What made it work was splitting the vaults by function instead of by person.
That's the whole trick. When we start leasing up a building we just bought, we're running ads for it. I share the Media Buying vault with a teammate and they have every card and login they need to launch the campaign. Nobody is texting me for a password. It just works.
Ten minutes a day is about 43 working hours a year.
It syncs across desktop and phone, so the vault is with you wherever you're working.
Try it.
My guess is half of you solved the password problem years ago, and some of you have a better system than mine. If that's you, hit reply and show me what you run. I read every one.
And if you want to see what I do with those ten minutes: Thursday at 2:00 pm Central I'm walking through the deals we're chasing right now. Save your seat here.
LET ME HEAR IT
Until next Sunday.
Be well,
Saul
P.S. Missed my podcast with Nicolas Lares? Here is the full episode.
Videos & podcasts: I publish them weekly. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast or Spotify.
