Despite CRE heavyweights pumping millions to defeat socialist-leaning Zohran Mamdani, Manhattan office leasing is on pace for 40 million-plus square feet (highest in a decade), luxury sales above $4M jumped 43% YoY, and Ken Griffin's Citadel is breaking ground on a 2 million-square-foot tower at 350 Park. Looks like capital follows opportunity, not campaign rhetoric.

Premium properties in major markets just posted their sixth straight monthly gain (up 0.4%), while smaller assets in secondary markets tumbled 0.9%. The divergence comes amid the lowest construction levels since 2013 and a projected net loss of 100 million square feet of tenants in 2025. Institutional capital is chasing quality, leaving secondary-market assets to fend for themselves.

The U.S. economy just flexed harder than expected. Q3 GDP hit 4.3% (up from 3.8% in Q2), blowing past the 3% forecast on robust consumer spending. But the Fed's preferred inflation gauge ticked up to 2.8%. For CRE, it's a mixed bag: growth supports demand, but sticky inflation could keep rate cuts on hold.

Adaptive reuse gets a second life on Chicago's North Side. Bender Companies just snagged a former Sears-turned-59-unit apartment building at 1900 W. Lawrence Ave. for $29 million in a sale-in-lieu-of-foreclosure deal. It's Bender's fifth acquisition this year and adds to Chicago's multifamily momentum: $4.9 billion in sales YTD versus $3.9 billion for all of 2024.

Well folks, it doesn't get better than this.

I just spent a week studying a company called WareSpace. And I can't stop thinking about them.

7 years ago, two guys at a brokerage kept getting the same call. "Do you have a small warehouse for my business?" 

The answer was always no. So they built WareSpace.

Today they’ve got:

WareSpace is technically an indirect competitor of ours. They do 200-2,000 SF micro units. We do 3,000-10,000 SF. They retrofit big boxes into small boxes (same playbook we run).

But they're doing something most CRE operators completely miss.

Commercial real estate marketing is stuck in 1997. Most operators talk like this: "10,000 SF available at $8.50 NNN. Clear height 24'. Contact broker for details."

Spec sheets, jargon, corporate-speak.

WareSpace flipped the script. Their CMO came from Amazon Web Services (and drove over $1B in pipeline at AWS). When he looked at CRE marketing, he saw an industry talking to itself.

His fix was simple: talk to the person, not the business.

Look at their messaging: 

"Reclaim your garage." 

"Stop running your business from your dining room."

"Your spouse can park in the garage again."

No jargon, just a human talking to another human about a real problem.

Check out their Facebook page and this UGC-style ad. The contrast with traditional CRE marketing is night and day.

WareSpace built a website that Google loves.

They created individual landing pages for every city and neighborhood. 

"Small warehouse space Philadelphia," "small warehouse Chicago Wheeling," and so on. 

Each page targets how real people actually search. Then every page links back to the main WareSpace site.

In SEO terms, this is called hub-and-spoke. Think of it like spokes on a wheel, all pointing to the center. Google sees this structure and says, "This site is the authority on small warehouse space."

The result is national traffic flowing to a single brand. While most operators list on LoopNet and pray, WareSpace owns the search results.

WareSpace removed every friction point that scares small tenants:

No personal guarantee. No NNN, no CAM - one simple monthly fee covers everything. 

Short-term leases (6 or 12 months). Tour, sign, and move in within 24 hours.

When you remove friction, you can advertise that you removed friction. "No personal guarantee" is a headline. "Move in tomorrow" is a hook.

You don't need $100M to apply this. Here's the playbook:

Rewrite your marketing in human terms. Kill the jargon. Speak to the person behind the LLC.

Build location-specific web pages. Target how real tenants search. Link them all together.

Remove friction, then advertise it. Every simplified lease term becomes a selling point.

Put a human on-site. Someone who answers the phone, does tours, knows tenants by name. That person is worth more than any ad spend.

Brand everything under one name. WareSpace isn't 20 random buildings. It's one brand that compounds.

WareSpace figured out something simple: commercial real estate is a people business pretending to be a buildings business.

They stopped talking like landlords. They started talking like humans. And 98% occupancy followed.

When's the last time you looked at your marketing through your tenant's eyes, not your broker's?

Have you ever killed jargon that made you sound "professional" because it was actually confusing people?

What's one friction point in your leasing process you could eliminate tomorrow?

Reply to this email with your own stories. I read every response (and I'll share some of my favorites in an upcoming edition).