11 lessons from my NYC trip

What I learned on markets, investing, and business

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11 lessons from my NYC trip

Welcome back everyone!

This particular article is dense and far reaching. I was fortunate to meet with 11 people at prominent firms on Monday. I highly recommend coming to NY if you have never been, I think this is the only place in the world where something like that is possible. The concentration of talent and geographic proximity of Manhattan is just impossible to beat.

Here’s a screenshot from a video I sent my kids showing them the “big buildings” 😊

Although the topics below will cover a lot more than LP investing, I have a hunch that some of the lessons I personally learned might apply to you also. Several of you have directly asked for market commentary on here, and I would appreciate any feedback on this post (i.e. was it helpful, or not) so that I can figure out whether I should do more of these based on phone conversations or other meetings that I have throughout the year.

If you don’t mind, leave a comment with what you found most useful!

Without further ado, here are 11 things I learned from my trip:

1. Debt market seems to be recovering, which is great in terms of lender appetite to lend (which of course impacts interest rates and terms offered to GPs). It appears that securitization terms are getting better as well, a market that has been struggling for some time.

2. Public REITs are interesting, with the main thesis being that they overcorrected (unlike their private counterparts that don't truly mark to market unless there's a transaction) … this isn’t investing advice, but I definitely think that you should at least look into REITs as a compliment to your syndication investments. They’re different, but both are great places to invest your money as I’ve described in a full pro and con analysis here.

3. I spoke to the founder of a massive (don't want to disclose but in excess of $10b) real estate owner that started in the 80s. Three lessons from this far reaching conversation: