When we published our most recent issue of Summit this past spring, the dangers and disquiet of COVID-19 were still being revealed. New investments were put on pause as we focused on near term operating and asset management issues and wondered when there might be a return to “normal.”
Now, a few months down the line, the formerly abstruse scientific language of public health is commonplace. Many of us now speak of R-values and comorbidities as casually as we talk about the weather and last weekend’s football game. And meanwhile, the short- and long-term economic implications of the global pandemic, while still imprecise, are at least better understood than they were in March, when the World Health Organization first declared the disease had reached pandemic proportions.
And though COVID-19 has upended routines at all scales, it hasn’t changed the importance and necessity of long-term thinking for sound real estate investing. But it has certainly complicated our traditional methods of understanding. So the fundamental question we asked as our editorial team planned this special, summer issue of Summit was: how do we facilitate responsible thinking about tomorrow when many (people, organizations, cities, states, and countries) are still sailing through the longest night of their lives?
As it turns out, all we needed to do was ask. After issuing a general call for contributions to for this issue of Summit, we received more submissions than ever before, and now have our largest issues to date. This not only reflects the quality of intelligence contained within AFIRE’s membership (and our other guest experts featured in this issue), but also underscores the philosophy of informed optimism that fundamentally defines our industry: we are realists, but our focus is on the future.
While each article in this issue focuses on a specific issue—infrastructure, mixed-use communities, logistics, retail, ethics, asset management, demographics, and so forth—you’ll find a common thread of futurism ties each article together to form a cohesive picture of where we are now, and where we might possibly lead our employees, investors, and communities tomorrow.
Benjamin van Loon
Communications Director, AFIRE
Editor-in-Chief, Summit
bvanloon@afire.org
+1 202 312 1405
IN THIS ISSUE
- A Real Estate Reckoning: Coming to Terms with a Complex History
AFIRE | Gunnar Branson, CEO - Resilient Cities: Which Metros will be Well-Positioned for Life after COVID?
Nuveen Real Estate | Jayanth Ganesan, Research Analyst, Americas; David Segall, Director, Americas; Melissa Reagen, Head of Research, Americas - Inside View: Asset Management During Crisis
Barings Real Estate | John Kennedy, Head of US Equity Real Estate Asset Management; Rob Little, CFA, Head of Real Estate Debt Underwriting, Servicing and Asset Management; James Salmon, Head of European Real Asset Management - Rightsizing CRE: Understanding New Changes in Tenant Demand, Economics, and Public Health
Aegon Real Assets | Martha Peyton, PhD, CRE, Managing Director of Real Assets Applied Research - The Future (of) Office: Flexibility, Talent, and Diverse Uses for Commercial Offices
American Realty Advisors | Stanley Iezman, Chairman and CEO; Sabrina Unger, Managing Director, Head of Research and Strategy - Supply, Demand, Stay at Home: COVID-19 and the Outlook for Logistics
Prologis | Melinda McLaughlin, Vice President of Research - Post-Catastrophe Retail: What’s the Value of Retail After a Catastrophe?
Investment Management Corporation of Ontario | Andrew Garrett, Executive Director, Real Estate - Mixed Use, Remixed: Could Mixed-Use Communities Grow in the Wake of COVID-19?
Lionstone Investments | Bryan Sanchez, Chief Investment Officer; Hans Nordby, Head of Research and Analytics - Ok, Boomer: Single-Family Rentals and a New Generation
Man Global Private Markets | Rolf Jaeckli, Portfolio Manager; Anthony Cazazian, Managing Director and Head of US Residential Real Estate - Medical Office Beyond the Baby Boom: Where’s the Sector Headed Next?
Anthology Capital | G. Evan Bennett, Founder and Managing Member - Infrastructure Means Understanding: Investing in Cities from the Bottom Up
Yardi Matrix | Claire Anhalt, Senior Research Analyst; Paul Fiorilla, Research Editorial Director - Preparing for a New Paradigm: A Dispatch from the 2020 Winter Conference
AFIRE | Benjamin van Loon, Editor-in-Chief - Craving the Light: Transparency Matters—Now, More Than Ever
L&B Realty Advisors | G. Andrews Smith, CEO - Why Migration Matters: Do People Follow Jobs, or Vice Versa?
Berkshire Residential Investments | Gleb Nechayev, CRE, Head of Research and Chief Economist - Time to Digitize ESG: How Industries are Adjusting Responsible Practices through COVID-19
Amanda Davis, Thought Leadership Content Manager
