Every spring the City of Los Angeles announces that it has balanced its budget, and this year the announcement came with better news than usual. The deficit narrowed. The Reserve Fund was rebuilt to roughly $515 million. No layoffs, no furloughs, five hundred new positions, and enough hiring to keep
Every value in real estate is a fraction. Income on top, the rate buyers require on the bottom. Net operating income over a cap rate. We spend almost all of our time on the numerator — the leasing, the occupancy, the rent roll, the capex that holds a tenant or wins
There's a sentence investors reach for when a market gets scary. "You can't build it for this price." It's said as a comfort, almost a closing argument. The building is trading below what it would cost to construct today, so there must
There's a version of this business where you never have to sell. You buy without leverage, you hold through anything, and time does the rest. No loan coming due in the wrong year, no partner who needs liquidity, no clock. That is real patience — the kind that can
Downtown Los Angeles didn't lose its businesses. It drove them out, and the receipts are sitting in public filings, court transcripts, and lease records for anyone who wants to look. Start with who's already gone. Skadden Arps left One California Plaza for Century City in 2023,
Bonds are the honest baseline I measure everything against. Here's why I still take the harder yield in small multi-tenant industrial.
When the city talks about bringing downtown back, it talks about the big things. A stadium. A convention center. A subsidized tower with a famous tenant. The conversation is always about the marquee — the project you can cut a ribbon in front of. It is almost never about the law