Remember when your grandma asked you what you wanted to be whenyou grow up. Doctor, nurse, policeman, teacher, firemanwere probably high on the list. After watching enough "PerryMason", you might have added lawyer. When it was time to go tocollege, your smart classmates talked up premed and pre law, and sodid your parents ("My son the doctor."). For the math whizzes,engineering and science programs were big. J-schools had adherentsin my day too. If you were shooting for a business degree, mostgrads had their eye on working for a Fortune 100 company orstarting their own business, building something that would lastwhile you made a decent living along the way. That was then.
Circa 2007, going to med school is passe. Who wants the billingand malpractice insurance headaches? Science and engineering giveway to dreaming up the next software/internet scheme. The best andthe brightest in business, meanwhile, have become (let's be crass)brokers -- investment bankers, traders, private equity players, orhedge fund investors. You make your (tons of) money out of fees,promotes, and complicated structures using other people's money andlots of debt, cashing in as soon as possible on the next trade. Themore transactions, the higher the volumes, the more everyone makes;while the frenzy of deals ratchets up prices and whips up moretransactions and higher fees. In the past decade, even lumpycommercial real estate wall streetized and traded like crazy thanksto various securitized structures. Entrepreneurial developers whohadn't turned into REITs, transformed themselves into advisors andmanagers to get in on the action. You buy real estate with littledown, sit on it for a short time, and flip into riches...repeatedly. And all the other intermediaries get their sliverof the pie too -- appraisers, lawyers, accountants, titlecompanies, even (gasp) rating agencies pile into the pool. Nothingmuch is created, leaving something for posterity isn't part of theequation. Extracting money through trades is the name of the game.It's genius.
That was then too. The game has changed for 2008. What will ittake to make money next year?
Continue Reading for Free
Register and gain access to:
- Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
*May exclude premium content
Already have an account?
Sign In Now
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Jonathan D. Miller
A marketing communication strategist who turned to real estate analysis, Jonathan D. Miller is a foremost interpreter of 21st citistate futures – cities and suburbs alike – seen through the lens of lifestyles and market realities. For more than 20 years (1992-2013), Miller authored Emerging Trends in Real Estate, the leading commercial real estate industry outlook report, published annually by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Land Institute (ULI). He has lectures frequently on trends in real estate, including the future of America's major 24-hour urban centers and sprawling suburbs. He also has been author of ULI’s annual forecasts on infrastructure and its What’s Next? series of forecasts. On a weekly basis, he writes the Trendczar blog for GlobeStreet.com, the real estate news website. Outside his published forecasting work, Miller is a prominent communications/institutional investor-marketing strategist and partner in Miller Ryan LLC, helping corporate clients develop and execute branding and communications programs. He led the re-branding of GMAC Commercial Mortgage to Capmark Financial Group Inc. and he was part of the management team that helped build Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Inc. (subsequently Lend Lease Real Estate Investments, Inc.) into the leading real estate advisor to pension funds and other real institutional investors. He joined the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. in 1981, moving to Equitable Real Estate in 1984 as head of Corporate/Marketing Communications. In the 1980's he managed relations for several of the country's most prominent real estate developments including New York's Trump Tower and the Equitable Center. Earlier in his career, Miller was a reporter for Gannett Newspapers. He is a member of the Citistates Group and a board member of NYC Outward Bound Schools and the Center for Employment Opportunities.
