Fifty-three. That is the number of street food vendors in Los Angeles County who hold a health permit, against roughly 50,000 vendors on the sidewalks. The county logged close to 10,000 complaints in three years and about 3,000 food poisoning reports in 2025 alone. Last fall
Volume is up, the private buyer is in the market, and it's still a terrible time for most sellers to sell. Both are true for the same reason.
The numerator is softer than the pro forma. The denominator is higher than January. This week's data made both worse.
There are some phrases going around all the capital conversations I’ve had this year, they kind of sound like wisdom: “Capital has gotten disciplined; Allocators are being selective; The bar is higher.” Everybody nods, because discipline is a virtue and nobody argues with a virtue. It’s what sponsors
There's a sentence in almost every 2026 business plan we've read, and in a few of our own. We'll refinance when rates come down. It wasn't a reckless thing to write. Back in February, the consensus had the funds rate ending this
It seems like everyone's watching for the same headline: a default, a foreclosure notice, a bank finally forced to take the keys. I know that's the first call I get from a real estate-focused reporter… "Did you see so-and-so just defaulted?"
Almost every capital conversation we have starts in the same place. Somebody tells us they're a value-add buyer. They want a business plan, not a finished product. They'd rather build something than buy something another operator already built. Four or five minutes later, the real
This Is Not the 1984 Deal Under the host city agreement, Los Angeles pays the first $270 million of any Olympic cost overrun. The state pays the next $270 million. Past that — no ceiling, no cap, no second guarantor — the bill is the city's alone. LA28, the private
The city's police chief says LA needs 12,500 officers. It has 8,551. The Olympic guarantee has no ceiling. And nobody at City Hall has been willing to make the call on what gets smaller. Part III of III.
Part II of III The story you will hear at every conference this year is that Los Angeles has bottomed, and the numbers people reach for are real ones: roughly $37 billion of sales volume across the metro last year, lenders quoting again, commercial mortgage distress running below the national
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