Perspectives

Seattle Housing: A Case Study in Crisis Creation

Kelly Lyles is a member of a dying breed: the mom-and-pop Seattle landlord. Her kind has become the target of an increasingly radical city council that has slammed the rental housing industry with a barrage of new-fangled policies over the last five years that protect tenants at all costs, including the cost of landlord property… Read more

Features

Managing Climate Change-Related Risks in Global Real Estate

The CRREM project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement no. 785058. In these times of COVID-19, our perspective of time has changed. Therefore, it might seem a long time ago that we had river floodings after storms Ciara and Dennis in February, Australian and Californian… Read more

Building Blocks of the Future

Our Story: How My Company Developed Modular Construction with Recycled Shipping Containers is Advancing Solutions to the Affordable Housing Crisis and Environmental Sustainability We constantly see headlines announcing this punishing housing affordability crisis – that the younger generation cannot afford homes, that nearly half of U.S. renter households are cost-burdened,1 and that each year fewer… Read more

Perspectives

America’s Sordid History of Exclusionary Zoning

In the summer of 1910, a successful Yale-educated attorney named George W.F. McMechen and his schoolteacher wife moved to an upscale neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. After all, McMechen had achieved the American dream; he and his wife were well-respected, affluent professionals, and they wanted their home to reflect their success. But there was a problem…. Read more

Features

Had Enough ‘Disruption’ Yet? Economic Reflections After the (First) Summer of COVID-19

It is now nearly a quarter-century since the adjective ‘disruptive’ gained currency as a positive value, rather than referring to its prior pejorative meaning of ‘disintegrative’ or ‘misbehaving’. The popular embrace of ‘disruption’ as an engine of forward economic change dates from a 1997 book by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma.1 In a… Read more

Perspectives

What’s “Still” Special About Special Purpose Property

Introduction After fielding comments and inquiries on special purpose property definitions and refinements based on the original article “What’s so Special About Special Purpose Property?”1 It is clear that further explanation is warranted. Some of the terminology is in need of further commentary, in combination with the refined issues that unfold from valuation in litigation. This paper expands on the concept of special purpose property... Read More