I don't remember signing up for Thesis Driven's newsletter, but I'm on it, and it does sound like something I would do. Their latest post, the first of this year by Brad Hargreaves, is called "Seven Real Estate Predictions for 2026." And I'd like to draw your attention to the last one. Here it is verbatim:

The word “sponsor” has historically implied episodic activity: raise capital, do a deal, return capital, repeat. That framing made sense when real estate investing was primarily about financial engineering and asset selection.

It makes far less sense in a world where alpha increasingly comes from operations.

By 2026, I think the most sophisticated real estate operators will stop being thought of—and thinking of themselves—as sponsors at all. They will be platforms. And platforms are underwritten differently.

Rather than being evaluated solely on IRRs and realized multiples, these businesses will increasingly be assessed through a private equity lens: EBITDA generation, revenue streams, margin stability, customer (tenant) retention, technology leverage, scalability of systems, and durability of management teams. Deal performance will still matter, but as proof points—not as the whole story.

The consequences? Platform economics reward longer-term thinking, reinvestment, and organizational maturity. They also open the door to entirely different capital partners, exit paths, and valuation frameworks that look a lot more like growth equity than traditional real estate promote structures.

This really resonates with me. Sponsor, promoter, and developer — these names have historically reflected the entrepreneurial and deal-specific nature of real estate. It's also one of the reasons why project brands typically overshadow developer brands; the focus is on that one deal.

A good deal is a good deal. We all get that. Sometimes a single deal is all that is needed to change your life. But as a general rule, I am much more interested in longer-term thinking, an approach that compounds over time, the opportunity to continually refine a craft, and the growth of brand equity.

In Brad's words, that is "platform over sponsor."

Cover photo by Fabio Sasso on Unsplash

Happy New Year! And welcome to another year of this daily blog. (In August of this year, we'll enter the 14th year of this daily practice.)

Exactly a year ago, I published a post talking about what might happen in 2025. It was last year's prediction post. Today, let's see how I did.

• Real estate development: I admitted that I had been overly optimistic in terms of how soon the market would reset (specifically Toronto). But I did still argue that 2025 would be an important turning point in terms of people capitulating and more legacy assets/deals getting reset. I think we did start to see this. We looked at a number of receivership sites and came across many instances where a landowner would take 40-50% of what they paid. The problem is that the market still hasn't fully reset and we're still in the midst of absorbing our current housing supply pipeline. So while it sounds nice to buy something for $0.40 on the dollar, what do you then do with it?

• Return-to-office: I said that we would see the average weekly occupancy index in downtown Toronto reach 90% by the end of 2025 (it was 73% when I wrote the post a year ago). As of November 2025, it was 82%. Not quite.

• Autonomous vehicles: I reversed my position (relative to the prior year) and said that autonomous vehicles are way further along than most people thought, at least at the time. And boy, was 2025 a great year for Waymo. It feels like they're now in scaling mode.

• EU carbon permits: A year ago, they were priced at €71.98 per tonne of carbon dioxide, compared to an all-time high of €105.73 in February of 2023. I guessed that they'd be between €90 and €100 by the end of 2025. Right now they're at €87.28.

• Crypto: I thought that 2025 would be a good year for crypto given the MAGA movement's support for it. For a while, it seemed like that would be the case. But if I look at the price of Ethereum, it's down 15.21% year-to-date. So not what I predicted. But I continued to dollar-cost average.

• Web3: I went on to predict that we would see a breakout web3 consumer app in 2025. I also mentioned that I was impressed by NFT marketplaces like Rodeo. Well, Rodeo has gone on to mostly die and I'm not sure it would be fair to say that there was anything that crossed over into the mainstream. I'm going to give myself a zero for this one. But if I had to pick something, I would say that Coinbase's "Base App" represents meaningful progress. Base continues to dominate the Ethereum Layer 2 market. It's fast and cheap.

I wish you all a healthy, prosperous, and fulfilling 2026.

Cover photo by Jamie Fenn on Unsplash

Happy new year, everyone! Yesterday we spoke about what actually happened in 2024 (and evaluated my predictions from exactly a year ago). Today, let's prognosticate about what might happen in 2025 (keeping in mind that I'm based in Toronto and so there will naturally be a bias toward this market):

• Very broadly speaking, our current commercial real estate downturn started, in my opinion, around the middle of 2022. That's when sentiment started to feel different and the market was starting to respond to increasing interest rates. Over the past few years, I've been overly optimistic in terms of how soon the market would reset. But eventually I'll be right. So I'm going to call 2025 as an important turning point where we see more capitulation, more bankruptcies, and a shedding of legacy assets/deals. For the other side of the market, this will mean more new deals.

• This, however, does not mean that we will see a development environment that anywhere resembles what we saw prior to 2022. On the new construction residential side (condominium and multi-family rental specifically), I think it's going to take 2-3 years for us to work through and absorb our current supply pipeline. This will be an obvious headwind for land prices. The successful projects in this environment will be located in core/prime locations, underwritten at more modest scales, and focused largely on end users.

• In 2024, we saw the continued rise of more people going back to the office. Here in Toronto, the average weekday figure is approximately 73% of what it was pre-COVID (data from November 2024). This year, I think we'll see this figure get close to 90% and then likely start to level off, some five years after the first lockdowns. I think it makes sense that we'll stabilize at some number below pre-COVID levels, but I also think it'll be a number that is much higher than most people expected just a few years ago.

• I am reversing my position on autonomous vehicles (relative to last year). I believe we're much further along -- specifically Waymo is -- than most people think right now. Autonomous vehicles are happening and, in 2025, I think we'll see a significant expansion of coverage across the US led by Waymo + Uber. I don't think we'll see anything earth shattering from Tesla in regards to FSD, but who knows, Elon is good at making things happen. The big test will be cities with snow. This will likely take longer.

• At the time of writing this post, the price of EU carbon permits is approximately €71.98 per tonne of carbon dioxide. It's all-time high was €105.73 in February of 2023, but some/many believe that it will need to be closer to €150 by 2030 if the world hopes to reach net zero by 2050. So for this reason, I'm going to say that its price rebounds to between €90-100 this year. This is largely a guess, but I'm including it in my predictions (at least partially) because it's quantifiable and easy to score later.

• Crypto and technology more broadly are going to have an awesome year in 2025. As Fred Wilson wrote on his blog yesterday, one of the things we saw in 2024 was "Silicon Valley's hostile takeover of the federal government, via an infiltration of Donald Trump's MAGA movement." The "establishment government" was seen as being antagonistic toward tech and innovation, and so the industry jumped teams. One would expect that to pay dividends this year.

• More specifically, I think we're going to see a web3 consumer application that finally breaks into the mainstream. Already, I've been impressed by NFT marketplaces like Rodeo. Many people won't appreciate that it's powered by some blockchain, but that's exactly what we want. We want the underlying technology to recede into the background and for the experience/utility to come into the foreground.

And with that, I will end and leave you all with this recent tweet from Chris Dixon. It's worth clicking through and reading the entire thing.

A big thank you to everyone who continues to read this blog. We're now into year 12 of this daily writing practice (my first post was in August 2013), and I'm still feeling more inspired than ever. It truly feels like we're at the dawn of so many new and exciting things: a new real estate cycle, an unprecedented innovation environment, and the list goes on. Next up, I'm going to write specifically about what we at Globizen are focused on for this upcoming year.

Cover photo by Tyler Rooney on Unsplash

I don't remember signing up for Thesis Driven's newsletter, but I'm on it, and it does sound like something I would do. Their latest post, the first of this year by Brad Hargreaves, is called "Seven Real Estate Predictions for 2026." And I'd like to draw your attention to the last one. Here it is verbatim:

The word “sponsor” has historically implied episodic activity: raise capital, do a deal, return capital, repeat. That framing made sense when real estate investing was primarily about financial engineering and asset selection.

It makes far less sense in a world where alpha increasingly comes from operations.

By 2026, I think the most sophisticated real estate operators will stop being thought of—and thinking of themselves—as sponsors at all. They will be platforms. And platforms are underwritten differently.

Rather than being evaluated solely on IRRs and realized multiples, these businesses will increasingly be assessed through a private equity lens: EBITDA generation, revenue streams, margin stability, customer (tenant) retention, technology leverage, scalability of systems, and durability of management teams. Deal performance will still matter, but as proof points—not as the whole story.

The consequences? Platform economics reward longer-term thinking, reinvestment, and organizational maturity. They also open the door to entirely different capital partners, exit paths, and valuation frameworks that look a lot more like growth equity than traditional real estate promote structures.

This really resonates with me. Sponsor, promoter, and developer — these names have historically reflected the entrepreneurial and deal-specific nature of real estate. It's also one of the reasons why project brands typically overshadow developer brands; the focus is on that one deal.

A good deal is a good deal. We all get that. Sometimes a single deal is all that is needed to change your life. But as a general rule, I am much more interested in longer-term thinking, an approach that compounds over time, the opportunity to continually refine a craft, and the growth of brand equity.

In Brad's words, that is "platform over sponsor."

Cover photo by Fabio Sasso on Unsplash

Happy New Year! And welcome to another year of this daily blog. (In August of this year, we'll enter the 14th year of this daily practice.)

Exactly a year ago, I published a post talking about what might happen in 2025. It was last year's prediction post. Today, let's see how I did.

• Real estate development: I admitted that I had been overly optimistic in terms of how soon the market would reset (specifically Toronto). But I did still argue that 2025 would be an important turning point in terms of people capitulating and more legacy assets/deals getting reset. I think we did start to see this. We looked at a number of receivership sites and came across many instances where a landowner would take 40-50% of what they paid. The problem is that the market still hasn't fully reset and we're still in the midst of absorbing our current housing supply pipeline. So while it sounds nice to buy something for $0.40 on the dollar, what do you then do with it?

• Return-to-office: I said that we would see the average weekly occupancy index in downtown Toronto reach 90% by the end of 2025 (it was 73% when I wrote the post a year ago). As of November 2025, it was 82%. Not quite.

• Autonomous vehicles: I reversed my position (relative to the prior year) and said that autonomous vehicles are way further along than most people thought, at least at the time. And boy, was 2025 a great year for Waymo. It feels like they're now in scaling mode.

• EU carbon permits: A year ago, they were priced at €71.98 per tonne of carbon dioxide, compared to an all-time high of €105.73 in February of 2023. I guessed that they'd be between €90 and €100 by the end of 2025. Right now they're at €87.28.

• Crypto: I thought that 2025 would be a good year for crypto given the MAGA movement's support for it. For a while, it seemed like that would be the case. But if I look at the price of Ethereum, it's down 15.21% year-to-date. So not what I predicted. But I continued to dollar-cost average.

• Web3: I went on to predict that we would see a breakout web3 consumer app in 2025. I also mentioned that I was impressed by NFT marketplaces like Rodeo. Well, Rodeo has gone on to mostly die and I'm not sure it would be fair to say that there was anything that crossed over into the mainstream. I'm going to give myself a zero for this one. But if I had to pick something, I would say that Coinbase's "Base App" represents meaningful progress. Base continues to dominate the Ethereum Layer 2 market. It's fast and cheap.

I wish you all a healthy, prosperous, and fulfilling 2026.

Cover photo by Jamie Fenn on Unsplash

Happy new year, everyone! Yesterday we spoke about what actually happened in 2024 (and evaluated my predictions from exactly a year ago). Today, let's prognosticate about what might happen in 2025 (keeping in mind that I'm based in Toronto and so there will naturally be a bias toward this market):

• Very broadly speaking, our current commercial real estate downturn started, in my opinion, around the middle of 2022. That's when sentiment started to feel different and the market was starting to respond to increasing interest rates. Over the past few years, I've been overly optimistic in terms of how soon the market would reset. But eventually I'll be right. So I'm going to call 2025 as an important turning point where we see more capitulation, more bankruptcies, and a shedding of legacy assets/deals. For the other side of the market, this will mean more new deals.

• This, however, does not mean that we will see a development environment that anywhere resembles what we saw prior to 2022. On the new construction residential side (condominium and multi-family rental specifically), I think it's going to take 2-3 years for us to work through and absorb our current supply pipeline. This will be an obvious headwind for land prices. The successful projects in this environment will be located in core/prime locations, underwritten at more modest scales, and focused largely on end users.

• In 2024, we saw the continued rise of more people going back to the office. Here in Toronto, the average weekday figure is approximately 73% of what it was pre-COVID (data from November 2024). This year, I think we'll see this figure get close to 90% and then likely start to level off, some five years after the first lockdowns. I think it makes sense that we'll stabilize at some number below pre-COVID levels, but I also think it'll be a number that is much higher than most people expected just a few years ago.

• I am reversing my position on autonomous vehicles (relative to last year). I believe we're much further along -- specifically Waymo is -- than most people think right now. Autonomous vehicles are happening and, in 2025, I think we'll see a significant expansion of coverage across the US led by Waymo + Uber. I don't think we'll see anything earth shattering from Tesla in regards to FSD, but who knows, Elon is good at making things happen. The big test will be cities with snow. This will likely take longer.

• At the time of writing this post, the price of EU carbon permits is approximately €71.98 per tonne of carbon dioxide. It's all-time high was €105.73 in February of 2023, but some/many believe that it will need to be closer to €150 by 2030 if the world hopes to reach net zero by 2050. So for this reason, I'm going to say that its price rebounds to between €90-100 this year. This is largely a guess, but I'm including it in my predictions (at least partially) because it's quantifiable and easy to score later.

• Crypto and technology more broadly are going to have an awesome year in 2025. As Fred Wilson wrote on his blog yesterday, one of the things we saw in 2024 was "Silicon Valley's hostile takeover of the federal government, via an infiltration of Donald Trump's MAGA movement." The "establishment government" was seen as being antagonistic toward tech and innovation, and so the industry jumped teams. One would expect that to pay dividends this year.

• More specifically, I think we're going to see a web3 consumer application that finally breaks into the mainstream. Already, I've been impressed by NFT marketplaces like Rodeo. Many people won't appreciate that it's powered by some blockchain, but that's exactly what we want. We want the underlying technology to recede into the background and for the experience/utility to come into the foreground.

And with that, I will end and leave you all with this recent tweet from Chris Dixon. It's worth clicking through and reading the entire thing.

A big thank you to everyone who continues to read this blog. We're now into year 12 of this daily writing practice (my first post was in August 2013), and I'm still feeling more inspired than ever. It truly feels like we're at the dawn of so many new and exciting things: a new real estate cycle, an unprecedented innovation environment, and the list goes on. Next up, I'm going to write specifically about what we at Globizen are focused on for this upcoming year.

Cover photo by Tyler Rooney on Unsplash