President's Blog

Hedge Funds and Real Estate: Strategies for 2012 and Beyond

July 9, 2012
post contributed by Megan Flynn

April’s event topic – Real Estate - is always a popular and well attended one for the Roundtable. With the market constantly moving and changing, especially in New York, the real estate events allow members a chance to get caught up with what has happened as well as gaining insight from experts on the where the market is headed.

Our panel of experts this April consisted of Zev Halstuch, Vice President in AllianceBernstein’s Commercial Real Estate Credit Research group, Jon Vaccaro, CEO and Founding Partner of Ranieri Real Estate Partners, and Todd A. Voigt, CFA, Senior Vice President with Cohen & Steers, with Robert Friedman, Principal of Lanesborough Partners moderating.

Friedman began the event with a reflection on where the market has been; using gloomy references to Charles Dickens  to describe the recent past. “I want to start with the state of the US Economy” he then said.

Halstuch said the US market is starting to rebound, that the relative oversupply seems to have begun burning off. However, Vaccaro was more cautious saying that he thought the economy is “still lingering”. Vaccaro also added that Miami seems to be coming back, but people still aren’t buying houses today as they’re still unsure whether or not it will be worth less tomorrow.

“Commercial Real Estate as an asset class can’t recover if the unemployment rate doesn’t improve”, Vaccaro said, “It’s not a robust recovery and not a double dip either.”

Freidman introduced the topic of the international markets to which each of the three guests had a different opinion on different areas of the world. Panelist discussed the markets of Japan, Australia, and Canada among others. The relationship between the state of the Euro and international real estate markets was also an interesting topic brought up.

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