A Catalogue of Everything Thesis Driven

I’ve been writing Thesis Driven since late 2022. Since then, we’ve published over 150 letters diving deep into a wide range of topics at the intersection of real estate, capital markets, technology, and cities.

I’ve assembled this catalogue of everything we’ve ever written to help longtime subscribers and newcomers alike navigate our library, breaking all of Thesis Driven down into the following categories:

• Real Estate Investment Themes
• OpCo-PropCo and Deal Structuring
• Capital Raising
• Technological Innovation in Real Estate
• Financial Innovation in Real Estate
• Macro
• The Future of Office
• New Cities
• Housing & Urban Policy
• Educational
• Advice
• Podcasts & Video Interviews
• Innovation 100 Awards

Real Estate Investment Themes

Exploring new categories and asset classes of real estate was Thesis Driven’s original mission. We’ve since expanded our scope but still consider this our best work.

• ADUs (October 2024, October 2022)
• Affordable Housing (October 2024)
• Build-to-Rent in Canada and the UK (January 2023)
• Build-to-Rent in the US (July 2024)
• Car-Light Communities (October 2022)
• Coliving (February 2024, March 2023, Jan 2023)
• Collectible Car Storage (May 2023)
• Early Childhood Education (June 2024)
• Family-Oriented Apartments (November 2022)
• Farmland (August 2023)
• Flex Office (February 2023)
• Glamping (March 2023)
• Historic Tax Credits (February 2023)
• Hotel-to-Residential Conversions (January 2023)
• Intentional Communities (July 2023)
• Land Subdivision (March 2024)
• Last Mile Logistics (February 2023)
• Making the Leap to Long-Term Holding (July 2024)
• Manufactured Housing and RV Parks (November 2024)
• Mid-term Rentals (August 2024)
• Monetizing Vacant Land (June 2024)
• Multifamily x Hospitality Combinations (January 2024)
• Multigenerational Housing (April 2024)
• Net Lease Real Estate (July 2023)
• Niche Assets (October 2024)
• Office to Residential Conversions (April 2024, September 2022)
• Placemaking (September 2024, June 2023)
• Play and Real Estate (September 2024)
• Preferred Equity (February 2023)
• Scattered-Site Student Housing (January 2024)
• Short-Term Rentals (November 2023, June 2023)
• Single-Family Leisure (February 2024)
• Single-Family Rentals (November 2023)
• Small-Site Multifamily (December 2023, May 2023)
• Social and Members’ Clubs (May 2023)
• Sound Stages (March 2024)
• Strategies for Investing Small Checks (April 2023)
• Tax Credit Development (September 2023)
• Under-the-Radar Sectors (November 2023)

OpCo-PropCo and Deal Structuring

As a sector of real estate investment, we’ve covered OpCo-PropCo structures so extensively at Thesis Driven that they deserve their own category.

• List of OpCo-PropCo Investors (November 2022)
• OpCo-PropCo Models (November 2022)
• Structuring Real Estate Investment Partnerships (January 2024, December 2023)
• Alpaca’s OpCo-PropCo Play (October 2023)
• The Future of OpCo-PropCo (March 2023)
• New Brick-and-Mortar Financing Models (November 2023)
• OpCo-PropCo Insights from Blueprint 2023 (September 2023)
• PropCo Seed Investment Models (October 2023)
• Solving the Challenges of OpCo-PropCo (August 2024)
• Structuring Mistakes (July 2024)

Capital Raising

As venture investors have pulled back from brick-and-mortar models, we’ve extensively covered the innovative ways entrepreneurs and operators are capitalizing their businesses.

• List of Active Real Estate Tech Investors (August 2024, February 2024, August 2023)
• Where Real Estate Tech Investors Want to Play (August 2024, January 2024, October 2023)
• Alternative Sources of Capital (May 2023)
• Against “PropTech” (June 2023)
• Bootstrap Capital for New PropCos (March 2024)
• Capitalizing Boutique Real Estate (April 2024)
• Five Real Estate Capital-Raising Scenarios (September 2024)
• Government-Savvy VCs (August 2024)
• How to Work with Family Offices (August 2024, April 2024)
• Questions a Real Estate Sponsor Should Ask Before Raising Money (August 2024)
• Raising a PropCo (July 2023)
• Real Estate Capital Markets Trends (November 2024)
• ReSeed and the Accelerator Model (May 2023)

Technological Innovation in Real Estate

Thesis Driven isn’t a proptech publication, but we do write about technology insofar as it influences the future of real estate and the investment models that make sense today.

• Public REIT Tech Rundowns (November 2024, August 2024, June 2024, March 2024, November 2023, August 2023)
• Calls for New Technology & Innovation (April 2024, February 2024)
• AI in Real Estate (November 2024, August 2024, April 2024, March 2023)
• Building a Property Management System from Scratch (October 2024)
• Centralizing and Offshoring Operations (October 2023)
• Construction Innovation (July 2024)
• Construction Materials (May 2024)
• Data-Driven Investing Tools (December 2022)
• EV Charging in Multifamily (April 2023)
• Fraud Prevention (September 2024)
• Home Discovery (April 2023)
• Geothermal Energy (April 2023)
• LatAm Real Estate Tech (November 2024)
• Lookalike Modeling (May 2024)
• Loyalty Programs (June 2024)
• Managed Wifi (April 2024, November 2024)
• Mass Timber (July 2024)
• Neutral (September 2024)
• Profiling Interesting Real Estate Tech Companies (August 2023)
• The Residential Property Management System (December 2023)
• Solving the Construction Worker Shortage (October 2023)
• Startups of the Post-NAR Settlement World (September 2024)
• Technology for Scattered Multifamily Portfolios (March 2024)
• Technology for Single-Family Rentals (April 2024)
• Tracking Zoning Decisions with an LLM (October 2024)
• Trust and Multifamily Fraud (November 2024)

Financial Innovation in Real Estate

Not all innovation is technological innovation. While the line is often fuzzy, many “new” things in real estate reflect novel approaches to finance or regulation.

• Airbnb’s Multifamily Play (March 2024)
• Appraisal’s Crunch Time (March 2024)
• C-PACE Financing (June 2024)
• Cherry Lawn (February 2024)
• Innovation in Single-Family Homebuying (September 2023)
• The Institutionalization of Home Equity (September 2024)
• Ownify (July 2024)
• Preferred Equity (February 2023)
• REITs as a Capitalization Strategy (October 2024)
• Security Deposit Replacement & Guarantor Products (May 2024)
• Strategies to Get Multifamily Development Unstuck (January 2024)
• Tech-Enabled Lending (February 2024)

Macro

We’ll occasionally tackle the macro picture and how it’s shaping the real estate world. Our features on population density and autonomous vehicles are good examples of our work here.

• AI and the Energy Transition (September 2024)
• Autonomous Vehicles are Finally Here (October 2023)
• The Banking Crisis’s Impact on Small Developers (September 2023)
• Brexit’s Impact on Real Estate (January 2024)
• Capital Voids and Opportunities in the Downturn (May 2024)
• On Civil War (July 2024)
• The Deals Getting Done Today (December 2023)
• Distress in the Real Estate Market (February 2024)
• The DOJ Wants to Change How We Buy Homes (February 2024)
• Explaining the Surge in Retail Leasing Demand (April 2023)
• The Future of Apartment Lease Terms (May 2024)
• The Future of Homeownership (May 2024)
• The Gap in the Smile States (June 2024)
• How Far Can the Exurbs Go? (August 2024)
• The Industrial Paradigm Shift (July 2024)
• Is the MLS Doomed? (October 2024)
• The NAR Settlement (September 2024, July 2024)
• Is NYC Growing? (February 2023)
• The NSF’s Emerging Innovation Engines (May 2024)
• Population Density (August 2023)
• The Semiotic Future of Real Estate (October 2024)
• Sustainability Trends from Blueprint 2024 (October 2024)
• There Will Be No Multifamily Supply Crunch (December 2023)
• US Real Estate in Sixteen Charts (July 2023)
• US Transit Projects You Need to Know (July 2023)

The Future of Office

The transformation of office happening today is perhaps the greatest macro shift in real estate since the 1950s.

• Alternative Uses for Vacant Office (June 2023)
• Flex Office (February 2023)
• If I Were the CEO of WeWork (August 2023)
• The Office Space Shortage (February 2024)
• Office-to-Residential Conversions (September 2022)
• Why Yardi Bought WeWork (May 2024)

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New Cities

Too fringe for real estate trade press but outside tech media’s area of expertise, new cities are perhaps my favorite area of Thesis Driven coverage. We do an annual roundup of all major new city projects under development.

• Overview of New Cities Under Development (April 2024, February 2023)
• California Forever (September 2023)
• Colony Ridge (Terrenos) (July 2023)
• Seabrook (October 2023)

Housing & Urban Policy

Housing, urban policy, and real estate are intertwined, and we occasionally write about policy from a real estate standpoint. Our editorial bent is pro-housing, pro-transit, pro-family, and pro-America. We believe free markets, high state capacity, and a strong social safety net can and should co-exist.

• The Case for Single-Stair Multifamily (January 2024)
• The Collapse of Rent Stabilization in NYC (January 2024)
• The Constitutionality of Rent Control (July 2024)
• Decoding the Builder’s Remedy (February 2023)
• If Wall Street Get the Boot from SFR (September 2024)
• Making Cities Better for Families (February 2024)
• Nine Reforms to Dramatically Accelerate Housing Production (March 2023)
• The Politics of YIMBYism (May 2024)
• On Fire Departments (March 2024)
• Solving the Construction Worker Shortage (October 2023)
• The Walkable Exurban Downtown (December 2024)

Educational

• Cap Rate Analysis (November 2023)
• How to Evaluate a Real Estate Deal Like the Pros (April 2024)
• How to Find Off-Market and Distressed Deals (January 2024)
• How to Write a Cold Email (October 2024)
• Key Roles in a Real Estate Transaction (February 2024)
• How to Make a New Asset Class (March 2024)
• Manufacturing Furniture (May 2024)
• How to Raise a PropCo (July 2023)
• The Role of Brand in Real Estate (July 2023)
• How to Source Technology as a Multifamily Operator (July 2023)
• How to Think Like An Institutional Investor (November 2023)
• Understanding Cap Rates (June 2024)
• Why Your Favorite Real Estate Metric is Bad (September 2024)

Advice

• Five Traps to Avoid (November 2023)
• Real Estate Events Guide (November 2024)
• Selling to the “Messy Majority” of Multifamily (November 2023)
• Support and Community for Developers (June 2024)
• Why Managing Real Estate is Hard (December 2023)
• Selling into Real Estate Owners (October 2024)
• Working with Institutional Real Estate Firms (July 2024)

Podcasts & Video Interviews

We launched the Thesis Driven Leader Series in early 2024; Season One concluded in April after 12 episodes. You can also find these on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.

• Rhett Bennett and Moses Kagan (Founders, ReSeed)
• Stephanie Blake (CEO, Skylight)
• Steve Case (Founder and CEO, Revolution)
• Dan Doctoroff (Founder and former CEO, Sidewalk Labs)
• Dave Eisenberg (Founder, Zigg Capital)
• Jilliene Helman (Founder and CEO, RealtyMogul)
• MaryAnne Gilmartin (Founder, MAG Partners)
• Caren Maio (Proptech entrepreneur)
• Charles Marohn (Author, Strong Towns)
• Dror Poleg (Author, Rethinking Real Estate)
• Spencer Rascoff (Founder, Zillow)
• Jan Sramek (Founder and CEO, California Forever)

Innovation 100

Our annual awards recognizing the people shaping the future of the built world.

• September 2024: 51-100, 16-50, 15-1

Updated December 3, 2024