Thesis Driven Mailbag: September 2023

Answering your questions about real estate, the markets, and building companies

Thesis Driven dives deep into emerging themes and real estate operating models. Today’s letter is our monthly mailbag in which I answer questions from subscribers. Want to ask me an anonymous question? Email me at brad@thesisdriven.com

The average Thesis Driven letter weighs in at a bit north of 2,500 words. While that’s a reasonable length for a deep dive into farmland investing or PropCo structures, it doesn’t afford us much flexibility to tackle other topics of interest to our readership.

So we’re introducing a regular (monthly?) mailbag in which I respond to anonymized inquiries from Thesis Driven readers. Today’s topics include:

• What US city I’d pick to invest in real estate;

• What I’d do if I were CEO of WeWork;

• My take on real estate operating expense inflation;

• The biggest mistake I see real estate tech entrepreneurs make;

• An update on the Thesis Driven developer database.

If you had to buy real estate in any US city today, where would you pick? —JD

Am I looking to preserve wealth or create wealth? If I’m a high net worth individual looking to park $20 million I’d have a different answer than if I were a GP looking to clear a 8% pref return hurdle in 3 to 5 years.