Last week I had the privilege of attending my first REEM Summit in Austin. This program is put together by conference chairs Larissa Herczeg and Krista Kerr, with support from the Employees Retirement System (ERS) of Texas and Teacher Retirement System (TRS) of Texas. The conference is relatively short but is filled with great panels and group discussions. What follows are some key takeaways from the meeting.
The first panel was properly titled “What the [BLEEP] is going on in debt capital markets” and was a good discussion from both a regional bank and real estate fund manager perspective. Mixed in was some live polling to get the sentiment from the audience as they discussed. Seventy-seven percent of the audience believed either: a) debt markets are not frozen; or b) the freeze is exaggerated. Some of the discussion centered around the liquidity crisis of March 2023, which was dubbed a “liquidity crisis due to a lack of confidence.”
Further, it was discussed
