The conventional wisdom is that gateway markets offer superior returns and liquidity — at least in comparison to their non-gateway counterparts — due to a number of perceived advantages, including the difficulties of permitting new construction, physical supply barriers such as mountains, concentrations of credit tenants, and the locales of leading “knowledge” companies and institutions. This view is taken on faith in much of the institutional real estate community — but there is a possibility that it will soon be upended. In particular, the gateway markets seem firmly ensconced in jurisdictions where the political economy often differs markedly from non-gateway markets.

Some pundits point to the COVID-19 pandemic as chief among the reasons for a host of ills lately befalling large American cities, and some of these view the COVID-19 pandemic as a temporary crisis (much like the Long-Term Capital Management default in 1998, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the