My 2024 white paper on internal migration in the United States detailed the ongoing shift in population from California, the Upper Midwest, and the Northeast to the Southeast, Florida, Texas and several other Southwestern states. I ended with the caution that Americans were moving toward heat, hurricanes, drought, water shortages, flooding and wildfires. These potential disasters led me to question whether there might ultimately be a reversal of the southward migration trend. Somewhat whimsically, I suggested that people might abandon the coastlines and other popular destinations in favor of moribund cities in the northern half of the country, such as Detroit, Rochester, Buffalo and Milwaukee. While it is much too early to make a definitive call, there are some scattered signs that ...

The classic loan is the subscription or capital call credit facility. Those loans provide the fund with an advance rate based upon the fund’s investors’ uncalled capital commitments — not to the fund’s investments. NAV loans, on the other hand, don’t look to investor capital commitments for repayment, but rather to ...

As the world becomes more digitized, data centers serve as the backbone of modern economies. The U.K. data center market is growing at an unprecedented pace, with hundreds of acres of land acquired for development in 2024 alone. Major investors and property developers are securing planning permission to build large-scale facilities, fueling a surge in critical digital infrastructure. The U.K. government also has recognized the importance of ...

First, consider the maxim, “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore,” indicating scarcity and barriers to entry, the kind of buzz words and phrases investors find especially appealing. Then consider the human family can survive without office buildings and data centers and any number of assets and asset classes, albeit not as prosperously as it would like, but it cannot survive without fertile land that produces food. Add to that the forecast that farmers need to increase food production about 50 percent by 2050 to sate a global population expected to reach 9.7 billion by that date, and one would think farmland would be a sure bet for a gainful position in the investment portfolio. Billionaires including ...

Few cities have experienced a sharper economic change of fortune than Detroit. It was one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation between 1900 and 1950. In the nearly 75 years since then, it has lost more than 60 percent of its population, becoming the defining example of a postindustrial city in decline. Chronic population loss creates a significant mismatch in the ...

More than a century ago, then-representative William McKinley pursued an aggressive tariff strategy that sought to protect American industry and reduce reliance on foreign imports. The McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 raised import duties to an average of 50 percent, one of the highest levels in U.S. history. The logic was simple: If foreign goods were more expensive, Americans would buy domestic products, fueling economic expansion ...

Collectibles are often the most valuable assets in an estate. What starts out as a hobby turns into a passion and eventually becomes a lucrative investment, built gradually over a lifetime. The best way to preserve the value of your investment, both for yourself now and for your heirs in the future, is to start planning today. The six steps below will help you get started.

Since its inception in 2017, the qualified opportunity zone program has attracted substantial investment. In surveys, qualified opportunity funds, the investment vehicles for qualified opportunity zone projects, have reported raising more than $40 billion in equity as of year-end 2024. This figure represents as little as one-third of the total capital raised by qualified opportunity funds, implying well above $120 billion in actual investment. This estimate far exceeds early projections, indicating strong investor appetite.

Every now and then, someone will lob in a compliment of what a great job I’ve done in building the Institutional Real Estate, Inc. platform. I’m always grateful for the recognition of the value of what we’ve built, but as others have noted, it takes a village. So, on the eve of the completion of our 38th year of continuously serving the interests of the institutional real estate and infrastructure investment community around the globe, and the ...

Coming off the back of a slow fundraising year, money is starting to move again in 2025. The first couple months of the year were dotted by fund closures and commitments, setting a positive tone for the infrastructure asset class. In February, Abrdn reported raising €585 million ($610 million) of commitments for its third core/core-plus infrastructure fund, Aberdeen Standard Core Infrastructure Fund III, (ASCI III). The strategy is focused on ...

The wealth management industry, traditionally defined by its reliance on human expertise and client trust, is at a pivotal juncture. Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the construction of portfolios, offering precision, speed and insights beyond human capabilities. For registered investment advisers (RIAs), this represents both a challenge and ...

As 2025 got out of the gate, a slew of financial behemoths, including J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Capital Group, KKR and Oaktree Capital Management, filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to register new interval funds. By the end of 2025, some industry experts expect ...

Gold prices surged to an all-time high of $2,940 per ounce on Feb. 20, pushing its market cap above $20 trillion for the first time ever, as trade tensions between the United States and Europe have stoked fears of a global economic slowdown. And while safe-haven demand is certainly a driver, there’s another potential catalyst that could send prices soaring even higher: the revaluation of America’s gold reserves. As many of you are aware, the United States holds the most ...

The U.S. power grid is being pushed to its limits. The artificial intelligence explosion of the past few years is generating exponential demand for utilities and data centers. Also, natural disasters such as recent wildfires and hurricanes are reminders that risks are high for utilities, as well as those that invest in them. Deloitte says U.S. power sector investments could total $1.4 trillion from 2025 to 2030 and that the sector’s traditional funding areas of ...

Shaun Hauser was still living under his parents’ roof when his father came home one day to announce some dreadful news: The company for which he worked as an information technology project manager had ceased operations in Winnipeg, Canada, putting him out of work. Rather than going in search of another place of employment, the senior Hauser started his own consulting business. The impact it made on his son was ...

With the arrival of 2025, I have been reflecting on prior articles that discussed when and where we believed commercial real estate (CRE) distress would emerge at scale. The good news is that this year may finally bring a gift to opportunistic buyers. In June 2023, based on the precedent of the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, I predicted that outside the office sector and a few isolated multifamily transactions, distressed buying opportunities wouldn’t emerge for several quarters. More recently, one of our top 10 predictions for multifamily for 2025 called for ...

The recent SEC action against Marathon Asset Management serves as a stark reminder for registered investment advisers (RIAs) to prioritize compliance when participating in ad hoc creditors’ committees or other informal relationships. The SEC’s emphasis on the risk of RIAs receiving material nonpublic information (MNPI) through these committees underscores the need for robust compliance measures.

Principal Asset Management has published a new paper about how data center developers are powering AI and their vast power needs and how they are getting the watts they need.