To listen to Will Braman talk about his people, you might think he is a C-level executive at a Silicon Valley tech startup, or a Boston-area biotechnology play.

In a nutshell, the business outlook remains one of relatively low interest rates and slow growth in 2016.

A tepid view for some, but for those who compete for real estate there will be heightened competition for limited prime properties. That is good news for well-situated investors and sellers. There are growing piles of treasure in the hunt for property of all kinds, and moneylenders are eager to extend secured funds where they can.

Like other advisers, Jeffrey Nauta has taken a gradual approach to using social media for business over the last five years, especially when it comes to using it as a tool to prospect for clients.

Real estate investors may still wake up sweating from nightmares in which they hear the “pop” of the 2008 bubble bursting. Looking at the current market, those same investors may be fearing a repeat after seeing record sales prices this year. Jeff Sutton and General Growth Properties’ purchase of Manhattan’s Crown Building in April for a reported $4,564 per square foot was the highest price per square foot ever paid for an entire office building, and Ivanhoé Cambridge and Callahan Capital Properties’ acquisition of 3 Bryant Park, also in Manhattan, for a reported $2.2 billion was the most money paid for a single office building since 2008.

Many investors have grown more comfortable with the risk/return attributes of newly constructed infrastructure; other investors, not so much. Operating brownfield investments will always be the core of infrastructure portfolios. But many infrastructure managers are frustrated by some basic misunderstanding — and mispricing — of certain greenfield risk.

The recent downturn in Africa’s commodities markets might seem to signal dark times for the continent’s emerging economies. The slump in global oil prices prompted Angola’s government to end fuel subsidies; weak copper rates dramatically reduced the value of Zambia’s currency; and J.P. Morgan delisted the Nigerian naira from the Emerging Markets Bond Index.

In August of this year, the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) introduced the Daily Priced NCREIF Fund Index (NFI-DP), the first daily pricing index for private real estate. The launch of this index represented a major step forward in facilitating the inclusion of private real estate investment options into a broader array of investment portfolios, which historically were largely unavailable to high-net-worth advisers and defined contribution plan sponsors. With the NFI-DP, these investors now have access to an index with daily data points and monthly reporting on the overall performance and valuation of this unique set of funds, which is more consistent with these investors’ needs.

Most of us have figured out “the cloud” is not a giant hard drive in the sky. So where does all that data go? Where is it stored? It is stored in massive data centers — which typically house tens of thousands of servers — located around the world, of course.

Any way you measure it, the investment adviser profession is strong, growing and on a path for continued expansion in the years ahead. 

With its $1.3 trillion nominal GDP, Mexico is the second-largest economy in Latin America and the 15th largest in the world. But you would not know that from the state of its infrastructure. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index 2015–2016, Mexico’s infrastructure ranks 59th out of 140 countries.

In October the SEC finally approved crowdfunding rules. Every real estate professional can now raise up to $1 million annually from non-accredited investors. The average private deal that my company tracks is $12 million. Is it reasonable to assume that a sponsor could put together three to five middle-market deals a year? Then would a $1 million crowdfunding cap make any sense for a $50 million annual deal flow? Would this new rule approval make any difference for the commercial real estate industry? Let’s take a closer look at the data.