If one looks at the history of technology and investment in real estate, it would unfold in a structure not much different than that of a classic, three-act play. The drama of the story, if not the tragedy, is introduced in Act One; the response to the onset of the drama unfolds in Act Two; and we behold the bright and sunny future in Act Three.

This isn’t your father’s dormitory. This isn’t even your dormitory.

In the past 10 years, student housing in America has changed dramatically. When you went to college, you probably shared a room, and the bathroom was at the end of the hall. Today’s college dorms usually have private bedrooms and bathrooms. After your freshman year, you probably lived off-campus in a funky house shared with too many fellow students, or in a run-down apartment rented from an absentee alumnus. Today, new off-campus housing built for the millennial generation has James Beard restaurants, spas, sundecks, and supportive, accessible staff.

Crowdfunding is attracting quite the crowd when it comes to real estate investing. 

Many have reported on the trillions of dollars needed to meet the nation’s infrastructure needs. We are all acutely aware of the challenges the public sector is facing finding money to develop public assets.  The overall conclusion is that private capital is essential to address the infrastructure gap. 

We are in a strange new place in oil drilling, and we all can take a guess that I am talking about fracking. This is a good start, but as quickly as we have come to understand “fracking” or horizontal drilling, we are already seeing changes in this drilling method.

There is one investment that stands tall in all economic environments — and sometimes even produces significant yields.

Higher education continues to be the path to advancement in the United States despite the ongoing debate about the value and cost of a college degree. College graduates will out-earn and are less likely to be unemployed than non- degree holders during their ensuing careers. 

Walk into any of WeWork’s offices to find artisan coffee, shuffleboard and foosball tables, free food, a wine cellar, contemporary artwork and open communal space that resembles the studio floor of a cutting-edge furniture shop. The tenants are mostly Internet start-ups that pay for office space by the month and thrive from being surrounded by like-minded companies.

Commercial property investors, like investors in stock and bond portfolios, love to borrow from the Greeks. This is not meant in the sense that the Greeks themselves loved to borrow from German banks a decade ago, only to wind up Europe’s test case for working out national fiscal policy when a common currency places monetary policy outside a country’s domain. I mean instead the easy adoption of the Greek alphabet to describe investment approaches.

We were all lucky to be born at the right time. Over the past 50 years, world GDP growth has been averaging 3.6 percent, driven by employment increases and productivity improvements in roughly equal proportions. An exhaustive and important study by the McKinsey Global Institute concludes that during the next 50 years, population growth will decline to 0.3 percent annually.