# Urban Real Estate Success_ Insights from Don Peebles

An episode of [Earn Your Leisure](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1450211392), 13 Jul 2026, 6:10.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8dbc4f54-a337-4481-9ef2-b355012b0a3d/f69e38dd-4fa1-4b11-90a1-b48500db8b01/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=eac4c628-29cb-469a-b5c8-b355012b0a48

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## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: So you know, you made your career in DC, New York,
[0:04] Speaker 1: Miami urban areas, right, so urban urban development. So what
[0:09] Speaker 1: is what separates successful urban development from non success because
[0:14] Speaker 1: we see a lot of like LA is famous, this
[0:17] Speaker 1: abandoned building. I think the guy was from China, but
[0:21] Speaker 1: they have graffiti all over it. He never finished construction,
[0:24] Speaker 1: so you know, and we hear about so many office
[0:27] Speaker 1: buildings in New York City right now that's vacant. So
[0:31] Speaker 1: the urban landscape as far as real estate development is,
[0:35] Speaker 1: I guess you know you could win or lose, right,
[0:37] Speaker 1: So from your illustrious career, what separates the winners from
[0:42] Speaker 1: the losers when it comes to urban real estate development?
[0:46] Speaker 2: Good question, by the way. So the first thing is
[0:48] Speaker 2: real estates are very straightforward business. It's a supply and
[0:51] Speaker 2: demand business. You know, if the supply is abundant, prices
[0:56] Speaker 2: are down. If supply is tight, then prices are up,
[1:00] Speaker 2: especially with if demand is strong. And so places like
[1:04] Speaker 2: New York City are supply constrained. It's hard to build.
[1:08] Speaker 2: Most of the land is developed on. If you look
[1:11] Speaker 2: at a place like LA, you know there's a lot
[1:14] Speaker 2: of open land to be developed and it's hard to
[1:17] Speaker 2: develop in l A in terms of getting approvals and
[1:19] Speaker 2: going through their process. Also, LA is very spread out,
[1:23] Speaker 2: so it doesn't have kind of core employment centers or
[1:28] Speaker 2: economic centers. And New York does, d C. Does you know,
[1:35] Speaker 2: you look at Charlotte, it does. It was uptown, you
[1:38] Speaker 2: look at Chicago, you know, but you look at San Francisco.
[1:42] Speaker 2: So what's happened is LA has been hit like everyone
[1:45] Speaker 2: else with you know, a remote working and uh and
[1:50] Speaker 2: and you know the other impacts of COVID. And the
[1:52] Speaker 2: difference is is that people don't even live near where
[1:56] Speaker 2: they generally work in LA and everything stretched out, So
[1:59] Speaker 2: it's going to be a bigger lift for LA to
[2:01] Speaker 2: come back. New York. On the other hand, while office
[2:04] Speaker 2: buildings there's a one hundred plus million square feet of
[2:07] Speaker 2: office space it's empty. That's the size of the entire
[2:10] Speaker 2: office market in Washington, DC. And however, while there's less
[2:16] Speaker 2: demand for office space, there's significant demand for housing and
[2:19] Speaker 2: so converting those buildings or tearing them down and rebuilding
[2:23] Speaker 2: with housing. So there's a use for the land and
[2:26] Speaker 2: the product. And that's why we like urban development is
[2:29] Speaker 2: because it's where large numbers of people live and large
[2:33] Speaker 2: numbers of people work and they're economic engines and so
[2:36] Speaker 2: even with you know, an unprecedented hit. So I think
[2:40] Speaker 2: that one of the things that you want to focus
[2:42] Speaker 2: on is investing in markets that are long term competitive
[2:47] Speaker 2: where there's significant supply constrained. My view is that New
[2:51] Speaker 2: York City, America's largest city, financial capital of the country
[2:56] Speaker 2: and of the world. Essentially it's going to bounce back. Washington, DC,
[3:00] Speaker 2: nations capitals, the most powerful nations in the world, will
[3:03] Speaker 2: bounce back. San Francisco Tech and innovation center will bounce back.
[3:09] Speaker 2: So those cities are the ones that have been hit
[3:10] Speaker 2: the hardest. Then you have places like Dallas, Austin, Houston,
[3:16] Speaker 2: and Texas for example, where it's a very pro business environment.
[3:20] Speaker 2: You'll see growth there, no state income tax, same thing
[3:23] Speaker 2: with Nashville, no state income tax, pro growth, you'll see
[3:26] Speaker 2: more growth there. So if you'ys are want to invest
[3:29] Speaker 2: in places where there's significant growth because of fundamentals like
[3:34] Speaker 2: tax policy and business policy, your sound or that there's
[3:37] Speaker 2: an opportunity to play a market cycle because they've been
[3:41] Speaker 2: artificially depressed.
[3:43] Speaker 3: Yeah, So does it feel like that that's the solution
[3:46] Speaker 3: right when you're talking about you know, we hive eded
[3:49] Speaker 3: it in the past when you're talking about commercial real
[3:52] Speaker 3: estate and how endangered that was, and we spoke about
[3:55] Speaker 3: that at Market Monday's Live at MSG. Converting commercial into
[4:00] Speaker 3: residential as a process, though right there's zoning laws as permits.
[4:05] Speaker 3: Talk about that because it does it work in your
[4:07] Speaker 3: favor obviously because your illustrious career, whereas a new developer,
[4:11] Speaker 3: a new contractor, it wouldn't be as easy going forward
[4:15] Speaker 3: with that, right I would assume.
[4:17] Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean not all buildings are right for conversion.
[4:19] Speaker 2: I mean, we've been converting office buildings for two and
[4:22] Speaker 2: a half decades and to other uses, so we've got
[4:26] Speaker 2: a lot more experience in doing that, and so that's
[4:28] Speaker 2: going to help us identify the buildings that are actually
[4:31] Speaker 2: economically efficient to actually convert. And so that's one of
[4:35] Speaker 2: the key things is under not every buildings right for conversion,
[4:37] Speaker 2: regardless of its location. It just structurally not able to
[4:42] Speaker 2: make that conversion. And one of the challenges that New
[4:44] Speaker 2: York has is that the buildings are so big they
[4:48] Speaker 2: would be massive undertakings, and that they would have too
[4:52] Speaker 2: many units in one place. And so I think that's
[4:54] Speaker 2: going to be some of the trouble. What is happening, though,
[4:57] Speaker 2: is Chicago, DC, New York, Sanford, Cisco and other cities
[5:01] Speaker 2: recognize the hit that they're taking in their marketplaces because
[5:05] Speaker 2: workers are not coming back to many of these buildings
[5:08] Speaker 2: and they're sitting empty, and so that means that the
[5:11] Speaker 2: stores and the other businesses that benefit from the presence
[5:15] Speaker 2: of these office buildings, those businesses are struggling or going
[5:21] Speaker 2: out of business. So they've got to incentivize new uses
[5:24] Speaker 2: for those properties, and so they're giving tax policy and
[5:27] Speaker 2: they're accelerating zoning changes and making zoning changes. Even Los Angeles,
[5:32] Speaker 2: which is very difficult to build in past a zoning
[5:36] Speaker 2: law that allows conversions for buildings that were built before
[5:40] Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five, you can convert them without going through
[5:43] Speaker 2: a land use or entitlement process. So they're trying and
[5:46] Speaker 2: that should follow in the coming months. You'll begin to
[5:50] Speaker 2: see more financial incentives at the local level, and then
[5:53] Speaker 2: probably in first quarter second quarter of next year, once
[5:57] Speaker 2: the presidential election is over, you'll end up seeing federal
[6:02] Speaker 2: tax policy that will incentivize conversions as well, with some
[6:06] Speaker 2: form of tax relief for those types of conversions.

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