The Future of CRE and what it means for YOU

THE SELF STORAGE REPORT — EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Episode: The Future of CRE and what it means for YOU Guest: Nikki Greenberg — real estate futurist and technology strategy advisor; former Head of Technology Strategy, QIC; host of The Visionaries podcast Host: Chris Berg — Abernathey Development Recorded: December 4, 2024 Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqtrygLJAFs Key topics: QIC technology strategy across 22 assets, $22 billion AUM and a $4 billion development pipeline; digital master planning of a shopping center; why almost no CRE firms have a technology strategy; 6-9 month hardware business cases and class B office; Ray-Ban Meta glasses and digital property rights; demography as destiny and the Miami crypto economy; Ryan Serhant's 50,000 Bitcoin offer; New Market Capital's Philadelphia multifamily Bitcoin collateral deal; the $100 trillion boomer-to-Gen Z wealth transfer; women controlling 51-54% of global wealth; Anna König Jerlmyr using Minecraft for Stockholm community consultation; Norwegian sustainability-linked mortgage rates and aging in place; retrofitting shopping centers into medical facilities; Uber Elevate, eVTOLs and Salt Lake City's 2034 flying-car planning; the $6.2 million banana Note: Speaker attribution reconstructed from raw captions. Light cleanup of transcription errors only; wording preserved. Timestamps and YouTube chapter markers removed. Turns marked [attribution inferred] could not be attributed with certainty. ————————————————————————————— Chris Berg: Welcome to the show. I recently had the honor to see our guest today speak at a — she was in Santa Monica at a CoStar/LoopNet event talking about the future of commercial real estate, really how PropTech is going to be impacting CRE. And she's just — she's got an incredible background, she did a great job at the event. To give you some background, and then obviously I'll introduce her: she was at QIC, actually an Australian investment firm. She was the head of technology and real estate there. They've got $7 billion of assets under management. She's also the three-term co-chair of the Technology and Innovation Council for the Urban Land Institute in New York City, which that must have been fascinating. Started PropTech for Women, and also now has got her own podcast called The Visionaries, where she just had a fascinating conversation with the mayor of Stockholm and how they're using Minecraft, young people, to help with zoning in the cities. Hopefully we'll get a chance to dive into that. Nikki Greenberg, welcome to the show, it's great to have you. Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, it's good to see you again, Chris. Um, I enjoyed chatting to you in LA, so I'm glad we can continue on the conversation. Um, you know, as I was saying before, I'm tuning in from Miami today, came here for Art Basel. Some — you know, not, not, not in the suit and tie like I usually am. Chris Berg: I love it — we had a chance to visit before. Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, here I am in the middle of cryptopia. Chris Berg: Which we'll jump into, some of that conversation as well. But I think just so people can appreciate, you know, what they're going to hear from you today — I think you do have a really fascinating background. So if you want to tell us a little bit more about that, how you went from QIC to going out on your own, and really what was the inspiration and impetus for that. Nikki Greenberg: Um, yeah, thanks. So, I mean, by trade and by training I'm an architect and urban designer, and when I finished business school I went into real estate development in Australia working in-house for some of the big names there. Um, moved to New York in 2017, and that's where I was exposed to PropTech. And what I was excited about is that, you know, technology has solutions for our industry that just kind of open up what we're capable of and bring great efficiency. So I made that part of my role, I made that part of my focus. And I had the great honor, you know, during the pandemic when I was back in Australia, to be head of technology strategy at QIC and just really putting this kind of theory into practice about how do we look at real estate technology at a portfolio level — across operations, the customer, and also our portfolio of physical assets, which is the part that I super geeked out on. Um, yeah, so from that, I'm very fortunate that today, being back in New York, I do strategy for companies about how to be future ready, how to think about technology. I do a lot of thought leadership, getting to travel around the world, travel around the country, and talk about the future of our industry, talking about emerging technologies, what we can do about it. And more than anything, just really trying to inspire people in our industry to know, hey, this technology is great and there's great benefits for it. You know, that I can be that person that can help to demystify what it is rather than bamboozle, and also strategically say, well, these are the types of things that we can and should be looking at at a, you know, more down-on-planet-Earth level. Chris Berg: So let's take — walk us into QIC a little bit, because what I'm seeing in real estate is it's a pretty slow-adapting industry, right, especially when it comes to tech. So I'm curious, as you were dealing with a $70 billion portfolio, um, I'm presuming it wasn't a bunch of 22-year-olds running around the office. So how are you laying out that strategy and then enrolling people within the organization to go, yeah, you know what, let's go — I don't know if you had it at the time — but let's go use ChatGPT to figure out how we want to, you know, utilize this asset better, whatever those tools were that you were using. Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, and I'll give you like a super, super, super high level, because obviously these projects are, you know, multi-phase, multi-departmental, um, you know, long-term projects. So, you know, within the real estate group we had 22 assets and about $22 billion in assets under management in the real estate group, plus a $4 billion development pipeline, which is what I geek out on. And what you really want to do, you know, as a company — QIC wasn't very different to any real estate organization, where we'd acquired different assets through the years and they're all at different ages and stages. And, you know, QIC is one of these companies where obviously I would never give away anything that's confidential — I just need to say that for the record, this is very clearly public information that's out there — but like a lot of real estate organizations, you've got to think about, well, how can we go from where we are today? And as an industry we tend to be 10, 20, 30 years behind, with like old computer systems, old way of doing things, everybody's sitting on Excel. You know, we got Excel around like 1990 and that's still like the dominant way of working. To go, okay, well, where do we want to go, and what's that road map to get there? And in kind of like a broad brushstroke, one of the ways that you start looking at technology strategy is you start dividing up the problem. You know, looking at, well, who is the customer? You know, who's the customer? One, it's us as a company, internal stakeholders, operations. So that becomes one of those buckets. What's needed in that is all like Microsoft, phone systems, and, you know, the stuff we do our jobs in. The next kind of group of stakeholders is the customer — you know, how do you actually bring customers in? That's, you know, websites, the marketing team, you know, a different kind of group that you think about. And then the third is the buildings, and this is one of those areas which is most neglected, to actually understand, well, our buildings need a strategy for how are we going to make sure that they are future proof, and looking at that in its own bucket instead of having this kind of whack-a-mole approach to putting technology in. So, um, so within that, you know, ran a big project in digital master planning as a pilot project, which was essentially looking at one of our shopping centers where we had a large investment in turning that into future mixed use, and going, okay, as we're designing the urban design, the architecture design, the interior design, the landscape design — let's do the technology design and understand what is that end use case that we want, so that it's one wonderful from an operational, experiential, customer perspective, um, cost perspective. What is that end state that we want to create, and then what are those steps to get there? And only then you go, what are those technologies that we need and that we need to start investigating, um, you know, consolidating, etc. So you kind of break — this is, you know, this is stuff I love. I like complexity, um, looking at, you know, big problems, breaking it down into components, and then you can start to put these steps in place and understand and know what are the roles of different experts in the organization to be able to both lead these change initiatives but also take ownership of these change initiatives, because it's designed through the expertise, um, enabled by emerging technologies. And I'm going to refer back to a lot of this stuff, I promise you, Chris, because everything comes back to these same foundations and these same fundamentals. So I know I threw a lot at you right in about, you know, in about two minutes and a half. Chris Berg: I'm curious, as you're — because you're traveling the world talking to a lot of different people in the space — how many organizations right now have got a technology strategy that you're talking to? Nikki Greenberg: Very, very, very, very, very, very few. Very, very few. Um, and it's one of these things where there's almost like this leapfrog, where a lot of organizations and their C-suite are saying, we need an AI strategy. I'm like, well, what you're actually saying is that we need a technology strategy, and then AI is that piece within it. Chris Berg: So I'm curious why, because — I guess maybe I should ask, with the assets that you were laying out a technology strategy, did you see that improve? Because let's be honest, everyone's really going to say, okay, how are you going to improve my NOI, how are you going to improve the value of my assets? So did you see your technology strategy improving the value of those assets? If so, how? And if that was the case, why are not more organizations implementing the technology strategy? Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, and that's a great question. And the thing is that it's not as simple as you just flick a switch and there it is, and especially when we're looking at assets we need to put in hardware that needs a whole business case, which in and of itself, just to have that business case approved, can be 6-9 months, and then the installation, and then the change, and whatever, you know, and trying to actually put it into your capex — all your capex improvements and your opex budget. So there's like a lot of mechanisms that need to happen before you can even start on something small and then to start seeing those, um, those improvements. But, you know, and I think that's one of those problems that when it comes to technology in our arena, is that we want to see that payoff happen straight away, but there's a huge investment in terms of time, effort and, you know, cost that goes in before you can actually start to see it. But if anything, you have to kind of go, well, what's the cost of us not doing anything? And what the cost of not doing anything is, is that tenants start to leave. They go, well, I don't want to be in this building where there's terrible Wi-Fi, or, you know, the heating's always breaking down, or whatever it is. You know, tenants start to leave, your rents go down, um, things start falling apart, you're not meeting the current sustainability standards because you haven't upgraded a system that you've had since the 1960s and you didn't think about it. So — and I think that's, you know, also what we're seeing a little bit with the class B office. It's this problem that's kind of been pushed down the road. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's hard for our industry to try and think long-term payback for high upfront costs, which is one of the tricky things in, you know, the industry and the way it works. Chris Berg: Well, which is interesting too, because you think most people that go into an asset with a five- to seven-year, you know, business plan, so they've got a little bit of a time horizon to implement it. But I think right now too, there's just so many — I'll call them things chewing away at your NOI, from property taxes to insurance costs right now, or skyrocketing, where people are probably like, look, I'm just getting the IRR I need now, let alone implementing some sort of technology strategy. But like you said, what's it going to cost me if I don't? Which is sometimes may be hard to understand or appreciate in tech. Anything you want to add to that? Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, and I think, you know, one of the things that I was quite attracted to with tech is that it can be flexible. And I'm giving like a bit of a dumb example, that in real estate you might say, hey, we need to put up a sign over here to show all the tenants. In tech land you can say, well actually, we can just have a projector that you buy from Best Buy for argument's sake for $100, and it can project what you want and we can change it every day, it's easy. You know, sometimes having that digital change is easier and quicker and more cost effective than, um, than you know, doing something physical. Or, you know, another example being, rather than going to a full smart lighting system, you can get a Samsung smart bulb and just change that one thing in it. So you know, there are these kind of shortcuts that we can use that get around this change and, you know, investment barrier, to actually like have an immediate result. And I think we're not playful enough to actually go, hey, let's just, you know, let's just try this out and, you know, get it going straight away. Chris Berg: I just want to touch on this quickly, because we did touch on this in Santa Monica, about those property digital rights, and then you mentioned the Meta glasses. And I think as those become more ubiquitous — just as you mention the screen — I think those property digital rights would be really interesting. I think it was Minority Report — did you see Minority Report? Nikki Greenberg: Oh, ages ago, yeah. Chris Berg: Where you can walk by and he's like talking to you about the specific, you know, advertisement. So I don't know if you want to comment on that before we move on, but I just think that's an interesting space, at least for people to start thinking about within real estate. Nikki Greenberg: No, yeah, look, I think it's interesting, and I think the reason that we started talking about it in Santa Monica is I've got a pair of the, you know, the Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Mine are the current version, they don't have AR in them, but I'm in love with them, because I can go through the streets of London, I can look at a building and go — if I said it, it'll probably start answering me — I can go, hey Meta, tell me about this building, who owns it, what is the rent, um, you know, who's the architect. You can definitely do that on ChatGPT, so you can start getting this like intel even with the current technology about a building just by looking at it or taking a photo of it and using, you know, run-of-the-mill AI. So, um, so 100%, like, I think that — and hopefully the audience is already familiar with everything you're saying about, you know, these kind of digital property rights — that you can start bringing in a digital layer into a physical environment, um, and making it more, you know, more interactive, and bringing in a whole, you know, phygital, as they like to say, um, experience. Chris Berg: I want to dive into some of the unique things that you're seeing from a PropTech perspective and what's going to really transform CRE. Before we do, though, I think one of the things I really appreciated about your talk was you talked a lot about — I'm a big believer that demography is destiny. I don't know if you use those exact words, but essentially I think that's what you were communicating in one way, shape or form that day. So just share a little bit about the demography-as-destiny piece and what you see and how that's going to impact the future of CRE. Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, we spoke about this also a little bit before our call, and I think we both — I mean, it's a whole arena which I think is, you know, one of the areas that I think is most fascinating and what we don't talk about enough. Um, and you know, I'd love for you to also share your perspective on this, because I think it's very interesting to discuss. But you know, with these generational changes that are coming through, different generations have different expectations from a place. And you know, for me, being in Miami at the moment — we will talk about this before and also — it's that, you know, Miami, people were laughing, you know, 12 months ago saying, oh, you know, all of these like crypto bros, they're living the life, like Miami is going to suffer, because now everyone's going to have to like go back to their desk jobs, go back to Wall Street, blah blah blah blah blah. And now they're — these young guys, like, and girls — they're laughing, they've got so much cash coming in, and their expectations of what a place is, is different to somebody else that might be older and having a family. So I mean, like the clubs and the restaurants and, like, you know, the beautiful boutiques and everything here, it's like all of these like 20-year-olds with so much cash to spend, and they want a certain lifestyle, you know, which goes with it. And it's a real part of an economy. I actually wrote an article — now that I think of it, I wrote an article about a year ago, it was called "When Lambo," which is like an expression to say, like, when will you sell your crypto to buy a Lamborghini? And there's this notion in the crypto world that you just want to hold on to it and see how far it can go. Um, Ryan Serhant, actually, you know, the well-known real estate agent in New York of Million Dollar Listing fame, he posted something on his social media recently which was a reminder about how he was offered — I think it was 50,000 Bitcoin for a property, which was $13 or 14 million. Um, he took that offer to the seller and they said, no, we're not taking Bitcoin. But today I believe it's worth $3 billion, right? So it's an interesting part of the economy. Chris Berg: Very interesting. And I do want to share my thoughts, but also, um, I don't know if you saw recently — there was an interview, I'm actually trying to get the CEO on, of New Market Capital. He was on CNBC and they're now using Bitcoin as collateral, and it's got escrow for four years. Did you see that? Nikki Greenberg: No. Oh, that's — that's very interesting. Chris Berg: And he did it on a multifamily property in Philadelphia. So I mean, it was — I don't remember the exact number of units. Can you — yes, Nikki, you're still there, good. Um, but it was a pretty big, you know — they refi'd it, they took I think $2 million in cash, I don't remember the exact numbers, out of it, but they used some of that to go buy some Bitcoin. That's now going to sit in escrow — it's got to sit in escrow for four years — and that's part of the collateral on the deal. And so I just think it's fascinating to see how these banks are going to utilize different assets to, um, collateralize real estate. And, you know, you and I were talking as well — I'd love to get your take — but I did a really great interview with a gentleman who's focused on big real estate families, um, how to utilize those assets, succession plans. And, you know, there's projected to be $100 trillion of wealth transferred from baby boomers to Gen Zers. And like he and I have talked about, as he's sitting down with this younger generation, they're kind of like, yeah Dad, this is great that you bought this industrial site, or, you know, this multifamily, you've got 30 multifamily properties, but I'm gonna go buy Bitcoin. Or, you know, not those exact conversations, but it's definitely part of the conversation, where they look at the real estate kind of like, yeah, it's nice cash flow, but, like you said, all my boys are out, you know, buying XRP or whatever, and seeing these incredible returns. Nikki Greenberg: And that's it. And I think it kind of plays to two things. It's that this younger generation, they're more used to things — an immediacy in seeing results. So to say, hey look, you know, buy a property, it's a good investment, hold on to it through your life, and you see it appreciate, as, you know, many people's grandparents did, and now this next generation, you know, two generations down the line, they're like, thank you grandparents for doing that for us. This younger generation wants this immediacy, because they're seeing it around there. So how do you appeal to that sensibility, and how do you, um, you know, how do you make sure that they're diversifying? But you need to communicate it in a different way, because it's not just about speed. But something, Chris, I might kind of add into that conversation, because, you know, you and I were probably also seeing different things on — when we go on the social media feeds, we're being fed different information — in terms of this, you know, this transfer of wealth. The other thing that's happening is that we've apparently — today women control, it's either 51 or 54%, of the world's wealth. And obviously, you know, financial services, even, you know, commercial real estate, a lot of it is still kind of through the lens of, you know, um, a very traditional lens. But there's actually — what's going to happen even before that generational transfer of wealth, because women outlive men — what they're actually talking about in terms of, you know, financial planning, and in the financial planning community they're like, well actually there's going to be this large transfer, as, you know, as the husband who may be the breadwinner hands it over as he passes away, it goes to the wife. And what kind of things is she interested in? And interestingly — and this might be a good opportunity for, um, you know, commercial real estate — is that, you know, from these articles I've been reading and the conversation happening around it, you know, women tend to be more risk averse in the way that we invest and looking for more stable opportunities rather than these, oh, crazy blah blah blah. So there might be, again, if we kind of want to say, hey, let's apply a lens to a changing demographic, to say, okay, well let's also understand that you might have, you know, a female retiree — what is she looking for, which would be different to what is, you know, a 30-year-old son or whoever looking for. And you have different people, different risk, different time, different way of appealing to them. But I think we — moving away from this one-size-fits-all or a very traditional customer that we've been serving in a certain light, to go, okay well, how do we tap into different customer groups, their lens, um, what interests them, what appeals to them? And, you know, obviously that's where we get a plug for diversity, because you have people from — you know, whenever I talk about diversity, I'm not just saying gender diversity or, um, you know, cultural diversity. It's also diversity of age, diversity of perspective, um, diversity of — when it comes to technology, like how tech savvy is somebody? You get different ends of the spectrum. You know, we need to have these different viewpoints, because these different viewpoints represent customer groups that you can start to target in a very specific way and speak to them in the language that's going to give them that aha moment, to go, actually you know what, this is something for me. Because we no longer just have, you know, five generic products. It's like, well, you can actually — it's a more, um, it's a more exciting and diverse world, I suppose, in terms of, you know, investment opportunities and all the rest. Chris Berg: Yeah, and thank you for that perspective. It's such a powerful perspective, because I have seen a little bit of data on that, and I agree, I think there's going to be a shift from just that female perspective as well, and they're a little bit, um, more risk averse, if you will. So, um, and the one last thing I'll add here and then we'll jump into more of the tech around CRE is just the fact that with more and more people becoming adept at crypto, you're going to see — and I used to host a podcast around this — but the tokenization of real world assets, where now some of these CRE properties can be tokenized, fractionalized. It's going to make it easier to, you know, mark to market, give you — hey, I've got this token, do you want to buy this share, you know, Nikki, of XYZ building? Um, so I think syndications and things of that nature may be more simplified, which, as you just suggested, may bring more people into the, you know, real estate investment world. Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, yeah. And I think again it comes down to how do you translate that into a message that people understand, um, and can really grasp on to. But I also definitely see that there's great opportunities in that. Chris Berg: So let's talk about what you've seen, because again, you've been traveling all over the world. You had a fascinating conversation, if you want to touch on that, with the mayor of Stockholm — and I didn't, I've never played Minecraft, so I was like, this is interesting but I really don't get it. Um, but just, you know, what you're seeing out there, where you go, hey Chris, I would really be aware of this trend because I'm seeing it very pervasive and I think it's going to have this kind of impact on CRE. Nikki Greenberg: Um, yeah, okay. So, a couple of questions, um, I'll jump around a bit, which I seem to do particularly well and quite often — well practiced. So, nice plug for my new podcast that was released yesterday, or pre-released yesterday. I've started a podcast because I keep meeting really fascinating people on my travels, and there's always people that I just want to know more about their story and what they do. So, Anna König Jerlmyr, she was the mayor of Stockholm. I met her about a year ago in Riyadh, in um, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, when we both spoke at the Cityscape conference. So there was 165,000 of my closest friends, and I got to talk to them about the future of real estate in 2050. And one of the things about, um, Anna — you know, we hung out, we had the same flight out of Riyadh, so we were hanging out in like the airport lounge at like 4 in the morning being served like hummus by robot waiters and just having a bit of a giggle about it. She somehow dropped that she ran this initiative where she realized that Mojang Studios, which created Minecraft, which is now owned by Microsoft, she realized that they were in Stockholm, and she has young boys, and she's like, my boys are always playing Minecraft, like, why don't we — if we want to have community consultation about what our city's doing, why don't we do something with Minecraft, because that's where kids are spending their time. So um, you know, so like, yeah, tune into — you know, go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or, you know, Amazon Music or whatever, or even go to my website or YouTube, and listen to the interview that I did with her, because it's really interesting, because it's an understanding of different generations, that these younger generations, they're spending time in different places. So again, it's about that message about how do you involve them in decision-making, how do you get them involved in what's happening in their city, to give them a voice, um, and go to where they are. So that was something quite interesting. Um, you know, there's a whole — I won't go into it now, but you know, definitely subscribe, there's some very interesting people with some very interesting stories. Um, in terms of like emerging technologies that are coming out now, I've been very fortunate that I do get to speak all around the world. Um, I was in Norway a couple of months ago, I was in, you know, in Copenhagen a few months ago, in Frankfurt a few months ago, I was speaking at different events. And what I love hearing about is, well, firstly, like, you know, what are they doing, what do they do well, and also what do they think of what we're doing in the US. And there always seems to be these common things coming up. You know, number one, for the Europeans it's really all about circular economy, sustainability. There is a mandate, so their technology is becoming very, very, very strong, and I think for us in the US we can probably piggyback off what a lot of them are doing, um, to be able to improve our buildings' energy efficiency and other things in a way that's, you know, two steps ahead. Um, the Norwegians are super interesting because they're also thinking about, um, a lot around aged care and aging in place, which I find to be quite fascinating. So these like multi-generational, um, you know, communities that are also thinking about, um, things like cognitive decline, which is quite interesting. And another, um, company that I heard, which was quite interesting — or rather it's an initiative — is there was, in one of the Norwegian cities, that were actually tying financing of residential real estate, um, you know, the rate, to how sustainable is that home. So tying in, yeah, interest rates and sustainability together, which kind of from a logical perspective makes sense. You know, so they're super interesting, um, they're doing amazing things. And then the common thing that always comes up is, you know, plug for America, just say, they all do the same thing, they're like, oh my God, you're so lucky you're in America, we wish we were in America. Europe's not really competitive for the startup ecosystem, whereas if you go to America you can find financing, if you're an innovator, you know, you're really well supported, if you fail it's not the end of the world, people are still back here again. So you know, they're super inspired by everything that's happening in the US. Um, you know, plug for New York especially. Um, yeah, but I mean, we have an amazing — in the US we have an amazing global reputation that's enviable, and I suspect that we'll be seeing a lot of European talent continuing to come over to the US to be a part of our technology ecosystem, and bringing their brains with them too. Chris Berg: Yeah, you know, thank you for saying that, because I think a lot of times we just sort of take it for granted here in the US. Hey, we've got 30-year mortgages, where you go to Canada they're five-year, you know, adjustables, you've got to refi every five years even on your homes. Or down in Mexico, you know, you've got to put a lot more money down to get a loan. So I think we are pretty fortunate — you can go in and, first-time home buyer, you know, 3.5% and leverage the heck out of the thing, right. You covered a lot there, so I want to touch on a few things. One is, um, to back up to the Stockholm mayor — like what really fascinated me, if you can just dive into it a little bit, was my understanding, at least, that she was utilizing these younger minds and Minecraft to help the city with zoning. Which, as a developer, zoning is the one thing where you just want to go, city, please work with me, I'm here to help. Like, and they just — some of them can be fairly punitive. So what is she doing with Minecraft and kids and the zoning, how is she utilizing that? Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, so it was more around community consultations. So she found that when it came to community consultation around, you know, um, getting commentary on what the city was wanting to do, it always was the same people giving their opinions. So she found — she actually did an initiative with the schools in Stockholm, so it became part of the curriculum in some schools, um, rather than an extracurricular activity, so that they could have, you know, kids as part of their assignment looking at different, you know, sustainability ideas and, you know, things that happen in the city, to start getting kind of the kids' perspective around, you know, what's possible, and getting them to think about these things. Which is, I mean, you know, kudos to her, like, a millionfold. And I asked her the question, I'm like, Anna, you're like the mayor of Stockholm, like, you've got other things to do, you're keeping this like vibrant city alive, and then you go, hey, huh, Minecraft, let's add like something that's never been done into it. But that's what we need. We need, you know, innovative ideas to engage people in different ways. Chris Berg: For sure. I thought it was brilliant. I want to share with you a quick anecdote about the elder care, and then see what you're seeing across the globe in other areas. So I used to be in the Midwest, in Fargo, North Dakota, and for probably a decade, maybe 15 years, um, we had a lot of refugees coming into the community. And so a friend of mine was running an elder care place, and one of his buddies was like, hey, I'm curious, you know, now that we've had refugees here for 10, 15 years, are you starting to see a lot more refugees come into your elder care facility? And the guy's like, no, we don't have any. The guy's like, what are you talking about, you don't have any? And he said to him — and I thought it was really interesting — he goes, look, the Western culture, or the white culture, is the only culture that just sort of, and I hate to use this word, these are his words not mine, but that just sort of dismisses their elderly. Where you look at these other cultures, Latino, you know, African, you know, they're like, hey, come live with us, you know, we'll take care of you. Was that part of the plans that you were seeing in some of these other areas, or what are they doing to integrate their elder care? And I say that too because I just think, you know, we miss out on so much beautiful wisdom from our elderly by just going, hey, you go live here and we'll see you when it's convenient for me. I mean, it hurts me to even say that come out of my mouth, but it's unfortunately where we're at right now in our society. Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, and the other unfortunate thing is that we're living longer. And if you — I don't know what the average life expectancy is now, but, you know, my late grandmother passed away at 94. If you say that 60 is old age, you've got a third of your life in old age. So why would you want to get somebody to like the peak of their knowledge, the peak of their career, and then say, okay, move aside and move on, and, you know, go go feed the swans, which is, um, which is outrageous to me. So I've seen these different models in, um, like the Netherlands, for example, where they have university students, um, you know, living also in retirement communities so that they can help out with different things and have that kind of transfer of knowledge there. Something else I saw, um, on LinkedIn, somebody posted about recently also in a similar regard, trying to — I think their expression was really to bring people out of retirement, and again to be able to leverage their expertise in training, um, and, you know, contributing back to the workforce, because they've, you know, gained so much in skills. So um, you know, I think, look, there's — I hope you would do something in, you know, in one of these series with somebody talking about, um, you know, retirement living, aged care, whatever you might want to call it, because there's huge opportunity, especially with, um, technology to be able to facilitate additional aging in place. Actually, I um, I had Thanksgiving — one of the guests was a radiologist, and he runs um, you know, one of these big networks. And one of the things that he was — because I just hounded him with information, you know, for information, as I tend to do if you're sitting next to me at the table, which some people like it, other people don't as much when they're trying to have turkey — but was asking him about his perspective around telemedicine and, um, being able — you know, in Australia they try to encourage people to stay at home for longer, um, and, you know, being able to facilitate that through, um, you know, through carers being able to come to the home, or, you know, different grants, etc., because rather than having different facilities. But one of the things we were saying is that they can even do X-rays and other things, that there'll almost be like a mobile van will pull up, they'll pull the equipment into your house, X-ray you, and then they'll, you know, take it out. Like DoorDash — deliver, like you get your, you know, Pizza Hut pizza, everything in your home, instead of everyone having to like go out to a hospital, go out to a medical facility, um, and that sort of thing. Actually, the same guy was telling me about, um — man, I hounded this guy, poor thing — I was asking him about, um, you know, within retail we've been saying for some time that medical facilities are a lot more stable, they're good long-term tenants, etc. And he was echoing that around how, you know, his group, they prefer to um, you know, retrofit an existing asset, particularly shopping centers, they've liked doing so, rather than creating a purpose-built facility, because you can do that quite quickly. And he was just referring to, you know, some of the structural needs that they need, such as understanding the loading, because you've got heavy equipment in some spaces, um, retrofitting the HVAC, because you need to be, um, you know, for being able to do surgery for example, you need that cleaner air in there, um, also thinking about things like lead panels around walls, um, because of that radiation coming through. But how like a shopping center asset is ideal for that, um, which, you know, for me really delights me about how we bring longer longevity to our assets, as well as people. Chris Berg: So, um, always — I want to be respectful of your time, so I hope that you're enjoying this and you'll come back again, because I feel like we could do a series of these, which would be great. And I wanted to — you said something about, hey, you had a chance to be in Saudi Arabia and talk about, um, real estate 2050. And I want to share, because I took some pictures when you spoke in Santa Monica, so I just want to share this slide with people to give an idea. And if you want to just take us out to 2050 — you know, where are we going? Um, a person that I listen to a lot in real estate said, hey, if I were you, I would start looking at potential real estate assets that are nearby where — I just shared — those flying cars are going to be able to take off and land. I mean, it's 2050, I'm going through the world, what's happening within real estate? Nikki Greenberg: Yeah, um, I think that's a great one to close on, and I love that image. So there was actually a conceptual image from a design competition that was run by Uber Elevate about what might the future multimodal transportation hub look like, and you can see those um, UAVs, or unmanned aerial vehicles, flying through the skies and being able to land on the rooftop of this building, or in between. And, you know, something — when we think about real estate, we know that the value really comes through location, location, location. If you're near a highway, if you're near, you know, a train station, if you're near, you know, transportation — and city planning is one of those things that is a driver to the value of our assets. So if we just take like one point and think about, okay well, what is the future of real estate? We know that there are development plans out there, we know that there are city plans, we know that there are plans for future transportation. Um, I was in Salt Lake City before I was in LA, and I had a fascinating conversation with somebody there that's working with, you know — I can't recall if it was the city of Salt Lake City or if it was Utah itself — but they are creating tangible plans to implement having, um, you know, eVTOLs, um, or, you know, flying cars essentially, as part of their city planning, and making it a part of the development plans that has to be considered by real estate developers moving forward. Because they're saying, we are going to have this future transportation coming to our city in the next, I don't know, 5-10 years, or I think they're working towards 2034 if I'm not mistaken. And we know we're going to get to hear about 2034 — what are the steps to get there? And as real estate developers we should always be going, we can see what these tangible plans are, how can we capitalize on that opportunity? And that's why it's not that hard to be a futurist. All you have to do is see what's being committed to, and how do we find that opportunity from a real estate perspective to support that kind of industry. So I just put myself out of a job. Chris Berg: But that's — I think you just enhanced it. Like, I think what you're sharing is spot on, and I could go into a lot more depth with you to ask questions about, hey, how would you — because one last thing I'll share is, we were looking at the Olympics coming here to LA in 2028, and so, you know, there's a thesis obviously around investing in certain areas, as you just suggested. But is there a tech out there where I could go to, for example, the Washington DC budget committee or transportation committee, and follow that conversation all the way to that money being, you know, appropriated to, allocated to, implemented? And I haven't seen that. Do you know, have any tech out there that's doing that? Nikki Greenberg: Um, from a tech perspective I'm not sure, but I think it's probably um, a matter of being in the right rooms, being in the right circles, being in the right mailing lists. And then, same as you might be an expert in healthcare real estate and, you know, what's happening — there's this eager field where there's people that are tangibly doing things. Um, where was it — um, I'm speaking at a ULI event next year in, um, in Florida in — when, this March I think? I think I should be plugging them. Um, but same thing — on the call they're like, yeah, we also now have tangible plans that we're going to start seeing flying taxis coming through. So I'd say we've got this — as an industry we've got to start making these working groups to say, okay, what are we doing as an industry to capitalize on the real estate opportunities for this new transportation that's coming. Um, which is a conversation for another time I think, but really exciting. And I'd encourage people to become that expert ahead of anybody else, because it's an emerging skill and expertise that is coming. Chris Berg: Yeah. Nikki, thank you so much for the insight. I mean, it's just — again, I could talk to you for a long, long time. I hope that you will come back, maybe we'll just focus on different niches next time, because I went to a lot of different places with you and it was just such a great conversation. I hope that's okay with you. Nikki Greenberg: That's right, we didn't even get to talk about our $6.2 million bananas, but — so another time. Um, if — I will say, I will say to anyone that's tuned into this, if you want to know where to find the $6.2 million bananas, just message me on LinkedIn and I'll tell you where the stand is located, um, in New York City where that banana came from. I told Chris, my friends and connections, they're going to be getting bananas for their Christmas presents. For the cost of a postage stamp and 35 cents, they too can taste what a $6.2 million banana tastes like in our crazy world. Chris Berg: Brilliant. Um, maybe we'll talk offline, we can talk about how we can start to put a little business together around that. So yeah, anything else you want to add or share, Nikki, that I haven't asked you? And obviously, most importantly, how can people reach out to you and get a hold of you if they want to have you come out and speak, or hire you, work with you, whatever. Nikki Greenberg: Um, yeah, absolutely. Um, the best place is to go to my website, nikkigreenberg.com. Um, I'm also on LinkedIn, I'm very active there, follow me there, chase me around. Um, I started a podcast called The Visionaries. I have one episode out so far, they're coming out every two weeks, really great guests. Subscribe to that, share that around. And I'm always available for bookings for keynote talks, um, just reach out to me if you have upcoming events. And again, I do strategy both for real estate organizations to understand what they can and should be doing about emerging technologies, how to actually think about the big picture and put a plan in place so that you know where you are going, and also I'm advisory for PropTech firms that want to know the realities of how you get in with these real estate people. So find me, reach out to me, love to chat. Chris Berg: And again, I will say she is fantastic. We had an opportunity to see her at the event in Santa Monica, and you held the audience the entire time — engaged, excited, great information. Um, so I was just — I loved it, and I'm very grateful for you giving us some of your time today while you're even in Miami. We'll let you go enjoy the sun. We'd love to have you back, and again thank you, and go check her out, nikkigreenberg.com. Nikki Greenberg: Wonderful. Thanks so much for the chat. Chris Berg: Thanks Nikki. — END OF TRANSCRIPT —