Gary Carmell
Last week we completed seven of our eleven State of the Company meetings that Tracy Hayes, the president of our sister company CWS Corporate Housing, and I have been doing for 26 years. And while it’s a lot of travel in a relatively short period of time,
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Gary Carmell
I must confess that one of my guilty pleasures involves eavesdropping. I find people fascinating, particularly when it comes to learning about what motivates them, what they do, their opinions about issues, and their nuances that make them unique.
Leaders Lessons Learned Listening
I was recently having breakfast and sitting out on the patio next to a group of four younger guys,
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Gary Carmell
With the 2010s having come to an end and the roaring 20s starting I thought I would look back over the past decade to convey key trends that impacted the economy and apartment investors.
I would summarize it as a decade of continued aggressive Federal Reserve involvement in the economy through continued low-interest rates and expansion of its balance sheet.
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Gary Carmell 
2020 has started off with some geopolitical fireworks that have carried over to financial markets as the headline below attests.
This is another good example of why having a hedge with U.S. Treasuries (and maybe a little gold as well) can be helpful to provide a counterweight to risk assets that inevitably take a mild beating,
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Gary Carmell
I make a concerted effort to avoid each day rolling into another without any distinction. I never want to look back on my life and have nothing stand out. I think this is one of the reasons I blog each week. It helps me reflect on my life and gives me the opportunity to bring forth those experiences,
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Gary Carmell
Someone who shall remain nameless (because that person wants to remain nameless when it comes to my blog) brought up an issue with me regarding this person’s concern that I am too open on my blog about personal issues and that it would be better if I just kept a journal as there was no need for me to be revealing such information publicly.
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Gary Carmell
It’s been said that markets go up like escalators and drop like elevators. There is also Newton’s Third Law which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is where the Fed comes into play when markets drop like elevators.
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Gary Carmell
Last week were engaged in our annual planning process. As part of this, we come up with key assumptions regarding the operating environment for the next three years or so. Interest rates, of course, are a huge variable in our business and dominated much of the discussion.
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Gary Carmell
Over the past year or so I have watched a number of video lectures from Rabbi Manis Friedman on YouTube. His clarity and insights have been very helpful for me in many different aspects of my life. Given that it was just Thanksgiving and it is a time to reflect on gratitude and giving I thought I would share one of his insights and how it has impacted my life and philanthropic endeavors.
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Gary Carmell
“What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.”
— Charlie Munger
For me,
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