Blog Archives

New Healthy Habits to Ignite Your Success

Healthy Habits

Habits That Helped Me Write My Book

**Special Notice at the end of this blog.

“If we really pay close attention to our thoughts and actions I would venture to say that we’re essentially a series of habits.  A Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40% of people’s actions are habits and not decisions,

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The Positive Power Of Network Effects on Real Estate

Network Effects

Network effects are extraordinarily powerful. The more people that join the network, the more valuable it becomes to be part of the network, which leads to more people joining. Entrenched, valuable networks are very hard to dislodge and offer great competitive advantages. Think of Facebook,

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Finding the Bottlenecks and Pain Points

removing bottlenecks

CWS has a sister company that focuses on corporate housing. They provide temporary housing for business people, interns, long-term, special projects for companies, etc. I am one of the advisory board members and it’s been such a treat to see how the company has grown and prospered over its 25 years in business.

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Trauma and Intelligent Investing

Trauma

Traumatic events can hold great sway over our lives. They can trigger reactions that are often times not healthy for us. I was at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and saw someone speak who was born in Brussels in 1943. For the first two years of his life,

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Growth and Stability – How Could Apartments Ever Be Obsolete!

CWS Apartment Communities - Growth

Last week we held our annual investor meeting and we had a record attendance of nearly 600 people (including employees). I told the audience that if we can grow our attendance by 7% every year that by the time we have our 100th annual meeting (this was year 49) then we should have over 11,000 in attendance.

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CWS at 50: How We Have Survived and Prospered for 50 Years

CWS Investors

Last week we had our annual investor meeting for CWS. This was a huge milestone as we celebrated our 50th anniversary. The attendance was a record with more than 600 people taking time out of their busy lives to join us for dinner and presentations from the CWS principals.

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Rent Control - Then and Now

With rent control being passed in California, Oregon, and New York, government intervention in rental housing is heating up. This is something we have been predicting for a number of years given the housing shortage and relatively stagnant wages for lower to middle-income earners. We also had a lot of experience with it when we owned manufacturing housing communities where it was much more widespread than apartments so we had a sense of the conditions that would lend itself to rent control pressures.

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Stressless Stress for Commercial Real Estate Investors

Stress-Free-Investing

“When clouds appear, wise men put on their cloaks.” – Shakespeare

Hyman Minsky famously said that stability creates instability. Good times sow the seeds for bad times because people believe that stability will be the norm and growth will continue uninterrupted.

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The Skyscraper Indicator - Is the Luxury Home Bubble Bursting?

skyscraper-indicator

A little while back I read an article by Ron Insana regarding New York luxury condos and how he believed that the top was in and the bubble was bursting. This is in conjunction with another article I read on Bloomberg.com about the weakening London luxury home market.

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Single-Family Housing: No Bubble But There Is A "But"

housing

It has been our belief at CWS that housing in totality has been undersupplied. This does not mean that apartments may not be over-supplied in certain metro areas, particularly in the urban core. This is the case because these properties are often very dense and result in the delivery of a lot of units at one time that can often result in rent discounts to entice people to rent at these communities so developers can expedite getting out of their construction loans and/or be in a position to sell their properties.

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