Steve Streetman
Transforming Communities Via Real Estate Innovations
Despite media depictions of real estate investors as greedy and selfish, the investors I know are some of the most generous and caring people I have ever met. Each one wants to make a difference in their communities even more than they desire making a profit. Because real estate tends ...
The Abstract Side of Real Estate
What does it even mean to invest in real estate? Historically, you buy a building. You develop. You occupy. You rent. You manage. Real estate has always been, literally, something real and tangible, something you can touch. But over time, as with every other investment type, real estate has become ...
Technology for Sustainable Communities
In nearly every industry the trend has been for smaller, customized, agile, and modular capabilities. Even in real estate we now see planned developments with retail, office, and housing co-located. And everywhere that these types of approaches are used they result in better, more robust products. They make life better ...
Lessons in Diversification from COVID-19
Investors regularly reassess their portfolios and rebalance in order to achieve diversification. And many view this process as a way to tweak their portfolios, making small changes. But the last year has shown us how quickly macro-sized changes can occur. These events should encourage us to broaden our concept of ...
Alternative Construction Methods Reduce Emissions
We need housing. The U.S. is underbuilt by 5.5 million housing units (at least). And yet, we also have a global imperative to reduce emissions into the atmosphere, especially carbon emissions. Is there any way to create this housing without adding to carbon emissions? Can we get to “net zero” ...
Hemp Homes: A New Sustainable Building Trend
Anyone building or remodeling this past year has seen lumber, steel, and concrete prices skyrocket. Lumber has tripled and other building materials have increased similarly. How can investors who already have tight margins handle the increased prices? How can we continue to build and not outstrip the capacity of buyers ...
Custom Furniture Printed for Your Home
On February I wrote about 3D printed houses and how they can help to address the affordable housing crisis while also being unique and beautiful works of art. But the technology has widespread applications beyond houses. Already today there are companies creating stylish furnishings that are 3D printed. And many ...
Most investors will evaluate potential investments and account for scenarios that would negatively impact their investment returns. They describe this as risk assessment or risk management, though technically it is a threat analysis (see my article in Think Realty in June 2020 for a more thorough explanation). Real estate investors ...
Three Reasons to Sell Your Real Estate for Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin has risen from $6,700 per coin to $58,000 in the past year. That’s an 860 percent annual increase and, frankly, that’s the average for what Bitcoin has done over the past five years. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that? And Bitcoin is not unique in its out-of-this-world appreciation ...
Over the past year, real estate investment (REI) organizations have scrambled to remain relevant and operative as the pandemic has shut down and altered in-person meetings. Mostly gone are the three-day live bootcamps, the annual conferences in vacation spots like Las Vegas and Orlando, and even the REIA meetings at ...
Can you build a house in a day? A house that is sturdy, energy efficient, inexpensive, and just flat-out cool? In 2021, the answer is yes. 3-D printing technology has come of age and in numerous pilot projects across the world, houses are being printed, finished, and occupied. Printing houses ...
Lies Your Stockbroker Told You
Whenever I hear a stockbroker saying that you should diversify your portfolio by investing in stocks AND bonds, I’m reminded of the old Blues Brothers movie (the one with John Belushi). As the band arrives at a honky-tonk bar for their first gig, Elwood Blues asks the proprietor what kind ...
Good for you! You’ve been investing and you have a nice piece of rental real estate where you’ve built up equity. But you have noticed that the return on that equity is not the best each year. Traditionally, you would say it’s time to sell and use a 1031 deferred ...
How many of you have heard knowledgeable real estate investors discuss risk? In sober tones they describe “risks” like loss of tenants, market risk, title claims, competition. And their “risk management” approaches are to always buy title insurance, don’t build if there are other projects in the pipeline, only buy ...
We’ve all heard the maxims: “Cash Is King,” “Cash Plays,” “Money Talks.” And there is nothing wrong with those terms. It is absolutely true that for most sellers out there having cash is the ultimate for a quick and easy sale. Having cash means that there are no other parties ...
Real estate acquisition and sale has traditionally been a slow-moving process. When I purchased my first home in 1987, a typical home-buying process took 30 days. Today, with modern technology, electronic communication, searchable databases, and the ability to execute contracts online, a typical home-buying process takes – 30 days. How ...
Imagine a group of real estate brokers who help their clients trade real estate parcels as if they were baseball cards. Brokers who can figure out how to move through properties (sometimes in three, four or five steps) to get to an ultimate cash sale. These brokers regularly do the ...
Cryptocurrency: Inherently International
There are numerous challenges to investing in real estate outside your own country. Many things that we take for granted in the U.S. (e.g., strong property ownership protection, the ability to get a mortgage) are not true in other countries. In addition, there are language barriers, differences in currency and ...
Real estate investing can be the best approach to build and preserve wealth. The value of real estate assets typically increases over time, yet regular and predictable currency devaluation can exacerbate increases. Plus, real estate is notorious for a lack of liquidity and a slow pace for buying and selling ...
Cryptocurrency and Real Estate
Cryptocurrency and one of its main underlying technologies, Blockchain, seem poised to transform many industries. Real estate, which tends to be a conservative, slow-to-change industry, is ripe for transformation by these technologies. How can real estate investors take advantage of Bitcoin and Blockchain to set themselves apart from the crowd ...
