Kathryn House
Hello and welcome to Talking Property. I'm your host, Kathryn House, and for our final 2024 episode, I'm joining forces with Spencer Levy, who steers CBRE's US Podcast, The Weekly Take.
Spencer Levy
There's a great expression I learned the other day and I believe it wholeheartedly. Happiness isn't getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you have.
Kathryn House
That's Spencer, a global client strategist and senior economic advisor for CBRE who's built a huge following for The Weekly Take. I must admit to being a bit of a fangirl. So I was pretty chuffed when Spencer agreed to join me on Talking Property to discuss takeouts from some of his podcasts this year and the potential learnings we have for our Australian audience. So Spencer, welcome to Talking Property.
Spencer Levy
Thank you, Kathryn. And hello Australia.
Kathryn House
So to kick us off, we have talked a lot on Talking Property this year about when commercial property investment volumes are going to start increasing. We haven't had a rate cut in Australia. The Fed's already lowered rates in the US by 50 basis points. You recently chatted to Drew Fung from Clarion Partners, a global firm with about 75 billion of assets under management, and with James Millon from CBRE's Debt & Structured Finance team about the impact this had on the market psychology. So why do you think that's been such an important inflection point?
Spencer Levy
Interest rates and deal volumes in commercial real estate are the same hand and the same glove. They are essentially the number one factor leading to cause of whether or not we're going to have good deal volume or not. Now, you use the term psychology. Is some of it psychological? Absolutely. And the psychology of it has to do with the rate of rise or drop, but the math has to do with the absolute rate. The difference being this, if we see a rapid spike like we saw back in 2022, that completely chilled the market, but if we saw it go up more gradually, you wouldn't have seen the complete chilling even if we went out the same amount. It was the shock and awe strategy, so to speak, by the Fed that caused that psychological damage to the market, which caused a fall-off in deal volume. But now from an absolute rate perspective, rates are coming down and they're down now I believe by 75 basis points. We think that that is going to help spur the market for financing and it already has. Our first quarter, or rather the market ending in September, we saw a significant uptick in debt and structured finance deals, but we didn't see a significant uptick in sales volume. And why? Because that same rise in rates caused a significant rise in cap rates. And if you don't need to sell, you're not going to sell. And so, unless you were a forced seller, you likely would've held onto the assets. Hence, we haven't seen a lot of sales of commercial assets on a relative basis. We did see a modest uptick in volume this year. We expect more volume next year when rates come down further. But if you were to link somehow the commercial and the single-family residential market, you see similar trends. Why would somebody sell their house if rates are high, if they're going to get into the next house at a higher rate? I'm not saying it's the same reason because they're certainly very different, but nevertheless, higher rates are causing a chill in both the commercial and the single-family markets.
Kathryn House
Yes. And data centres. James talked on your podcast about the interest and that he hasn't seen anything like it in his 20-plus- year career. Are you seeing a lot of activity in that market sector?
Spencer Levy
And we are, and it's for one reason, one word, liquidity, and that liquidity is coming both on the equity side where just about all of my major investors are going into the space or are already in it. Even some of my more conservative investors are doing it and teaming up with some of the more opportunistic groups. But the real reason for liquidity is on the debt side. You can get very competitive rates for large loans. And when I say large loans, I'm talking hundreds of millions of dollars of loans from foreign banks. And because you have the ability to finance the deal, you have a lot of liquidity on the equity side, we're seeing tremendous deal volume, certainly on a relative basis in data centres, beyond what we've seen before. We've also seen value increases. We've seen value increases because of funds flows because of that liquidity. And second, fundamentally, we've seen rents continue to rise in data centres. And that wasn't the case four years ago. Rents were actually dropping in data centres until about four years ago. But now because of the incredible new demand, because of that demand being caused by AI, a little bit by crypto, and just generally speaking, by people wanting more data centre space and not being able to get enough of it because we have a limitation in the amount of power and water we have, you're seeing data centres being a tremendous space to be in at the moment.
Kathryn House
Yes. It was interesting to hear on the podcast, some tenants who aren't going to have access to power for four years are still signing leases.
00:05:02 Spencer Levy
That is pretty remarkable because most tenants don't have four-year time horizons for when they can take occupancy. Now, you need to be clear here, this is not occupancy of people sitting there. This is occupancy of their data needs and there are things they can do in the short term to meet those needs, including going to what's known as a co-location facility where they don't have the entire facility. They might share it with somebody else. They can throw a few servers in their existing offices. Again, these are band-aid solutions over the long term to take a larger piece of a data centre or the entirety. But yes, that power limiting factor, that water limiting factor is going to push data centrers into markets and submarkets that are much further afield from where institutional investors would ordinarily go. Institutional investors normally like these so-called gateway markets, even for data centres where there are the hubs in Dallas, in Northern Virginia, in New York and San Francisco. But you're going to see more of these go into very tertiary and secondary markets that have an abundance of power and water.
Kathryn House
Yes. And we're seeing that in Australia as well. Everyone is chasing the power sources.
Spencer Levy
I was going to say chasing because one of my favourite movies of all time was Mad Max, and it's the best chase movie of all time. So maybe there's something to that in Australia.
Kathryn House
Absolutely. I need to rewatch that. And maybe just one last question on this particular podcast, you mentioned debt, and so private debt funds have seemed to have really stepped up their lending in the US. Are the banks still pulling back?
Spencer Levy
The banks are only lending to their favourite clients and they're lending to them at what I would call unattractive rates except at the very margins, okay? So,cmbs construction debt from 90% of builders, including some of the best builders, is still twice as expensive as it was three years ago. But you are beginning to see the ability to get more competitive debt for the most attractive asset classes, notably industrial and multifamily. Multifamily, of course, having the distinct advantage of having government agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that give you liquidity even in tough markets. But the insurance companies are jumping into that space as well. So for the most attractive sectors, insurance companies, non-bank financial institutions, conduits, CMBS debt is very available. Banks, less so, but increasingly so for their best customers.
Kathryn House
So, a bit of a change of gear. This year on The Weekly Take, you've been zeroing in on US cities and regions that are shaping the future. So, I think cities that you've looked at, Nashville, Cleveland, Austin, New York, Tampa. Look, this might be akin to naming your favourite child, but which city's success story has stood out to you the most and why?
Spencer Levy
Well, a lot of people ask me, what's your favourite city to invest in America? And I say, I don't have any favourite markets or cities, I have favourite submarkets within those cities. Because even if you go to a dynamic market like Dallas, which is a terrific market, they have some tough sections of it. Downtown Dallas is not a particularly strong submarket right now, but Uptown Dallas is. Frisco, which is outside of the city centre is, and in similar fashion, if you go to markets like Nashville, you have incredibly strong submarkets, but you have some weaker markets there as well. But I make that point by saying this, and again, here comes the shameless plug. I'm sure I'll have 10 more of these, but my friend and colleague, Colin Yasukochi, who I was privileged to have as a guest on my show recently and had dinner with him in San Francisco, I might add, he wrote a report called the Tech 30. I think that's the report that people should look to when you say, which markets do you like, Spence? And I say, well I like the submarkets that Colin lists in that report. And these markets are in Charlotte, they're in Nashville, they're in Dallas, they're in San Fran, they're in all the same markets that you would think I would pick, but they're the submarkets within it that have the certain characteristics of live, work, play, infrastructure, capital that are going to make them thrive even if the headline in that market is tough. I'll give you one example there. So, we had on the show in the spring, Glenn Gilmore, who's the CEO of Brick & Timber Collective, and they own nothing but office buildings in San Francisco. And you might be like, oh no, he must be getting crushed, right? No, his buildings are 100% leased. And you're like, well, why? Because they're in Jackson Square in San Francisco, which is a great submarket. And where is Glenn expanding his business operations to? Wynwood in Miami, yet another submarket, kind of like Jackson Square, that has older buildings that can do adaptive reuse, has obviously a big art scene there because that's where Art Basel is. But ultimately, the whole theme of office is dead and San Francisco is dead, that's not true. You go to the right submarkets, you can find great opportunities, and if you can buy these opportunities at fair market value today, my advice to my clients is pretty simple. Back up the truck.
Kathryn House
Yes. Well, it's interesting. We just interviewed someone for our podcast that's coming out next year on client predictions. Ross Lees, who heads a big fund down here, and he's super keen on fringe offices, so he says that they've been having some really good net absorption, that there's a lot more vibrancy in some of these fringe markets. So, I think he has a very similar view, don't write off office.
Spencer Levy
I think that he's right. And I would also say that I don't know what his source of funds are, but if his source of funds are high-net-worth individuals versus say, pension funds or endowments, he's going to have a very clean runway to go acquire a lot of this because while the institutions may want to go back in right now, they're having a tough time going back in because they're saddled with a lot of offices that don't fill those characteristics, that are saddling the balance sheet. And then there's always the fear factor of showing up in investment committees and getting shot down.
Kathryn House
Yes. So planning, it's a real hot-button topic in Australia, and I'm sure too in the US with the current housing shortage we have in both countries. So, I was really interested in your overcoming NIMBYism podcast with Jerry Davis, particularly because he's a former Hollywood producer who helped develop classics like Toy Story and Ice Age and now runs a family firm in Connecticut. You also had Jessica Hall from our LA office on that episode. So, I'd love to hear some of the tips that you took away from that. How do you marshal community support to get the planning outcomes that we need?
Spencer Levy
Sure. Well, other than maybe Mad Max, that little squirrel in the Ice Age movies-
Kathryn House
Oh, I love him.
Spencer Levy
He's another one of my favourite characters of all time. And I would put him up against Mad Max if they had to survive because that little squirrel, he's got something to him. So in any event, the bottom line is this, in that particular issue of NIMBYism, and it's a very difficult issue because NIMBYism, not in my backyard-ism, and people are trying to change it to YIMBY, yes in my backyard-ism, is less of an economic issue and more of a, I would say, emotional one at times where people fear the other, whoever the other might be, and they keep them out of their communities through what I consider to be very, very short-sighted thinking. And the short-sighted thinking is like, well, you're going to take something from me, and I get nothing in return. And the thing that they think is being taken are things such as more traffic is often used. And then you have the less, I would say, talked about reasons about using schools and things like that. But the point is you have to first of all have something in it for everybody, and that something in it for everybody has to be the primary reason is shifting from short-termism to long-termism. Because short-termism, yes, there's going to be challenges. Construction is going to disrupt the neighbourhood. Yes, there's going to be more traffic, but there's going to be more economic vibrancy over the long term. And then most importantly, if you're looking at workers that are in retail or restaurants, do you really want them to commute two hours to your community or do you want them to have housing that's near where they live, work, and play? It's the right thing to do, but we have to get there by shifting the thinking from short-termism to long-termism, which I would say would be the big headline for that discussion. And we can go into much more detail.
Kathryn House
I think local government, we have some real issues here on the planning front with government, and on the podcast, you did talk about the missing middle problem in the US and the need for different types of housing. So how do you think we can ease that missing middle issue?
Spencer Levy
Well, I think what the missing middle means is that a lot of housing policy, most housing policy is focused on the lowest echelon of economic folks. So people that are making less than 50% of the median income in your community, and not enough of it is focused on the people making between 50 and 100%. You know who those folks are? Those are people that are the middle, these are people that are cops, firemen, teachers, those kind of folks. And we need to have a policy that encompasses the lower end of the economic spectrum, the middle end of the spectrum, the higher end doesn't need help. So we're not looking for incentives there, but the economic reality is this, and this is where you need to have an open mind on how these things are solved because it costs the same to build an apartment building for the higher end as it does for the lower end. And if that is, in fact, the math, can you do it all for middle or lower-end housing without significant government incentives? You can't because the math doesn't work. So you have to look at the math in a way that says, okay, what is the way to make the math work the best? And making the math work the best is having some piece of each of the higher end, middle end, lower end, in the same place, not only because of the social good of mixed-income communities, which I feel strongly is the right way to go, but also because we have to get to the practical economic reality that you can still make the same amount of return on investment doing lower end or middle-income housing as you can for other forms of housing. Otherwise, it's not going to get done. And again, it sounds very cold, capitalistic. It's not. We want more supply, and in order to get more supply, we need to have people make the same or better profitability on a different form of housing than what they might consider higher-end housing. Now we did have another episode on this that I will point to. We had Nadir Settles, who is the head of affordable housing at Nuveen, on the program shortly after they had purchased a $4 billion Capital A affordable housing company. Now Capital A means it's government incentives versus attainable housing, which is not necessarily government incentives. And why did he do it? Well, first of all, putting aside the fact that it was the right thing to do, he also said, we're going to make the same money on this as we would anything else. And once you look at it through that prism, you can do good while doing good.
Kathryn House
You talked on the podcast about LA. It's a city that's facing some of the same issues we've got here in terms of a massive housing shortage and a brain drain. So, you've got university students who are moving to different cities or more affordable states, a really large homeless population. How do you change the narrative with cities like LA?
Spencer Levy
Two words, Century City. Remember what I said at the beginning of this conversation about I don't like any cities. I like a lot of submarkets within cities.
Kathryn House
Yes.
Spencer Levy
I would take the Century City submarket over 99.9% of all submarkets in America right now, and that is smack in the middle of LA. Why? Because that is where the economic nexus of activity is moving. That's where you have live, work, play. That's where you're seeing spec office development. And now, is downtown LA, the Bunker Hill section, a net loser in the near term? It is. But LA, if you go to the best submarkets, and it's not just Century City, it's West Hollywood, it's Santa Monica, it will be El Segundo, even though El Segundo is a little soft right now. But the reason why El Segundo is going to do fine is because it's 10 minutes from the airport and they have all of the major professional sports teams, with the exception of the Dodgers, that practice there, and the beach is 10 minutes away. It is a tremendous submarket that's going to thrive while downtown LA, which has the massive million-square-foot office towers, is going to suffer in the near term. So I think if you break it down into its component parts, there's a much better story to tell about LA than perhaps the headlines would suggest. And then on the brain drain thing, when we did the tech talent report, LA comes in, I don't know the exact number, but not in the top 10, but if you did it based upon media tech, they'd come in number one by a lot. And people are still going to flood LA for that type of technology, for those types of workers. So I'm not worried about the brain drain in LA. I am worried about what we're going to do with the downtown part of LA, but I'm not worried about some of these other submarkets.
Kathryn House
So continuing on the topic of development, I really enjoyed your podcast on modular construction. We're talking about modular a lot more in Australia to help deliver housing supply faster, at less cost, and more efficiently. You had a really interesting discussion with Andrew Staniforth, the CEO of an American modular construction company, a six-year-old venture capitalist-backed startup. And Andrew - I love this, says he still plays with Lego for a living, and through Assembly, he's on a mission to make urban development more scalable and sustainable. So what were some of your takeouts from that conversation? Is modular going to help us through some of these issues that we're facing?
Spencer Levy
Well, much like we discussed before about NIMBYism, that part of its psychological, part of its mathematical. It's the same thing here. The psychological aspect of this is that most people when they think modular, think boxy, they think it's going to be ugly, unattractive in their communities. That's what they think because they think when they think modular, they go immediately to manufactured housing. But the reality is you can make modular housing look exactly like, if not better than, from an aesthetic standpoint, you can other buildings. Now, are there some limitations on height because of the construction materials? They exist today, but for the most part, they're not a problem. But where you really run into issues, once again, is labour issues. There are labour issues here as it relates to how do you construct them, where do you construct them? Because a lot of these are constructed in factories versus being constructed on-site. And that brings up other issues. And I would say to you that if we could talk about this in a holistic fashion, meaning that we're talking about from the point of construction to the point that somebody's actually living there, I think these labour issues can be not just mitigated, but actually helped from the standpoint of you got workers in these factories working on these, you got workers on site working on these, but the ultimate winner is going to be the local community. If you could put one of these jobs up in half the time, you could have another one, which is not only getting people in there sooner, but let's go back to the math. You can do it for less cost, and less cost means more building if you do it in an aesthetic way, a way that maintains jobs for the folks that would be building it either on-site or in the factories. I think it's a win for everybody. I'm a huge advocate for modular if people look at it holistically.
Kathryn House
Yes, it was so interesting to hear that Andrew's company put up a 15-storey New York building in just three weeks. It's extraordinary what it can carve off construction times.
Spencer Levy
Yes. In the three weeks, just to be clear, that's going vertical in three weeks. The site work took longer than that, get it prepared for the three-week actual going vertical. But nevertheless, yes, once you go vertical, you can go vertical almost overnight. It's almost like the TV show The Jetsons, I don't know if... do you get The Jetsons down there?
Kathryn House
Yes, I loved The Jetsons.
Spencer Levy
Well, here we go for the most academic portion of today's podcast. There was an episode of The Jetsons where they brought in a building company where they built an apartment building in like four seconds on the show. They dropped floor one, they dropped floor two, they dropped floor three. And I'm not saying we could do it that quickly, but we can get a lot closer to that today than ever before and we should encourage it. So thank you, George Jetson and family.
Kathryn House
They were ahead of their time.
Spencer Levy
Yes.
Kathryn House
And it's going to expand beyond housing by the sound of it, interest from hospitals, the medical field, it could solve a lot of our problems in construction.
Spencer Levy
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Look, I think more is better, for sure. New supply is the answer, but I think we still need to find ways to keep the existing supply economically viable. Meaning if we're going to talk about sustainability now, let's just get right to it. The greenest thing you can do is to reuse an existing structure rather than knock it down and build a new one. And no matter how green the new one is, it'll still take you years, if not decades, to get back the payback from the emissions you created by building the thing. So I'm all for new construction, faster, better, a hundred percent. But we need to find ways to make these existing structures viable because it's not just going to maintain our city centres, which is really important. It's also greener.
Kathryn House
Yes. So you talked earlier about tech talent, and in one of your recent episodes, you did speak to a San Francisco venture capital firm that has 20 billion of assets under management and with CBRE's Colin Yasukochi.
Spencer Levy
Yes. Colin Yasukochi, my good friend.
Kathryn House
Yes.
Spencer Levy
Hello Colin. Shout out to you, man. It's twice today.
Kathryn House
So while the tech talent report that you do in the US is based on US cities, it'd be great to get a bit of a feel for how are we best to go about getting more of this tech talent? One of the comments on the podcast is that we need more engineers on the planet than we have available.
Spencer Levy
So one of the statistics I cite a lot is, and again, this is a political issue, so I'm not trying to go into politics here, but there is certainly politics when you're talking about immigration, but part of the reason why Canada scores so well on Colin's tech talent survey is because they have five times the amount of skilled labour immigration as the US on a percentage basis. And these things matter when you're dealing with shortages of highly skilled workers. And so, what do you do to get more of them? Well, I guess if you want to get them in your country, you got to look at your immigration laws a little bit with a wider lens. And then the other thing you do is obviously train more of them in the great universities. And when people talk about some of these neighborhoods that I like, live, work, play infrastructure type neighbourhoods, many of them are surrounding great universities. It's not a coincidence because you go to a market like Tempe, Arizona where Arizona State is based, and look, Arizona State when I was a kid, I would say academically was not top tier. Now it is. Why? Because they added an honors program there that kept all the smart Arizona students in state. And what do you see in Tempe, Arizona right now? You see all the new industry in the STEM trades right next to the campus, and it's again, not a coincidence that the university upped its game and the community around it upped its game along with it.
Kathryn House
Yes. So universities need to pivot to be producing these AI software engineers.
Spencer Levy
They do, and they need to do it unabashedly with incentives to keep what they got there. And there's ways to do it. I'm not going to say you should give all kids free tuitions, and this is coming from a guy who's got two kids in college and it's very, very expensive. So more free tuition is good, but nevertheless, find ways to keep the best and the brightest of your own community in town is a great place to start.
Kathryn House
Yes, I particularly liked from that episode there was a comment about the people who are going to be the most in-demand are those who can write. As a writer, I particularly liked that because it's about directing AI.
Spencer Levy
Can I add a caveat to that for a moment?
Kathryn House
Yes.
Spencer Levy
I'm going to add one caveat to that, and this is somewhat self-serving, but in addition to the many things I do with the podcast and meeting with clients and being on stage, I teach public speaking, and the reason I teach public speaking is I like doing it and I think I have something to share. But I think that when you're talking about communicating with others, oral communication is the lowest-hanging fruit out there. Most people, I would say, are terrified of spiders, heights, and then public speaking, and maybe not necessarily in that order, but if people communicate orally better, I think that is actually more of a separator than being a great writer. And oral communication isn't just being on stage, it's being at a dinner table, it's being in the elevator and the CEO walks in. It's being on this podcast, being able to communicate your ideas succinctly and in a way that is persuasive, that's the key word here, I think is a bigger separator than writing. The writing's really important as well.
Kathryn House
Well, this might actually be a good lead into another question I was going to ask you about leadership, and you've done some really interesting podcasts this year, which have not necessarily been about property, but more about resilience and leadership. So, you interviewed DeDe Halfhill, who's a US Air Force veteran and is now a consultant. What resonated with you from your conversation with DeDe? I know she talked about leaders needing to adapt, the difference between managing and leading. What really stood out to you from that conversation?
Spencer Levy
Well, I would follow that thread of managing versus leading. And leading, everybody can be a leader. Not everybody's the manager, but everybody's a leader. Everybody at every level of the organization. I've been fortunate to mentor dozens, maybe more, hundreds, I don't know, of people throughout my career. And I really seek those opportunities out, not just because I believe I have something to offer, but because they offer something to me too. It's a two-way street. And learning about people's real experiences and how they express it, incredibly important. So that's just a big picture. I think leadership's a two-way street. But I think in terms of the resiliency point, absolutely. One of my great friends and also a guest on The Weekly Take podcast who recently hung it up was Laura O'Brien. She was on the show and she taught me a long, long time ago that moving up the corporate ladder isn't a ladder, it's a jungle gym. Sometimes you're on the monkey bar, sometimes you're on the slide, sometimes you're in the ball pit. Do they have ball pits on these things? But you get my point. The point is you have to have that ability to adapt and roll with the punches. Look, I've been very fortunate in my career, but it hasn't always been a ladder and I've made mistakes along the way. And I would say that if I were to point to a category of mistakes that you make is taking things too seriously is the wrong way to put it, but taking setbacks too hard. Move forward, keep going. And I think that that is resiliency. Toughness is as important as any characteristic that we've talked about so far.
Kathryn House
And on that resilience front, one of your really fun podcasts was your interview with celebrity author Ben Nemtin. So he talked himself into shooting hoops with President Obama. He's got a New York Times bestseller, What Do You Want to Do Before You Die? Which sounds a bit maudlin, but it's all about bucket list items to find your purpose, protect your mental health, and achieve your goals. You had a really interesting personal story on that podcast about what got you into doing The Weekly Take. Can you talk our listeners through that?
Spencer Levy
Sure. So this was back in March of 2020, and the world was in the depths of COVID lockdown. I mean, it was completely locked down. We did not know what we were going to do, but we did know we still had our clients out there that also didn't know what they were going to do, and say, well, what are we going to do to communicate with these clients? Well, in addition to 300 presentations I gave that year, which was the most I've ever given on Zoom, we said there's a better way. There's a better way than doing this one at a time. We can do a mass communication way of talking with our clients and speaking with them in the way they want to be spoken to. And so, we did it, and we started the podcast and I gave tremendous credit to a lot of people, Brian Reed, Brad Werner, Benji Baer, Jennifer Morgan, I can give a hundred names. But it really came with that first step of saying, we're going to communicate with these clients in a way that they want to hear it. And we did. And I will tell you, the first couple of months of that show, heavy lifting.
Kathryn House
I know
Spencer Levy
I mean, we had weeks we did not know who was going to be on the show. We had to pull out what we call tongue in cheek, the magic Rolodex, who are we going to call? Who's going to be on the show? And it was scary. We didn't know we were going to get it done, and we had a different format at the beginning. We had a news thing at the beginning, and then we had the guest. We changed that up. But I think it really works. And the reason why it really works is because we communicate with people in a way they wanted to be communicated with. A - on this podcast, I'll give you a B - which is social media, and LinkedIn is the only social media site I'm on. I am not on anything else. I mean, I may technically be on the other things, but I don't use the other ones. Why? It's a business-to-business communication tool, but also, when you communicate in sound bites, and I try to keep my posts as short as possible, I try to make them funny. I try to make them personal, but I also have to have a business angle there, tremendously successful. And why? Because that's how people want to be communicated with. They want short sound bites. They want to be able to listen to the podcast in phases. Some of the people listen to this podcast at time-and-a-half, and I may sound like a chipmunk, but you're getting the same information. So communicating with people in the way they want to. And I'm not denigrating white papers because I just referenced several of them on this show, but they are a complement to what you do, they aren't the core of what you do. What you do is communicate ideas effectively. And I'll use the word again, persuasively.
Kathryn House
So, Ben Nemtin was all about the bucket list. So it would be remiss of me not to ask what's on your bucket list for 2025?
Spencer Levy
Well, for 2025, I would say for next year, I'm very fortunate to have a great team that keeps me rolling on the road every day in front of thousands and thousands of clients every year. I mean, it is in the thousands. So I want to just keep what I got going in a great pace because there's a great expression I learned the other day, and I believe it wholeheartedly. Happiness isn't getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you have. And I feel very fortunate to be in the position I'm in today, and I don't take it for granted by trying to give back in as many ways as I can. So there is nothing I want in 2025. Now, I do want the market to get better because I want my clients to be happier. I want them to be more successful. But nevertheless, as far as where it's going for me personally, let's keep riding this horse until not because it's going pretty well.
Kathryn House
I love that idea of wanting what you have. So, Spencer, thank you so much for joining Talking Property. We've certainly covered a lot of ground.
Spencer Levy
Well, thank you for having me, and this is a wonderful podcast. I encourage everybody to listen to this show. Listen to The Weekly Take. Please follow me on LinkedIn, which by the way, that's where I use that quote today about wanting what you have. And it resonated with people. So people should spend more time looking at their own family, friends, professional stuff, and say, you know what? This is pretty good. Because sometimes going for that next brass ring isn't what it's made out to be.
Kathryn House
Yes. Well, thank you also to our listeners for tuning in and for all your support throughout 2024. We'll be back in your ears in January with our property prediction series for 2025, featuring some of Australia's new guard leaders. QIC's Deb Coakley, Growthpoint's Ross Lees, GPT's Russell Proutt, and Dexus' Ross Du Vernet. So make sure to follow Talking Property wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to keep up to date with what's happening in US markets, you can tune in to The Weekly Take. We'll include a link in our show notes. Wishing you all the very best for the festive season. Until next time.
