The Real Estate Philosopher® · Duval & Stachenfeld LLP

As the Chairman of Duval & Stachenfeld – a law firm in mid-town NYC known as The Pure Play in Real Estate Law – I am inviting you to join The Real Estate Philosopher®. This will consist of my thoughts and also thoughts of friends and colleagues.

It will not be published in any traditional media – it will go only to friends of our firm. The purpose here is very simple – to put forth thoughts in the real estate world that are different, provocative, and challenging of accepted wisdom. Hopefully, nothing said here will be mainstream thinking.

You may be wondering how I am qualified to write on these topics since I am “just” a lawyer. However, I have an unusual place in the real estate world. As the Chairman of The Pure Play in Real Estate Law (one of the largest real estate law practices in NYC), I interact with an incredible number of real estate players. This ranges from small real estate shops with nothing but a gleam in their eyes, to some of the largest real estate institutions in the world, and everything in between. This gives me a unique and global perspective and allows me to act as an amateur philosopher in the real estate world. This has always been my hobby and it is what I love doing.

Regards,

Bruce Stachenfeld
a.k.a The Real Estate Philosopher®

Shorting the Empire State Building? Not This Real Estate Philosopher!

Dec 14, 2021

In fact, the rebounding of NYC is already happening right before our eyes. Multifamily rents are up up up. Luxury and non-luxury condos are selling briskly, some for record prices. Anecdotally, I was in Times Square last week to get some dinner on a random Tuesday night, and it was a crazy crowd that I almost had to fight my way through. And try making a dinner reservation. New York City is already back big time. Just like Jerry Seinfeld and I predicted back in March.

Small Sized Deals Hunt for Capital | A Hole in the Capital Stack

Dec 8, 2021

There is an almost extraordinary amount of capital available to invest in real estate deals. I don’t know if it is a trillion dollars yet, but it is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. At the same time, there is a voracious demand for this capital from various sponsors and developers.

WFH vs. Workplace Sanity - Who Will Win?

Aug 3, 2021

My strong belief and prediction is that Work-From-Home (WFH) is a trend that started long ago and is moving forward at a moderate pace. COVID made it seem transformational, but it is not. It is just the continuation of a pre-existing trend. I make this point in my upcoming book – The Real Estate Philosopher’s Guide – coming out in October – and I have a graph in the book to illustrate my point

Your Decision-Making Ability is Worse Than You Think

Jul 13, 2021

As an aside, a lucky break that didn’t seem lucky at the time – in the distant past now -- was many years of depressing purgatory at a couple of major law firms where I was on the ‘loser track.’ And if you are a lawyer reading this, you know what I mean. There is nothing like having some humility whipped into you when you are young enough to learn from it. Consider the most obvious decision for a law firm, namely, how many lawyers to hire. If you hire too many, you have overcapacity, and if you don’t hire enough, you have under capacity – either of which can be tragic. However, when you are making hiring decisions, you don’t know how much work will come in the door in the coming year, i.e., will it be a Global Financial Crisis year or a COVID year coming up, or a robust year. So you do the best you can. Interestingly, I have been wrong almost every year in making this kind of decision.

Hedgecoin Versus Bitcoin

Jun 1, 2021

There will be a real estate point made at the end of this article, I promise. Please do enjoy the rest of it…. So let’s see if I have this right. The reason that Bitcoin is valuable is because they won’t make more of it. It is not the greater fool theory, right? If so, I want to talk about our hedgehog. For those of you that don’t know, the hedgehog at my law firm is a very powerful unifying principle. It stands for the proposition that we really care about our lawyers and our clients, and it is not just because the lawyers bill hours and the clients give us money. It is because there is something special in the relationship.

New York City is a Power Niche

May 25, 2021

I have been positive on NYC since people started writing it off a year ago – I guess everyone knows that by now. You may find this hard to believe, but I think I missed the biggest reason for positivity. And this is a reason why I am now even more of a NYC bull than before. I give credit for this thinking to Donna Olshan, President of Olshan Realty.

Retail, Retail, Retail

May 13, 2021

The last time I stuck my neck way out, it was to pound the table that we would have a Big V Recovery, a phrase I coined. I was dead-on accurate that time, so this means I must be right this time, right? I am just kidding, but I am sticking my neck out again right now and saying that this is the best time ever to purchase, invest in, and otherwise play in the retail space. Let me get right into it:

Opportunity Zones - Taxes - Duval & Stachenfeld OZ Hub Taking Off

May 1, 2021

So it seems like there is a decent chance that the tax on capital gains will swing to 40% from 20%, or something close to that. So my Opp Zone partners and I were kicking around how this would affect Opportunity Zones, and it is pretty obvious…..

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Shorting the Empire State Building? Not This Real Estate Philosopher!

Small Sized Deals Hunt for Capital | A Hole in the Capital Stack

WFH vs. Workplace Sanity - Who Will Win?

Your Decision-Making Ability is Worse Than You Think

Hedgecoin Versus Bitcoin

New York City is a Power Niche

Retail, Retail, Retail

Opportunity Zones - Taxes - Duval & Stachenfeld OZ Hub Taking Off

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