Playbooks

Real estate

Real estate looks like one asset class but is a dozen businesses wearing the same word, and the entity follows the tenant, not the building.

Real estate is the one industry on this list where nobody needs a license and everybody thinks the structuring is simple. Buy the building, put it in an LLC, done. That advice is fine until you notice that an apartment building, a data center, a hotel, and a self-storage yard are not the same business. They are four different businesses that happen to involve a roof. The lease is different, the tenant is different, the thing that can go wrong is different, and the entity that should hold each one is different.

The move that separates these pages from generic real estate advice is that structure follows the tenant, not the building. A single-tenant net lease to a national credit tenant is closer to owning a bond than owning property, and it gets structured like one. A hospitality asset is an operating business with a mortgage attached, and the operating risk, not the real estate, drives the entity. A multifamily building carries habitability liability a warehouse never will. Same asset class on paper. Different failure points, different holding structures, different insurance.

Start with the first page if you want the general rule about why the lease, not the deed, is the asset. Then go to the asset type you actually own. Each one names the specific clause, the specific tenant risk, and the specific structuring move that asset demands, the thing the generalist misses because they structured around the building.

Inside this hub

Real estate: the lease is the asset, and the clause nobody reads is why

Nobody needs a license to own property. The real sophistication in this vertical lives in specific lease clauses buried past page twenty.

Office: the conversion trend that runs into physics before it runs into zoning

Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to office: the conversion story skips its own first constraint, and subtenants are protected only as well as a document most never think to ask for.

Retail: the formulas were written before online sales existed

Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to retail: percentage rent and radius restrictions predate e-commerce, and one anchor leaving can trigger co-tenancy rights across an entire rent roll at once.

Industrial and logistics: the number that matters isn't on the rent roll

Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to industrial: clear height, not square footage, is what actually determines storage capacity, and prior contamination can make a buyer strictly liable for damage they never caused.

Multifamily: the rules that follow the unit, not the owner

Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to multifamily: rent stabilization can survive a vacancy even when a new owner assumes it resets, and a completely neutral screening policy can still trigger real fair housing liability.

Hospitality: there's no tenant, and that's the whole problem

Everything on the real estate core applies, except there's no lease. A hotel operator gets paid whether or not the owner actually profits, and a franchisor can force a multi-million-dollar renovation as the price of keeping the brand.

Land and development: the deal where the risk comes before the asset does

Raw land generates no rent, so the real deal question is who bears the risk that entitlement fails entirely. And a ground lease's fine print decides whether a building worth hundreds of millions survives a default it had nothing to do with.

Self-storage: the eviction is a sale, and the statute runs it

Everything on the real estate core applies. What's specific to self-storage: the lien sale that replaces eviction is a strict statutory procedure where one wrong notice creates real liability, and the asset's REIT-favorite economics hide a genuinely operational business.

Senior living: the asset class where the real estate answer depends on a healthcare question

Everything on the real estate core applies, and so does an entire second vertical. Which side of the licensure line a property sits on decides which body of law runs the deal, and the standard propco-opco split carries a twist here that most real estate investors haven't priced.

Data centers: the lease measures kilowatts, not square feet

Everything on the real estate core applies, except the unit of account. A data center lease is priced on power capacity, the scarce input is a utility interconnection that can take years, and the SLA replaces the habitability clause entirely.

Life sciences: the most expensive buildout in real estate, for the weakest credit

Everything on the real estate core applies, at higher stakes. Lab space costs multiples of office to build out, the tenants are often pre-revenue biotechs, and that combination inverts how every standard lease protection has to be sized.

Student housing: twelve months of income decided in one leasing season

Everything on the real estate core applies, plus a calendar no other asset class has. The lease is by the bed, the credit is the parent's, and a property that misses its pre-leasing window eats the vacancy for a full academic year.

Net lease: the asset class that's only a lease

Everything on the real estate core applies, distilled. A single-tenant net lease deal is a bond wearing a building, the underwriting is the tenant's credit and the lease's remaining term, and the one question that separates pros from coupon-clippers is what the building is worth dark.

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