What will be the resolution of the fiscal cliff and will it be a real fix, or just kick the can for six months-will they even agree to kick the can

What will be the tax code in 6 or 12 months

Will the EPA still be on its near rampage under Lisa Jackson who I had the unfortunate experience of trying to deal with when she ran DEP in NJ

Will Obamacare get rewritten or even repealed

When will Assad fall, what will come after, will Turkey continue to step up military attacks, will it spill into Lebanon and elsewhere

Will the Iranians rise up and try a revolution like Syria, or will Israel attack before spring-they can’t allow the rush to a bomb to go much further

Will China rejuvenate its economy

Where will the dollar be in six months

Will China and its neighboring countries come to a military incident in the South China Sea

Where will food prices go given the drought impact on corn

Will Illinois finally be shut out of the bond market

Will foreign capital and entrepreneurs continue to come to the US as the last safe haven

Will US corporations start to hire or spend their huge cash savings in 2013

Will the Dodd Frank issues with their impact on hedging for securitization get resolved quickly

Will housing continue to improve and how fast

Will the hotel industry finally revert to the mean and slow down substantially, resulting in its recovery coming back ACin line with the anemic GDP and jobs numbers, and the reduction in spending by most corporations

Some of these things will mean huge changes or bad outcomes for the world. Some are less impacting, but will none the less matter to investors and real estate values.

I got a good laugh this week as the hotel industry pundits claimed at the Lodging conference that they could predict the increase in Revpar to the tenth of a percent. What they really did was throw a dart and hope that by this time next year their prediction was right by coincidence so they can claim to be geniuses. What is really amazing is some people listening actually believed these wild guesses.

If Romney wins, the fiscal cliff is solved by a Simpson Bowles type agreement and Iran has a revolution, then the markets go way up. Obama wins and there is no December agreement on the fiscal cliff and Israel attacks Iran. Disaster. Or maybe the real result is part of each or something entirely different. My point is there is absolutely no way to know any of the outcomes right now. Investors need to risk adjust their models for any scenario and don’t leverage up too much. You might need your cash to get through a real crisis in the world or another recession. Or you might take the big bet and be right and make a fortune.

To me, as an old guy who has been part of the world for far too long, chances are better than 50-50 something in the above list will go wrong in 2013, and it will be a rough year, at least during the first half. I would only do a deal where I believed, after careful underwriting, that even if things go bad, I have a buy price that is very good and the liquidity to get through whatever happens. I do believe that if one is careful, buys right, and has the ability to go the long term, that a lot of money will be made over the next five years in US real estate. Just don’t be out on the end of the limb when the wind gusts hit.