We do not know exactly what Donald Trump will really do on many issues, but it will hopefully be a complete reversal of most of what Obama wrought upon us. Whatever it is it cannot be worse than Obama and the left wing's centralized, over-regulated government we have had. If they do succeed in dramatically revising Dodd-Frank, and eliminating most of the excessive regulation, then banks will start to be banks again instead of regulated utilities. This will be very good for CRE.
Bankers will no longer have to fear retribution and firing because they made a loan to CRE. They can shed tens of thousands of compliance officers who they were forced to hire over the past several years. Most important, Elizabeth Warren is left to be just a raving nut radical with no real power to do a lot more damage. She and her gang of lefties in the Senate will try to stymie progress of the reformers, but at the end of the day, she will not succeed. The lifting of many of the excessive regulations, and the populist battering of banks and Wall Street will hopefully stop now so we can all get back to doing deals instead of worrying about transgender bathrooms, and quotas of this race or that gender. We can get back hopefully to hiring the best person, regardless of race or gender, and maybe reinstate the right to fire at will.
The EPA will be de-fanged, and for those of us in the brownfield land development business this is a very good thing. Getting rid of the wetlands rules that EPA has been pushing will be a major help to land owners. If he really does repeal and replace Obamacare, cuts taxes the way he says and eliminates much of the regulatory burdens, we could possibly have a thriving economy and a very good situation for CRE. The bad news of course is rising interest rates will make it harder for tight deals to work, and values will be more limited.
Although many of you may be shocked, upset and feel Trump is a really bad guy—which he is—the reality is he is going to be President, and we need to wait to see what happens. Hillary Clinton was a criminal, and the foundation was a massive money laundry operation to fund the Clinton lifestyle and to hold people getting ready for the campaign. It was pure bribery and totally illegal. Trump is seeming to surround himself with a number of good people, and so far he is acting like the grown up he needs to be since the election. Maybe those other people will be able to have some influence on him for the better.
What we all need to be aware of is this is a worldwide trend and it is very possibly going to accelerate the election of Marine Le Pen as President of France. While most pundits think she will not win, I believe she will, and the pundits who got it all wrong about Trump are getting it all wrong about France. They are just not listening to the real people. If that happens next year, just as Brexit is starting, then the EU comes apart. She has vowed to do the same exit.
Europe is in very serious trouble, and it is a foolish place to invest in hard assets now. Over the next few years there will be more elections and more right-wing governments who want out of the EU. It is the same political winds of being fed up with the elite telling everyone else how to live their lives. The era of the last 70 years since WWII is over and the West is returning to individual states and people having loyalty to their homeland and their tribe. When the EU does unravel, the US wins because the flood of capital will arrive here looking for a safe home. The US is still the best and safest place to invest. Europe will prove to be a disaster for investors in real estate.
Joel Ross is Principal at Citadel Realty Advisors. The views expressed here are the author's own.
We do not know exactly what Donald Trump will really do on many issues, but it will hopefully be a complete reversal of most of what Obama wrought upon us. Whatever it is it cannot be worse than Obama and the left wing's centralized, over-regulated government we have had. If they do succeed in dramatically revising Dodd-Frank, and eliminating most of the excessive regulation, then banks will start to be banks again instead of regulated utilities. This will be very good for CRE.
Bankers will no longer have to fear retribution and firing because they made a loan to CRE. They can shed tens of thousands of compliance officers who they were forced to hire over the past several years. Most important, Elizabeth Warren is left to be just a raving nut radical with no real power to do a lot more damage. She and her gang of lefties in the Senate will try to stymie progress of the reformers, but at the end of the day, she will not succeed. The lifting of many of the excessive regulations, and the populist battering of banks and Wall Street will hopefully stop now so we can all get back to doing deals instead of worrying about transgender bathrooms, and quotas of this race or that gender. We can get back hopefully to hiring the best person, regardless of race or gender, and maybe reinstate the right to fire at will.
The EPA will be de-fanged, and for those of us in the brownfield land development business this is a very good thing. Getting rid of the wetlands rules that EPA has been pushing will be a major help to land owners. If he really does repeal and replace Obamacare, cuts taxes the way he says and eliminates much of the regulatory burdens, we could possibly have a thriving economy and a very good situation for CRE. The bad news of course is rising interest rates will make it harder for tight deals to work, and values will be more limited.
Although many of you may be shocked, upset and feel Trump is a really bad guy—which he is—the reality is he is going to be President, and we need to wait to see what happens. Hillary Clinton was a criminal, and the foundation was a massive money laundry operation to fund the Clinton lifestyle and to hold people getting ready for the campaign. It was pure bribery and totally illegal. Trump is seeming to surround himself with a number of good people, and so far he is acting like the grown up he needs to be since the election. Maybe those other people will be able to have some influence on him for the better.
What we all need to be aware of is this is a worldwide trend and it is very possibly going to accelerate the election of Marine Le Pen as President of France. While most pundits think she will not win, I believe she will, and the pundits who got it all wrong about Trump are getting it all wrong about France. They are just not listening to the real people. If that happens next year, just as Brexit is starting, then the EU comes apart. She has vowed to do the same exit.
Europe is in very serious trouble, and it is a foolish place to invest in hard assets now. Over the next few years there will be more elections and more right-wing governments who want out of the EU. It is the same political winds of being fed up with the elite telling everyone else how to live their lives. The era of the last 70 years since WWII is over and the West is returning to individual states and people having loyalty to their homeland and their tribe. When the EU does unravel, the US wins because the flood of capital will arrive here looking for a safe home. The US is still the best and safest place to invest. Europe will prove to be a disaster for investors in real estate.
Joel Ross is Principal at Citadel Realty Advisors. The views expressed here are the author's own.
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Joel Ross
Joel Ross began his career in Wall St as an investment banker in 1965, handling corporate advisory matters for a variety of clients. During the seventies he was CEO of North American operations for a UK based conglomerate, and sat on the parent company board. In 1981, he began his own firm handling leveraged buyouts, investment banking and real estate financing. In 1984 Ross began providing investment banking services and arranging financing for real estate transactions with his own firm, Ross Properties, Inc. In 1993 Ross and a partner, Lexington Mortgage, created the first Wall St hotel CMBS program in conjunction with Nomura. They went on to develop a similar CMBS program for another major Wall St investment bank and for five leading hotel companies. Lexington, in partnership with Mr. Ross established a hotel mortgage bank table funded by an investment bank, and making all CMBS hotel loans on their behalf. In 1999 he formed Citadel Realty Advisors as a successor to Ross Properties Corp., focusing on real estate investment banking in the US, UK and Paris. He has closed over $3.0 billion of financings for office, hotel, retail, land and multifamily projects. Ross is also a founder of Market Street Investors, a brownfield land development company, and has been involved in the acquisition of notes on defaulted loans and various REO assets in conjunction with several major investors. Ross was an adjunct professor in the graduate program at the NYU Hotel School. He is a member of Urban Land Institute and was a member of the leadership of his ULI council. In 1999, he conceived and co-authored with PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Hotel Mortgage Performance Report, a major study of hotel mortgage default rates.
