Ethan Penner, CEO of Mosaic Real Estate Investors, sat down on March 7, 2023 with AFIRE CEO and podcast host Gunnar Branson, challenging conventional thinking based on what has worked on the past—and presenting practical insights about how investors can avoid thinking mistakes and navigate the more challenging aspects of the current (and coming) real estate cycle.

Ethan Penner joins Elizabeth Baker, Senior Event Producer at Bisnow along with Spencer Levy, Chairman of Americas Research, CBRE to discuss how to best invest in today’s volatile capital markets, as well as their predictions and outlook on the year to come. From an economic cycle disrupted to a new administration, our speakers are ready to point you to the hottest asset classes and incentives to make a profit and long-term investment in.

There are some sectors of the real estate market, such as suburban residential housing, that are doing just fine throughout this crisis. However, other areas are facing true existential risk. The value of commercial real estate in big cities is extremely uncertain due to the combination of the virus itself, potential migration out of cities, and the fact that so many people can work from home.

The financier who pioneered the use of commercial mortgage-backed securities is railing against a proposed federal bailout for the market he created, in part because it would help deep-pocketed landlords such as Tom Barrack’s Colony Capital Inc. Ethan Penner, who rose to prominence at Nomura Securities in the 1990s, argues in an essay that it’s “wrong, plain and simple”

MREC Management founder and Chief Investment Officer Ethan Penner says a proposed federal bailout for the commercial mortgage-backed securities market that favors specific borrowers “doesn’t make any sense at all.”