Record Breaking Real Estate Investment with Raymond Wong | EP94

Raymond Wong is the Vice President of Data Operations for Altus Group’s Data Solutions team and has over 30 years or market research experience. Altus Group is a leading provider of Software, Data Solutions and Independent Advisory Services to the Global commercial Real Estate Industry. In this episode we talked about:

• Raymond`s First Steps in Commercial Real Estate Industry
• Overview of 2021 year from Raymond`s Perspective
• The Retail World of 2021
• The Future of Office
• Real Estate Inducement
• Sublease Market
• Asset Classes
• Interest Rates and Inflation Outlook
• Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned

Transcriptions: Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm Jesse for galley. And my special guest today is Raymond Wong. Raymond is the vice president of data operations for the Altice group.   For those that aren't aware, Altis group is a company that provides software, data solutions and independent advisory services to the global commercial real estate industry. We use them quite a bit and have been for as long as I've been in the industry. So without further ado, Ray, how's it going?

 

Raymond (51s): Great. Thanks Jesse. I thank you for having me

 

Jesse (55s): Well, I appreciate you coming on. I think this is definitely a year where people are getting a little bit more into the actual data, looking at deals, I think with a bit more granularity, perhaps in other times as a function of just being, you know, having less product, but a lot of dollars chasing that product. So maybe for the, for the listeners that aren't familiar with, you, you could give us a little background about how you kind of got started in, in the crazy industry of CRE.

 

Raymond (1m 23s): Yeah. I started in commercial brokerage as a sales trainee, and I just sorta got consumed with in research and sort of got consumed with market trends and analysis. So basically I just sort of ran the research group and then moved over to the consulting side. And then that allowed me to work with a number of various institutions and, and investors and understanding how, how data can be useful to them and then rationalizing some of the decisions and as well as how critical data is especially the right type of data with respect to interpretation and analysis.

 

So basically I spent my last 33 years in research.

 

Jesse (2m 12s): So have you seen, or I guess I should put it this way. What do you think has been one of the biggest changes from the way we look at data and study data in our industry from, you know, when you got started to, to what we do today,

 

Raymond (2m 29s): There's a lot more value attached to it today, compared to when I started, it was sort of the emphasis, again, going back 33 years, it was more of a gut feel that the data was there and it gave you a sort of indicator, but it was a little bit more sort of wild west. And now we people pay and attach a value to the information, but more is all about interpretation of the trends.

 

Because as, as you know, whe