Real Finds Podcast: Commercial Real Estate Unfiltered

Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Q1 2026: The Market Stopped Waiting Eighteen months ago, this market was in a holding pattern. That phase is over. Not because the uncertainty resolved — it didn't. But the deals that are getting done right now are being priced for a world that is permanently more expensive to build in, permanently more selective about where institutional capital goes, and permanently more bifurcated between the a...

Aaron Shavel is a professional engineer who built his career in heavy civil construction, including years on MTA subway projects in New York, and now advises on battery energy storage facilities being deployed across the Northeast. He writes on construction, infrastructure policy, and urbanism on Substack and has become one of the sharper voices connecting how things actually get built to how communities actually function.

In this e...

Frank Forte started his career mopping up bank failures at the U.S. Treasury, worked the largest commercial real estate default in U.S. history at Fortress/CW Capital (the $5.4B Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town deal), and placed $2B/year in debt and equity at Berkadia before going out on his own at 27. A decade later, Lucerne Capital has done $400M in volume, raised $100M in equity, and generated north of 30% IRR on many of its...

What if your building could think?

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon Lamphere sits down with Honghao Deng, co-founder and CEO of Butlr, to break down how AI, sensors, and real-time data are transforming the way we design, operate, and invest in physical space.

From MIT’s City Science Lab to deploying millions of sensors globally, Honghao explains why buildings are the largest interface humans interact with daily and w...

How much of the data center boom is really about real estate — and how much of it is about power?

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon Lamphere sits down with Britt Burt of Industrial Info Resources to unpack one of the most important forces shaping commercial real estate, industrial development, and infrastructure investment today: the growing electricity demand.

Britt brings nearly four decades of experience covering t...

The future of work isn’t coming...it’s already here, and it’s moving faster than most businesses are prepared for.

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon Lamphere sits down with futurist Elatia Abate to break down how artificial intelligence is reshaping the workforce, eliminating traditional career ladders, and forcing companies to rethink everything from hiring to strategy. From disappearing entry-level roles to the ris...

Insurance is one of the largest and least understood costs in commercial real estate. In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon Lamphere sits down with Lisa Holt, founder of Ivy Risk, to unpack how insurance markets actually work and why developers, investors, and property owners are seeing dramatic shifts in costs.

Lisa explains how insurance brokers evaluate real estate risk, why development projects are uniquely difficult...

Caregiving is no longer a “personal issue” happening outside the workplace. It’s a workforce issue, a design issue, and a real estate issue.

Our blog: https://www.vvco.com/caregiving-building-for-a-longevity-society-and-the-future-of-work-with-marisa-toldo-rfp-89/

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon Lamphere sits down with Marisa Toldo—an architect and researcher focused on the built environment—to unpack the collision...

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon Lamphere sits down with Mike Herl, SIOR (Partner/Broker at Madison Commercial Real Estate)—who spent 17 years on the road and logged 3,500+ shows touring with major acts like Mötley Crüe, REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, and even crossing paths with Smashing Pumpkins (plus the broader Midwest orbit of legends like Steve Albini). Then he took that same high-stakes, contract-heavy, person...

This episode marks a rare, in-depth market briefing directly from Gordon Lamphere, drawing on real transactions, real underwriting, and real negotiations happening across Chicagoland as we enter Q1 2026.

Learn More: https://www.vvco.com/state-of-the-commercial-real-estate-market-2026-q1-rfp-87/

After a year of conversations with developers, corporate occupiers, lenders, municipal leaders, and operators across every major asset class...

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, host Gordon Lamphere sits down with Anita Verma-Lallian, a seasoned real estate developer at the intersection of data centers, energy infrastructure, AI, and film studio development. With a family background spanning more than four decades of land development, Anita shares how her platform has evolved from residential and industrial projects into some of the most capital-intensive and stra...

On this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon Lamphere sits down with Justin Den Herder, structural engineer, professor at The Cooper Union, and principal at global engineering firm TY Lin, to unpack what mass timber really means for commercial real estate.

They dig into how mass timber moves from romantic concept to bankable project, why embodied carbon is finally showing up in real underwriting conversations, and how timber ca...

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, host Gordon Lamphere sits down with Cali Williams Yost, CEO and founder of the Flex+Strategy Group, to explore how CEOs, COOs, HR leaders, and real estate decision makers can move beyond simple “return to office” mandates and design truly high performance flexible work models. Cali has been a pioneer in flexible work since the late 1990s, and she explains how technology, shifting demograph...

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, host Gordon Lamphere sits down with industrial outdoor storage specialist Andrew Wiesemann to unpack one of the hottest, most misunderstood asset classes in commercial real estate today. From zoning headaches and generational turnover to cap rate spreads and sovereign wealth funds, this conversation is a masterclass in how IOS really works on the ground.

Andrew shares how he went from buyin...

In this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, host Gordon Lamphere sits down with Alana F. Dunoff, ProFM, FMP, IFMA Fellow, a strategic facilities planning consultant, adjunct professor in Temple University’s Facility Management program, and principal of AFD Professional Services. With more than 30 years of experience helping organizations align people, process, and place, Alana brings a unique perspective on how companies can reimagi...

Today’s Guest: Xander Snyder, Senior Commercial Real Estate Economist at First American. Xander blends a rare mix of family-office investing experience and data-driven economic analysis, helping institutional investors, developers, and lenders make sense of real-world market trends. With 15+ years in the business, he’s part economist, part operator, translating macro shifts into actionable market intelligence.

Why this matters now: ...

Today’s guest: Joe Galvin, Chief Research Officer at Vistage (44,000+ members worldwide). A former Gartner analyst and sales leader, Joe now runs one of the country’s most data-driven windows into the mid-market CEO mindset. The Vistage CEO Confidence Index.

His data captures what business owners and leaders are actually seeing on the ground — what they fear, where they’re cutting or investing, and how they’re navigating the hybrid ...

There’s a lot of noise about modular housing construction, and then there’s what actually pencils. Today, Rory Rubin, CEO of SI Container Builds, breaks down how steel-framed, factory-built homes and multifamily can be ~50% faster to deliver and ~10% less expensive (out the door) than traditional site-built, while still meeting code, appraising, and insuring like any other home.

We get into the realities behind the headlines: ICC co...

There’s a lot of noise about modular housing construction, and then there’s what actually pencils. Today, Rory Rubin, CEO of SI Container Builds, breaks down how steel-framed, factory-built homes and multifamily can be ~50% faster to deliver and ~10% less expensive (out the door) than traditional site-built, while still meeting code, appraising, and insuring like any other home.

We get into the realities behind the headlines: ICC co...