Field Notes
Field notes, with the working shown.
What we are reading in the markets we work in, and the mistakes we watch people make in each of them. Every figure is sourced. Where we are guessing, we say so.
- Costa Rica · Residential A 7.6% yield that arrives as 5.5%. Costa Rica advertises gross. What reaches a foreign owner in the Central Valley is a different number, and the gap is the whole decision.
- Hospitality · Operations A hotel P&L has one line that tells you whether it is being run or just occupied. Occupancy flatters. RevPAR is honest. GOPPAR is the one an owner should actually be paid on.
- Worked example · Entitlement The deal did not fail. It just took nineteen months longer than the model. A worked example of an entitlement timeline, and why delay is the risk that quietly outranks cost.
- Build-to-rent · Underwriting Build-to-rent is not building houses and then renting them. The product, the cost plan and the exit are all different from for-sale. Underwrite it as for-sale and the margin disappears on handover.
- Operations · Rentals The rent you set in week one is the rent you argue about for five years. Most owners price to fill, then spend the tenancy trying to recover. Here is the other order.
- United States · Markets There is no American rental market. There are about a hundred and sixty-five. Ninety-two of them are posting negative rent growth while the Twin Cities run at +4.6%. The national figure describes neither.
- Worked example · Houston, Texas Three bids, forty thousand dollars apart, for the same house. How we read a renovation estimate, what the spread actually means, and the line items where the money quietly leaves.
- United States · Multifamily For the first time since 2022, more apartments were absorbed than built. Supply has been the whole story in multifamily for three years. That story just ended, and most underwriting has not caught up.
- Short-term rentals · Operations A short-term rental that cannot get a permit is worth nothing, however well it pencils. Nightly rate is the last thing to check, not the first. New York removed roughly 83% of its short-term listings with a single law.
- Construction · Development management The bid you get is not the budget you wrote. Materials are running +6.4% while final-demand prices run +3.5%. Contractors are closing that gap in the back half of 2026, and it closes on your project.
- Operations · Property management The eight per cent is not the cost of property management. A worked example of where an operating year actually leaks, and why the management fee is almost never the number to argue about.
- Investment · Disposition Plan the exit before you sign the purchase agreement. Hold, improve, refinance, sell or reinvest. Most owners only seriously consider the option they happen to be standing in.
- United States · Land The lot shortage ended. Most people are still pricing like it didn’t. Finished-lot supply in the US has loosened for seven straight quarters. What that does to a land deal you underwrote in 2022.
- Colombia · Residential Medellín is not one market. It is about nine. Prime neighbourhood pricing in Medellín spans roughly three to one. Buying the city average is how foreign capital gets hurt here.
- Worked example · Land The split that looked good and wasn’t. A worked example of a four-lot exempt split where every number was right and the deal still lost money. The error is made on day one, every time.