Editors' Choice: The Very Best Bisnow Stories Of 2024
This year has been anything but predictable for commercial real estate.
From fraud scandals and market shake-ups to the enduring challenges of DEI and housing affordability, 2024 has tested the resilience of CRE professionals everywhere.
It has also pushed our newsroom. In this roundup of our best stories of the year, chosen by our stable of editors from around the U.S. and UK, we revisit some of the defining moments and news coverage of the year — the moments that made our team go deep to bring these stories to the surface.
Dive into voluminous coverage of the Nightingale-CrowdStreet debacle, which exposed the pitfalls of crowdfunding and the rise and fall of Elie Schwartz, who allegedly swindled thousands of investors out of tens of millions of dollars. Read about how D.C.’s housing crisis (and a Bisnow investigation) spurred legislative reform, or explore how TikTok became an unexpected platform for CRE deals.
As we close out the year, we’re proud to bring you this collection of exceptional stories from our journalists across the world — the ones who sweat to bring you the news every single day.
— Mark F. Bonner, Bisnow Editor-in-Chief
MOLLY ARMBRISTER, WEST COAST EDITOR
Colorado Cannabis Sales Have Cratered. So Has The Industry's Need For Real Estate
By Jonathan Rose
As the first state in the U.S. to welcome recreational marijuana sales on Jan. 1, 2014, Colorado’s legal cannabis market has seen its ups and downs on the path to relative maturity 10 years later. Following a surge of demand during pandemic lockdowns, the state’s dispensaries are now reckoning with a drop in sales coinciding with a return to life more like the normal that existed prepandemic.
Combined with the overall settling of the market and decreased competition resulting from a spate of mergers and acquisitions, the state’s cannabis sales have dropped by nearly half since 2021. As a result, the need for real estate, whether retail to house stores or industrial to grow operations, has fallen. Bisnow Denver Reporter Jonathan Rose dug deep with sources and data to determine the severity of the problem for cannabis real estate in the country’s legal weed vanguard. What he found is stark, with companies simply walking away from leases or selling for deep losses.
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Appraisal Is At The Root Of CRE. There Are Deep Cracks In The Industry's Foundation
By Sasha Jones, Matt Wasielewski and Ryan Wangman
Sometimes understanding what makes the CRE industry tick means taking a long look under the hood at its not-so-glamorous side. That is exactly what Sasha Jones, Matt Wasielewski and Ryan Wangman did during one of Bisnow’s most ambitious reporting projects of the year. Over a four-month period, the team delved into the inner workings and daily realities of the appraisal profession, a group whose decisions underline nearly every commercial real estate deal.
The team discovered stark demographic realities about appraisers and difficult truths about how they’re trained. They uncovered a long-running controversy involving The Appraisal Foundation, the group that writes the rules for the profession. In a four-part series, Sasha, Matt and Ryan explained why appraisal matters, who pulls the strings and why this unsung piece of CRE deserves scrutiny.
MARK F. BONNER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Bisnow's Nightingale-CrowdStreet Coverage
By Jarred Schenke and Ethan Rothstein
Across at least 15 stories in 2024 alone, Atlanta Reporter Jarred Schenke and Deputy Managing Editor Ethan Rothstein have obsessed over two questions: Who is Elie Schwartz, and why was he able to use money raised with CrowdStreet as his personal piggy bank?
Not so long ago, Schwartz was a rising real estate star with a $10B track record. Now he faces a federal wire fraud charge for allegedly swindling investors out of over $50M in two failed crowdfunding deals. The Nightingale Properties CEO, whose portfolio once included high-profile Manhattan and Philadelphia properties, has seen his empire crumble under lawsuits, defaults and bankruptcy filings — and CrowdStreet is still flailing to recover its credibility in the CRE crowdfunding world.
A few weeks ago, Schwartz was finally charged with wire fraud for alleged embezzlement from investors on CrowdStreet. Prosecutors claim Schwartz diverted funds meant for real estate deals in Atlanta and Miami Beach for personal use, including stock trades and luxury purchases.
Nearly 1,000 investors were affected, with only $127K of $54M remaining. Schwartz pleaded not guilty and was released on bond, marking a key step in the DOJ's ongoing investigation.
The story isn’t over yet — not by a long shot — but more than likely if you have learned anything this year about Schwartz, the Nightingale saga or the future of crowdfunding in CRE, you have probably read a breaking news story or an investigation from Schenke, Rothstein or both.
JON BANISTER, DEPUTY EAST COAST EDITOR
Political Backlash Has Already Undercut CRE’s Approach To DEI. Now It’s Expected To Get Worse
By Bianca Barragán, Matt Wasielewski and Emily Wishingrad
Gen Z Is Fighting For A More Diverse CRE. Ignoring Its Demands Could Be 'Perilous'
By Taylor Driscoll and Ryan Wangman
These stories, Parts 2 and 3 of this year’s edition of Bisnow’s DEI Data Series, detail two forces that are putting pressure on commercial real estate companies to act in opposite ways on the issue of diversity.
The first story shows how growing political backlash to DEI has led firms to pull back on these initiatives and change their approach to communicating them. Published the week after the election, it also looked at how that backlash is expected to worsen under a Trump administration and how “we're absolutely going to see more true colors coming out.”
The second story looks at the rising influence of Generation Z, the most diverse generation ever to enter the workforce. Multiple Gen Z commercial real estate professionals told Bisnow they looked at the diversity of companies’ leadership before deciding whether to work there. In a competitive hiring landscape, experts said it could be “perilous” for CRE firms to ignore the demands of young people entering the industry.
Read the full stories here and here.
KATHARINE CARLON, CENTRAL U.S. EDITOR
It's The Climb: Why CRE Women Are Getting Stuck On The Way Up And What The Industry Can Do About It
By Olivia Lueckemeyer, Taylor Driscoll and Bianca Barragán
Commercial real estate has populated its boardrooms and C-suites with more women than ever, but their numbers are still small, and those on the climb up are finding themselves mired in the mushy middle.
Over months, Bisnow’s team surveyed 180 women and interviewed almost 20 for a series that uncovered a crisis for industry women in the early and middle stages of their careers: Despite top-line numbers that suggest progress, women are stalling out and walking away from the industry in frustration, citing a persistent boys club that is stacked against caregivers and remains rife with bias that is mostly unconscious and hard to root out.
Women at earlier stages of their careers called efforts to diversify at the top “window dressing,” suggesting the industry still has a long way to go to achieve true parity. And that could be a tall order given political winds and growing pressure to abandon DEI efforts.
KAYLA CARMICHEAL, DEPUTY NEWSLETTER EDITOR
TikTok: CRE's Hidden Deal-Maker
By Kayla Carmicheal
It started with a question: If CRE pros love engaging and deal-making on social media, can they make it happen on TikTok?
Short answer: 100%.
CRE pros across generations are making hundreds of deals and hundreds of thousands of dollars using unique social strategy and industry expertise. If you've ever been curious about how TikTok can translate into real-life business, this one's for you. I never would have thought TikTok could be a destination for millions of CRE pros and dollars, but there's a market for everything.
MIKE PHILLIPS, UK EDITOR
In The Bare-Knuckle World Of Real Estate, Green Loans Are Losing The Fight
By Ciara Long
Real Estate Lenders Are Missing The Chance To Make Borrowers Cut Carbon
By Maddy McCarty
Real estate is an industry fueled by debt — without it, a majority of investors and developers would be unable to operate. The choices lenders make and the policies they pursue have a huge influence over the strategy of real estate firms. And yet hardly any of the biggest lenders to the sector have a strategy to decarbonize their real estate loan books, and very few are trying to incentivize borrowers to be more sustainable by offering green loans. Ciara Long and Maddy McCarty dove deep into why this key part of the real estate finance ecosystem is telling the world this isn’t their problem.
Read the full stories here and here.
TIM CARROLL, CHIEF COPY EDITOR
The Plan To Develop A 'Black Wall Street' In Boston Faces Growing Pains
By Taylor Driscoll
Transformation stories resonate. Character growth is a staple of any narrative, and in commercial real estate, neighborhoods are some of the characters with the greatest opportunity to bloom.
There is plenty of growth happening in Nubian Square, an enclave of Boston's Roxbury neighborhood where there were 2M SF of projects underway as of May. It wouldn't be growth if it had always been this way — Nubian Square faced disinvestment for decades.
But not all growth is good ("Their concern is the gentrification," Cruz Cos. President John Cruz III said. "That's the biggest fear of everybody."), and Boston Reporter Taylor Driscoll expertly captures this nuance.
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'Representation Is Inspiration': 3 CRE Leaders On Forging The Path For Black Wealth — And Why It Matters
By Ryan Wangman
You may be able to tell I'm a bit of a sucker for stories involving neighborhood economic development, and this one features the lead developer of a massive project in the neighborhood where I went to high school.
J. Byron Brazier is heading up Woodlawn Central, an $895M mixed-use project on 8 acres of church-owned land on Chicago’s South Side. In this roundtable, Brazier, McKissack & McKissack’s Girard Jenkins, and Capri Investment Group’s Quintin Primo III, who is partnering on the renovation of the Thompson Center for Google, spoke about their projects' impact, how they established themselves, Chicago's progress on diversity and the hurdles that remain. Chicago Reporter Ryan Wangman asks the right questions and elicits insightful answers.
JAY RICKEY, DIRECTOR OF NEWSLETTERS
Landlords Cash In On Concert Demand As Live Nation Squeezes Small Venues
By Matt Wasielewski
When I asked a friend of mine who works at my favorite music venue this year why there would be fewer concerts at his facility over the summer, he responded, "Live Nation hates us!" A couple weeks after I'd pestered my buddy, the Justice Department announced it was suing Live Nation-Ticketmaster for monopolizing the live concert industry, alleging it has grown to control nearly every corner of the live entertainment industry, from venues and ticketing to promotion and artist availability. The DOJ's suit inspired this story from Matt Wasielewski, in which industry professionals described Live Nation as a company notorious for leveraging its power to retaliate against venue operators. Live Nation, which sold a record 145 million tickets globally in 2023, disputes the idea that it has any undue influence over the concert space but said in May it plans to open at least 12 new venues by the end of 2025.
ETHAN ROTHSTEIN, DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR
A VC-Backed Startup Turned Houses Into Stocks. Its Bets Are Failing, Leaving Its Tenants And Investors In Limbo
By Jarred Schenke, Maddy McCarty and Ethan Rothstein
It all started with a bizarre foreclosure notice — a $6M mortgage for a small house in the exurbs of Atlanta filed against an entity called Landa App.
That discovery by Atlanta Reporter Jarred Schenke kicked off a monthslong investigation into a company that got in on one of the defining early-pandemic trends: fractional real estate investing. But Landa, founded by a 20-something Israeli entrepreneur with no real estate experience, appears to have gotten in way over its head.
It bought hundreds of relatively cheap houses — financed with high-interest, short-term loans — and sold shares in them to investors. More than a dozen were targeted for foreclosure, but scores more weren't paying any distributions to investors, several of whom told us they were afraid of a total loss.
But beyond the questionable financing decision-making of Landa and its customers, real lives have been affected. Jarred spoke to several residents of the houses owned by Landa, and they told him they felt their houses were being neglected and their concerns ignored. Yet they felt trapped, because housing prices have climbed so far that they can't afford to move.
Jarred, Houston Reporter Maddy McCarty and I tried to tie all these themes together, and this story to me captures one of the defining overall trends of 2024: Many of the people who tried to invest in CRE over the internet for the first time in 2020 and 2021 through startups promising to “democratize” the industry wound up losing big, while the housing crisis only worsened.
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'The Whole Industry Could Collapse': D.C.'s Housing Providers Face An Existential Crisis
By Jon Banister
It's the dream of every working journalist to publish a story that leads directly to the passage of legislation, and that's exactly what happened this fall after Deputy East Coast Editor Jon Banister published this piece.
The sudden collapse of prominent local developer Neighborhood Development Co. raised serious questions, and when Jon set out to answer them, he discovered that NDC was merely the canary in the coal mine.
More than 80% of subsidized units weren't bringing in enough income to cover their debt and costs. Twenty-two thousand units were at risk of foreclosure. The owners of those buildings — most of which are rented to the most vulnerable residents — said they were in dire financial straits because of mounting unpaid rent.
They had been suffering in silence until Jon called them. “We’ve been focused on just trying to stay afloat,” an owner told him when asked about why this issue had been unreported.
In a follow-up story, Jon unearthed data that showed applications for rental assistance doubled in just the past year as more residents realized D.C. law stated that the application itself — regardless of its hope of acceptance — would stave off eviction.
His reporting opened the floodgates. A week after his first story broke, lawmakers were calling for reform. Mayor Muriel Bowser said the rental assistance loophole “upended” the housing system. Less than a month later, the D.C. Council passed emergency legislation to address the crisis, and they cited Jon's story in a memo introducing the bill.
JOHN KRUKOWSKI, DEPUTY STUDIO B EDITOR
How Predictability And Transparency Can Keep Construction Projects On Track
By Elizabeth Reyn
“We didn’t know how we were going to solve this problem,” the CEO of Synergy Modular told Studio B Writer Elizabeth Reyn. “But we made a huge commitment that no matter what it takes, we’re going to figure out a solution.”
A can-do attitude is not unusual in business. Problem-solving — to boost profits, increase productivity and so on — is what most companies do. But Elizabeth’s article stood out to me because of its emphasis on the human element.
The problem in this case stemmed from supply chain-related challenges that had halted an affordable housing project for homeless veterans. Elizabeth described how this disappointment inspired the company to look for solutions and, eventually, create a sister company specializing in modular construction in the hopes of avoiding similar setbacks on future projects.
CATIE DIXON, MANAGING EDITOR
Not 'Even Worth Giving Them Our Name': Why Most Foreclosure Auctions Don't Actually Result In Sales
By Bianca Barragán
This story surprised me. It was well-timed, publishing early in a year that saw a rise in foreclosure auctions. Southern California Reporter Bianca Barragán did an excellent job setting the stage of the auction she attended, and she had me hooked with the image of a dozen people sitting in folding chairs waiting for the auction of a specific building — and then no one bidding because that’s not actually what you do at foreclosure auctions?
She’s got great anecdotes and quotes — one woman has run auctions for 15 years and seen only one sale — and the story was a fascinating look at a part of CRE I didn’t understand as well as I thought I did.
PATRICK PACE, COPY EDITOR
AI Can Turn Hours Of Architecture Work Into Seconds. But At What Cost?
By Emily Wishingrad
“Hoisington remembers having a moment of realization seconds after he used the AI assist for his iPad sketches. ‘Who am I teaching? I’m teaching a software program. I’m not teaching a person,’ he said. ‘That kind of hit me.’”
Companies all over the world are beginning to incorporate artificial intelligence, and architecture firms are no different. Using AI for long, monotonous processes gives architects the ability to finish projects faster, adopt new workflows and, in general, use their time more efficiently. But as these firms begin to integrate this rapidly advancing technology, questions about security, privacy and the future of the workforce loom large.
This story also delves into a crucial issue: ownership. When AI enhances an architect’s work, who holds the rights to the final product? It raises another question that resonates across industries: Could AI eventually render certain jobs obsolete? This story is a timely reminder that although AI is exciting and can be extremely helpful, companies must approach it cautiously, as its future implications remain uncertain.
JULIA TROY, STUDIO B EDITOR
'Where Are We Going To Be At In 4 Or 5 Years?': Efforts To Address Housing Affordability In Texas Focus On Local Regulations
By John Krukowski
At Studio B, we regularly develop new custom content products to help our clients highlight the topics that are most important to them in exciting and engaging ways. This year, we launched a content series format where we partnered with clients to craft a series of three articles that dove deep into the state of a particular niche facet of commercial real estate. This article is the third in a series that Studio B Deputy Editor John Krukowski did in partnership with Texas-based law firm Allen Boone Humphries Robinson on the rise of master-planned communities in the Lone Star State.
What I love about this series is that it takes a topic that many people may be unfamiliar with — master-planned communities — and not only provides the graphs, statistics and expert opinions you would need to understand what it is, but also explains why you should care about it. This final article explores the role master-planned communities and zoning regulations play in the housing affordability crisis and explores the future of housing in Texas.
