Jon Gray Bullish on US Real Estate's Prospects
Parties aren't meant to last, but Jon Gray is confident the American real estate bull market won't be staggering home any time soon. Gray, the head of Blackstone's mighty real estate group, told the Wall Street Journal that the foreign investor crush on leading US markets will continue despite significant economic tremors rattling the eurozone and once-indomitable China. Still, he added that the foreign buyer pool is likely to expand beyond China as that rising superpower comes to terms with a stock market plunge and broad chill. As for countries ripe for investment, Portugal, Italy and Spain—the nations often grouped with Greece in the PIGS acronym denoting European trouble spots—represent especially compelling targets. What differentiates today's boom from the bubble that preceded the Great Recession? Gray says that buyers are being much smarter with their leveraging, avoiding the reliance on debt that contributed to the dark days of 2008 and 2009.
