Bisnow's podcast, Make Yourself At Home, hears from members of the commercial real estate industry about how they are managing this new reality and gaining insight into their day-to-day approaches. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon Music.
On this episode, we sit down with Sonny Kalsi, the CEO of BentallGreenOak — a real estate investment platform with more than $50B of assets under management.
The firm, which is the investment unit of Canadian insurance giant Sun Life Financial, is investing billions in the Japanese real estate market, and recently spent nearly $700M on an office building in Tokyo.
Kalsi spoke on the podcast about the investment focus in Europe and Asia, why he thinks the Asian office environment is a safer bet than the U.S., and New York City’s long road to recovery.
“I really believe these cities, they will figure it out, they will have such high concentration of highly talented, highly motivated people … but it’s going to take three to five years,” he said. “By this fall, we’re going to start feeling a lot more normal, but everyone keeps saying, 'When are we going to get back to the end of 2019?’ And everything, what it feels like, what people are doing, office tenancy and office rents — I think that’s three to five years.”
