What lies ahead for CRE? We continue our Private Markets Outlook series with a discussion featuring two of our portfolio managers, Jason Landon (equity) and Rob Lawrence (credit). They join Research team members Andrew Korz and Alan Flannigan to share how major shifts in CRE are playing out on the ground.

The Private Markets Outlook podcast series from Future Standard features special guests and portfolio managers from across our firm, each bringing unique perspectives on private equity, private credit and real estate. Subscribe and stay tuned for more.

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:06] Alan Flannigan: Welcome back to the Private Markets Outlook series from Future Standard. Today we are discussing what lies ahead for commercial real estate with two of our portfolio managers. The past five years in real estate could best be described as a roller coaster, and investors would be forgiven for experiencing whiplash.

First, the pandemic forced a rethink of entire property types, especially office. Then came a boom with values jumping more than 30% in just 18 months. And just as quickly, the Fed’s rate hike slammed the brakes, triggering one of the most challenging periods for the asset class in decades. Property values fell. Transaction activity dried up and performance went negative for two years.

Now in September 2025, the market feels steadier. Prices have stopped falling. Activity is creeping back, but investors are still cautious. It’s not the chaotic ups and downs of recent years, and maybe that’s the best news. In our midyear Private Markets Outlook, we argued that higher-for-longer rates have reset the opportunity set, but the real story is how those shifts are playing out on the ground. So today we’re bringing in two of our top real estate investors. We’ll be talking to Rob Lawrence on credit later on to share what he’s seeing on the ground. But first, let’s talk to Jason Landon on the opportunities in real estate equity.

[00:01:33] Jason Landon Interview

[00:01:36] Alan Flannigan: We’re pleased to be joined by a very special guest. He’s a Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Secondaries here at Future Standard. Jason Landon, thanks for joining the show.

[00:01:46] Jason Landon: Thank you Alan.

[00:01:47] Alan Flannigan: And to start, Jason, can you give people some sense of your background? You’ve got decades of experience in the real estate market. You’ve allocated hundreds of millions, billions of dollars of capital over the course of your career. How did you get to this point, and what have been some of your formative experiences as a real estate investor?

[00:02:05] Jason Landon: I’ve been with the firm for almost 24 years and been with the program since we launched it. So when we first launched the business, we launched it basically on the backbone of the private equity business.

And we did so by advising institutions with their private real estate portfolios—doing the investment pacing models, sourcing and underwriting managers. And all that led to developing extensive relationships in the marketplace. That takes us back to 2002. Then we had the GFC and with the GFC and that significant market disruption, that created an opportunity to pivot and start executing in the secondaries market. Again, something that we had been doing in private equity dating back to 2002. So that created a great opportunity to use our GP relationships, our information advantage, to quickly pivot and provide a solution to the marketplace, namely in LP secondaries.

We then extended further our strategy to look at our GP relationships and how can we be more strategic to them. And we started doing direct co-investments. That’s a big part of what we do. When you fast forward to where we are today, I’m leading a team of five professionals.

We’re doing the same type of investment activity in secondaries and, and co-investments. But in today’s environment, we’re really focusing on income-oriented opportunities. We think the core plus base is providing some of the best risk-adjusted opportunities today where the market has been repriced and the need for liquidity—that’s where we want to be playing.

[00:03:52] Alan Flannigan: So Jason, it seems, first of all, it’s very interesting the birth of real estate secondaries coming out of a lot of the private equity expertise that the firm had around the GFC and we’re going through the other end of a similar CRE correction, obviously for different reasons. But it seems like most people agree that that’s come to an end, at least in many of the ways that we think about it. Property values have stopped declining, activities improving, albeit slowly. And fundamentals have at least stabilized and are improving in some sectors. There seems to be perhaps a lack of consensus about what type of market environment comes next. At a high level, how would you describe where the market is headed and how does that compare with, say, a year ago?

[00:04:41] Jason Landon: Well first, taking a step back and looking at the last three years, it’s been a challenging three years. Over that time a lot has happened. The market has adjusted. Expectations have adjusted. So I think you need those two elements first to get to the other side and start thinking about a recovery here. With the expansion of cap rates with an expectation by investors and market participants of hire for longer. I think that sets the foundation right. Along all along the way, you’ve had fundamentals that have continued to improve. We did have a significant—in addition to the rapid rise in rates—kind of back to normal.

You also had on the back of that, a huge addition of supply. That led to the challenges that we’ve all been facing. But now, and you’ve all have written about this, fundamentally as we look forward, that supply pipeline is really dropping off. Demand has remained resilient. That all feels pretty good.

And then you look at the indices, you look at the Odyssey Index, for example, and that’s an index that is widely accepted across the marketplace as an indication of where private real estate is; it’s the open-ended core index for real estate.

After two-and-a-half years of negative returns, this year it turned positive. Once it turns positive, it tends to stay positive. I think when you look at all those elements, the Survive ’Til ’25 discussion that took place, we’re here. Yeah, it’s now ’25. It’s third-quarter,’25.

I think people might’ve, when they were saying that it felt it was going to look and feel different than it does…but there has been a lot of progress in the marketplace. And I think some of the, well, why are you asking the question? Why isn’t there consistent consensus about where we are? It’s still taking time. Sure. Transaction volume still isn’t back to normal, but again, we’re getting there. Sure. Then for investors, they still aren’t seeing those distributions fill their inbox or their bank accounts, so they’re in need of that. But it’s all coming. It’s just taking time.

[00:06:56] Andrew Korz: Yeah. I love how you phrased that, Jason. And we think about the interest rate environment. I would call it normalized interest rates, but higher interest rates, however you want to slice it. They act as a constraining factor. We came into this year across private markets.