How I'm Preparing for 2027 (5 Simple Ideas)

release edition [095]

read time [5 minutes]

Welcome to The Multifamily Download, a weekly newsletter where I provide institutional insights to help you build an exceptional Multifamily career.

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Today at a Glance:

• 2027: How I'm Preparing
• ULI: Emerging Trends
• Weekly Listen: Tim Ferriss

In partnership with: DealNav

2027 Prep

The New Year will be here before we know it. As the holidays approach, I thought I'd share a little bit about how I think about planning for the New Year, in case anything that I share is helpful.

What follows are five simple ideas that I find helpful when conducting annual reflection and planning exercises. Enjoy!

1/ Personal Whitepaper

Most organizations publish (either internally or externally) a whitepaper that attempts to shape and communicate their perspective on the market environment heading into the New Year.

For some firms, this is a tedious and meticulous endeavor, and for others it's a casual pulse check on the market at large.

If you are not directly involved in writing the whitepaper for your firm then I would highly recommend considering writing your own personal whitepaper.

This doesn't need to be a scholarly piece of writing. It's your opportunity to shape what you know about the current market, determine what you think about what you know, and then form a thesis around what you think in a manner that can be defended or discussed in conversation.

Investment theses of all kinds attract capital from varying sources, so it's not necessarily the thesis itself that is powerful; it's the conclusion and conviction behind it that is meaningful.

2/ Personal SWOT

As you already may be familiar, a SWOT analysis evaluates the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of a given set of variables that are being evaluated.

One helpful layer of annual reflection is to conduct a personal SWOT analysis whereby I can honestly (and ideally without bias) reflect on my personal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for growth, and threats.

In a personal capacity, I would recommend focusing on character traits you enjoy about yourself, those that you would like to refine or enhance, areas that you may have delayed or untapped growth potential, and variables that are inherent risks to your personal livelihood if gone unchecked.

This is highly personal, so there are no right or wrong answers.

Please consider this an invitation to slow down, pause and reflect on 2026 as it relates to your personal well being and ambitions outside of your professional pursuits.

3/ Business SWOT

Similar to the personal SWOT above, consider conducting a SWOT analysis for your job or business based on what's unfolded in 2026 and how you intend to proceed into 2027.

This reflection should be geared towards how you're contributing to your organization based on what you (or others) expect of you in a professional sense. Again, there are no right or wrong answers here.

The goal is simply to set aside time to thoughtfully reflect.

4/ Intentions for Becoming

This is somewhat vague, and that's by design. Before The Multifamily Download, I wrote 76 editions of a weekly newsletter called The Builder's Blueprint (IYKYK). In edition 052, which I titled "How to Rewire & Redirect Your Life", I wrote the following:

What's the point?

Consider setting intentions for the type of person you are becoming.

As James Clear wrote in his book Atomic Habits, "Do my current habits cast a vote for or against my desired identity?"

5/ Technology Trends

Finally, I am going to be thoughtfully considering my technology stack over the next six to eight weeks heading into 2027.

AI is upending a ton of legacy software, but it hasn't replaced everything.

I plan to share the technology tools that I enjoy and find interesting heading into 2027.

For now, amid the backdrop of AI, consider evaluating your plan for increasing your productivity in 2027 (i.e. your output of work per unit of time).

These five topics are meant to give you a few things to think about as we enter into what is typically a slower time of year in our industry. (and if you're busy with deal executions or closings, congrats!)

To me, developing a personal conviction about the market environment, myself, my organization, and my technology are all worthy of careful consideration.

Emerging Trends

I recently shared a free resource on LinkedIn that I thought I'd share here, too.

The resource is simple but powerful: it evaluates the recently released 2027 ULI Emerging Trends report.

But, because the report is 162 pages long, I decided to use A.I. to extract what matters in Multifamily.

First, I had it analyze the full report (not just the Multifamily section).

Then, I had it pull out the Multifamily signals hiding in the office, retail, hotel, senior housing, and data center sections.

Lastly, I added my own perspectives from 90+ editions of The Multifamily Download plus a countertrend for every finding.

It came back with 11 takeaways:
• NOI growth replaced cap rate compression
• “Why real estate when I can get 5% risk-free?”
• The supply gap runs on submarket time
• Unaffordability doesn’t automatically create renters
• The K-shaped consumer shows up in retail first
• Policy is the new geography
• The coastal comeback (SF went from 45th to 5th)
• The Sun Belt is sorting into winners and laggards
• The Midwest contrarian case
• Data centers are now a Multifamily cost line
• What senior housing and hotels teach operators

Three observations that surprised me:

(1) San Francisco apartment vacancy is 3.2%, with rents up 15.6% YoY. No, those are not typos. Pretty wild.

(2) Seattle had the biggest ranking drop in the survey’s history, even as its apartment vacancy fell below 7%. The power of policy headwinds I suppose.

(3) High-income Multifamily was the segment most likely to be called overpriced, and also the most likely to be called underpriced. Go figure, right?

I organized everything into a free Notion breakdown that I'm calling “ULI Emerging Trends 2027: 11 Takeaways for Multifamily Owners (Analyzed by A.I.)”

The Notion resource includes:
(a) all 11 takeaways, with page number references
(b) an observed countertrend for every finding
(c) a 13-market scorecard for Multifamily owners
(d) the 11 numbers worth remembering

Click here to view the full analysis.

Weekly Listen

This week's listen is from outside the real estate sector and gleans wisdom from one of the first podcasters I enjoyed listening to regularly. In episode #887 of The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim answers listener questions on how the ideas from The 4-Hour Workweek hold up in a world of AI, how to rebuild personal agency, and what he’d change about The 4-Hour Body now that he’s past 40.

I enjoyed his take on rebuilding momentum through small daily actions, and on knowing when to persist versus when to quit. It’s a helpful given the personal SWOT and technology topics mentioned above, and a good reminder that advice that served us well five years ago deserves a fresh look as our lives change.

You can listen to the full episode here.

Wrap Up

That's it for today. I hope you found this edition of The Multifamily Download insightful.

Consider sharing this link to The Multifamily Download with a friend or colleague.

Your feedback is appreciated, so feel free to reply anytime.

Thanks for reading. See you next week!

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