Thank you very much, everyone. Good morning. We're pleased to host KBW's annual real estate conference. Today I have a very exciting panel on the commercial real estate capital markets with Chris Ludeman, Global President of Capital Markets at CBRE Group, Mark Gibson, CEO of Capital Markets Americas at Jones Lang LaSalle, Jeff Day, Chief Strategy Officer and President, Head of Multifamily Capital Markets at Newmark, and finally, last but not least, Willy Walker, Chairman and CEO of Walker & Dunlop. Chris, to start off, could you please convey your sense of the current market environment, how things are playing out so far this year and what you're hearing for top clients? I'll ask the same question for the other panelists as well. Thank you. Well, maybe I'll focus on fundraising. That'll be interesting to hear from the other panelists, but LPs are very much on the sidelines. They're very pensive. Lots of fundraising going on, but hard to make commitments. I think a lot of that's lack of predictability and clarity as to where things are going. Until those LPs come off the sidelines in a meaningful way, I think we're gonna have continued price discovery. How about any other trends that you're seeing in terms of transaction volumes, pricing? Are we just in a period of price discovery? What do you expect would change that? It's the LPs getting more confident in deploying that capital, committing to make that capital investment or any other factors? I think all those will play in. I do think that if you look at some of the bids that are out there, people are coming off the sidelines to test pricing. I don't know what the other fellows have seen, but we've seen bid disparity that can be up to 50% top to bottom, and that's I don't know if I've ever experienced that since the GFC, so that's an interesting phenomenon. One thing that I think is quite positive, and I know we all travel a lot, is more, more people are back in the office, and it seems to be a palpable, meaningful change. I think it's coming from the top of these organizations to get the people back, and they seem to be very resolute about that. That is, I think, a fundamental change in the last quarter. Mark, how about your perspective? What are you seeing in terms of current market dynamics, color from institutional investors, and the outlook there? I'm gonna take a little different view of it, Jade. One is, I think if we pan out and we look at a little bit of a macro picture here for a minute and think about strategies of what we ought to be doing given the current temper of the times, we have a common enemy, and the enemy is inflation. Inflation is impacting the cost of capital, which is impacting valuations. The question really is, what is your view on inflation? We had a period of time where you had an interruption of supply chain logistics that hit us out of the blue, which is abnormal, and at the same time, you had pretty significant stimulus coming in. The question is, when will that normalize? If so, do you think the shortening of the curve is going to skate ahead of the Fed, which generally it does? If that happens and you see a normalization of the short end of the interest rate curve, all of this discussion that we're having around real estate values and others are gonna change as a result of that. A lot of the issues that we're seeing are gonna be self-correcting as cost of capital begins to moderate. We're asking large LPs to think through 18 months from now, think about where their view of inflation is and what does that actually mean relative to cost of capital and therefore impacting valuations. I think most to the current environment, I think most of your large LPs. Well, I'll make a provocative statement. I don't see a lack of liquidity. There's plenty of liquidity, you just don't like the price of the structure that they give you. Where we are right now is the large institutional investors have rationalized a 3.25%-3.5% ten-year bond. Historically, that's a 150-200 basis point spread above it, which is going to equate to roughly a 4.5%-6% cap rate, generally speaking. That's a very, very general commentary. If we see consistency at that level of 3.25%, 3.5%, which the debt ceiling is causing some issues there, we are seeing transactional volume increase. They don't see the long end of the curve moderating as inflation wanes or is mitigated. They see the short end of the curve normalizing. I think from our perspective, and we're actually seeing it on the ground, Jade, if you just get consistency, rather than volatility in the bond market, people have had enough time to rationalize their views on what I just stated, and we're beginning to see transactional volumes and bids, across the board increase particularly over the last 30 to 45 days. I'll just pause there. That's great. Jeff Day, what are your thoughts around the transaction environment and the outlook? Perhaps can you comment on loan portfolio sales and if you're starting to see an uptick there as well? Sure. Happy to. Look, our house view is that we're really going through a secular change right now due to the inflation and policy shift around interest rates, as Mark said. Investors have a new risk-free rate. We may look back on the last 10 years as the golden age, particularly for multifamily and industrial, and that's causing people to reset. I also agree with Mark that there's really no lack of liquidity. It's a function of uncertainty and not being the guy that buys at the wrong point and then finds that they bought a falling knife, to say. What we really see outside of exogenous events like the debt ceiling and like geopolitical risk and rampant inflation beyond what we're expecting is relatively decent fundamentals other than in certain places, like office. Hospitality, retail recovering. Multifamily's fundamentals are still very good. They're just not as great as they were two or three years ago. Rents were growing 18%, 20%, 22% in some cases. We've got a little bit of expense stress there. There's a supply of capital available to buy at the right point. I believe Chris said it, we're starting to see more noise, and you have to hear noise before you see action. People want to transact once they find stability. It's really been the volatility in rates that I think have caused people to pause. Second quarter is gonna be rough too. I actually think that towards the second half, particularly in the fourth quarter, people are gonna get their feet. We're gonna see transaction volumes increase, and we're going to see a new normal, which is really what we have to find. As it relates to loan sales, yes. I think that's the one caveat relative to transaction velocity, is that over the last few years, the dependence on banks for financing has been much higher than it has been historically. If you see where the CLO markets are, the CMBS markets are, even some of the institutional and private lenders, there's going to be a lack of liquidity there. Smaller and regional banks are going to have to clean up their balance sheets. Interestingly, the large banks, because they were under a much higher level of scrutiny, have much cleaner real estate books. So, you know, we saw Pacific Western go through what they've gone through over the last few days. Obviously, we have the Signature transaction that is probably the largest trade in the market right now, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more of that balance sheet cleansing over the course of the next several months. Thank you. Willie, as seems to be the case during these volatile periods, the GSEs provide, you know, an island of stability through a storm. Are you expecting that to continue to be the case? Just as it relates to multifamily overall, you know, what are your thoughts around the resilience of the sector? I would point out the last two down cycles, COVID, you know, if you count that as a recession, the government provided a lot of relief, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac provided forbearance. In the GFC, there were excess subprime mortgage households that reverted to being renters, so we had a countercyclical driver of demand. Will that be the case this time? Just what are your overall thoughts on the outlook for multifamily? First of all, good morning, Jade. Thanks for having me. Second of all, it's a real pleasure to be on this panel with Mark and Chris and Jeff. Obviously, as you know, Mark and Chris and Jeff all work at companies that have global platforms and we're only in the United States, and they all also do a tremendous amount in non-multifamily of office and retail and hospitality, and they've got big leasing groups and sales groups and financing groups that all focus in non-multi. We are 80% multi and only 20% non-multi. As a result of that, our focus on multi with the presence of the agencies is a real benefit. Fannie and Freddie, I was giving a speech in Chicago on Monday, and it was a kind of a diverse audience of commercial real estate investors, and I said, "How many of you would like to have the agencies for your asset class of commercial real estate?" Everybody who owned office, retail, hospitality, or industrial raised their hand. At the same time, you just look at Fannie and Freddie's volumes year to date. Fannie, I think, is at $16 billion, and Freddie is at $9 billion through April. They're both well behind on deploying capital into their caps. As all of my colleagues on this call know because they all are very significant players in this market, both agencies' pipelines are very full right now. I would just say from a market dynamic standpoint, a little bit back to what Mark said, we've seen. In February, when the 10-year got down to about 3.50, we saw a lot of deal flow coming in, and then the 10-year floated from 3.50 back up to over 4 and got up to 4.10, 4.15, and deal flow kind of dried up a little bit. The reason for that is just because of where the spreads are on debt financing as the 10-year gapped out by that 50-75 basis points. People's cost of financing went up appropriately, and commensurately, they moved from being able to put on a 5% loan to putting on a 6% loan. When you're trying to refinance, either looking at what the cap rate of the existing asset you own or a buy at 4.75%-5%, it doesn't make sense. They won't take 100 basis points of negative leverage. Then we had the failure of SVB and Signature, and the 10-year collapsed back down. 10-year was at 3.50%, got down to 3.35% two weeks ago. At a 3.35% 10-year with the spreads that Fannie and Freddie are putting onto their loans, you could get a fixed rate loan in the high fours, low fives. Because cap rates on many multifamily assets have drifted up to high fours, low fives, people were actually making acquisitions with positive leverage, which is the first time we've seen positive leverage in the market in quarters. As a result of that, we've seen a lot of deal flow come back into the multi market. All of a sudden over the last 2 weeks, the 10-year has gone from 3.35% up to 3.72%, and all of a sudden we're back to that old math, and people are sitting there going, "Okay, I'm gonna pull back." What I've been telling a lot of investors, and as I know all of my colleagues on this call are seeing, the market is very tenuous. One moment it feels like you're getting conviction and moving forward, and I think that goes back to what Mark said is what the market's really looking for is any kind of stability. The, you know, the kind of the Goldilocks scenario from my standpoint would be get beyond the debt ceiling, and you have a pause with the Fed, and the Fed feels like where they are can sit for a while. Not cutting. I don't think there's one of us who thinks either thinks or really wants or needs the Fed to turn around and cut in the back half of the year. If the Fed would stay, and we could get cap rates to stabilize, not just on multi, but across the industry, and your cost of financing would stay somewhat consistent, you can see transaction volume come back in a much larger form than it is today. On the multifamily side, just the follow-up would be, what kinds of deals are you seeing? There's a lot of talk about mezzanine and pref coming in behind multifamilies to do agency execution. Are those the type of transactions? Are they refinancings? You also mentioned acquisitions, but what would be the sort of, you know, indicative type of deal that you're seeing? I mean, gosh, it's all over the place, Jade. Yes, I mean, I was with a client yesterday in Chicago who's looking to refinance a new development that is stabilized. It's 90% leased. You know, it has a construction loan on it has mezz, and it has pref. It's got a capital structure that's a little complicated, if you will. It's not gonna take just an agency takeout on that loan. It's gonna require more than just that. At the same time, I went to visit another client who just did a 53% 5-year fixed rate Fannie Mae loan at 4.63% on an acquisition at a 4.85% cap rate. Pretty standard run-of-the-mill execution. You know, they also decided to do a 5-3 structure rather than a 5-4 and a half structure. They actually paid to have more flexibility of opening up that loan after 3 years rather than waiting 4 and a half years for the prepayment to get out of the loan, simply because they think that rates will go down, but they don't wanna take the risk of borrowing floating today. They wanna fix it for the short term, but have optionality once they get beyond year 3. I think everyone is seeing the market in a different way. You know, that was a 53% loan. They're a well-capitalized buyer, and not everyone has the ability to put 47% equity into a deal. Yeah, Jade, on that point, I agree 100% with what Willie stated. You have to remember that the insurance companies are pretty giddy at this moment in terms of taking share from banks for a host of reasons. Almost everyone is looking to some form of a 3-year fixed in some form or fashion with a flex structure, to Willie's point. Another item which goes back to my comment and Jeff's comment about the lack of liquidity, we are a very large placement agent across the world, and our debt fundraises that we're doing right now are generally oversubscribed. As different than in the past where it was helpful to have a seed portfolio, everyone really wants go-forward activity. Those are oversubscribed, so... Primarily from large equity investors that are literally investing $ billions into the credit market to take advantage of it. There's a whole host of rationale for that. It goes back to their view of inflation moderating maybe faster than what the market anticipates, and seeing this yield curve normalize. They're trying to take advantage of the current environment that we find ourselves in, and the uncertainty that we've all mentioned in doing so. We're seeing a lot of different players into the credit space, in addition to the agencies, which multi-housing is just blessed to have. One of the questions. Go ahead. Chris, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Chris. What I was gonna say is, with all those new participants, can they be, will they be active? I know they want to move from the equity markets into the credit markets, but can they be responsive, agile, and quick? That's something to be seen. I'd also just add, Jade, that both Chris and Mark sit on platforms that have very large asset management platforms. The ability for them to raise capital to push out through their distribution network, just like we have at W&D, is a great opportunity for all of us as it relates to our Asset Management businesses. I'd also say that the pull back on banks, we all work with banks, and our brokers all work with banks. We also all know that lots and lots of borrowers go direct to banks. As banks pull back, the need for a broker, a debt broker, whether it be at JLL, CBRE, Newmark, or Walker & Dunlop, to go take your deal out and broadly market it. Steps up because that the name that came up earlier was PacWest that Jeff talked about. The PacWest banker is no longer writing that construction loan, is no longer writing that short-term floater. As a result of it, if you had that long-standing relationship with that PacWest banker, he or she isn't there anymore. It's unlikely you're gonna go down the street to First Republic, which is now part of JPMorgan, and try and reestablish a new relationship. You typically will call up CBRE and say, "Hey, take my loan out to market and get me 20 bids from across the country, because capital is not robust right now and I need your expertise to find that one bid that works." While volumes are down significantly right now, there's a huge growth opportunity for all of our companies as it relates to stepping into those bank relationships that previously had been direct. I think the other thing that's out there that we should be watching. Go ahead. ... I was gonna say is that, you know, you have all these deposits that have moved from the regional banks into money center banks. Will those stay? If they stay with the big money center banks, will they get back into the markets as opposed to being, again, under the regulators' thumb? Will they start to flow back to the regional banks? Will the regional banks use that capital or just shore up their balance sheets, again creating a lack of, a lack of conviction until we get some stability? I'm looking at the GFC. It was an 8-quarter correction. We're currently modeling a 5-quarter correction, and it began in the fourth quarter of 2022. You know, the regional banks issues add some uncertainty. You know, I could see this extending beyond, you know, the end of this year, but I could also see a case for a bounce back. What would be your thoughts on that, and what are the main indicators, Chris, that you're looking at to determine when you think things might start to inflect to the positive? Well, I would say, I kind of watch CAs. If you... We put most of our stuff through a common pipe, and we can measure everything. When CAs start to increase, it's an indication that people are off the, off the sidelines, at least they're looking. As we start to see the number of CAs expand in a meaningful way, and then we look at it by sector or by product or by strategy, that usually is a good indicator that capital is getting ready to participate more fully in the markets. Sorry, and can you say what the, what the acronym CA stands for? Oh, I'm sorry. Confidentiality agreement, signed when they- Okay, great. ... take something out, and it just saves like- What have you been seeing so far on that front? It's still pretty muted. you know, I mean, you look, you can find exceptions on a particular trade, you can find exceptions in a sector. Obviously, multifamily and industrial are better. But, you know hospitality, somebody mentioned hospitality, it's been very active. In some of the other primary food groups, it's been down by 30%. CAs have been down by 30%. When those things start to pop, I think money will come off the sidelines. Jeff, what about you? What are the indicators you're looking at, and do you think that by the fourth quarter we'll be in, you know, positive territory on a year-on-year growth basis? We're trying to look at some of the public indicators that are more forward in nature. We're looking at BBB+ spreads, corporates, publicly traded REITs to try and figure out where the current sentiment or forward-looking sentiment is. Is it a little bit of a proxy for where we see activity coming from, and at what point in time? You know, as we were just talking about, we've seen, particularly in industrial and multifamily and hospitality, an increase in noise, and you have to have the noise first. In terms of hitting the reset button and having year-over-year growth, fourth quarter was pretty rough last year, as you know. I think it's reasonable to think that we could approximate or exceed the fourth quarter. We're really focused on, you know, trying to get the traction during that period of time and really get into 2024 with some momentum. That's our view. Just for clarity, deals that are being contracted now would close when? Over the next 3 to 4 months on average? Even less than that probably. Okay. You know, 30 to 60 days, depending on how much work has to go into the debt structure and what the nuances of the contract structure are. Transaction timing really hasn't changed that much. It's getting under contract that's taken a little bit longer. Okay. Mark, you mentioned inflation as the core issue this cycle. I 100% agree with you. What we saw this cycle in certain sectors, like industrial and multifamily, was rent growth move ahead of the realization of expenses. During COVID, you had a lot of inability to service assets, to come see them in person, to do work orders. There was also supply chain backlogs. You couldn't order, you know, the capital goods in time. Now we're in a phase in certain parts of the market where the rents are decelerating and the expenses are still catching up. In multifamily property, insurance costs have been growing astronomically. In fact, there's some markets in Florida where it's very hard to find property insurance. In terms of the inflation outlook, is it your view that investors are starting to look beyond that 18-month horizon and they expect inflation to normalize, or are there certain items, you know, that they're worried about being pretty sticky this time? As you know, this is outside my core competency. I'm a real estate guy, Jade. Since I spend all my time chatting with or most of my time chatting with the largest owners of capital, so your sovereign wealth funds or state plans or others behind the scenes, their view on that front is they started off underwriting 2 risks. Let's go back to when the Fed started its fight against inflation. The risks comprising the risk premium were inflation risk and recession risk. Both were, I mean, those are difficult to price simultaneously. You didn't want to deploy because you didn't want to look foolish to Jeff's earlier comment about deploying now, or to Chris's comment, we're deploying now if cost of capital and returns are gonna be higher in the future. At the same time, if you're concerned that the Fed will overcorrect, which has been historically the case, then you want to prepare also for a recession. Therefore you have to underwrite more recession-oriented outlooks. The view today from the majority of the investors is the inflation risk is quite mitigated, and most are focused on recession risk. When we make comments of, there's no lack of liquidity, but you might not like the price of the structure, they're underwriting as they should, in terms of preparing for a more muted economic view over the next period of time. Now we're doing what is pretty normal, and we've all done multiple times in our careers, is we're just underwriting conservative metrics relative to buying an asset or lending against an asset. That's across all industries, it's not just real estate, it's across the board. Ironically, the risk premium has compressed. Until the debt ceiling crisis occurred, and hopefully we get past that, but up to that point, over the last 45-60 days, spreads have actually compressed in the debt space and in the real estate equity space. That is interesting. Another note that Chris brought up, which I fully agree with on his commentary regarding confidentiality agreements or CAs, we also look at bid activity, and the bid activity has been dramatically growing. That is interesting. There's disparity on how to underwrite as a result of what I just stated, but you do see that occurring in the marketplace today. Again, going back to one theme, which is stability. The market has rationalized where we're likely to be long term. It's just, can we consistently count on it staying there? I'm speaking more toward the long end of the curve than I am necessarily the short end of the curve, which is inflated due to inflation. Willie, you know, we get a lot of questions about markets. There are clearly markets that are outperforming, where there's been a ton of growth, where there's a lot of positive in-migration. There's markets that have supply issues. Some of those are the growth markets, in fact, but they now have a slowdown driven by tech, as well as absorbing some supply issues. Then there's markets that didn't really participate in the COVID boom that are proving, you know, resilient. Could you just survey which markets you believe at W&D, perhaps for multifamily, but could be overall, you know, have the best outlook, where you're seeing the most interest from investors, where you're seeing the most deal flow. Any markets that are of concern to you, where you think there might be structural features that could be addressed, and then markets that are, you know, persistent laggards. You know, it would be great to hear some commentary on geography. I wanna sort of say what Mark said, which is that you're sort of asking me an economist question and I'm not an economist. Look, the issue with it is, as everybody on this call knows, there's really good real estate and really shifty real estate in every market across the country. There are really great operators and there are really bad operators in every market across the country. It really is a supply and demand issue. I mean, if you look at, for instance, Peter Linneman, who does a fantastic quarterly report, some of Linneman's favorite markets right now are not markets that any of us would say benefited from the COVID pandemic or the growth afterwards. They're Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, who, you know, like, wow, why are Cleveland and Columbus great markets today? Cleveland and Columbus are great markets today 'cause they've been undersupplied and they've got good growth characteristics given those micro markets. You'd never sit there and say, 'There's not a ton of job growth.' I mean, Mark's in the city that is getting the most in-migration of, you know, Fortune 500 companies across the country. You say, 'Go Dallas.' Dallas has got a ton of supply. While Dallas is an incredible market from an overall fundamental standpoint, it's also got a lot of cranes still in the air, and it's got a lot of deliveries coming out. It's all very much sort of market specific, sponsorship specific. I would say one other thing, Jade, that I think is important, and Jeff talked about, you know, BB B spreads, and Mark was talking about inflationary pressures and what are the kind of the telltale signs. I do think there's a general sense in the market that all commercial real estate is struggling. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are tons of real estate owner-operators who have long-term fixed rate debt. They fixed the rate in when rates were down in the 2s and the 3s, they're sitting in the back of their seat just cash flowing right now. Not great for any of our businesses because they're not doing a lot. They're not refinancing, they're not buying, they're not selling, they're doing really, really well. You know, as far as a credit crisis is concerned, I don't think any one of us on this is sitting there going, "You know, there are gonna be lots of defaults in our portfolios." Obviously, office is under a lot of, you know, a lot of pressure right now, and it seems like The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg like to write an article every day on some big office tower that has defaulted. That's gonna work through. I mean, there's $80 billion of office loans that need to be refinanced in 2023. Sounds like a pretty big number. I can guarantee you that all of my colleagues on this call and people at W&D are working on those loans trying to find a way to restructure them, get... you know, either kick the can down the road or get it redone. A lot of the special servicers are requiring people to put new equity into the deals, owners are either gonna re-equify those deals or they're gonna default, those deals are gonna be picked up by somebody else. There was a really interesting graph that was put up at the Milken Conference where they had a credit panel, just talking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It showed MGM bonds, it showed ARIA CMBS bonds. It showed that the MGM bonds on their corporate debt are trading at a 250 spread, that the ARIA CMBS bonds are trading at a 487 spread, even though MGM has guaranteed the ARIA bonds. They've got a 15-year lease on the ARIA, and they have mandatory investments in the ARIA property every single year. You sit there and you say, "That doesn't make any sense. There's absolutely no reason that the ARIA bonds should be trading at that type of a premium over MGM's corporate debt." I think the market has just sort of sat there and said, "Whoa, we don't like commercial real estate right now." I think that there is plenty of value to be found if people, you know, do their homework and go find opportunity. Before turning it over to one of the other panelists, across the housing space, where do you sit, where are your views on Class A versus B and C versus affordable housing? You know, do you think either category, any of those categories, presents an outsized growth opportunity? I know W&D is focused also on growing small balance lending through various initiatives. Yeah. I'll run real quick through that. Look, the bottom line is this. Something like 45% of single-family homeowners in the United States locked in a 2%-3% mortgage in the last 2-3 years since rates went down. Those people are not selling because they have $5,000-$7,000 a year of free cash flow that if they refinance their home or they sold it and moved to another home, their 2% mortgage turns into a 6% mortgage. There's that supply is off to the side, which means that single family home builders are the only way that you can get new supply in, and they are all building homes right now. They're right back to where they were in '11 and '12. They're building homes at a $450,000-$550,000 price point, which means that the affordable entry-level home is not being supplied, and the person who refinanced their mortgage over the last couple of years isn't gonna sell it. Which means that prices are gonna stay high and mortgage costs are gonna stay high, which means that multifamily is positioned to have great occupancy. Once we get through this period with no new supply, the regional banks and the local banks are not lending on multifamily today. You're not seeing shovels go into the ground. There's a really good tailwind coming up in 2024, 2025, 2026 for multi, generally speaking, as it relates to housing. The only other thing I'd say on the bank issue, if you look at the top 15 small balance multifamily lenders in the United States, JPMorgan Chase number 1, Wells Fargo number 2. Of the next 13, all of them are local and regional banks other than Walker & Dunlop and Arbor. With the regional banks pulling back, we see a huge opportunity to step in on the SBL lending side. Chris, how about you for... what are your thoughts on markets? I know CBRE clearly has global reach, so, you know, are there any markets that you view as standout strong performers expected to be resilient, and which markets would you have some concerns about? Well, maybe I'll focus on markets that I think we should all be concerned about, particularly if we're staying in the housing area with the regulatory environments and the political pressures in certain coastal markets. I think that's tough. Everybody loves Florida, those insurance costs in Florida are just out of control, and that could be a contagion elsewhere. I mean, if that's a challenge in the marketplace. It's my view that, look, I think there's still a lot of demand for housing, loads of demand, whether it's for rental or for purchase, but it's a question of cost. I can make a juxtaposition. Could be a product of our last conversation with a developer. If you look at developers in industrial, for instance, and somebody in the Inland Empire is trying to get their buildings leased at $1.60 a square foot per month, and he said, "Gosh, I got no activity. But if you drop down to $1.40, that thing's gonna be full in a minute." Right? It's a bit asking, but there is, I think, strong demand across sectors for space because the economy has been remarkably resilient. I do think that what we're starting to see is and it's clear it's gonna happen for a while, when you can't build something in an accretive fashion, the built environment's gonna be more attractive, and that's gonna take some time. So, if you can... if you have to build to a 7% or 8% return on cost and you can buy in the 6s, well, I'll tell you, a lot of capital's gonna go there before they go back to the Development business. I think it's a natural phase. The last point I would make is. Then I'll get to your point about where. We're starting to see more big players look for testing the market on liquidity because they do feel some liquidity pressure. They do feel the denominator effect, and what do they have to sell or what can they sell despite wanting to get rid of other things? They're not looking for portfolio premiums, they're looking for liquidity, and they just want to load balance. Those are all things that are, again, very bespoke to a particular LP or a particular GP, but that's gonna have to create some trading volume. In the end, I think following the people and following the jobs is gonna pay off in the long term. Any other more specifics you wanna mention, or we'll leave it at that? Well, I'd leave it at that. Maybe Jade has a point of view on some markets, but I think that most of them are pretty obvious. I to Willy's comment, if you look at some of these markets that have not attracted a lot of capital, it's hard to invest in quantum. It's hard to invest in scale. You can sharpshoot some of those things, but it's hard to deploy a lot of capital. Yeah. You all have grown tremendously in the U.S., where do you see the best growth opportunities market-wise? Which markets also would be a concern? On Europe, how big an opportunity does that represent for Newmark? Let's work backwards. In terms of the European footprint that we built out over the last 12 to 18 months, we'll be selective as we were when we entered the market. We think it's a significant opportunity for us, you know, particularly in terms of having direct day-to-day access to capital that will be driven to the U.S. and the U.S. real estate market, we're really focused on U.S. capital markets as the driver of our business, and accessing that capital is important and will become incrementally more important in this environment. As it relates to the U.S., absolutely agree with Chris's assertion around particularly insurance. That's gonna be a very difficult nut to crack. I actually spent, I think for the first time in my whole career, an hour with insurance consultants to try and figure some of the issues that we're seeing for our clients, with our clients out yesterday afternoon, it's really not clear exactly what's going to happen. We're seeing insurance go up 300% in some cases in coastal markets. As Chris said, there's insurance that's not even available in certain types of properties in certain markets. You have to look at that and say, "Gosh, that's going to have to impact the appetite for those types of properties and those sorts of markets." That would be one place that I would look at and really have to think hard about deploying capital. Conversely, Texas, I mean, you know, I don't wanna overstate it, but I think Texas is the new real estate capital of the U.S. in many ways. If you look at Austin and Dallas and Houston, they all have tremendous fundamentals. One of the things that's really interesting about population shifts is that they thought that baby boomers would stay home, where they lived and where they worked and where they grew up. We're actually seeing a multiplier effect of the younger generations and where they're moving because the parents or the boomers, I hate to use that term because my kid calls me that, but the boomers are following their kids. That's actually making the growth that we thought we would see anyway even more dramatic. You see other markets like a Portland, which has got some interesting dynamics right now, or San Francisco, which has interesting dynamics. At the end of the day, those are fabulous cities. They've got a lot of great fundamentals. They've got geographic barriers to growth. The quality of life in many ways is fantastic. I lived in the Bay Area for a long time. I think if somebody can sort through all of the issues and see some light at the end of the tunnel, there might even be some opportunities there. I guess for the final topic, saved the best for last. Maybe we could start with Mark. Mark, what are your thoughts around the office asset class? Is it undergoing, you know, a complete secular shift? Did, in fact, WeWork and its growth essentially mask some of the underlying obsolescence affecting Class B and C properties? Inflation is a big driver of some of these costs, and the TIs, the tenant improvements needed to sign those leases. There is leasing activity, but to actually attract the leases, sign them, it requires significant spend on the part of landlords. What do you, what do you think is going on in the office sector, and how do you, how do you think this plays out? Well, it's a great question, Jade. I'm gonna start with something that Chris said early on. He stated that he sees more activity in the CEOs of large occupiers across the U.S. mandating back to work, and we have been seeing that for a long time. It hasn't been as widely publicized as what is actually happening on the ground. When you step back a minute and you really think about a few topics here, one is, young people are actually very social. They wanna be trained, they wanna be mentored, they wanna learn, and they wanna progress. They're actually not the issue. Very general comment. That is a falsehood in the media. If we didn't get back to office and allow our people into office, particularly those 35 or under, they would leave and go somewhere else. That is where we are, number 1. That's just an interesting commentary across the majority of the industries. Number 2 is that labor productivity has fallen off a cliff, and you have to wonder why. All of these companies are trying to figure out how to get that productivity back and how to retain top talent, and that means you have to challenge and learn and progress and create new products or whatever it may be. All of those factors are actually driving this consistent drumbeat that you're seeing back to work. Having said that, we're much more productive than we used to be if we're not in the office 'cause we learned how to do it during the pandemic. Particularly in high commute markets, we think it's positive that you do have some flex scheduling because it'll keep more people in the labor force, which we need, which we think is pretty interesting. The net result on all of this is you're probably gonna have 15% or so less demand because there are certain elements in certain industries and certain ways that don't necessarily need to be in a collaborative work environment from a productivity standpoint, or a learning, or a mentoring, or a creating standpoint. That's about it. The question then is valuation. What we're seeing in the marketplace, is as follows: we think office would have devalued anyway, if work from home never occurred and we didn't have the pandemic. The reality of it is the investor market is now no longer naive of what it takes to recruit a tenant or keep a tenant. You would've had valuations based on cash flow, going forward in any event, which in and of itself is a 25% diminution, generally speaking, across the board in valuations. What we're seeing now, though, is because employers want a great work environment, and a great experience for their employees, the top 15% of the inventory in office is dramatically outperforming. Highest rents that we've seen signed ever. Occupancy is pre-leasing, all that sort of thing. They're in unbelievable demand. The next 35% of the inventory, ±, is at a devaluation of, depending upon where you are, 25% to maybe 20%-50%. The bottom half of the inventory, which are obsolete or very, very old, dysfunctional type buildings, we're not quite sure how to value that for a host of reasons. In terms of all of the... Willy made a comment at the Milken Institute, and I think it was spot on. You're gonna have... What we're seeing as distress, both from a loan sale activity or anything else, is predominantly centered in the office environment for a host of reasons. It's not a systemic risk for another host of reasons, as Willy stated. I do think that that is the one area that you will see some distress, and we have opportunistic capital that is now coming in to take advantage of it, given some of these narratives that I just mentioned on tailwinds of people coming back to work. Sorry to take so long, but it's a, it's a complex topic, but one that has been misunderstood, I think, in the investor universe. Jade, if I can jump in behind Mark on that. I would just echo what both Chris and Mark have said as it relates to back to office. All four of our firms have unfortunately had to do reduction in forces in 2022 in some instances, in 2023 in others. We had to do one a month ago. I will tell you, office usage and occupancy at Walker & Dunlop is up significantly since we did that action. The labor markets have been such that if we had tried to get people back into the office a year ago, Mark or Chris or Jeff could sit there and say, "Hey, you don't like the policy at Walker & Dunlop? Come across the street and we've got a. You know, you can work flexibly here." Today, everyone's putting that requirement on their people. Mark built one of the best cultures of any company in our industry at HFF. How did he build that? By having these incredible people in the office, training them day-to-day to learn from the other bankers and brokers at HFF. That's what creates real value in our industry, is those personal relationships, and we're seeing it right now. The tide has clearly changed, and Chris started this conversation by saying this at the top. It's, it-- I don't know that it's gonna come back to anything what it always used to be. I just had knee surgery and I was out in our L.A. office three weeks ago and I said to them, "I'm not gonna be in the office on Monday," and I'm really happy. I got Zoomed to not go into the office on Monday so I can recover from my knee surgery. That's great. It's flexibility, whatever. The point being is that we've gotta get back to a default to the office and not a default to home, and I think more leaders across the country are pushing for that right now, and I think we will see a dramatic change there. The final thing I'd say is in Chicago yesterday, I had an investor who sat there and said, "You go half a mile that way and there is a whole street of office buildings in Chicago that you can't get a bid on. You go half a mile to the right and there's a street that we're selling the highest per square foot rents we've ever seen for office in Chicago." As real estate people, we hear that and say, "That makes sense." A lot of people are trying to draw a broad brush over all office and say it's all dead, and that's just not the case. Thank you. Jade, I might just plant a seed that. Yeah, go ahead, please. ... the other things that we're gonna have to resolve irrespective of the cost of TIs and commissions and all the things to keep these buildings full, you've got people or you've got entities that are challenged with at an individual asset level, the question is, can they be a good counterparty because they're not sure they're gonna own it in a year or two years? A lot of that goes back to how much real pressure the regulator's gonna put on these banks. Is there going to be a pretend and extend keep these people alive? On top of that, in many of these big markets, you've got other forces at work that are gonna eat capital, including, you know, carbon emissions and all the things that you try to work towards ESG environments that I think unless we have some sort of government intervention, it's gonna make the office space problem worse in some respects. You'll see a lot more blend and extends in maybe in place because people can't get the capital to move properly. The interesting thing, and every one of us is doing this, you're in places like San Francisco, D.C., New York, Seattle, pick four or five cities, and if we're there regularly and you see the street traffic, they're all, with the exception of D.C., where the federal government I think has really gotta come in and say, "Get their employees back to work," in each of these major cities, there are more people on the streets, there are more people in the offices. You know, we've probably all been in to see JPMorgan. They cut their space by 20%, and if you go on every single floor that they've got at 277 Park, there are not enough seats. You know, as that starts to permeate, and these people live in communities, I think you're, we're gonna be pleasantly surprised about a return to productivity. Because we've also started to see as people work remotely, controlling not only their productivity, but their quality is very difficult. The risk around bad execution on quality and bad supervision, I think is heightened. Well, thanks very much. We're at the end of our time. Does anyone have any final comments? Otherwise, we can leave it at that. I think this panel's been great and really a pleasure to have together. Privilege for me to be able to moderate this panel. Thanks so much. Thanks, Jade. Appreciate it, Jade.