📍 Where AI growth is reshaping CRE demand

👋 Hello, Best Ever readers!

In today’s newsletter, AI markets emerge, rental fees evolve, migration slumps, FIFA checks out, and much more.

Today's edition is presented by Real Estate Alpha. Most real estate investors don't think about where they sit in the capital stack until something goes wrong. Real Estate Alpha puts you above the operators. See why investors are allocating to this structure. Learn more today.

📅 Join us April 2 at 1 pm ET for a free webinar: Unlocking the Full Potential of IRA Investors for Real Estate Capital Raises. Learn how to access a powerful pool of capital and confidently raise funds from retirement investors. Register now.

Let’s CRE!

🗞️ NO-FLUFF NEWS
CRE HEADLINES

🏠 Fees Reformed: More than 30 rental fee laws enacted since 2019 have capped application costs as low as $10, banned broker fees in Boston and New York City, and required landlords to pay interest on security deposits.

📈 Rate Hike?: Markets have repriced the odds of a Fed rate hike to 45% as core PCE holds at 3.1%, oil tops $116 a barrel, and the probability of a cut this year has fallen from 72% to 37%.

🏢 Office Fractures: Regional office distress is deepening as Northeastern markets push aging buildings toward residential conversion, exposing developers to environmental compliance gaps, while layered debt structures drive more properties to receivership and fuel landlord-tenant disputes.

📉 Construction Cools: Private nonresidential construction spending has fallen for four straight months and is now down 8% from its December 2023 peak, with manufacturing starts dropping 15% YoY as CHIPS Act megaprojects wind down.

🏗️ Starting Up: Multifamily built-for-rent starts rose 18% YoY in Q4 2025 to 91,000 units, pushing the rental share of total multifamily starts to 95% — near historic highs — as condo starts remain flat.

🏆 TOP STORY
WHERE AI GROWTH IS RESHAPING CRE DEMAND

For decades, tech job growth meant San Francisco or Seattle. Artificial intelligence is changing that calculus, pulling talent and capital into a second tier of emerging markets that combine lower costs with deepening infrastructure — and a new analysis of more than 300 U.S. metros maps exactly where that shift is landing.

Markets with deepening AI labor pools generate sustained demand for office, coworking, and data center space — and the emerging tier, where costs are lower and growth is accelerating, may offer compelling entry points before institutional capital fully arrives.

🏙️ Large Metros

• New York leads all U.S. markets in hiring volume, adding 15,018 new AI-native roles across finance, media, and enterprise tech.

• San Jose commands the highest average salaries at $216,000 and the deepest talent concentration — more than six times the national average.

• Dallas–Fort Worth ranks as the most cost-efficient large market, with $128,000 average salaries, costs just 3% above average, and 316 coworking locations.

🌆 Mid-Sized Metros

• Fayetteville, AR, leads this tier with 1,054 new AI postings, 70% fiber coverage, and costs well below the national average.

• Huntsville, AL, posts AI role concentration nearly five times the national average, driven by its aerospace and defense base.

• Durham–Chapel Hill, NC, has added more than 500 AI jobs with average salaries of $127,732 and AI roles more than twice as concentrated as the national rate.

🏘️ Small Metros

• Boulder, CO leads with 416 new jobs, $177,851 average salaries — the highest in this tier — and AI concentration more than three times the national rate.

• Princeton, NJ, tops all small metros in raw hiring with 685 new postings and strong career mobility from its proximity to New York.

• Ann Arbor, MI, rounds out the top three, adding 420 jobs with average salaries above $119,000 and living costs just below the national average.

The common thread across all three tiers is infrastructure. Fiber coverage, coworking density, and proximity to research institutions are consistent predictors of where AI hiring is taking hold — and where CRE demand is likely to follow. Markets like Huntsville, Fayetteville, and Durham–Chapel Hill are building the underlying conditions for sustained growth at a fraction of the cost of coastal alternatives.

THE BOTTOM LINE

AI job growth is no longer a coastal story. Emerging metros are accumulating the talent, infrastructure, and cost advantages that historically precede real estate demand cycles — and the window to get ahead of that curve is narrowing.

🤝 TOGETHER WITH REAL ESTATE ALPHA
GET PAID BEFORE THE OPERATORS DO.

In any real estate investment, your position in the capital stack determines who gets paid first, and who absorbs losses when things go sideways.

Most syndication LPs sit at the bottom. Last to be paid, first to take the hit.

Real Estate Alpha changes that with their preferred equity structure. You sit directly below the lender and above common equity, including the operators themselves. Before the operators collect a single dollar of profit, every preferred equity investor has been paid in full.

And if the portfolio faces stress? The operators carry $32.5M in equity (~43% of a $75M portfolio) that absorbs any losses before your capital is ever touched.

Here's the structure that won Pitch Slam 2026:

✅ Protected by Entire Portfolio - Backed by the equity and cash flow of a $75M+ multifamily portfolio ($32.5M operator equity protection, $700,000+/mo cashflow).

✅ 12% Fixed (15-19% Effective) - 12% fixed annual return, tax deferral for 8+ years, 15-19% effective yield. More cash in your pocket, without the additional risk.

✅ 90-Day Liquidity After Year 1 - No long-term lockups. Need your capital back? 90 days' notice and it's yours.

✅ Preferred Equity Position - You get paid before the operators do.

✅ 10-Year Track Record, 0 Missed Payments - Paid every December 31st, zero misses since day one.

Click the link below for full details and to book a 15-minute discovery call. No pitch, just a real conversation to see if it aligns with your investment strategy. 

This investment round is almost full and closing soon. Accredited investors only.

💰 CRE BY THE NUMBERS
INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, FIFA CHECKS OUT, AND MORE

🌎 1.3 Million 

Net international migration fell to 1.3 million in 2025, according to RealPage, down from a peak of 2.7 million the year prior, pushing U.S. population growth to its slowest pace since 2021. The Census Bureau projects migration will fall further to 321,000 in 2026 — potentially the lowest in more than 50 years.

🏨 2,000 Rooms 

FIFA has canceled hotel room blocks across all U.S. World Cup host cities, releasing 2,000 of 10,000 previously booked rooms in Philadelphia and 800 of 2,000 in Mexico City. The pullback stems from inflated booking estimates made two to three years ago, with demand trailing early projections across host markets.

🏦 $278 Billion 

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's combined retained mortgage-backed securities portfolios have climbed from $158 billion in late 2022 to $278 billion as of January 2026, following a directive to purchase $200 billion in MBS to stabilize mortgage rates amid widening spreads and elevated Treasury yields.

📉 4.08% 

The Dow Jones Equity All REIT Index closed the week ended March 20 down 4.08%, marking three consecutive weeks of declines. Self-storage led sector losses at 7.93%, while Service Properties Trust recorded the steepest individual drop among major REITs at 13.94%.

📩 YOU’RE INVITED
ARE YOU LEAVING IRA CAPITAL ON THE TABLE?

Most real estate sponsors overlook retirement accounts when raising capital — not because the money isn't there, but because the process feels complicated. It doesn't have to be.

📅 Join us and Equity Trust Directors Kelsey Dineen and Matt Calhoun on Thursday, April 2, at 1 PM ET for a free webinar on unlocking retirement accounts as a powerful source of deal capital.

In this session, you'll learn how to:

• Tap into Traditional & Roth IRAs, SEP/SIMPLE IRAs, and HSAs

• Accept IRA investments in your syndications and funds

• Expand your investor pool with capital many sponsors overlook

• Simplify the process with Equity Trust as your custodian

Can’t make it to the live event? Register anyway, and we’ll send you the replay.

🎙️ THE BEST EVER CRE SHOW
A FIELD STUDY ON BUILDING YOUR INVESTOR LIST

Ninety percent of capital raisers have a list problem, not a product problem. On the Best Ever CRE Show this week, Richard McGirr explained why, and the answer almost always comes down to the same missing piece: a lead magnet that actually works.

A lead magnet isn't a PDF. The bar is higher. It's a tool, resource, or piece of content that solves a specific problem for exactly the right person and creates a direct on-ramp to your product. 

Richard built a software application that helps single-family landlords model portfolio cash flow, targeting the type of person who has three to eight properties and $2 million to $5 million in equity sitting largely idle. The app does the qualifying. By the time someone signs up, they're already primed for the pitch.

From there, the path to a closed investor runs through three stages — and most capital raisers are stumbling at all three:

• The Earned-Before-Paid Rule: Don't spend money on media until you've proven your funnel works organically. Richard's test: Go on a podcast with a lead magnet ready. If listeners are not converting to subscribers, the funnel is broken, and paying to send more people into it only accelerates losses. He burned $60,000 learning this before his paid webinar strategy started working.

• The Training Frame: A drip campaign isn't just nurture — it's training. The goal is to align prospective LPs on how you evaluate deals before you ever have one to show them. Send case studies, break objections, explain your underwriting markers. By the time you call, they're evaluating your next deal using your own criteria. You're writing your own test.

• The Discovery Call: Nobody wires money without a conversation. Open with "I don't have a deal right now" — it removes pressure and raises your status simultaneously. Then ask why they want to invest, and keep asking until you get to the real answer. Nobody invests in apartments to own an apartment building. Get to what the cash flow is actually for, and they'll sell themselves.

Richard's point is that sequence matters as much as any individual tactic. Earned media feeds the lead magnet. The lead magnet feeds the list. The list feeds the drip. The drip feeds the call. Skip a step and the whole chain breaks.

🎙️ Listen to Richard’s full episode here.