Sam Zell was one of America’s mightiest property tycoons. Where would he have looked to build his fortune today?
He danced on more graves after Black Monday in October 1987. With rents and occupancy rates falling, indebted property owners needed money, and turned to capital markets. He created a fund with Merrill Lynch, an investment bank, that raised capital from investors to buy distressed properties. Such real-estate investment trusts , which own, run or finance properties, date back to the 1960s.
Mr Zell was born to Polish-Jewish parents who narrowly escaped the Holocaust. He got his start in business early, buyingmagazines in downtown Chicago, where he went to Hebrew school, for 50 cents and selling them to classmates in the suburb where he lived for $3. He wore jeans to work long before office-casual was a thing, and took motorcycle-riding trips around the world with a group of friends, “Zell’s Angels”. He explained his business philosophy as “If it ain’t fun, we don’t do it.
Where would a young Mr Zell look to build his fortune today? Stephanie Wright of New York University thinks that, given his preference for easy-to-understand markets with limited competition, outdoor storage facilities could pique his interest. They are big but employ few people, meaning cities dislike them and limit their growth, even though demand remains robust. The same goes for parks of prefabricated homes, the business of the first company Mr Zell ever took public, in 1993.
Conventional wisdom argues for staying away from the office and retail assets that helped make Mr Zell a billionaire. American malls have long been written off for dead, bricks and mortar deemed to be no match for e-commerce. In the era of remote and hybrid work, leasing activity is slowing across most big American cities even as employment continues to rise, according to, a property manager. Office-vacancy rates are increasing—to 17.
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