The phrase “Only connect…” is the epigraph of the 1910 novel Howards End by the British novelist, E.M. Forster. This book stands in a peculiar place in my educational history and, I suppose, in my personal development. So, to begin, a brief biographical story.

In the summer of 1968 I intended to take a course in “Post-War European Fiction” at Brooklyn College. (The “war” in question, of course, was World War II.) I had plenty of time between the close of the spring term at Cathedral College, the seminary I was attending, before the summer term began, so I grabbed all the books in the syllabus and read them. Hey - they were novels, and this wasn’t a heavy lift!

No good deed goes unpunished, as my wife would later tell me. When I showed up to register at Brooklyn College, the European Fiction course was closed out. So I did a quick scan of what other literature courses were available and wound up with “20th Century British Novels”, which included Howards End.

What I didn’t know when I signed up was something I discovered the first day of class. There were 18 students in the course, and 17 were women. Now THAT was an educational experience for a 19-year-old seminarian, I can assure you!

However, it wasn’t literature that was my primary reason for heading for summer classes that year. I knew I had a required Economics course coming up in the Fall term back at Cathedral, and the word was that the Eco professor was a terrible bore. So I was looking to avoid a bad experience more than seek out a good one. But that Economics 101 course at Brooklyn College was tremendous. It was taught by a Wall Street guy, an adjunct professor with a practical bent who could relate Samuelson’s textbook to events in the world. I was hooked —- in a way I wouldn’t realize for more than a decade.

My reason for these reflections are the ways that life experiences connect over time, and the ways that seemingly disparate disciplines weave together in the way of the world. It is my experience of the mythic Ariadne’s Thread, solving a problem by multiple means, sometimes backtracking if necessary, making choices among alternatives, and having the courage to abandon dead-end paths to strike out in more promising directions.

The immediate impetus for this blog post is the uploading of two new bits of content to the website.

The 1988 Landauer Real Estate Market Forecast on the Consulting/Landauer page, and
A pdf of the notes pages of a presentation I gave to the Real Professionals Network on January 21, 2021. That’s under Economic Analysis/Data and Trends

The Landauer Forecast, naturally, comes to mind as part of my professional path, which diverged in unexpected ways from those I envisioned during my seminary years. However, in that divergence, there is more connection that some might imagine. I’ve left very few of my experiences behind, but draw on all sorts of learning in dealing with the many choices life, the economy, and the real estate business lay out before us all.

The 1988 Forecast reminds me of one of my great limitations. When Madelyne Kirch of the graphic design firm J.P. Lohman told me that the color palette for the publication was going to be “taupe and teal”, I was totally at a loss. I had to confess that I was an “eight Crayola guy” and had no idea what Taupe and Teal were as colors. Instead of fighting it, though, I had to trust professional judgment that was beyond my ken (and maybe learn something new).

The very cover of this edition speaks to the connection of established ways and new perspectives. There is a brown triangle at the base of the cover - a brown that was dubbed “Landauer Brown” at the firm (see the 1984-1986 Forecasts on this website). This was literally the firm’s signature color, as we signed our reports using brown felt-tipped pens. But then there is a taupe background color, an oriental looking calligraphy swoosh (first used in the 1987 edition), and a teal circle that suggested the rising sun of the Japanese flag (which, yes, is red - I know). Not for nothing was this the first of the Landauer publications to be issued in a Japanese translation.

As in the previous year, John White contributed strategic commentary - still worth reading, in my opinion, as he makes numerous points of perennial value. It’s interesting to note that he wrote “Even the most provincial of investors will be strategically better off if they monitor the economy and relate this to their own real estate. Wall Street seems very remote to much of the country, but believe me, it is a mirror of global economic thinking. This monitoring process plus patience and coolness will bring their own rewards.”

Of further note is the contrast of this perspective to John B. Bailey’s introductory letter to the Forecast which places a different emphasis, “real estate remains a parochial product.” The diversity of opinion within the firm was part of its intellectual ferment, and I sought to capitalize on this by inviting the heads of each of Landauer’s regional offices and major divisions to contribute “sidebar” commentaries to the publication. The variety of perspectives truly helped ground the forecast empirically.

Yet it fell to me to capsulize the firm’s point of view in a new section, “What to Watch For in 1988.” For today’s real estate students and junior executives, this may serve as an object lesson in the strength of collaborative effort as well as employing a “managing upward” approach within an organization. “Only connect…”

That commitment to “connection” is, I hope, apparent in the January 2021 presentation I made on Tuesday to the Real Professionals Network. (Whoops! I just noticed I put the wrong date on the title slide…. ). Some of these slides I re-used from the Miami CREW presentation of January 12th, but the thrust of my theme “We stand in a new era” was original for RPN. {This is also the third quarterly joint economic presentation I’ve made for RPN with JLL’s chief economist, Ryan Severino.}

**The connection is not only the detailed linkages between economics and real estate (as the Landauer Forecasts underscore), but the connection of each to the broader society.**

The introductory slide asked the audience to reflect on context and foundations, and reminded them that the Framers of the Constitution and their generation bequeathed us an extraordinary legacy by considering both. One of the audience, Emil Malizia of North Carolina, later asked me to elaborate on a reference I made to John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Aristotle. Here’s some of my thoughts on that, which I shared with Emil.

Locke's reference to "life, liberty, and property" is from his Second Treatise on Government, and was well known to the Virginian delegates to the Continental Congress, including George Mason as well as Jefferson. Mason was important in many ways, including being a key drafter of "The Virginia Declaration of Rights," which specifically held that fundamental human rights included " "the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."

Clearly Jefferson was fully aware of Mason's enumeration, but chose not to adopt it wholesale. Why? It seems that he (Jefferson) was already conflicted by the moral weight of human property (i.e., slaves) and in the bill of indictment which was the Declaration of Independence did not want to provide the apologists for George III with the advantage of "whataboutism" (You say you are suing for "liberty" but what about your own slaves???).

There could also be a deeper move on Jefferson's part: a conviction that happiness is connected to "the moral sense." (See Garry Wills' book Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Joseph Ellis' The American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson.) This idea of happiness as rooted in moral uprightness was a key concept in the Scottish Enlightenment, in figures such as Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith. Smith's The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, and was likely unknown to the delegates to the Congress in Philadelphia drafting the Declaration of Independence. But Smith's earlier (1759) work The Theory of Moral Sentiments would certainly count as part of the intellectual framework of the founding fathers.

What is the reason for connecting to Aristotle? Hannah Arendt argues persuasively in her On Revolution that the Declaration and the Constitution can hardly be understood without an awareness of how steeped in classical education the founders were. In fact, she argues that it was that classical balancing of liberties and the law that distinguished the American Revolution's success from the later, and less successful French Revolution.

Here's where I find a powerful connection from "the pursuit of happiness" through the concept of "moral sense" back to Aristotle. In Book Ten of the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle summarizes his idea that happiness (eudaemonia) is connected with virtue (arete). He further recognizes that happiness does have a relationship with a certain level of material well-being, but is not entirely coincident with material prosperity (part of his argument for moderation in all things, which the Romans adopted in the phrase "in medias res stat virtu").

Here's a brief quote for you from Ethics, X: "Happiness stands in need of external accessories to but a small extent, less than the happiness founded on moral goodness.... a man and member of society will choose to act on moral grounds [even] as a human being he will have need of external goods to permit him to live on a human level."

To me, this last idea - certainly known to Jefferson - would be a profound cause of the cognitive dissonance which anyone reflecting on slavery would experience, since slaves themselves might have the "moral sense basis" for happiness, but would not have the "moderate material well-being" foundation. The Declaration's bill of indictment of George III stressed how England's oppression violated colonial rights by restricting liberty in material ways. Jefferson could argue consistently that this impeded the "pursuit of happiness" while sidelining the "property" argument invoking slavery, that has a much weaker moral basis. England had formally ended slavery in 1772 - something the Virginia planters were definitely NOT on board with!

In an age of 24-hour news cycles that are dominated by passing events of dubious consequence, keeping aware of context and foundations - yes, of “connections” - has proven invaluable to me as a thinker and a doer. I recommend it.

Only connect... (rev. 1-24-21)

The phrase “Only connect…” is the epigraph of the 1910 novel Howards End by the British novelist, E.M. Forster. This book stands in a peculiar place in my educational history and, I suppose, in my personal development. So, to begin, a brief biographical story.

What I didn’t know when I signed up was something I discovered the first day of class. There were 18 students in the course, and 17 were women. Now THAT was an educational experience for a 19-year-old seminarian, I can assure you!

The immediate impetus for this blog post is the uploading of two new bits of content to the website.

The 1988 Landauer Real Estate Market Forecast on the Consulting/Landauer page, and

A pdf of the notes pages of a presentation I gave to the Real Professionals Network on January 21, 2021. That’s under Economic Analysis/Data and Trends

**The connection is not only the detailed linkages between economics and real estate (as the Landauer Forecasts underscore), but the connection of each to the broader society.**

In an age of 24-hour news cycles that are dominated by passing events of dubious consequence, keeping aware of context and foundations - yes, of “connections” - has proven invaluable to me as a thinker and a doer. I recommend it.

Archival material added and to come

With the investment community avoiding real estate with the icy disposition of a spurned lover, the early 1990s may seem to be the wrong time to bring up the subject of a long-term commitment.

Now, as 2020 (thankfully) elides into 2021 and real estate transaction activity has been cut about in half since 2019, I believe this contrarian perspective may again be useful to the investment community.