Dennis Lopez | QuadReal Property Group’s CEO

In the last three years, on a gross basis, we have invested about $29 billion in both that and equity. We were able to do that without a lot of new capital because we were able to manage the capital we had very well. And frankly, that was due to the technology that we had put in place early on. Hello, and thanks for tuning in to Real Estate Capital. I'm your host, Nancy Lushin of Park Medicine Partners. Capital is a lifeblood of the real estate industry, but the decisions on where and how it's allocated are driven by people and personalities. Who are they? What motivates them? What can we learn from their experiences? On this show, we introduce you to some of the real estate industries' most influential thought leaders and decision makers. And we talk about what is important to them, how they make critical decisions, who has influenced them, and a lot more. Today, we're revisiting one of my favorite episodes in the last two years, a conversation with Dennis Lopez, CEO of Quadreel Property Group. We recorded this episode in January 2025, but with the rise of interest in platform investing and property, this conversation feels more relevant than ever. So let's do a quick refresh on Quadreel, created in 2016. Quadreel serves as the real estate investment arm of the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation. Dennis joined in 2017 and shifted its core investment approach to platform building. Under his leadership quadreel more than quadruple the assets under management to $98 billion, investments span Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia. Dennis has over 30 years of global experience with prior leadership roles at Axa Investment Managers, Sun Real Estate Group, and JP Morgan. In this episode, we discussed how to identify and build strong real estate platforms. How investment and crop tech has helped them for a manage extraordinary growth without dramatically expanding its workforce. The development, power, and financing dynamics driving the data center boom, and the role institutional capital can play in affordable housing. Here's my conversation with Dennis Lopez. Dennis, it's great to have you on the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. Well, thanks for having me, Nancy. Really appreciate it. And it's nice to see you too. It's been a while. It's been a while. Well, I guess it's amazing. I feel like I've known you my whole career just about. I think you were your young whipper stepper at JP Morgan when we first met. I think I was at the O'Connor Group. And you've gone on to great things. Maybe just to share with the audience a little bit about your career path and kind of how you got from JP Morgan to quadreel where you are today. Sure. Well, I got to JP Morgan back in the early 80s after getting out of the business school program at UCLA and definitely wanted to go live on the East Coast. And it was great to be in New York and get a chance to work with companies like yours at that time. It was O'Connor and many other ones. And then an opportunity came up after a few years to go over to Europe. The concept of real estate investment banking was kind of just kicking off and it had been successful in the US. And JP Morgan wanted to build a team in Europe. So I got sent over to do that, which was great. Did that for about eight years. And it was really, you know, it was great too to kind of get a sense of how real estate operates. Not just in different markets, but in different countries and how different people think about it. After that, then decided that I'd been on the sell side or the advisory side long enough. So one to get on the buy side had an opportunity to join a hedge fund that had been started by a couple of guys out of Goldman Sachs called Cambridge Place. And they wanted someone to kind of build a real estate equity business for them. They were deck guys and they were doing CMBS and RMBS. So did that for a few years. And then the bricks got really popular, you know, Brazil, Russia, India, China. And investing in emerging markets became a tremendous opportunity. So got a chance to go work for a high net worth Indian family running their real estate businesses in Russia and India. And adapt for a few years. Wow. Did you stay in London or did you move to India? I stayed in London. But I would commute to India. I'd be there at least two times, sometimes three times a month in Russia, usually once every month or two. Wow. So a lot of traveling. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it was really different. I mean, we'll save it for another podcast. Some of the stories of operating in Russia, you know, post claps of the USSR. And, you know, it was really kind of we can talk about podcasts about the Russia fund that we raised here at Park Madison, which we generally don't talk about very much. Yes, we don't want to talk about investments in Russia. But anyway, it was, you know, obviously you have to learn somewhere, right? That's exactly right. You know, that was a definite learning experience. And it was also a good experience to for just understanding how investing in emerging markets really works and what it takes to make it work. So after that, that was about a good seven plus eight years of very entrepreneurial activity, then got an opportunity to go become CIO of OXA's real asset business. So that was not just real estate equity and real estate debt, but morphed into also infrastructures, well, too. So the opportunity there was to take what was a very large European business and grow it into a global business. So that was a great opportunity and did that for about eight years, too. And did you live in Paris when you did that? No, it was commuting once again from I had an office in London, an office in New York, and I kind of spent time in both. But I spent a ton of time in Paris. I mean, I've probably been to Paris over 100 times or something like that. And that was great, too, because at least especially when they first hired me, I was the only American, you know, working in the firm as a huge firm. They had at the time, I joined probably around 60 billion of euros of assets. It grew up to over 105, something like that. So it was really interesting, you know, working in 100% non-American, non-English speaking culture. And then after doing that, I didn't ask you how your French is, but it is not good. It felt very embarrassing actually. It's so hard, isn't it? Well, even if you learn a little bit, you're never going to be good enough. And it's pretty hard to do that, especially when you got a job. And you're the boss? Well, I was the CIO. So it was quite the boss, but close. But anyway, it was always a bit, you know, you kind of sit in a meeting, you're in Paris and a lot of defiance. Yeah, 30 people around the meeting and all the documents are in English and everybody's speaking English for you. You kind of think, okay, what's the problem here? Anyway, though, it's a great experience, learned a lot, great company. We did some really, you know, amazing things with the platform. And then the opportunity that I'm working on now is came up where the province of British Columbia wanted to create its own real estate asset management company to invest their capital and also to, as we built the platform, invest other people's capital as well, other institutions. So that I joined in June of 17. And that's what I've been doing since then. And it's been a really tremendous experience and great opportunity. Yeah, well, it's been an incredible growth trend that you've started there. So quadri-l was a startup, essentially, when you joined in 2017. And how, what's the assets under management today? Yeah, it was a startup from scratch. So basically, the assets of the pension fund of the province BCI were managed by third parties. Those contracts were terminated and the transition was put in place where about 21 billion, and I'll talk in Canadian dollars all the time you guys can put the exchange rate in. So we started off with about 21 billion of assets and then we hired 1200 people to manage those assets. 90% of the assets were in Canada. And the mandate was to not only do the asset management ourselves, but also to expand the portfolio to be global. So, you know, fast forward to, you know, the end of 24, we're now up to 89 billion of assets and have operations around the world, office in Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, New York, LA, and then Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, which is our headquarters. So we've merged in a debt business. So we have an active debt program about 11 billion of that is debt. We're focused on North America and we've done some public equities, not a lot, but a little bit. And the platform has really developed around the philosophy of doing it yourself. So we have nine operating platforms now focused on markets and sectors of high conviction. And if you take those platforms into place, we have 2,900 people now working for us. Wow. So much done pack there. But sort of big picture, you think about the Canadian all the Canadian provinces of which they're, I guess they're seven. The big, you know, you think about Ontario, had Oxford and Quebec, had Ivanhoe Cambridge. Was that, was that the model that you were looking to pursue when you started quadril or is there a slightly different variation on that model? Yeah, the Canadian model, generally, it's not just for real estate, but it's for other asset categories too. It's very much a model that is much more focused on doing it yourself or building your own platforms. They do obviously use partners and that's an important part of the platform strategy too, but you know, the things that they feel comfortable with doing in-house, they bring in-house. So definitely that was our strategy. In fact, I think we've probably taken that to the extreme and that easily over 80% of our assets now are in platforms that we own or have a significant ownership interest in. And, you know, that was the plan. You know, in some respects, one of the motivations was just you're paying away lots of fees and if you set up your own company, you don't have to do that. But I think even more than that, it's control, performance, alignment of interest. There's many things that I think personally are, well, saving fees is important or probably even more important, which is performance. That's what really is the most important factor. So that was kind of the philosophy behind it. To give you a sense of, you know, some of the numbers, it costs just under 200 million to set up quadril. We've dividended back in the first seven years, 500 million. And the management company, which we created from scratch, which made $14 million the first year, is now worth about a billion dollars. So it's been a good investment for the province. If you do the IR and that, it comes out to about 37% the multiple seven and there's two. It's better than most real estate deals. Yeah, it's improved the portfolio return. Let me say that. So no, it's been, it's been a success from that front. It's also been a success to improving performance. The performance before quadril was good, but relative to our peers, you know, frankly, it was underperforming and since we've been able to form quadril, we've been able to do very well based on our peers and benchmarks and other measurements of success. So, so far so good. It sounds amazing. When you buy into a platform, how do you keep the entrepreneurial spirit at that platform? Well, we only buy into platforms that have a demand outlook. It's very long term. So, you know, even in the market today, there's strategies that, you know, you can make money. Let's take like office to resi development, something like that. So, you convert an office building to residential. I mean, you can make a lot of money out. That's a good strategy, but it's kind of like, you know, it's relatively short term, maybe three or four years, something like that. We're more focused on markets and sectors where it's just the demand is extremely long term that you think I can't see in the next decade or more where we're still not going to need this product. So, what are ideas of that? Well, right now, super hot data centers would be one of those. The growth of data is massive and will continue to be that way. We, one of our first investments in platforms was a data center company. So, we've been building and operating data centers since, you know, late 18 or early 19. And it's just been, you know, that concept of very long term growth was what kind of got us interested in the sector. I had done some of that before in Texas, so it wasn't actually new. Affordable housing is another one where I don't see the solution to that problem for many, many, many years. So, that's why we really love living in a lot of different aspects of that. It could be condos, multi-family, manufactured housing. So, that's kind of the way we think about it. So, the platforms we have established have a very long-term outlook. So, when we make those investments, you know, we think we can grow the platform. So, we're going in to take a company to a completely different level and think that that will be a company that will have an interest in very long term. You mentioned data centers, which obviously is very hot. We're here we are at the beginning of 2025. What did you see five years ago or more that allowed you to get into it so early? Well, like I said, when I was at Oxford, we bought a data center company. We're building data centers in Paris, in Milan, and in Switzerland. So, had the opportunity there to kind of get a sense of the sector. But I'd say really what it was, it was this concept of like, what are demand? Well, where's demand that, you know, isn't just going to be short-term, but it's going to be very long-term. And also, too, frankly, that you don't have technological factors impacting you as much. So, you know, we have been kind of not participants in retail, sorry, based on your early-year-old counter days. But we have not done retail the last 18 years here at Park Madison, but not because we don't like the sector. It's just been such a challenging sector to invest in. Well, you know, so just on that, so just take retail, we thought, well, you know, the department stores are changing dramatically. You can repurpose the space, but that's a lot of CapEx, so that's going to impact your return. So, we don't like that. And then there's this thing called e-commerce, you know, and you know, it's kind of small, but we think it's got good trajectory. So, I just kind of made us think that, okay, retail's not going away, but is this going to be the strongest demand area of real estate for the next decade? And we didn't think that was the case. Data centers are just the opposite. You know, we kind of think, okay, the cloud is expanding rapidly. E-commerce is coming. You know, they're talking about things like driverless cars. Well, that's going to take a lot of data. It seems like everybody's got iPhones now and it's taking tons of photos. That takes a lot of data. They're talking about virtual reality. So, all these things, when you kind of pile them up, and then frankly, you look at, you do, we did a lot of research on it and saw that the growth of data is going to be massive for as long as you can see. And then you really study what it takes to put the internet in place. You know, if I brought the cables, cell towers, satellites, and you kind of see that, well, the data centers is kind of the heart. It's the center of the internet. So, we don't think it's going anywhere. In fact, if anything, it's just going to get more and more important in our lives. So, that's why we like the sector. That's why we like the specific property type. And then all of a sudden, you know, AI comes up and takes all those incredibly strong growth factors and demand factors and just puts it on steroids. And that's kind of what we've experienced in the last couple of years. So, you know, a little bit of luck with AI. We didn't anticipate that. But, you know, it's absolutely the conviction that all these different uses that I just articulated are going to be important in growing for the next decade or more. A question that we get a lot from investors who've just recently started to look at the data center space is, are you better off going into the doing development and then selling to a core buyer? Because what is the long-term residual value? And what's the CAPEX going to look like 15 or 20 years down the road when you're really great tenant, maybe either maybe leaving or technology changes? How do you how do you invest in data centers? How do you think about it from that perspective? Well, along the lines of the way we like to do everything is we very much like to be involved in the development of creation of value. We think that's really important going forward. You know, we've had a period of declining interest rates, declining cap rates for a very long time that have kind of helped everybody out on returns. We don't believe in that scenario going forward. So, therefore, how we can outperform, we have to do operations and we have to create value and that's through development and running things. So, in terms of the technological obsolescence of data centers, well, first off, you know, we don't own those elements of the property that have the high technological obsolescence. In other words, we own the building, we own the cooling, we own the generators. A lot of times we'll build the substation. You know, all of this is technology that's been in place for decades and it's not going to change. The servers inside the data halls are owned by the tenants and those are the pieces of equipment that have a relatively short life three to five years or whatever and those are the pieces of equipment too that will be subject to, you know, technological change. And also too, remember, we're not selling square feet, we're selling power. So, even with these changes to the technology in the building, which we don't own, they're most likely still going to require power. And if you think about it now, the real constraint, and as you know, is real estate investors are always looking for constraints to supply when you have strong demand. So, the real constraint to supply now is power and solutions to power take a long time. It takes a long time now. not only to build power generation, but the transmission lines. I think probably you and everybody else now have kind of seen enough articles on this to kind of realize that's now becoming the issue of data centers. So if we own a property that has the power, has the transmission lines, has the fiber optic cables is in a geographic location that there's densities so that there's an aggregation of data centers for the users there for talent and for operations. In 15 years, why is that not gonna be attractive? I mean, the cost of the building, but then we'll be depreciated to nothing. So if you believe that there'll be a continued demand for data, which we absolutely do, and it's gonna be significantly greater, I don't think those things aren't gonna be valued meaning the power and the location. Maybe the servers in the data hall will change dramatically, but what we're providing well. Will you generally just have one operating partner for a strategy like this or one platform? In this particular case, we have one platform that we have a significant ownership in, and then we have one platform that we're one of a small group of people who own. So, frankly to find really good operators and really good platforms is hard. And because we started early on it, we were able to get in to two platforms that we have really high conviction on. They're operating very well and creating value not just buying stabilized properties. And as you know, right now to do that is pretty expensive and hard to find. So, but typically, yeah, I think for a sector, we would only want one or two platforms 'cause we don't want to compete against ourselves. If they're in different markets, then that's fine, but if they're in the same market, frankly, usually one's enough. The two that we have, one is more focused on enterprise and hyper scale and the other one's more focused on kind of carrier hotel. So, they don't really compete with each other. Are the return levels the same for hyper scale and carrier hotel in your mind? Well, I mean, you know, the carrier hotels are great, right? I mean, you know, it's a monopoly or at best or worse than oligopoly. So, but there's only a few of those and the ones that are owned aren't trading and if they do trade, they're incredibly expensive. And, you know, it's really hard to build them. So, that strategy is when you have to pick somebody who's kind of already in the game, has the sights. Hyper scale is kind of what's become the flavor of the day, you know, with the big six being driven by AI right now. And those opportunities, you know, there are lots of opportunities right now, but even then, you know, it's kind of become the flavor of the day and there's lots of people who are promoting themselves as developers, but I don't know if they necessarily have the skills or the relationships to be successful. It's going to get more competitive shortly because so much attention has been brought to it. - Have you, how have you found debt for, I mean, these projects are so large that the debt is not easy to find and have you, where have you found the debt and how does the cost of that debt compare to say, you know, debt on some other core real estate assets? - Yeah, actually, we haven't found the debt to be a problem because the tenants are really strong. You're talking about Microsoft Amazon, you know, meta people like that oracle. The banks are happy to lend it to it because the contracts are along the typically 10 to 15 years and because, frankly, the tenant-- - So it lending against the credit of the tenant, basically. - Yeah, it's the credit of the tenant, right? And I mean, the tenants too. If a data center cost a billion, they put in half of it for the servers. So I mean, so every aspect you'd want in terms of the commitment of a tenants there. So we haven't found raising debt capital to be a problem. We found the pricing to be, you know, the base rates we don't like, but the spreads are fine. And then after construction, then, you know, you've, what we're setting up for our stabilized properties is kind of these master trusts where you issue asset back securities off of. And, you know, for that rated paper, there's a lot of appetite for that. So debt really hasn't been a problem. In fact, just the opposite on our lending side, we've been trying to find opportunities to lend today's centers because we're an equity operator. We figured, yeah, let's lend to them too. And it's been pretty competitive in the last 15 to 24 months. So we've done a few, but not as much as we'd like. Potentially that will change just because there's so much supply out there, so much paper to buy, so much debt that maybe you'll start to see some of the lenders get constrained, but we haven't seen that so far. - Well, that they're going forward in 2025, what else are you excited about from a property type perspective? - Well, we're very excited about debt, you know, so I'd say we kind of slow down our equity operations in mid-22, and we've continued, but it's been more on a kind of a selective basis where we could find, you know, opportunities for sectors or markets that we liked. But boy, on the debt side, it's just been great. So we really husbanded our capital and kind of went after the market in late 22, 23, 24 have been great. We've been very focused on sectors of high conviction, basically alternatives, living logistics, and in the portfolio state of fairly high quality, we don't really have any significant problems, so we're not playing defense, we've been playing offense, and the returns have been outstanding. One of the things that's happened to really help the returns is for lack of a better word, the leveraging market or the banks lending to us, to lend money to others. That market now has gotten increasingly attractive where the spreads between what we can borrow and what we can re-lend at are attractive and that helps returns too. So it's a-- - They're lending to you off your balance sheet? - No, off the mortgages that we lend. So it's a, it's secured by the mortgages themselves and not our balance sheet. So that's a really attractive business. The returns, especially on a risk adjusted basis, the returns have been great. High single digits, low double digits, just depending upon kind of how high you wanna go up the capital stack in our loan or how much leverage we wanna put on it. Great business, been really great in 23 and 24, been really great. We'll be really great this year in 25. And it's also impacted too because the banks themselves, the regulation of the banks and the capital charges in particular have been such that they have been a big provider of capital in the past. I think they'll continue to be a big provider, but there's a real opportunity there for the debt funds of which that's what we do. - Mm-hmm. You mentioned living as a place where you've invested a lot of capital and so many have manufactured housing, student housing. What are your thoughts about built to rent, BTR? - That's when sector we haven't participated in. So we've got big platforms and student housing in the US and Australian New Zealand. Little we're working on it in Europe and the UK. We're the largest owner operator developer of manufactured housing in Canada and we're really putting additional effort into that platform to even make it even bigger. And we just finally got a smaller portfolio about some 400 million of manufactured housing in the US to kind of get going on that. So those are all areas of living that we have very high conviction in and have been able to execute. You know, single family rental, we just, you know, we haven't. I don't know that we don't think it's a good sector to be and I just think we have maybe found the right opportunity. I know one thing that's kind of got us focus is just the cat backs. We don't like sectors that have a lot of cat backs. And if you think about it, you know, for multi family, you've got, you know, maybe one row for a lot less cat backs is using if you have a large portfolio, single family home. So the one constant in all the sectors we've gone for is to have as low a cat backs requirement as possible. So that's one of the reasons why we don't do hotels. We haven't done retail and we have to very limited office. All those sectors have very high cat backs just to maintain cash low and not to get a return on it. - Right, right. You've hired so many people or brought in house people so quickly, what if you learned in your, years at quadril about hiring people and then secondarily just building that culture? - Yeah, like, you know, for most of my career, I've been kind of a deal guy. You know, I love to do deals. I like to make investments, first advising people than doing it myself. And then as I kind of progressed in my career, I got more into management positions. And this soft thing called culture, which is so fuzzy, you know, and you hear these things like from, you know, culture each strategy and all that kind of stuff. But it's actually really true. You know, so. - Those darn people have lot to do with how you perform, right? - Yeah, that's right. So the most important thing has been to establish a culture with all these people, a culture of performance, a culture of responsibility. integrity and how you behave. Collaboration, innovation, those are kind of our key phrases. And yeah, that's, I mean, for the success we've had, I'd attribute a very significant part of it to getting the culture right so far. But it's also one of those things too that you can take forever to build it in a nanosecond to lose it. So yeah, so the way that we have managed that growth and manage the firm is by setting up a really strong culture in. And the thing too is you do that. What, I mean, you can't, you read books about it, you bring in the right people, as coaches and advisors, you rely on a management team. How do you do it? So yeah, it's, um, you hire for it. And initially it's hard until you establish the culture to get that right, but we've got it now. So now when we interview people, that's a huge part of, you know, the hiring decision is that they have the right culture, not to be unfairly, but we fire for it too. So, so frankly, you know, we will usually, you know, we can figure it out pretty quick in a year, like, okay, we missed on this one or for whatever reason this person doesn't. So have it. So we, you know, people don't fit in. We don't say you're a bad person. We just go look, you know, the culture isn't the right fit here. So this isn't the right place for you. Now, the reality is when you do that, and we've been around for seven years now, after probably about four or five years, you kind of got it. So those issues within the culture are, um, the minimalist now. So, so yeah, you basically, you hire people, you keep people, and then, and then frankly, you know, at some point, age and stage of your career, you're not going to change so much. But for the younger people who are coming in, you can kind of set the culture, and they, they learn that, and they learn at least why we think that culture is beneficial at our firm, and, and then you can kind of grow it. But it is hard to change people, and we've decided that if, you know, if people don't want to change, that's fine, you know. Would you say the culture is consistent from Tokyo and Hong Kong to Toronto to London, New York? Yeah, absolutely. It is. I mean, one of the probably our biggest cultural values collaboration, and that, um, you know, we, you know, you have a little bit of verticals you need because people have to specialize in, in debt or multi-family or retail, or, you know, we're, I'd just say residential whatever it is. But then we really foster a climate of, you know, everybody needs to work together. And, um, and also we set up our compensation systems that way too. Obviously, everybody gets evaluated at the end of the year, and they're, they're, an element of their compensation is based on their performance, but then another major element of the compensation is the performance of both the management company and the portfolio. Have you, um, incorporate the technology into the, your culture or your day-to-day processes at this point? Yeah, we're trying to. It's really hard. The, the element that prevents rapid uses of technology isn't the technology. It's people. And when you're using, when you implement technology, you're, you're changing the way people do business the way they, the way they operate. And that's the hard part. So you got to get them convinced that, um, that this is a worthwhile change. You got to get them convinced of the time it takes to make the changes is worthwhile. And then after you get it in place, you got to get them convinced to keep using it and to really utilize the technology fully. So adapting technology is really about having the right mindset and right approach to your, your, your, your employees, your staff, your, your colleagues, you know, adapting the culture. I mean, the, the technology and having the culture to do that. So, so like the two areas that we've really focused on in advancing that, yeah, we've got a 60 person IT group, but, and they're very much involved in it, but there's two areas. One is digital buildings and the other one is the classic kind of data analytics. So we started digital buildings right away. So we've been utilizing sensors and technology in our buildings to, to create efficiencies from day one. And that activity is quite advanced. And then in terms of the data from day one, we really start, we set up a data governance group to try and organize it because it's hard to study the data if, if it's just completely disorganized or inaccurate. And then about two and a half years ago now, we put together a data analytics team to start taking our information and studying it and also to bringing in third party information in a way that we can utilize in our investment decisions as well as the way we run our business. So, so you know, we, it's, it's the old walk before you run strategy. So we kind of have been building on it. And we've seen good results, but, um, but you know, the really big results are still in the future. Are you more efficient today? Do you, do you operate with fewer people because of data analytics? Yeah, it's not really fewer people. It's just that we can do more, we can grow to the extent that we've grown without going our base that much. So the base, you know, we've grown, I'd mentioned 2900, but a lot of those, I'd say almost half of those 2900 people are really in the property management side, which is very intensive in student housing and a manufactured housing in particular. So, um, you know, the kind of the base staff that supports it, especially in areas like finance, uh, treasury, haven't grown that much. Uh, and we've obviously, you know, four or four and a half times are AUM in the last seven years. So, and then, and it's also to quality of how we were able to control our organization and manage organization. That really came into play in the last couple of years because it's been hard, you know, the access to capital has been difficult. So we were able to really get on top of every dollar we spent every dollar we raised, every dollar of cash flow, every dollar we borrowed and put in place really very sophisticated detail cash management systems for our debt and equity business that allowed us to have capital because we weren't putting cushions in because we knew exactly what we needed for our projects, going forward for the next 24, 36 months. So, um, so that sort of technology has really helped us. In the last three years, on a gross basis, we have invested about 49 billion in both that and equity. You had mentioned wanting to raise market to invest third-party capital, which I think you currently do, but perhaps that's in your growth plans as well. How do you envision that or am I mispeaking in saying that? No, I mean, right off the bat in 2018. Remember, we kind of got the company going in '17. I joined in '18. I'm '16. The company going formed it and I joined in the middle of '17. In '18, we started talking with RBC about creating a core fund form. In '19, we kicked it off. That core fund today is over $10 billion and we just had all Canadian assets. All Canadian assets, yeah. So, and the capital raising for that vehicle has been very successful. In fact, a couple days ago, I was up in Toronto celebrating our fifth capital race for that. So, um, so that's always been part of the plan. It's not like we're focused on raising third-party capital, but we've now, with the platforms we have in place, we're able to generate a really attractive kind of coherent portfolios around a particular strategy or market and those exceed BCIs capabilities to invest in. We want to keep growing the platforms. You're able to have good people because you have platforms that you can grow and that you have opportunities that attract really strong people. So, um, so it's just it's really more a part of that. So, I think there will be a point in time where we probably get big enough that, you know, instead of raising third-party capital, we'll just kind of continue to to use the existing capital as working capital and constantly reposition properties or sell properties. And just that will be big enough, but you know, we're not there yet. Right. But how does running quadril as a Canadian company make it different than if it was a US company or a European company? I think it's been very satisfying to work for a Canadian company. They have great ethics, great standards. It's, it's a good country, you know, it's run very, it's run well. Their pension fund system is really amazing. You know, whereas, you know, on the states, a pension fund that's funded 100%, I don't think it exists. You know, it seems to be good if there's 70 or 80% funded. A corporate pension fund, but not a public plan, right? Yeah, public, right. Yeah. So, in Canada, they're all over 100%. They're all extremely well-funded. And, um, and, you know, the last couple of years have been rough for everybody, but generally, they've been run very well for the last couple of decades. So it's, um, it's great working for a Canadian company. Yeah. I think you're one of the very few investors who has been active in China in the last few years. Are you continuing to be active in China? No, no. I mean, you know, to be honest, who that's not going to work out very well. So we kind of to dip our toes into that, you know, we put a little bit over a percent and a half into China of our portfolio, you know, picked out some strategies and themes that should have worked really well. I mean, China has the highest ratio of e-commerce over 40% and the lowest ratio of modern distribution facilities in the world. So you kind of go, okay, that's a good basis. But, you know, mainly due to politics, it didn't really work out. You have a lot of company with that experience. Yeah, no, but I mean, it doesn't matter. So, I mean, you know, I think, you know, once again, based on my experience in working in India, we're not investing in India. And we generally avoided, well, we avoided all the emerging markets. The one we thought we would test out was China just because, you know, frankly at that time, all the discussion of China becoming the largest economy in the world and how successful they'd been for the previous decades really made us think, well, we've got to at least test out a few thesises. But then the geopolitical scenarios completely reversed. So, no, so we marked down our portfolio. We sold assets where we could and we will be exiting China, you know, as soon as we can, which is going to be a while. Yeah, yeah. Well, I feel your pain. And we are not alone. I have actually been speaking with some Canadian investors where we're working on a project say in Miami on the coastline and you know, say, well, I have a map here. And, you know, these areas are redlined for me. I cannot invest along the, you know, the waterline in Miami or certain other places that, you know, are viewed to be not as sustainable. How are you thinking about that? Have you read lines, certain areas and give us your views about that? We've been very focused on climate change since we started the company. So we've been through our portfolio several times, identifying properties and loans in markets that are in high risk areas either. It was really initially mostly all floods, mostly, you know, from the ocean, some from rivers, but mostly oceans. And then obviously now it's moved in the last probably year and a half, two years to wildfires, well, too. So, so we've sold over a billion more of properties, 100% just because of those factors, nothing to do with the location or demand or rents or anything like that. So I wouldn't, redline's not the right word. It's just that, you know, we feel we have the entire world to invest in. So why would we invest in a market that has these risks unless we're getting higher returns than we don't? So we don't. So is it flooding from oceans and wildfires? Are there the two things that you feel are the greatest risk for property owners? I think those are the ones that, you know, for the property types that we're interested in and the markets are interested in, those are the greatest risks. So it's just, you know, it's really the ocean rising, which, you know, it's going to have an impact on shorelines. And then it also has an impact that the ocean's rising when you have storms and then wildfires, you know, so those are the biggest ones. And it's not too just the destruction of the property. It's when the insurance companies start raising the rates to a level two that they get, it gets pretty expensive. And it's also when, frankly, other people in the market are concerned about it. So the prices you can get are reflecting, you know, what they think maybe the useful life will be. So we're taping this sadly during the terrible wildfires going on in Los Angeles. You're from Los Angeles. Do you think that just the magnitude of this event and, you know, this happening in the dense urban area, will it change investor views of the market? Do you think for the next foreseeable future? Well, it sits a major event, right? You know, we, I've lived in big cities my whole life, grew up in LA, lived in New York, lived in London, lived in Vancouver now. Notice because the other three, but it's still pretty big. Yeah, you don't think of a fire in a city that goes on for over a week. You know, you think of a building catching fire at worst, maybe a block, but you don't think of what's happening in LA now. This fire has been raging on control for a very long time. In challenging neighborhoods that you would never think would be at risk. So yeah, I think it's definitely going to impact people's thinking. You know, people have been talking about climate change and the impact of climate change for a very long time. But you know, when something like this happens, then it becomes more real. Yeah. Yeah. What do you, what sources are you using these days on climate change? What, what do you look for? Good guidance. Those people who provide the services, we've kind of gone through a couple of them. And it's really more just having picked those services, which we think are the best based on our experience and based on our own opinions too. So I'm not going to, no, no paid advertisements or anything like that. But basically, yeah. So it's just kind of picking those out. Some of the ones, frankly, who are involved with insurance companies are pretty good because they've been doing it for so long. Yeah. Yeah. The insurance companies have to figure this out. So I want to ask you a couple of rapid fire questions if I should. Okay. You've lived all over the, in many places of the world. Yeah. Do you have a favorite city? London. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do you have a favorite restaurant? No, probably not. But I must admit, the food in India is really amazing. Well, that's interesting. Okay. Who would you say has had the greatest influence on you in your life? I won't disclose the individual's name, but when I was at JP Morgan, I was very interested in becoming a managing director. The first year I was up for it. I didn't get it. And I got some advice that what I needed to do was less about being even better at what I'd done in the past and kind of change my skill sets for what was required for the new position. So it was kind of like, you know, don't focus on being a better deal guy, focus on maybe having more strategic convictions that drive the direction of a company versus a particular deal, a bigger picture perspective, and then add that in with what you've done before. So that was, that was pretty important. It kind of tells you that at certain stages of your career, what got you there, isn't going to get you any further. You need to pick up some new skills. And so taking the time to figure out what it takes, what those skills are for that new position is kind of what it takes to get you to the next level. But how lucky were you that you had someone who cared about you enough to share that? Right. And how many times have you probably said something to a young person working with or for you that was that instrumental? And you probably didn't even realize it at the time? I don't know. I mean, one of the really great things that I've had the opportunity in my career is to work with people who are very talented and younger or at a different stage of the career myself. And it's really nice when you can help them out. And you see them be successful. And then stay in touch with them and see them grow and do really great things. So that's, that's been really nice through a couple of firms I've worked at, particularly JP Morgan was one of them. But you know, also to a certain extent to a couple of firms, OXA was one that you, you've had a chance to impact people's lives and allow them to be reached, you know, do things in their career that maybe they might not have done. So that's, that's, that's, that's a very good part about the job. Yeah. Yeah. Last question. Sure. If you could have dinner with anybody dead or alive, who would it be, Dennis? Winston Churchill. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, I like him. I don't read a lot of books, but I read books about him. Yeah. And I really just admired his, you know, just kind of some of the things I was talking about, just his sense of what was the right thing to do and just kind of dedicated himself to it. And it wasn't necessarily popular. A lot of the time. But, and it wasn't even right all the time. But it was right more than it was wrong. And he had a major impact on the world we live in today. Didn't he? Yeah. Yeah. And so much courage. That's one of the things when I read about him. I just am overwhelmed by his courage. Yeah. Now he's an amazing man. Yeah. Thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. Yeah. It was. And thank you so much that appreciate you having me. It's great. Yeah. Come back soon. Okay. We'll do thanks Nancy. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Real Estate Capital. Before you go, I have a quick favor to ask. We've put a lot of thought and effort into this show and making sure we bring you insights from Real Estate leaders that you know it normally find in the mainstream media. So if you're enjoying this show, please remember to follow it on your favorite podcasting app so you never miss an episode. We'd also love for you to share it with others or give us a review on Apple podcasts so others can find us. Thanks again for tuning in for more information about our firm. Please visit our website at part madisonpartners.com.