Why the real estate industry sucks:
Investors primarily concerned with a quick return have given us what real estate developer Chris Leinberger calls a disposable built environment. We’ve taken a 40-year asset class in real estate, he says, and turned it into a five-to-seven-year one. This is one byproduct of the weird reality that it’s easier for people who don’t live in your community to invest in it, that it’s easier to finance new suburban strip malls than to redevelop an empty storefront.