Research library / 25 articles
This is the full collection of my work on Los Angeles real estate, hotels, triple-net leases, public companies, semiconductors, retail, and interest rates.
USC Village put housing for about 2,500 students beside a grocery store, restaurants, and public space on fifteen acres next to campus. I researched how that concentration of residents and spending affected the apartments and businesses around University Park.
AAHOA reports that its members own about 60 percent of hotels in the United States. The number is often repeated as a quick fact about Indian American ownership, while the history of how families built that position over several generations receives far less attention.
SoFi Stadium hosted eight matches, but a World Cup trip involved much more than the hours spent inside the stadium. Fans landed at LAX, stayed across the county, used regional shuttles, and attended events from the Coliseum to Downtown, so I traced where that spending was most likely to go.
Oceanwide Plaza was supposed to bring a hotel, condominiums, shops, and restaurants to a full block across from Crypto.com Arena. Instead, construction stopped, bills went unpaid, and the empty towers became covered in graffiti before a proposed $470 million sale brought the project back into the news.
Trader Joe’s parking lots have become a running joke, but the congestion follows from a real estate problem. The stores are small enough to receive fewer required spaces and popular enough to bring in the traffic of a much larger supermarket.
In-N-Out can’t enter a new state by signing a franchise agreement and shipping a box of instructions. Before the first restaurant opens, the company needs food production, warehouse space, delivery routes, trained managers, and sites that can handle unusually long drive-through lines.
Three Brentwood apartment sales totaled nearly $96 million even though borrowing remained expensive. The prices caught my attention because they show what buyers were willing to pay for a small number of apartments in a neighborhood where developable land and available buildings are both limited.
One family owned Crown Valley Center from its construction in 1969 until the recent $20.5 million sale. I looked at what made a 57-year hold possible and why an institutional buyer wanted a grocery-anchored center that may still have below-market leases.
At a small motel, the same owner may check in a guest, call the air-conditioning contractor, and review payroll before dinner. Direct involvement can lower costs and speed up decisions, but any comparison becomes misleading when a relative’s work is treated as free.
Costco’s hot dog and soda still cost $1.50 even though food, wages, and nearly everything else in the warehouse have become more expensive. I looked at why the company protects this one price so aggressively and whether the combo has to earn money on its own.
Pasadena apartment buildings and offices sit in the same city, yet their vacancy rates tell very different stories. Households still need a place to live near jobs, schools, family, and transit, while an office tenant can shrink, work remotely, or postpone a move.
Marriott and Hilton signs appear on thousands of buildings that the companies don’t own. Hotel investors pay for the real estate, renovations, employees, and property debt, while the brand companies collect franchise and management fees from a growing network.
An apartment building can raise its rents and still be worth less than it was under cheaper financing. A higher mortgage payment limits what a buyer can borrow, while a higher required return reduces the price supported by the same income.
A hotel REIT owns the actual buildings, pays for renovations, carries property debt, and receives the cash left after guests are served and expenses are paid. The dividend is easy to notice, although a high yield may be warning investors about a renovation bill, weak balance sheet, or softer travel demand.
The AI boom is usually discussed through Nvidia’s GPUs, but a working data center needs memory, advanced manufacturing, networking chips, optical links, cooling systems, and enormous amounts of electricity. I mapped the companies behind those less visible parts of the system.
An advanced GPU can’t do much if it spends its time waiting for data. High-bandwidth memory, usually called HBM, sits beside the processor and moves information quickly enough to keep it working, while using much more factory capacity than ordinary DRAM.
Nvidia’s advantage now reaches beyond the GPU into CUDA software, networking, and complete systems. The harder part of studying the stock is deciding how much of that strength investors already expect the company to deliver.
A cap rate compresses one year of property income and a purchase price into a single percentage. Comparisons become convenient, although the number still hides the lease, future repairs, mortgage, and everything that happens after the first year.
A triple-net lease can make ownership look simple because the tenant may pay taxes, insurance, and much of the maintenance. The owner is still depending on one contract, one rent check, and a building that might be expensive to reuse when the tenant leaves.
A tenant can pay every rent bill on time while the property quietly becomes harder to finance and sell. As the lease approaches expiration, buyers know less about the next tenant, the next rent, and the amount of construction that may be required.
Some Downtown Los Angeles offices are selling for a fraction of their former values and far less than it would cost to build them today. The discount is tempting, although it may be paying a buyer to accept empty floors, expensive renovations, limited financing, and a difficult block.
After the split, Sandisk sells NAND flash and solid-state drives while Western Digital concentrates on hard disks. Both store the growing amount of data produced by AI systems, but they do it with different technology, economics, and exposure to pricing cycles.
Marvell doesn’t make the main AI accelerator, yet its custom chips, optical connections, switches, and storage products help thousands of processors operate as one system. Data centers now account for roughly three quarters of the company’s annual revenue.
Intel is trying to repair two businesses at the same time: its own processors and a foundry that manufactures chips for outside designers. The factories could make Intel strategically important again, but they are consuming cash and still report multibillion-dollar operating losses.
Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta are committing extraordinary amounts of money to servers, networking, power, and data-center buildings. Their existing software, cloud, search, and advertising businesses can fund the construction, but the equipment will create depreciation and operating costs for years.
