I was never the expert in any of them.
Short-term rentals. Hotel-to-multifamily conversions. Then back into commercial.
Three different operating models. Three different capital stacks. Three different sets of investors.
None of them required me to be the smartest person in the room.
They required me to find the smartest person in the room... and partner with them.
Here’s what nobody is saying out loud about 2026:
The top 10 real estate funds raised 40% of all institutional commitments in 2025. The top 15 managers control 45% of private real estate AUM. More than half of RE funds closed below their target size last year.
Sector specialists are getting absorbed in M&A waves they cannot fight.
Meanwhile, AI is compressing the cost of cross-sector underwriting from quarters to weeks.
CBRE: 3x faster preliminary analysis. Goldman: 20-35% reductions in due diligence costs. JLL: 60% labor cut on lease abstraction. $1M+ in missed escalations recovered.
The PE managers winning the next decade will not be those with the deepest single-asset-class expertise.
They will be the orchestrators.
The formula:
AI fluency + a full-cycle subject matter expert operator. In every vertical you want to play in.
What used to take 6 months can now happen in 2 to 3 weeks.
Niches still matter.
The niche operator just doesn’t have to be you.
Full breakdown with the data, the workflow, and the counterargument here: https://andrewlebaron.com/newsletter/niches-dont-matter-anymore-kinda
Your friend, Andrew LeBaron
#CommercialRealEstate #PrivateEquity #CapitalRaising #AI #RealEstateInvesting