Vikram Mansharamani, an author, a Harvard lecturer, and a global equity investor, will keynote the annual Multifamily Executive Conference, Sept. 13 to 15, at the Bellagio Las Vegas.
For more than 18 months, the multifamily industry has faced uncertainty with the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial downturn, rising labor and materials costs, supply chain issues, and the eviction moratorium.
Mansharamani will share his insight with conference attendees on how to navigate this uncertainty and prepare for the future unknown.
“There’s some things we can control and understand and other things we can’t. When we are dealing with uncertainty, we’re generally in a world where we can’t control what we’re trying to be able to rapidly react to and understand possible scenarios,” he says. “When thinking through how to navigate this, it’s important to think about scenarios where the world gets worse. When everybody believes one thing, I want you to think the opposite.”
He says scenario and future thinking can be helpful in preparing for what may be coming down the road.
“Navigating this uncertain dynamic is really about looking broadly at all of the conditions and thinking not in terms of one future, which is what oftentimes happens—people try to predict a future. But instead think in terms of futures, and that’s using multiple scenarios,” he says. “The simple way is to have three—it gets better, it stays the same, or it gets worse.”
Mansharamani, author of “Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence” and “Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst,” also says the pandemic made him more mindful about the sources of the data he was receiving and led to a conscientious effort to diversify his media diet to get a more complete picture.
“Every perspective is limited, every perspective is biased, and every perspective is incomplete. The other thing that implies: There are often perspectives that are valid that you might not agree with,” he says, adding that he will watch Fox News and CNN as well as read The Economist and The New Yorker. “They all have slightly different twists. When you take that idea that every perspective is limited, is biased, and is incomplete, the natural solution to that world is to adopt multiple perspectives.”
In addition to Mansharamani’s address, the three-day MFE event will examine three critical change agents for the industry—technology, labor, and regulation. Additional sessions will explore the latest on the capital markets, the eviction moratorium, hiring and retaining talent, managing rising insurance costs, cybersecurity, and other vital topics.
Back by popular demand will be the Executive Panel, where GID’s Gregory Bates, Steadfast Apartment REIT’s Ella Neyland, and UDR’s Tom Toomey will reveal how they’re approaching today’s market and what they’re doing to prepare for tomorrow, as well as the Annual Economic Outlook, featuring Zonda chief economist Ali Wolf, JLL chief economist Ryan Severino, and John Sebree, senior vice president of the Multifamily Division at Marcus & Millichap.
New this year, the conference will offer more interactive sessions on the exhibit floor, including game show-themed content around the latest in proptech and deal-making.
For more information or to register for the MFE Conference, visit https://cvent.me/YgD1y0?RefId=edit. Use discount code MFEC2021 to receive $150 off.
Attendance is reserved exclusively for multifamily industry property executives, developers, architects, builders, and other real estate executives.
