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Domain Real Estate Partners-

Key Themes for 2025 – Affordability, Land-light Models, and Demographics

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10.22 Domain Real Estate_Web

 

 

Stewart: Hey, welcome back. I'm Stewart Foley, and this is the InsuranceAUM.com podcast. We're the home of the world's smartest money, and today we're talking about real estate, specifically home builders and the key theme shaping 2025 affordability, land light models, and demographics. To help us understand what's really going on in the markets, I'm joined by Robert Clark, who's a repeat guest. He's the Chief Investment Officer and Founding Partner of Domain Real Estate Partners. Robert oversees, and I know you go by Bob, you oversee all the investment decisions for Domain. You work closely with their home builder partners, this is your world. You've also co-founded DW Partners, and you were a portfolio manager at Brevin Howard and Morgan Stanley. As I mentioned, you're a repeat guest. I love having you on because you know this stuff so well. Welcome back to the show, Bob.

Bob: Stewart, thanks for having me. It's good to see you again. I hope you've gotten some Emo’s pizza since we did the podcast last year, but if not, we're going to have to do that sometime.

Stewart: Yeah, I'd love to. I just, you know what, I can't remember the last time I had Emos, and there are other people who listen and I'll call some people out. Luke Schlafly is a St. Louis guy and he knows, and I'm trying to think, there are a few others. I'm trying to think of my St. Louis people who know Emos and appreciate it.

Bob: There's definitely some insurance capital in St. Louis for sure.

Stewart: Yeah, but I mean, just people in the business that are from there, and the people who are from there are like, why didn't even remember me. But listen, here's the thing, our icebreaker question has changed a little bit since you've been on. You have options now, so it's either what was your first concert or what's your favorite movie? Take your pick, Bob.

Bob: First concert was Lollapalooza in 1994. 

Stewart: Wow, that's a good start.

Bob: I think it was a Red Hot Chili Peppers headlining.

Stewart: Wow, that's cool. That's a great show, a great time in Chicago. People come out for that in droves, and it's still going strong. It's good. So let's get into it, right, so first of all, I think it would help people to know that they don't know Domain in what you do. Can you just give us, I mean, you also run the firm, so you're not only an investor or CIO, but you're also running a business. Can you give us the high-level overview on Domain, just to kind of get us started?

Bob: Yeah, absolutely. So Domain Real Estate Partners launched in 2015. We're solely focused on the US home building space. We partner with the for-sale people who build and develop new housing communities around the US. We own a little over a hundred thousand residential lots around the United States on behalf of our builder partners. So we're really their financing partner. They're going to build and sell homes, but we come in and help them finance land and land development. And the business really is focused on strategically just that industry and understanding deeply what their needs are. There's a lot of complexity in land development. There's a lot of complexity in a lot of real estate verticals, but Domain Real Estate Partners is solely focused on the for sale, the for sale housing markets in the US, which ends up being a very local business. But the kind of needs of home builders across different geographies and different strategies rhyme, and so we've kind of developed products that focus on them. We have a little over 4.7 billion invested and have done a bit over 600 deals; we closed our 600th deal last week.

Stewart: Good for you. Congratulations.

Bob: Thank you. Yeah.

That's a lot of deals.

Bob: Yeah, it's a lot of communities. I mean, it's actually a great space with a lot of people who are in this industry; they tend to stay. It's a really excellent industry to engage in and has been very rewarding. At the end of the day, it's also fairly tangible. So if you work on some esoteric area of finance, I think you go to a cocktail party, you're really not supposed to mention work. And if you work in housing, it's at least something people know about. It's tangible, they understand it, and it's usually of some interest to people, what house prices are doing, why they are what they are. Why have we had so much trouble developing more housing as a country? We clearly have had a housing shortage, as evidenced by what house prices have done the last five years, especially during the pandemic. So it's become more of a political issue as well. So it's actually a really rewarding area to work in, and some really great people in the industry

Stewart: Coming into the year, mortgage rates were still elevated, although they've come down a little bit. Affordability seems to be a major challenge for the home buyer. Can you talk to us about how the market for new housing is faring here in 2025?

Bob: Yeah, yeah. Mortgage rates continue to be kind of the most topical item in terms of potentially what could unlock more demand for housing. Housing affordability is the main challenge. We hit a few years back six times median home price to median household income and that's really a historical anomaly. Since then, home prices have kind of gone sideways, and we've continued to have positive income growth and so that ratio is improving. We're kind of on the path of what looks like a soft landing coming off of the really high home price increases we had in 2020, 2021, and 2022. But the industry's really a slog right now. If you look at the home builder stocks over the last year, it reflects that they've hit a harder operating environment. You're seeing margin pressure is something you'll hear from all the public builders, and is a real challenge, even more so for the private builders.

So what's happened this year is sort of challenging market conditions. It's not a good time to buy a new home, but there's people who have life events and need to buy something or want to make a move. And so the home builders see a lot of demand, they see a lot of traffic, but converting the home buyer into a sale has really been more of a challenge in 2025 than it was even in 2023 and 2024, when the home builders really surprised to the upside and managed despite mortgage rates to have some pretty good years. So they're still profitable. There are no impairments. It's not an industry that's in distress by any means, but you're coming off what really were cycle peak margins in 2021 and 2022, and you're in what I would kind of call a wet blanket market, where there are buyers of homes, but you really have to work hard to get to that sale.

And so the very talented salespeople in these communities all around the US are earning their keep in 2025, really working hard to understand the home buyer and the competitive dynamic. The existing home markets come back a bit, so because mortgage rates were so low, a lot of people have 3%, 2% and 1.5% mortgage rates. It's really hard for that person to make a move. And so you've had a bit of mortgage, lock in where the existing home market's been depressed. The new home builders have really taken advantage of that, captured some market share, but we've seen listings come back up. So nationally, you're not nearly as depressed in terms of the existing home market competing, and it's kind of been a slog. So margin pressure, not a distressed environment, but they're also adjusting their business. So they're still buying new land, they're still operating their business, but they've cut back a bit on starts, and that's something. I think starts are down about 4% year to date.

And Lennar had really been the outlier in terms of aggressively continuing to put product on the ground. Lennar came out in their last call and said they're still going to keep building, but they're going to be rational about it. And I think they cut their delivery target for the whole year by a meaningful amount, and that was very well received by their competitors, who had been maybe a little chippy about Lennar's strategy to pretty aggressively pursue a volume target. So yeah, tough conditions, but in the process of what looks like a soft landing and a reasonable outcome, and as a credit investor in the space, yeah, we do not have anything. Nothing is on the credit watch list. There are no defaults in the portfolio. It's smooth sailing from a credit perspective, and that's reflected in credit spreads in the space as well, which continue to be at the lows despite the margin challenges.

Stewart: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, when you look at houses today, the cost of what it's listed at, given the runup in home building supplies, is like you can't build it for what it's sitting there for, and I'm sure that that's created some pressure on the home builders that you're referring to. We hear fears of bubble and AI concerns around tech valuations, but there's a risk that home prices could correct due to these factors as well. How do you assess that?

Bob: Yeah, it's interesting, right? They're very different dynamics. So things like stock prices, and you do hear concerns, especially as a credit investor, you sort of pay to think about what could happen and what could go wrong. You're not really oriented towards all the things that could go right. Home prices are incredibly stable. If you just think about the depth and size of the housing market, it's really hard to have home prices move dramatically. The appreciation we saw in 2021 and 2022 was really extraordinary. And so we hear a lot of talk, and you'll suddenly see these charts get sent around on the social media apps about comparing home prices or what home prices have done compared to the housing bubble that we had in the early mid two thousands. It's just such a different market, and you really don't have the setup for a massive decline in home prices.

So when I call it a wet blanket market, that's to distinguish from something that's like a bubble or something that needs to crash, something that's heading off a cliff. It's really not the right brokerage for home prices. We have a huge amount of home equity in this country. The people who own and occupy their homes, they're not speculating on homes. We don't have the person who owns 10 homes and is trying to flip them. You don't have mortgage credit quality where it was in the previous bubble. It's probably the biggest factor I hear from institutional investors is that we just don't see a mortgage credit quality problem. So it's interesting, we're starting to see some of these businesses in the paper, like the subprime auto lenders, the fraud with the auto supplier business that filed. And so people are topically very interested in where there'll be cracks in the credit system. US housing mortgages, I don't only ask the place to look for cracks in the credit system; it's one of the safest credit investments in terms of just how it's structured, the amount of underwriting, and you often don't exactly repeat the sins of the prior cycle.

So if you look at what was at the heart of the housing bubble and the financial crisis, mortgage credit was right at the heart of it. Well, what did people come in and regulate and change and attack, and where have institutions been focused the last 10 years? Mortgage credit quality is really pristine right now, and we have a huge amount of home equity. So, what it would take for home prices to really crash is an amount of real liquidation flows in housing. If you needed to sell 8 million homes, home prices would go way down. It's just really hard to generate that kind of liquidation flow when you don't have a credit problem, because even if the unemployment rate goes up, people have home equity, they have other financial resources, you just don't create the kind of selling pressure you need to have things go down in terms of AI and the macro and all these things. That's just such a different world and different environment. I think people should, when they look at housing and a lot of, I think institutional investors have developed this thesis that they do understand the strengths of the US residential housing market and its merits as an investment, and that's part of how our business grows and thrives is that a lot of institutional investors have developed a pretty core conviction around US residential.

Stewart: I mean, that's good news from my perspective. That's music to my ears as far as all of that makes sense. So, given the backdrop of the market, how are home builders managing their businesses, right? What's new in the sector, and maybe a look at what's coming?

Bob: Yeah, I mean, it's a challenging operating environment. So a lot of the large public home builders would like to grow, but they also need to be aware of conditions on the ground. And so one of the big themes that we've seen in home building is people thinking about their land strategy and that's where we really partner with the home builders is instead of just buying land, working on getting it developed and eventually building and selling homes, can they work with a financial partner who holds the land for them, ultimately capitalize that sort of interest cost to the land when they buy a finished lot and then can just build and sell a home on what is, I think average cycle time in the United States is four months to build and sell a home. That's a really, naturally, very good business for them. And so we've seen a lot of home builders actually head towards what you'd call a land light or asset light strategy in which they work with a financial partner that finances the land and land development for them.

That's what Domain does fundamentally—some of the home builders don't want to use the financial structure, and they actually want real operating land developers. People who go out and entitle land themselves; they want them to be their land partner and take all the risks involved in land development, versus just a financing structure. And so you see some of the builders like D Horton and NVR that are very focused on truly having land partners that develop inventory for them and aren't just a financing partner, versus firms like Lenar has led the way in sort of a more financial land light strategy that they pursued. A big thing that happened this year is Lennar completed its transition to land light, and they spun off Millrose properties in the first quarter, which is a public REIT that does land banking. And so that exists, there's sort of a public comp and think it has around a 9% dividend yield, and our fund is annualizing it at 14 to 15%.

So I think we have a little bit of a premium to them in terms of how we manage that, but you have a public land banker for the first time, which is interesting. One of the big themes in the sector has been this move to land lightly in terms of what's coming. There are really big changes afoot, ultimately, in home building. Home building's not been a high innovation sector. One of the things that has been happening and will continue happening is that private home builders have a much harder time than publics, and so we expect the M&A environment to be pretty meaningful, and we see private home builders continue to get bought by public, which really have significant advantages in the current environment. The other thing is probably just demographic change, which you can talk a bit about, but the demographic and immigration picture are other challenges that the homeowners are dealing with.

Stewart: Yeah, I was just going to ask about that. So at the end of the day, households buy homes, so the demographics really do matter for this industry. How are you thinking about the demographic picture in the near term and then longer term?

Bob: I think it's super important to the industry. I often say at these industry conferences that we don't talk about demographics enough. Everyone will talk about what the Fed's going to do in the next meeting, and they don't always talk about what's US immigration policy is going to be over the next 10 years. That matters a lot more to how this industry will perform in the long term. It doesn't really come in a lot for us, Stewart. When we look at a community, we really do detailed project-level underwriting. We're looking at a specific community and the homes that are going to get built, and the fact that there needs to be demand today for those homes that configure that type of home at that price point, and make sure that you have location, location, location, right? Real estate is so much about what's the actual real estate. Is this a place a person wants to live?

But as much as that's what matters at a single investment level, at the industry level, household formation is really the massive macro variable, almost even more than unemployment. Unemployment will drive the cycle of when nobody's going to buy a home when they're worried about their job, but how many households there are is ultimately how much demand we have for the size of the whole industry. The near-term picture is really starkly different than the last three years. So we had extremely high immigration post the COVID period. So when you got into 2022, 2023, 2024, you had significantly higher net migration to the United States, and a lot of those people are renters, but at the same time, that demand growth flows into total households, and it gets absorbed into both apartments and into single family housing near term. We've really shut that down with the immigration crackdown and policy change.

And it's not just closing the border, it's also the signaling, and it's that buyer in terms of buyer confidence. We see communities that have a very ethnic buyer profile, and wow, you saw dramatic changes in consumer confidence. The home buyer really shifted in response to the immigration policy in certain communities, and that's just a big challenge for the home builders to manage through that. So near term, the immigration policy has created a lot of discussion, and the tariffs have created a lot of discussion. Would you have cost-push inflation? We've really seen no cost push inflation building products went up in 2021, 2022. We actually have home builders beating their proformas on vertical construction costs this year, where I spent tens and tens of hours with our investors talking about analyzing potential impact from tariffs. And then it really, tariffs were an event for consumer confidence, and they were not an event. On the cost side, the immigration policy has really affected Florida and Texas are the weakest two markets.

The best places for home price appreciation are actually the places we didn't build as much. Housing places like the Northeast are doing very well. Net migration flows, like Portland is positive 2%. That's wild. So to have Florida be so weak in terms of migration trend is a really sharp reversal of what's happened the last few years. Ultimately, Florida and Texas, I think longer run, the demographic story will play out very positively, but near term, they're very challenged, and longer term, I think this country's demographic picture is challenged, right? Birth/deaths are about 500,000 people per year, positive. That will go negative in the next 10 years. And from there, it doesn't really seem like that will naturally reverse. So the United States will be wholly dependent on immigration for net population growth. That's a very different environment both in the home building industry, and I think it has consequences as investors look at many different businesses.

We're so anchored to thinking about growth as sort of just baked into the cards of the US economy. We've never had a situation in the US where you could forecast births and deaths, we're going to be sustainably negative. And so yeah, I think immigration policy will be a massive, they say demographics or destiny, that's also going to be immigration policy is going to determine a lot of the outcome, both in terms of the debt picture and the fiscal side. An industry like home building is very much right in the cross hairs of what doesn't really affect what we do. Our investments are kind of four-year amortizing investments, and we underwrite particular projects, but at the industry level, I think it's a very big question, and there's certainly some near term challenges as well.

Stewart: It's interesting. I want to dig in a little bit more on land banking, which is that's what your firm does, but I also want to talk about what it doesn't do. I just want to clarify so that people know, but what's the outlook for land banking, and is it something that we should hear more about? It makes total sense to me that a builder, a big publicly traded builder, would want to be, it seems to me, land light that makes sense to me from a capital requirements to fund all that building. But I want to be clear here, Domain does not do the developing the land development. You are financing the land development and the lots themselves. Have I got that right?

Bob: Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's exactly the capital intensity. Part of the reason we like a financing business in the home building space is it's not an industry that doesn't need money. It's incredibly capital-intensive to buy land, build the civil construction of the site. So our dollars are used to acquire the site to build the civil construction of the community. So think of things like streets, sewers, wet and dry, utilities, and landscaping. We fund all of that, and then when it's actually time to build and sell homes, which is, that's really a consumer-facing business. You go in and you look at the model homes and talk to the salesperson, you buy a new home suburban community, that business is where the home builder naturally generates revenue, sees their gross margin, but they started that project maybe three or four years ago. They might've been entitling it for years before that.

And so they're really running the operations. They identify the land to acquire, they acquire the land and put it under contract, they hire the engineering firms that do the civil engineering of the whole site. They oversee the work. Even the home builders, though, when you talk about who they have, they don't own bulldozers, right? The home builders themselves hire contractors and subcontractors. So the division of labor is pretty interesting to follow. When you look at an industry, what exactly do you do, and then what do they do? And then even they don't do it. Who's the guy who swings a hammer and actually does a thing who employs the electrician? You're like, oh, those are the trades. They don't work for the home builder either. They don't have electricians on staff; they subcontract out to electricians. So, home builders are in some ways you can think of them as the developer, the arranger, and the person who's managing the risk, managing the timelines, and the contractual arrangements.

So yeah, I mean, I do think that the land banking strategy is not a small part of how the home building industry is going to operate. It's funny, we talked to one of the large consultants in the space, and he used to always act like land banking would at some point have some huge problem. John Burns is sort of one of the top consultants and has built a wonderful real estate consulting firm. I used to give him trouble. He would get up at his conference and kind of say, I don't know if the land bankers are going to blow up. And then it was always framed so negatively as if I don't think they're holding the bag. And I'm like, that's such a negative framing for what we're doing. Nobody says this about hotels. Hotels in the United States, people might not know, but there's somebody who owns the land and owns the building in the hotel, and they generally lease it to an operator.

Marriott doesn't own all the Marriott hotels. Marriott operates the hotels. There's a company host Marriott that owns the land in the building, and they lease it to the hotel operator. Well, nobody who looks at the hotel industry says, oh, well when are these whole operators versus when are these people who own the hotels? When are they going to blow up? It's just a transformation that happened in terms of how the industry is organized. And I think that's what's happening with land banking. I would argue that we are in the early stages of a transition of home building, which is really two businesses glued together. It's a land and land development business glued together with a customer-facing home building and home-selling business. And I'd say those two businesses can, to some extent, separate. In fact, I'd say historically, if you look at the industry, the people who were building homes and making money, building and selling homes, they needed to go and develop land in order to create the supply so they could build and sell homes.

Stewart: Sure.

Bob: There are other countries like Australia; those are two totally separate businesses, for instance. And so I'd say we're in the early stages of transformation to separating those businesses a bit. And whether it's a purely financial structure like land banking is, or whether it ends up being more like an operating separation, which is more similar to what Dr. Horton and VR are doing. I don't know if that's known yet, but one way or another, the idea that it has to be an integrated business. Some of Wall Street's history is business to get taken apart, put back together. We should have a conglomerate. No, you've got to take the conglomerates apart. So I don't want to overly act like there's a crystal ball, but my own view, being in the industry, is that we're in a transformation to separating to some extent those two parts of the business.

Stewart: So one of the things we talked about last year was how insurance capital is becoming more involved in these financings. Has that continued to gain steam in 2025? And speaking of your crystal ball, what's your outlook for insurance capital in this particular part of the market?

Bob: Yeah, I remember talking about that. I think when we were talking last year, we were just working on our first private placement to insurance capital. So that successfully closed at the end of 24. We did a subsequent issuance in 2025 in the first quarter, and in the third quarter, we closed our first traditional out of our main finance company. We did a private placement for $200 million of pricing, five-year and seven-year notes, fixed rate, going entirely to insurance capital. And so we're starting to see insurance capital come in. I've said for a while at some of these industry conferences, ultimately, insurance capital is the best capital to actually do these sorts of complex financings for home builders. They really don't have; it's been mainly banked by the regional banks. And I think solving that so that insurance capital can invest in the for-sale housing market in the really credit-protected parts of what's available.

That's one of our big goals as a firm is to engage more with insurance capital as part of how we originally reached out and talked to you about how to engage with the space, and I think there is a little bit of an education curve, but actually, insurance companies in real estate are incredibly sophisticated to start with. And so they're really quick and can make a decision about what they want to do. Some of it was unlocking, you had to have rated structures in terms it needs to be capital efficient. And so some of the guidance there has helped in terms of, and then us getting rated, look, we got our main fund entity rated investment grade, as well as getting the private placements rated investment grade. And so getting it to be capital efficient has been a big part of unlocking the engagement from insurance companies.

But I would say that's a very positive development in terms of what capital is going to be available to the home builders. We'd really like to see where that goes. And maybe ultimately some of the things that are traditional vertical financing, meaning financing the actual sticks and bricks of building the home. I think some of that traveling outside of the banking system and sitting with insurance companies directly is a path that we'd like to be a part of seeing if that happens as well. But today, where it sits is very limited. Insurance capital participation really did our first transaction in 2024 and a couple more transactions in 2025, but now we've sort of unlocked the flywheel of we know how to get a structure where it works for insurance capital, and so we'll be expecting to do more there. And I think when I think about the industrial logic of it, there are incredible advantages in terms of scalability, durability of capital banks, really are not inherently very stable structures.

And so getting the whole private private credit's sort of being maligned because of some of these canary in the coal mine type defaults, and the people who want to be negative on private credit are going to take their shots here in the press. And I'm sure there are people who are short BDCs, and all of these things exist longer term private credit, I think has a very robust profile in terms of the rationale for it existing and getting some of that complex lending out of the banking system. And then the banks can back-leverage those portfolios, which is what they're doing. So the same thing will play out in areas like ours. It's just a much smaller niche, and we're sort of behind a bit where the middle market lending or lending to the LBO machine is the most evolved in terms of all the different varieties of senior capital providers having come in. But yeah, it's not prospective anymore. Stewart, we actually got three transactions done. We have two more that are set to close in November, and so, really significant engagement from Insurance Capital.

Stewart: That's fantastic. I'm glad to hear that. It's always a great education in this space. And I don't know a host of folks who are in your world, but you are in this; you live and breathe it, and it's obvious by the way that your command of the details of this business is really obvious. And I want to say thank you first of all for that great education. But secondly, I got a couple of fun ones for you. We've changed them up a little bit. And you've been at this a long time, and you've been at the top of it. You've been an entrepreneur. What characteristics are you looking for when you add to members of your team? And the reason I say the entrepreneur part is because it is a big decision to add someone to your team. I mean that person is, depending upon that job. And I remember very well when someone who works for us purchased a home, and I was like, oh man, I felt the pressure to perform to make sure that she could keep her job and pay her mortgage. But what are you looking for when you're adding to folks?

Bob: I completely agree. I mean, we just crossed 40 people as a firm, and the responsibility in terms of running a business well and having a strategy, and executing, and it is a team. So I know if you work at a firm with 20,000 people, they call everybody teammates. But at some level organization, I think it's incredibly challenging to maintain that kind of culture. And there's places that have done it incredibly well. There are places that haven't at 40 people. I think you can set the tone and hire and have a culture that's incredibly strong. So I find it really rewarding at our current firm size to be able to just have everybody be in. I'd say it's funny when I interview people, often other people have kind of kicked the tires or done kind of the technical part, or we know who they are. It's sort of not usually the first discussion.

And one of the things I really want to know, Stewart, is that people have a team mentality and not, I can say the word team or I can say the word partner in a meeting, but like, Hey, you're going to be somewhere. I remember even when I was at Morgan Stanley, my thing was we're going to make Morgan Stanley win. Was I looking at my next role or my career, my thing sure times, but really my mentality all day, what I was doing was I was on the team, and I was just like, when I played football in high school, what's the play? What do I need to do on this play? And it was all about the team. I think there are differences in personality types, and there are people who naturally have a team mentality and are going to find that easy. And there's people who can do that.

They need to do that, but it's kind of not how they naturally would operate. And I really think we need to have people who can buy in and be part of a team because the finance industry can be so competitive, and people can be very toxic at times. And so we just can't have that inside the team mentality. And so I look for team mentality. I also think there's a thing where I love what I do, but I don't think it's the only thing I could have loved doing. And so one of the questions I will always ask people when I interview them is, what do you like about your current job? And if they answer that with what they don't like, we will not hire them.

Stewart: That's interesting. Alright, the fun one on the way out the door, I think you've answered this before. Who would you most like to have dinner with? You can have up to three guests, one, two, or three. Dinner's on us. Who would you most like to have dinner with? Alive or dead.

Bob: Okay, very interesting. So last time I was very in my economic mode, and I think I said Warren Buffett, who we agreed was the highest market value dinner guest because they auctioned it historically. And we had Milton Friedman and Carl Marx. I think we were going to gang up on him. I think I need a less political answer this time, so I'll show some dimensionality. Kurt Vonnegut, very humorous and would very much enjoy having lunch with him. Let's see, I'll go with Stan Musial from St. Louis.

Stewart: Wow.

Bob: Stan the man.

Stewart: Wow. I'll have a seat at the table. That's amazing. Stan Musial. I haven't thought of Stan Musial in years, man. I mean, there's a statue of the guy, and standing in front of the stadium, it was there forever.

Bob: Absolutely.

Stewart: I mean ever St. Louis is such a baseball town, and if you made a positive impact on the Cardinals with some consistency, you are revered forever. Ozzie Smith is like Lou Brock. Lou Brock was my childhood hero because he batted left-handed and so did I. But wow, that's such a great callback for me. Thanks.

Bob: And then I'm still going to throw an economist in, but since we had Friedman last time, I'll throw in Frederick Hayek and I'll see if Musial and Hayek get along, but they can have a beer and maybe some monster and brats or something, but that would be an eclectic group and I think hopefully Veronica would make us all laugh. So show a little dimensionality versus last time, we were pretty far in the political economy range.

Stewart: I like it. All right, listen, thanks for being on, Bob. We've been joined by Robert Clark, Chief Investment Officer of Domain Real Estate Partners. Thanks for taking the time. Seriously. It's been a great education,

Bob: Stewart. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for doing this.

Stewart: Same here. If you like what we're doing, please rate us and review us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. If you want to watch us, please check us out on our new YouTube channel at Insurance AUM community. If you have ideas for podcasts, shoot us a note at podcast@insuranceaum.com. My name's Stewart Foley. This is the InsuranceAUM.com podcast, Home of the World's Smartest Money.


Disclaimers:
This podcast is intended to provide an introduction of certain investment strategies and structured transaction opportunities that Domain Real Estate Partners, LLC (“Domain”) currently holds or may hold.  This information  is being furnished to you for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell any securities. Any such offer will be made solely to qualified investors by means of a private placement memorandum and related subscription materials.  

This podcast is not a recommendation for any security or investment. References to any portfolio investment are intended to illustrate the application of Domain’s investment process only and should not be used as the basis for making any decision about purchasing, holding or selling any securities. Nothing herein should be interpreted or used in any manner as investment advice. The information provided about portfolio investments is intended to be illustrative and it is not intended to be used as an indication of the current or future performance of Domain’s portfolio investments.
An investment in a fund entails a high degree of risk, including risk of loss. There is no assurance that the fund’s investment objective will be achieved or that investors will receive a return on their capital. Investors must read and understand all the risks described in a fund’s final confidential private placement memorandum and/or the related subscription documents before making a commitment. The recipient also must consult its own legal, accounting and tax advisors as to the legal, business, tax and related matters to make an independent determination and consequences of a potential investment in a fund, including US federal, state, local and non-US tax consequences.

Past performance is not indicative of future results or a guarantee of future returns. The performance of any portfolio investments discussed in this podcast is not necessarily indicative of future performance, and you should not assume that investments in the future will be profitable or will equal the performance of past portfolio investments.

Do not rely on any opinions, predictions, projections or forward-looking statements contained herein. Certain information contained in this podcast constitutes “forward-looking statements” that are inherently unreliable and actual events or results may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated herein. Domain does not make any assurance as to the accuracy of those predictions or forward-looking statements. 

Third-Party Rating. An investment grade rating was assigned to Domain’s operating company by Kroll in May 2025.  This solicited rating was based on both public and non-public information provided to Kroll. Domain compensated Kroll for this rating.

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Domain Real Estate Partners

Domain Real Estate Partners was founded in 2015 as an alternative capital provider for the for-sale residential sector and has financed over 600 projects comprising of ~$14bn of project costs. Domain provides flexible financing solutions to homebuilders and lot developers primarily in the form of structured lot purchase options (land banking), non-recourse loans, and project-level equity investments.

520 Madison Avenue, 21st Floor 
New York, NY 10022

John Mackin, Partner
John.Mackin@dwpartners.com

212-751-5878

 

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