Business
How multifamily offices are playing commercial real estate
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
The family offices of high-net-worth investors are increasingly pouring their money into alternatives, and real estate is high on their list. For some, instead of going it alone, they’re joining forces in multifamily offices.
The multifamily office model lets these investment arms of wealthy families pool resources, share expertise and unlock bigger deals. With more than $12 billion under management, Realm is a multifamily office investment platform specializing in commercial real estate. The typical family using Realm has about $200 million in investable assets.
CNBC spoke with its CEO, Travis King. Here are some highlights from the conversation, edited for length and clarity:
Property Play: Why go multifamily?
Travis King: We are better investors collectively than we would be individually. So what that means is we’re combining not only capital, but also our collective trusted relationships and industry knowledge and geographic knowledge to find and execute better investment decisions.
You’ve seen big allocations amongst the institutions. They’ve all grown their real estate allocations, in some cases, from low single digits to, in some cases,10% or more allocation-wise. You still don’t see that with a lot of the family offices, although there’s a strong desire to do so.
So I think that next horizon is going to be finding ways to access direct real estate with these families that will allow them to be able to diversify a little bit more and enjoy some of those benefits of real estate that have been a little bit elusive unless you wanted to actually buy that real estate yourself, which can tend to be very time intensive, for sure, and, a lot of times, requires a pretty large dedicated staff.
PP: How do you play real estate?
TK: Real estate is evolving, right? There’s never one thing that you want to be focused on in real estate. I think that’s part of what gives us a leg up. … You’ve heard the adage ‘location, location, location,’ and that’s true. I think that continues to be a very true adage. What we find is that we’re unique in that we move across property type and across geography. So given the scale that we have as an organization with, I think collectively, north of $12 billion in investable assets amongst these families that we work with, we have the ability to see a lot of different deal flow in a lot of different areas.
In real estate, there’s a macro-cycle, and that cycle is always very important. You don’t want to swim against the tide. You also don’t want to, you know, try to fight the cycle. But there’s micro-cycles that happen in different geographies and within different property types, so that’s a key thing to consider.
PP: So of the many CRE sectors, what’s your fave?
TK: If you look at this point in time, what we think is interesting, you’ll start with office. I think in a lot of areas, we’re starting to see office really be in an area where we think that pricing has kind of bottomed. And you know that because when we start looking at some of these investment decisions — we’re looking at one right now in Northern California — it becomes less of, ‘Hey, would we like this if it were just a little bit cheaper?’ And it starts to get to the point where that’s not really the question anymore. It really gets down to saying, ‘We know it’s cheap. It’s intrinsically cheap.’ In some cases, we’re buying things at 15% of replacement cost.
Realm CEO Travis King
Courtesy of Realm
PP: What are you staying away from?
TK: What I try to stay away from are broad categories, right? Say, for example, like, well R&D or industrial is going to be over. These things cycle, and there’s going to be different points in time. So I think the market, by and large … they look at things and say, ‘OK, data centers, you know, they’ve been over invested, and now there’s too much capital in data centers.’ We particularly were, we’re not really in data centers in a large way, because we focus on that lower middle market.
PP: Isn’t everybody in data centers?
TK: Yeah, but it’s the big boys in data centers, right? I’m trying to find an angle where we have something that others don’t. If you look at the big boys that have got tens of billions of dollars in their fund to be able to invest, there’s a lot of dollars required to do the infrastructure in the data center. We really focus on, kind of $50 million deals and below, because we feel like we’ve got an edge there. So yes, everyone is in data centers, but it’s one of those things where a lot of people are saying, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of money chasing this. It might be late in the cycle.’ I tend to probably agree with that, but it’s also just outside of the realm of where we’re trying to invest.
PP: How does your business change if interest rates come down?
TK: I would say reducing interest rates helps real estate in most every regard. I think first and foremost, it’s going to help transaction volume. I think it just provides a wind to the sails of transactions, and it raises the value of all real estate.
New Delhi: Bhavish Aggarwal-run Ola Electric Mobility Ltd reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 418 crore for the July-September period (Q2 FY26), its exchange filing said on Thursday, as revenue slipped.
Revenue from operations dropped 43 per cent year-on-year to Rs 690 crore in Q2 FY26, down from Rs 1,214 crore in Q2 FY25, indicating a substantial decline in sales for the quarter.
However, the electric two-wheeler maker’s operating EBITDA loss narrowed to Rs 203 crore during the quarter from Rs 379 crore a year earlier, indicating improved cost efficiency.
The company’s auto segment delivered an EBITDA margin at 0.3 per cent by reducing Auto operating expense from Rs 308 crore to Rs 258 crore (on-quarter), the release said.
After the announcements of the results, Ola Electric’s stock fell to Rs 49.4 on the NSE, down 66 paise, during intra-day trade, posting a decline of 1.32 per cent from the previous close.
“For the Auto segment, we expect lower volumes than the Q1 guidance as we continue to focus on margin and cash discipline in a hyper competitive market,” the company said in its filing.
For H2 FY26, Ola Electric targets total deliveries of approximately 100,000 units. This moderation in unit volumes will be complemented by volumes from its new vertical beginning in Q4, the company added.
The company recorded sales of 16,034 e-scooters in October, marking a 61 per cent decline from 41,843 units sold in the same month last year, according to data from the government’s Vahan portal.
“On a full-year basis, we now expect FY26 consolidated revenue of around Rs 3,000 – Rs 3200 crore, reflecting a balanced focus on profitability over volumes,” the company said.
The auto segment will continue to improve QoQ profitability. We expect to exit Q4 with Auto gross margins around 40 per cent and segment EBITDA of around 5 per cent, it added.
Miles DavisDevon political reporter
PA MediaAbout 1,300 children in Devon are now getting free school meals who were not previously entitled to them.
Devon County Council and Torbay Council have changed the rules so families who are entitled to free school meals automatically get them without having to apply.
The increase in the number of children who are eligible also brings with it extra “pupil premium” funding that can be used to provide additional support for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Cornwall Council agreed to introduce the same scheme from September 2026 and said it believed it could affect about 1,800 children, while Plymouth City Council said it was also looking into the possibility of making the change.
The percentage of children receiving free school meals in the Devon County Council area has risen steadily from 9.6% in 2016/17 to just under 20% by 2023/24.
At the moment, a household must earn less than £7,400 a year to qualify for free school meals.
Devon County Council said it was the first county council in the country to introduce auto-enrolment for pupils whose family income made them entitled.
The council said there were now about 21,065 pupils receiving free school meals, with an increase of about 1,065 due to auto-enrolment.
‘Unfair link’
The leader of Devon County Council, Liberal Democrat Julian Brazil, said the application process for free school meals had been “a barrier” to some families.
He said: “This is one of those initiatives that makes absolute sense – it’s good for pupils and it’s good for schools.”
The changes have also meant that schools in the Devon County Council area will receive an additional £1.5m, with an extra £1,515 per primary pupil and £1,075 per secondary pupil on free school meals.
Moira Marder is chief executive of the Ted Wragg Trust, which has 18 schools across Devon.
She said: “The additional pupil premium funding unlocked by this policy will enable us to offer more targeted interventions and extra support to these students, moving one step closer to breaking the unfair link between disadvantage, opportunity and outcomes.”
According to research carried out by the charity End Child Poverty in conjunction with Loughborough University, 27% of children in the south-west of England were living in poverty in 2023/24.
That figure was highest in the Plymouth Sutton and Devonport area – at 35% of children – and at 32% in Torbay.
Sonia Duggan, who works for the charity Action for Children in Paignton, welcomed more childen getting free school meals but said many families were still struggling to feed themselves.
She said: “The auto-enrolment is great. However, it’s not going to touch the surface for some of our families.
“Our families are living in poverty. Everything has increased – all their bills, fuel costs, their food, everything.
“We have families that are working, that cannot afford to feed their children.”
Business
Digital Life Certificate From Comfort Of Home For Pensioners: How To Book Doorstep Request Through India Post; Check Direct Link
 "Digital Life Certificate From Comfort Of Home For Pensioners: How To Book Doorstep Request Through India Post; Check Direct Link")
New Delhi: India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), to provide doorstep Digital Life Certificate (DLC) services to its pensioners under the Employees’ Pension Scheme, 1995.
Under this collaboration, IPPB — a 100 per cent government-owned entity under the Department of Posts — will leverage its wide network of over 1.65 lakh post offices and more than 3 lakh postal service providers (postmen and Gramin Dak Sevaks).
Digital Life Certificate For Free
EPFO will bear the cost of issuing Digital Life Certificate entirely, making the service free for their pensioners.
They are equipped with doorstep banking devices and digital process of face authentication technology and fingerprint biometric authentication, to assist EPFO pensioners in submitting their Digital Life Certificates conveniently from their homes, eliminating the need for them to visit bank branches or EPFO offices to submit traditional paper-based certificates.
Digital Life Certificate: How To Book Doorstep Request Online
Doorstep request for Digital Life Certificate can be made through the Post Info app or website.
You can visit https://ccc.cept.gov.in/ServiceRequest/request.aspx to book India Post doorstep request for Digital Life Certificate
India Post Payments Bank introduced the doorstep service of Digital Life Certificate in 2020 for generating Jeevan Pramaan for pensioners using Aadhaar-enabled biometric authentication to reduce the turnaround time for issuance of Jeevan Pramaan.
On completion of the certificate generation process, confirmation SMS will be received by the pensioner in his mobile number and the certificate can be viewed online the next day.
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