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Hi Reader,
For 2026 at Feroce, we are starting the way we want to continue it: curious, connected, and looking ahead with purpose.
Rather than making predictions or bold declarations, we are beginning 2026 with a question. Or actually, a few of them. We have found that the right question often does more to focus a team and spark clarity than any one answer.
This month’s article shares a story from our New Year’s Eve’s table, a little wisdom from the teenagers in the room, and a simple, useful way to stay aligned with your North Star.
As always, thank you for reading. If you want to share your team’s guiding question for 2026, we would love to hear it.
Start With a Question:
A New Year’s Approach to Navigating Goals
We celebrated New Year’s Eve gathered around the table with friends and family, a fun mix of teenagers and adults. Between the cutthroat board games, delicious desserts, and the countdown to midnight, we dove into a conversation about resolutions and plans for 2026.
What started with traditional goals evolved into a round of questions that helped frame the year ahead. Instead of simply naming goals, the group posed questions to guide their year:
- Will this decision help me meet my goal?
- What served me well in 2025 that I want to bring into 2026?
- What did not serve me well in 2025 that I will leave behind?
The teenagers, in particular, reframed it as a trend check: What is In and what is Out for 2026?
Where “In” means doing more of something and “Out” means letting go or doing less. (And, yes, of course, algebra homework came up).
The ensuing discussion was energizing, humbling, and insightful. If you live or work with teens, this may sound familiar.
So, of course my next question is, how do CRE leaders put this to work? What questions do commercial real estate leaders use to stay aligned with their North Star?
At Feroce, we have seen the power of intentional questions in action. We work with leaders who are navigating complex goals, leading teams across multiple initiatives, and adapting to change on multiple fronts.
For some, the guiding question is precise and measurable:
- Does this decision support our goal of deploying an additional $250 million of equity across a minimum of three transactions into stabilized, recent-construction, multifamily assets in our target markets by December 2026?
For others, a broader framing sparks more engagement:
- Does this action align with our 2026 investment strategy?
Leaders building new initiatives around operational excellence and change management can frame forward-looking questions that stretch across teams and capabilities:
- Does this decision support our goal of training five more employees each quarter to use AI tools to manage their email inboxes?
- Does this action help us expand our internal talent’s skillsets to include AI literacy?
Whether you prefer specific or broad framing, simply asking the question has power. It creates space for clarity, focus, and alignment.
So, as we begin 2026, ask yourself AND your teams:
What question can we use as a filter to determine whether an action moves us toward the goal or pushes away from it?
p.s. how you make space for your team to actually answer the question matters. For some teams, a dose of irreverence has made it feel safer to respond and open up the discussion.
- Bring soccer ref cards to the table - does this decision earn a red card?
- Apply a hashtag for the response - does this elicit a WTAF or JDI?
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🧠 What is on the minds of consumers and business owners?
Two recent sentiment snapshots offer a glimpse and highlight the contrasts.
According to the University of Michigan’s prelim January 2026 Consumer Sentiment Index, confidence has ticked up slightly from the prior month after falling back down from the mid-summer uptick.
✔️ Brass tacks: overall sentiment remains 25% below where it stood in January 2025. And consumers continue to focus on kitchen-table issues, like their grocery bill and fears about losing their jobs.
Meanwhile, on the small business front, the NFIB December 2025 Small Business Optimism Index also shows a slight uptick from the prior month while remaining below the peak of Dec 2024 (highest in the last six years).
In December 2025, of the 10 survey indicators, two increased, three decreased, and five remained neutral from the prior month. The entire month’s optimism was driven by a single outlier: a 9-point surge in “Expect Economy to Improve,” marking the first increase in this indicator since July.
✔️ Brass tacks: the jump in expectations for better economic conditions is reported as a sign that owners are cautiously re-engaging after a long period of uncertainty.
📉 Mind the gap.
Even as headline sentiment numbers suggest “improvement,” the gap between consumer experience and business outlook highlights the underlying complexity.
❌ Consumers remain skeptical about the economy while small business owners are forecasting optimism.
❌ Consumers with college degrees are concerned about losing their jobs while small business owners note labor quality as their second highest issue.
What other signals are highlighting the gap?
Where are you seeing contradictions in consumer behaviour and business expectations?
Keep these reports on your radar:
🔗 Index of Consumer Sentiment
🔗 Small Business Optimism Index
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Where’s the door to the bathroom?asks a lot of hotel guests nowadays.
As hotel design moves away from separate rooms for the bathroom and the sleeping area and toward the open plan 🪟 format, many hotel guests are missing the solid door 🚪 separation.
Luckily, concerned citizens seeking privacy have compiled a database of doorless hotels along with information on select hotels that have real doors to bathrooms. Crowdsourcing is welcome.
Ah, the glamour of travel.
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AI on your mind?
Yes, of course it is, in one way or another.
It is on CRE leaders' minds. And yet, it is not being discussed enough when we talk about talent skills and development.
Some of that is because there is an assumption that people will figure it out on their own, the new entrants to the workforce will bring all the skills and answers with them, or the solution will be delivered to us by the tech providers.
Well, we all know what happens when we ass-u-me.
So how do we move forward from here?
🏃 Talk about it with your teams and clients. Silence is deadly. When there is no communication, people fill in the blanks and it is regularly ugly.
🏃 Technology is part of the solution, it is not THE solution. AI is not your savior, AI is a tool in your toolbox. Identify the problem, allocate the people and resources, create the roadmap for the solution, and then determine where technology plays a role in delivering the solution.
🏃 Start now. Do not wait for someone else to do it. Do not wait until after tax day or year end audits or first quarter reporting or the big deal closing. Have the first conversation this week.
Photo credit: Vicki Nunn, pixabay
For a fun Friday distraction, follow Lawrence the salmon shark’s treks through the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean. 🦈
Since Lawrence was tagged more than 6 years ago, he has traveled an average of 9,000 miles annually.
That is Seattle to Boston three times over.
👣 What pattern do your dots show on the map?
🚸 Where will your journeys take you in 2026?
Thanks to Steve and the keycrew Journal team for digging in and asking great questions about what CRE can expect and how we can be ready for 2026.
The Real Estate Recovery Playbook: Why Operational Excellence Is Now the Key to Gaining an Edge
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What We Are Reading
✨ Columbia+, Learning AI Through Visualization – continuing the learning journey with Columbia’s Center for Artificial Intelligence in Business Analytics and Financial Technology.
✨ NantumAI, CREative Cuisines 2025 Holiday Cookbook – makes me smile to read the stories behind the recipes from across the CRE tech community.
✨ Forbes, The World’s Most Valuable Women’s Sports Teams 2025, Brett Knight, 17 Dec 2025 – follow the money into women’s sports.
✨ this man’s mind, I'm Kenyan. I Don't Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me. Marcus Olang’, 8 Jul 2025 – fascinating intersection of linguistics, authenticity, colonialism, education, and AI.
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Where We Can Catch Up
- NexusCast: The 6 Steps for Managing Your Building's OT Devices, 28 Jan
- ULI Washington WLI Annual Luncheon, 3 Feb
- Inspiration @ Intersection of Real Estate + Tech, Sourdough Special, 6 Feb
- CRE Diversity Equity Inclusion Advisory Board, 12 Feb
- AFIRE 2026 Winter Conference, DC, 11-13 Feb
- GSCNC President’s Circle Dinner, 13 Mar
- CREBA DC Board Meeting, 19 Mar
- ULI Washington Management Committee Meeting, 20 Mar
- Finance Park, Thomas Edison High School of Technology, 27 Mar
- Seattle, 1-3 Apr
- American University Real Estate Development, guest lecturer, 13 Apr
- ULI Washington Awards for Excellence, 16 Apr
- CREBA Awards, 22 Apr
- ULI Spring Meeting, Nashville, 5-7 May
- National Girl Scout Convention, DC, 20-25 Jul
- Blueprint, 22-25 Sep
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About Feroce Real Estate Advisors
Feroce Real Estate Advisors works with forward-thinking real estate companies to leverage change and build value at the intersection of commercial real estate investment, sustainability, and technology. We guide clients through complex challenges, positioning their real estate and teams for success in our rapidly changing world.
Our work usually falls into one of these categories:
- Fractional executive roles serving as head of asset management or portfolio management for growing real estate investment management companies.
- Provide high value strategic advisory services with a focus on investment performance, organizational priorities, and technology deployments.
- Advisory board roles with proptech organizations focused on high ROI solutions in operational improvement, decarbonization, and cleantech and renewables.
Our clients hire us when they are at an inflection point, faced with scaling up, repositioning portfolios, or maneuvering through complex decisions. We deliver clarity, structure, and momentum to take teams from reacting to proactively executing a plan that delivers measurable results. We bring the combination of institutional investment experience, real-world operating execution, and a future-oriented lens on technology and resilience.
Please reach out to connect:
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All the best,
Mandi
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