Samuel Zell (born Shmuel Zielonka) is an American billionaire businessman, with investments in commercial real estate, energy, manufacturing, logistics/transportation, healthcare, and communications.
When all is said and done, what must be remembered is a newspaper is a business. It used to be a fabulous business that made extraordinary margins. It's now a very good business with appropriate margins.
Interest rates are going to go up because employment is going to go up. If employment goes up, then our apartments get filled. And if employment goes up, our office buildings get filled. The reality is that increased economic activity combined with increased interest rates is basically bullish for real estate.
The reality is that I need to be challenged and interested, as long as the risk and reward is in line.
The question is not do you take money out of stocks and put it into real estate, or the reverse. There's so much money out there looking for a home. I don't think it's eitheror.
Everyone likes pussy. It's un-American not to like pussy.
Just by being private, the culture will change. We won't be forced to make decisions that are 90 days in relevance.
In my case, if one out of five opportunities is interesting enough to work on, maybe one in five of those ends up being worth doing. That might be a function of risk. That might be a function of price. There are all the variables. But you have to be constantly sorting and choosing and prioritizing.
If you could find a major city that actually had a functioning, good public school system, you should buy all the real estate.
When you got a demand issue it's hard to imagine the stock market at an all-time high.
I've always been called a professional opportunist, and in the future I'm open to anything. We've spent a lot of time offshore, looking at opportunities in real estate outside the United States.
My single biggest financial concern is the loss of the dollar as the reserve currency. I can't imagine anything more disastrous to our country. . . you're already seeing things in the markets that are suggesting that confidence in the dollar is waning. . . I think you could see a 25% reduction in the standard of living in this country if the U. S. dollar was no longer the world's reserve currency. That's how valuable it is.
The single biggest issue that I'm very sensitive to is inflation. I'm very concerned that this extended period where the interest rates were quite low and stimulated a lot of activity could breed inflation and create a problem for us.
I can’t imagine anything being more disastrous to our country than if the dollar lost its reserve-currency status.