Journal
Slow writing for investors — on value-add strategy, cross-border structure, and the architecturally distinctive homes that anchor the Shibui thesis.
Mallorca
Mallorca market →A working manual for acquiring a traditional Mallorcan finca — the legal, fiscal, structural, and rural-planning realities most brokers do not explain until after the offer is signed.
November 2025
16 min read
The Tramuntana range runs 90 kilometers along Mallorca's northwest coast — UNESCO-protected since 2011, planning-restricted by design, and home to the most supply-constrained finca market in the Mediterranean.
November 2025
11 min read
Deià has fewer than 700 residents and the highest per-square-metre prices on Mallorca. A working guide to what trades, what it costs, and why the market behaves like a private members' club.
November 2025
10 min read
The Sóller valley offers Tramuntana location, citrus-grove tradition, and a functioning year-round community at roughly half the price of Deià. A guide to what trades, where, and why.
November 2025
9 min read
Three of Mallorca's most-asked-about luxury submarkets, compared on the dimensions that actually shape an ownership experience — supply, buyer pool, infrastructure, and pricing.
November 2025
10 min read
Spain's real estate Golden Visa was abolished by the Council of Ministers in April 2025. What replaces it for property-route residency, and what existing visa holders should do.
November 2025
8 min read
A complete breakdown of acquisition, ownership, and disposition costs for Mallorca property — transfer tax, IVA, ongoing wealth tax, annual maintenance, and the eventual capital gains math.
November 2025
9 min read
Mallorca's tourist rental licence (ETV) regime has been frozen for new issuances since 2022 across most of the island. What this means for buyers expecting rental income.
November 2025
8 min read
A small number of Mallorca fincas trade at substantial premiums to the broader market — properties restored by recognized architects with documented design provenance. The market behaves more like collectible art than residential real estate.
November 2025
9 min read
The forces shaping Mallorca real estate over the next 24 months — rental licence freeze, post-Golden-Visa demand patterns, currency dynamics, and the supply pipelines that will determine pricing.
November 2025
12 min read
Japan places almost no legal restrictions on foreign property ownership. The friction is operational — banking, registration, tax filing, and the cultural conventions of the Japanese real estate transaction. A working manual.
November 2025
15 min read
Tokyo's surviving pre-war wooden townhouses (machiya and kominka) are a small, supply-constrained category attracting a specific kind of foreign buyer. The economics and the cultural framing.
November 2025
10 min read
Beyond the central tower-condominium markets of Minato and Shibuya, a different Tokyo property market exists: low-rise residential neighborhoods like Daikanyama, Aoyama back-streets, Yanaka, and Kagurazaka. A guide to the geography foreign buyers actually choose.
November 2025
10 min read
Annual property taxes, rental income withholding, capital gains at sale, and the cross-border filing requirements that catch foreign owners off-guard. A working manual for the non-resident Japanese property owner.
November 2025
11 min read
Japan's depreciation system treats land and building as separate assets — land cannot be depreciated, the building can. How the allocation is made, why it matters enormously, and the structural implications for cross-border buyers.
November 2025
10 min read
Japan has an estimated 9 million vacant houses (akiya). They are widely reported as available for ¥1M or even free. The actual economics, after restoration costs and operational reality, are very different.
November 2025
9 min read
Japan has two internationally established second-home destinations: Niseko on Hokkaido and Karuizawa in Nagano. They serve different buyers, different seasons, and very different return profiles.
November 2025
10 min read
The pool of international buyers paying ¥200M to ¥450M for restored Tokyo and Kyoto machiya is small, identifiable, and growing. A look at who they are, what they value, and how the market dynamics differ from broader luxury real estate.
November 2025
8 min read
Japan introduced its 'new earthquake standard' in 1981. Many beautiful older Japanese houses predate it. The seismic upgrade is a significant cost item — and often the determining factor in whether the property is worth restoring at all.
November 2025
8 min read
The forces shaping Japanese real estate over the next 24 months for high-net-worth foreign buyers — currency, demographics, the Tokyo central market, and the structural opportunities most international buyers are still underweighting.
November 2025
12 min read
Kyoto's machiya inventory is shrinking faster than Tokyo's, the restoration craftsmanship base is deeper, and the regulatory protection of historic streetscapes is the strongest in Japan. A working thesis on why Kyoto machiya have become the most structurally interesting Japanese residential category.
November 2025
11 min read
Miami
Miami market →Miami is one of the most foreign-buyer-friendly markets in the United States. This is what the acquisition process actually looks like, what it costs in 2026, and where the structural traps sit before, during, and after closing.
November 2025
16 min read
Miami Modern (MiMo) is the only architecturally protected midcentury district in the United States that still trades below its replacement cost. This is the thesis, the comps, and why we are buying.
November 2025
13 min read
Coconut Grove is the quietest premium submarket in Miami. For investors who care about long-hold residential, it is also the most defensible — and the only Miami neighborhood where the moat is biological.
November 2025
11 min read
Coral Gables is the only fully master-planned premium municipality in South Florida. For long-hold capital, that planning is the asset.
November 2025
10 min read
The Florida insurance market has been the single largest change in Miami investor economics since 2022. This is what the new math actually looks like, and how we underwrite it.
November 2025
12 min read
The three Shibui markets are not interchangeable. They sit on different currencies, different cycles, and different investor logics. This is how we allocate between them.
November 2025
11 min read
The Design District / Edgewater axis is the most institutionally active part of Miami right now. For private capital, it is also the trickiest to navigate.
November 2025
9 min read
US estate tax and FIRPTA are the two structural issues that turn a clean US real estate acquisition into a tax problem at death or on sale. The standard solution is a foreign blocker — and the math is unambiguous above $1.5M.
November 2025
13 min read
There is no equivalent of Spain's Golden Visa in the United States. There are, however, several investor-linked visas. Each comes with serious trade-offs, and none are triggered by buying real estate alone.
November 2025
10 min read
The post-2021 Miami surge has cooled selectively. This is where we think the next cycle's value sits, what we are watching, and where the carrying-cost math has not yet caught up with the price.
November 2025
11 min read
Investment
Investment terms →What a private real estate fund actually is, how it is structured, what it really costs, and the specific clauses every prospective LP should price into the deal before signing.
November 2025
14 min read
The four classic risk-return quadrants of private real estate, what each one actually requires from the sponsor, and how to match a quadrant to a specific pool of capital.
November 2025
12 min read
A 25 percent IRR can produce less wealth than a 12 percent IRR. The math is unforgiving, and so is the marketing. A working investor's guide to reading every return number on a real estate term sheet.
November 2025
13 min read
Sponsor selection drives more variance in private real estate returns than market timing or strategy choice. A structured framework for diligence on the GP behind the deck.
November 2025
11 min read
Each access route has structural trade-offs in fees, control, diligence burden, and operational complexity. A framework for choosing the right route at the right scale of capital.
November 2025
10 min read
A walkthrough of the legal documents an LP signs when subscribing to a private real estate fund, with attention to the clauses that quietly govern years of capital.
November 2025
11 min read
The distribution waterfall determines how every dollar of profit is split between LP and GP. Two funds with identical headline economics can produce materially different LP outcomes depending on the waterfall.
November 2025
10 min read
Ground-up real estate development carries three risks that stabilized assets do not: entitlement risk, construction risk, and lease-up risk. Pricing each one correctly is what separates underwriting from optimism.
November 2025
10 min read
Senior debt, mezzanine debt, preferred equity, and common equity occupy different positions in the capital stack with different risk-return profiles. A framework for choosing the right tier for the right capital.
November 2025
11 min read
The headline two-and-twenty is only part of the picture. A full fee accounting of a private real estate fund includes organizational, transaction, asset-management, financing, and disposition fees that compound to 600 to 900 basis points of gross-to-net IRR drag.
November 2025
10 min read
A single $2M commitment to a 2021-vintage fund concentrates risk on the specific entry valuations of that window. Vintage diversification is the most underappreciated risk control in private real estate.
November 2025
9 min read
Cross-border
The concept →When you buy property in another currency, you are taking two trades — a property trade and a currency trade. This is how to think about both at once, and why we almost never recommend a derivatives hedge.
November 2025
13 min read
Spain's property-linked Golden Visa has ended. This is what the change actually means in 2026, what alternative residency routes remain, and why the impact on Mallorca's market has been smaller than the headlines suggested.
November 2025
10 min read
Owning property in three currencies requires banking in three currencies. The practical infrastructure for cross-border families, and the silent FX costs of getting it wrong.
November 2025
10 min read
Hedging the FX exposure on a 7- to 10-year property hold is operationally complex and usually unprofitable. Here is the honest math, and the limited cases where it is justified.
November 2025
9 min read
The shift in luxury consumption away from logos and toward provenance, materials, and craft has a direct analogue in residential real estate — and most of the institutional new-build product is on the wrong side of it.
November 2025
11 min read
Buildings that cannot be replaced are a structurally different asset class from buildings that can be. The investment implications are large, and most investor frameworks misprice them.
November 2025
11 min read
Where a family is tax-resident, where the children go to school, and where the assets sit — these decisions interact, and they should be planned together rather than serially.
November 2025
11 min read
The single most common framing error in private real estate is conflating the trophy second home with the investment portfolio. They should be sized and underwritten separately.
November 2025
9 min read
For families that hold both significant real estate and significant collections, the two interact more than is usually appreciated — across situs, insurance, storage, and combined illiquidity.
November 2025
9 min read
The Japanese aesthetic concept that gave the firm its name is more than branding. It is a frame for how we think about quality, scarcity, time, and what we choose not to do.
November 2025
8 min read
The journal is shared first with the Shibui investor circle.