The Real Finds Podcast, hosted by Gordon Lamphere of Van Vlissingen and Co., is Chicagoland’s leading commercial real estate podcast, with new episodes every Wednesday at 3 PM CT. Each episode connects global trends, from interest rates and automation to reshoring and public policy, to real estate decisions happening on the ground across Chicago and the Midwest, through candid conversations with the developers, operators, policymakers, engineers, and investors shaping the built environment.
Gordon Lamphere, J.D. is Vice President of Sales & Leasing at Van Vlissingen and Co., Chicagoland’s #1 ranked commercial real estate broker for 2026, and host of The Real Finds Podcast. Van Vlissingen and Co. is Chicagoland’s oldest commercial real estate firm, offering brokerage, property management, and development since 1879.
🎧 New episodes every Wednesday at 3 PM CT.
Why Institutional Capital Is Wrong About Workforce Housing With Jon Siegel – RFP 108
Why Institutional Capital Is Wrong About Workforce Housing With Jon Siegel - RFP 108 Most multifamily capital is crowded into the same trade: newer assets, hot markets, long bid lists. Jon Siegel thinks that herd behavior is precisely what has created the most interesting opportunity in apartments today. Siegel is Co-Founder...
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Why Smart Investors Are Buying Dirt With Ron Rohde – RFP 106
Why Industrial Outdoor Storage Is the Asset Class Big Capital Cannot Easily Buy: Lessons From Ronald Rohde https://youtu.be/vxrTHcuZdOE Why Smart Investors Are Buying Dirt With Ron Rohde - RFP 106 (Transcript) Industrial outdoor storage (IOS) has been one of the hottest corners of commercial real estate for five years running, and...
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Why Blackstone Is Pouring Billions Into Net Leases With Sean Hostert – RFP 105
Net Lease Decoded: Why the Quietest Corner of Commercial Real Estate Is Drawing the Loudest Capital Most commercial real estate conversations start with the building. Net lease flips that instinct on its head. It is one of the few asset classes defined not by what the property is, but by how...
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The AI Real Estate Goldmine Everyone’s Missing With Bruce Garrison – RFP 104
The Underground Layer That Decides Which AI Data Centers Get Built In commercial real estate, the data center conversation almost always starts with power. How many megawatts can the site pull, how fast can the utility deliver it, and how close is the nearest substation. Those questions matter, but they obscure...
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Pulling Off the Largest Office-to-Residential Conversion In History With Eugene Flotteron – RFP 103
The Conversion Underwriting Playbook: What 25 Water Street Teaches CRE About Turning Distressed Office Into Housing The largest completed office-to-residential conversion in United States history started as a building almost no one wanted. A 1968 tower in Lower Manhattan's Financial District, 1.1 million square feet of deep floor plates and stingy...
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Commercial Real Estate Doomers, Gurus, & Industrial Opportunity With Chad Griffiths – RFP 102
Chad Griffiths on Industrial Real Estate's Next Decade Industrial real estate may be the most universal asset class in commercial property. A 100,000 square foot box with dock doors, decent clear height, and highway access performs essentially the same job whether it sits in Edmonton, Dallas, or Chicago. On episode 102...
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The Industrial Real Estate Risk Playbook With Daniel S. North – RFP 101
The Industrial Real Estate Risk Playbook With Daniel S. North For most of the last decade, the legal language buried in industrial and data center contracts was an afterthought. Buyers and developers fought over price, timing, and tenant credit, then signed off on standard clauses they assumed would never come up....
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Hydrogen, Data Centers, And The End Of Energy Poverty With Whitaker Irvin Jr. — RFP 100
When Power Becomes the Site Constraint: Hydrogen, Data Centers, and the New Math of Industrial Development For most of the last century, the first questions in industrial site selection were about land, labor, and logistics. Is the parcel big enough? Can we staff it? How close is the interstate? Power was...
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How Regional Brokers Beat The National Flags With Kurt & Stewart Jensen – RFP 99
Kansas City vs. Chicago: How Two Midwest Industrial Markets Compare in 2026 The Midwest industrial market is often discussed as a single block, anchored by Chicago and rounded out by secondary metros with broadly similar fundamentals. The reality on the ground is more nuanced. Two of the strongest industrial markets in...
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Brownfields to Billions: The Hidden CRE Opportunity With Sam Haydock – RFP 98
Brownfields to Billions: Unlocking CRE's Most Overlooked Opportunity Drive through almost any older industrial corridor in the Midwest and you will find them: shuttered factories, vacant lots, weeds growing through cracked asphalt, smokestacks standing against the skyline with nothing left to do. These are brownfields, and for most people, they register...
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Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion With Josh Bandoch – RFP 97
The Persuasion Framework Every Commercial Real Estate Professional Needs Most commercial real estate professionals spend enormous energy on market knowledge, financial modeling, and deal structure. Far fewer invest the same rigor in the skill that determines whether any of that preparation converts into a signed lease, a closed acquisition, or a...
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Chicago Industrial Space Manufacturing multifamily Office Space Quantum & Data Centers Real Estate Real Finds Podcast Retail Warehouse
State Of The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market 2026 – Q2 – RFP 96
State Of The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate Market The Chicagoland Commercial Real Estate market stopped waiting. Here is what that actually looks like in quarter 2 of 2026. About 18 months ago, everyone in this market was in a holding pattern. Investors, occupiers, lenders, developers. Waiting on rates. Waiting on the...
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The Battery Real Estate Play & Return Of Main Street With Aaron Shavel – RFP 95
The Battery Real Estate Play & Return Of Main Street With Aaron Shavel - RFP 95 Aaron Shavel is a professional engineer who spent most of his career in heavy civil construction, including years on the MTA subway projects in New York. He now advises on battery energy storage facilities being...
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The Density or Growth: Building a $400M Small Bay Industrial Portfolio With Frank Forte – RFP 94
Building a $400M Small Bay Industrial Portfolio With Frank Forte Frank Forte did not take the conventional path into commercial real estate. He came out of school during the financial crisis, pivoted from Wall Street ambitions into distressed debt consulting at the U.S. Treasury, moved into a senior housing debt and...
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This MIT Startup Is Rewriting The Rules Of Commercial Real Estate With Honghao Deng – RFP 93
Most commercial real estate decisions about office space are built on occupancy data that is, at best, incomplete. Badge swipe systems tell building operators that someone entered a floor. They do not capture dwell time, conference room utilization, which collaborative zones are actually generating activity, or whether thermal comfort conditions in...
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Shift From Location To Power In Commercial Real Estate With Britt Burt – RFP 92
The New Site Selection Calculus: Why Power Is Replacing Location as the Defining Variable in Commercial Real Estate For decades, the core logic of commercial real estate was geography. Location determined value, absorption, and long-term viability. That logic is being rewritten, and the force doing the rewriting is electricity. https://youtu.be/gbuLXT-dhkE Shift...
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AI, Commercial Real Estate, and the Future of Work with Elatia Abate – RFP 91
AI, Commercial Real Estate, and the Future of Work with Elatia Abate What does the rise of artificial intelligence mean for commercial real estate, the workforce inside those buildings, and the companies leasing the space? On episode 91 of the podcast, Gordon Lamphere sat down with Elatia Abate, a futurist, former...
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Insurance, Development Risk & The Hidden Economics Of Real Estate With Lisa Holt – RFP 90
For most of the past century, commercial real estate operators treated insurance the way they treated utility bills: an unavoidable cost that crept up a little each year but never seriously threatened the math on a deal. That era is over. https://youtu.be/9hqYsos2JDg In Episode 90 of The Real Finds Podcast, Gordon...
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Caregiving, Building For A Longevity Society, And The Future Of Work With Marisa Toldo — RFP 89
Caregiving, Building For A Longevity Society, And The Future Of Work With Marisa Toldo — RFP 89 The office vacancy conversation has been stuck on the same set of explanations for four years. Remote work. Hybrid schedules. Interest rates. Oversupply. These are real forces, and they have genuinely reshaped demand. But...
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From Mötley Crüe to Multi-Million Dollar Commercial Real Estate Deals With Mike Herl SIOR – RFP 88
On this episode of The Real Finds Podcast, I sat down with Mike Herl, SIOR and partner at Madison Commercial Real Estate, to unpack one of the more unconventional paths into commercial real estate and, more importantly, what his experience reveals about the Wisconsin market today. https://youtu.be/HAF9khJMLkA Yes, Mike spent 17...
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