Blau: Trump presidency will be boon for real estate industry

Just a few days after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, another developer has joined the chorus of real estate professionals who are optimistic at the prospect of one of their own being in the nation’s highest office.

“I think it will actually be good to have someone who understand industry in the office,” Jeff Blau, chief executive officer of Related Companies, told Bloomberg. “If you take away the theatrics of what we’ve all been watching the last couple of days or months, and focus really on his economic policy, what he’s saying could actually be good for the country from an economic perspective.”

Blau noted Trump’s pledge to invest in infrastructure, to reform the tax code and to deregulate the banks as possible future boons to the real estate industry.

“Banks have been hamstrung, they haven’t been able to make loans the way they have in the past,” he said. “We think he’s going to bring that back.”

He said that Related agrees with Trump’s decision to exit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, even though the company “sources materials from all over the world.” Blau said that over the last few years, Related has increasingly turned to domestic companies and even started its own curtain wall factory in Pennsylvania last year.
Blau’s sentiments echo that of several other real estate bigwigs who anticipate that a developer-in-chief will be a good thing for the industry. [Bloomberg] — Kathryn Brenzel