SMART BRICKS RESEARCH
Smart Bricks Research
The research lab behind Smart Bricks: applied work on AI-native investment firms, institutional real estate, underwriting and real estate intelligence.
More research
Field Notes
What a Defensible Underwrite Looks Like: The IC Memo Standard
A figure nobody can trace to its source has no business in front of an investment committee.
Field Notes
What Sits Beneath the Model: The Data Layer Institutional Decisions Actually Run On
A financial model inherits whatever accuracy, and whatever verifiability, the data beneath it already had.
Analysis
Covenant Risk and the Cost of Finding Out Late: Risk Without a Test Date
A covenant fixes the date on which somebody must look at a deteriorating position.
Field Notes
The Rent Roll Is Not Income: What Proves a Building Earns What It Says
A rent roll summarises a stack of documents that rank one another, and it does not record which one won.
Field Notes
Why Generic Due Diligence Fails on Private Real Estate: The Register Was Never Asked
The four instruments of institutional diligence were designed for markets in which the seller’s pack was the only complete account of an asset.
Analysis
The Real Cost of a Ten-Day Close: What Time Pressure Does to the Baseline
A compressed acquisition close is usually costed in analyst hours.
Field Notes
A System or a Demonstration: Seven Tests for AI Infrastructure in Institutional Real Estate
Most evaluations of an AI underwriting system examine one output on the day of the meeting.
Analysis
Fee Compression Is Permanent: The Operating Leverage Case for Institutional Real Estate Managers
The fee a real estate manager earns has become a published, benchmarked number that allocators compare across managers to the basis point.
Thesis
The Transparency Gap: Why Private Real Estate Cannot Answer What Public Markets Answer Daily
A listed REIT’s investor reads occupancy, lease expiry and debt maturity from a filing built to be looked up.
