Last Monday I was in Manhattan by 8 AM. Three properties — different buildings, different neighborhoods, different ownership situations — each one a data point in the market analysis work that underlies everything we do. Delta Lounge on both ends: a lifesaver when the day starts before the city wakes up and ends well past midnight.

My sister came with me. She’s shadowing the inspection and analysis work, learning the practice from the ground up. Her first was in Hawaii. Next up: California and Missouri. We wrapped the last site in time for an early dinner at Red Rooster in Harlem — one of those meals where the conversation is half business and half just two people catching up on a life that’s moving fast.

Home by midnight. That’s the rhythm right now. Not glamorous, but it’s mine. And honestly? I’ve stopped trying to make it look like anything other than what it is: the work of building something real, one day at a time.

I’ve been sitting with Emma Grede’s book Start With Yourself through stretches like this one. Her premise is deceptively simple: the business has to be built from the inside out. Not from market conditions or funding rounds or what’s trending — from a clear-eyed understanding of who you are, what you’re built for, and what you actually believe.

I keep returning to that idea. Because this particular stretch — market analysis in New York, market intelligence on Cleveland, deepening our affordable housing work — it only makes sense if it’s an extension of something real. Otherwise it’s just noise.

The City I Keep Coming Back To

I’ve been deep in Cleveland for the past several months. Not because it’s a hot market the way coastal investors talk about hot markets — because it’s home, and because I think most people who aren’t from here fundamentally misread it.

The MarketRent™ Cleveland series started as a data exercise and became something else. Four articles in, I’m writing about neighborhoods I grew up around, infrastructure investments I watched get built, and development projects that are reshaping the city in ways that rarely make national headlines.

A few things from the research that have stayed with me:

Cleveland has been doing adaptive reuse — converting old office towers and historic buildings into residential — for fifty years. While coastal cities are just now treating office-to-residential conversion as a novel post-pandemic strategy, Cleveland passed through that phase out of necessity, built the institutional knowledge, and produced a downtown that performs with stability that newer conversion markets haven’t earned yet. The Terminal Tower at 50 Public Square: purchased in 2016, converted into 297 apartments, completed 2019. That’s not a trend story. That’s fifty years of compounded experience.

The East Side story is the one I find most compelling. The $330M Opportunity Corridor — a 3.2-mile urban boulevard completed in 2021 connecting University Circle to I-490 through Fairfax and Kinsman — is the kind of infrastructure investment whose consequences play out over decades, not quarters. The neighborhoods it reconnected were isolated from Cleveland’s economic core for a generation. The corridor changed the geography. The development pipeline building on top of it is just beginning.

And the numbers are real: rent growth in the Cleveland metro more than three times the national. Not speculative. Structural.

The data tells one story. The Cavs in the playoffs tells another. Both are true at the same time — that’s Cleveland.

The full series is on MarketRent™ if you want to go deeper: Cleveland’s Urban Revival — Downtown Adaptive Reuse — East Side Opportunity Corridor — plus a market brief for readers who want the executive summary first.

Deepening the Work

Two new service offerings are expanding what Clarendon does in affordable housing — not a pivot, a deepening.

Residential: marketing rental developments, ownership opportunities, and resales of AH ownership units. The families navigating these markets deserve the same quality of representation and market intelligence that everyone else gets. That’s the gap 360Abode is designed to close.

Commercial: acquisition and disposition of AH multifamily, mixed-use, and development sites. Our Philadelphia contract — where we will be providing real estate services across the city’s affordable portfolio — is the first engagement that reflects the full scope of what this advisory practice is built to do. Case study here.

Both are extensions of infrastructure we’ve spent years building: the compliance work, the market intelligence, the inspection capacity, the research. The brokerage and advisory layer just takes it all the way to close.

It’s a lot moving at once. And the only way I know how to hold it together is Grede’s framework: the work has to be rooted in something real or it won’t hold. Affordable housing is that root. Everything else — the research, the inspections, the brokerage, the advisory practice — is built on top of a genuine belief that this sector deserves better infrastructure.

What I’m Into Right Now

Start With Yourself by Emma Grede — genuinely useful for anyone building something entrepreneurial, particularly at an inflection point. Not self-help in the way that phrase usually lands. More like a clear-eyed framework for making decisions from the inside out rather than in reaction to external pressure.

The MarketRent™ Cleveland series — four articles plus a market brief, all linked above. If you have real estate exposure in the Midwest or are thinking about it, worth an hour of your time.

Manhattan market analysis. There’s no substitute for being in the buildings, reading the neighborhoods, understanding what the data is actually measuring. The inspections are the ground truth that makes the intelligence credible.

Red Rooster Harlem — early dinner after the last inspection of the day. Not my first time, but it lands differently when you’re there with someone experiencing it for the first time. The fried yard bird. Always.

Day trips with the Delta Lounge. There’s something about the compressed intensity of a day in another city — inspections, conversations, observations, a good meal — and then being home that clarifies thinking in a way that multi-day travel doesn’t always produce. The lounge on both ends makes it sustainable. I’m leaning into this rhythm.

Sunday Reflections is back. If you’ve been here a while, thank you for staying. If you’re new, this is the space where I write about what I’m building, what I’m reading, and what I’m thinking — the version of the work that doesn’t fit neatly into a market report.

If you are working through a transaction, a compliance requirement, a market intelligence need, or a strategic portfolio opportunity — I would welcome the conversation.

— Eve

Eve Moss is the Founder and Managing Principal of Clarendon, a commercial real estate firm specializing in housing markets nationwide. With 30+ years of experience, she operates from New York, Boston, and Cleveland, serving agencies, property owners and policymakers.

For inquiries about market analysis, valuation, brokerage services, or strategic advisory, contact eve.moss@clarendon.com or visit clarendon.com.

Everything at evemoss.com → Market Intelligence. Mindful Living.

Subscribe to receive:

• Quarterly market reports

• Market intelligence updates

• Analysis of housing policy changes

• Insights from 30+ years in real estate

Friday was March 6th.

Eighteen years ago, I signed the paperwork that made Clarendon real.

I’ve been sitting with that number since. Not because milestones demand reflection. But because eighteen years is long enough to look back and actually see something.

Where It Started

I became a commercial real estate appraiser because of a program.

MassHousing and the Appraisal Institute created an initiative specifically to bring more diversity into the CRE appraisal industry. I was part of that cohort. The firm where I trained did significant work in affordable housing — and that exposure shaped everything that came after.

I went on to a major lender, as a senior appraiser doing market rate apartment appraisals. I learned the discipline of rigorous valuation in a high-volume, high-stakes environment. I learned what it meant to deliver reliable analysis under pressure.

Then I opened my own firm.

The focus wasn’t affordable housing from the start. But the expertise I had built — and the relationships I had developed in that sector — gradually pulled the work in that direction. It wasn’t a pivot. It was a recognition. This was where the need was greatest. And this was where I could do the most meaningful work.

I founded Clarendon on March 6, 2008.

Six months later, the financial crisis hit.

What Eighteen Years Actually Looks Like

We did not start in a good market.

We started six months before the worst financial collapse in a generation. And then we made a decision. We held. We focused. We leaned into the work that doesn’t stop when markets collapse — because affordable housing compliance doesn’t stop. Housing authorities don’t pause. Families don’t pause. The need for rigorous, reliable market intelligence doesn’t pause.

That decision set the character of the firm.

In eighteen years, we have worked through conditions that tested every professional services firm in this space.

We worked through government shutdowns. The kind that freeze contracts mid-cycle and require you to hold your clients steady when the ground is moving.

We worked through Hurricane Sandy. Properties damaged. Portfolios disrupted. Markets in the Northeast reshaped overnight. The work of market alignment doesn’t stop because a storm hit. It becomes more urgent.

Then COVID arrived.

In-person inspections were suspended nationally. Section 8 renewal timelines compressed and extended and compressed again. Our clients were managing unprecedented uncertainty across their entire portfolios.

While most firms were scrambling to figure out how to work remotely, we didn’t miss a beat. From the beginning, Clarendon was intentionally built for distributed national work — cloud-based, location-independent, designed to serve our clients across multiple states without being anchored to a single office. That wasn’t a response to COVID. That was the architecture of the firm.

And then we went further.

We developed a COVID inspection protocol that was implemented nationally by HUD. We didn’t wait for guidance. We built it.

We are working right now through a period of federal policy shifts that are creating new questions for every affordable housing owner in the country.

Each of those moments required the same thing. Steady analysis. Clear communication. Reliable delivery when reliability was hardest to come by.

That is what this firm has built.

The Team

Here is what I didn’t fully understand in 2008.

I knew the work. I understood valuation methodology. I understood SAFMR analysis, non-shelter services valuation, the nuance of a phased RCS approach for a complex portfolio. I had the expertise.

What I didn’t yet understand was what it would feel like to watch someone else carry that work forward with the same care.

There is a moment every founder knows. The moment when you realize the work has grown beyond you. Not because you’ve lost control of it. Because the people around you have grown into it.

I have watched team members walk into property inspections in markets they had never visited. Deliver analysis I would have been proud to deliver myself.

That doesn’t happen in a year. It doesn’t happen in five.

It takes time. Consistency. The willingness to invest in people before you can prove the return.

What the Work Is

Affordable housing has changed in eighteen years.

The shift from REAC to NSPIRE. The evolution of SAFMR methodology. The way technology has transformed market analysis — and how much human judgment still matters in interpreting what the data actually means.

What has not changed is the stakes.

Behind every market study and appraisal is a property owner trying to keep a development financially viable. Behind every contract renewal is a community of residents whose stability depends on whether that building stays in the program. Behind every preliminary rent assessment is the gap between what a property earns and what it could earn — and the difference that gap makes over time.

I don’t take that lightly. I never have.

Eyes Up

Earlier this week I posted a photo with two words.

Eyes up.

I mean it the way I always mean it. Stay present. Stay forward. Keep your attention on what is ahead.

But on an anniversary like this one, it means something more specific.

Eyes up — because the view from eighteen years is worth seeing clearly. Not to celebrate the distance. To understand what the distance proves.

We started before a crisis. We held through every disruption since. We built the protocols other firms followed. We grew the team, deepened the relationships, and expanded the national footprint — without ever compromising the quality of the work.

That is the track record.

Year nineteen starts now.

#grateful #blessed

If you are working through a transaction, a compliance requirement, a market intelligence need, or a strategic portfolio opportunity — I would welcome the conversation.

Eve Moss is the Founder and Managing Principal of Clarendon, a commercial real estate firm specializing in housing markets nationwide. With 30+ years of experience, she operates from New York, Boston, and Cleveland, serving agencies, property owners and policymakers.

For inquiries about market analysis, valuation, brokerage services, or strategic advisory, contact eve.moss@clarendon.com or visit clarendon.com.

Everything at evemoss.com → Market Intelligence. Mindful Living.

Subscribe to receive:

• Quarterly market reports

• Market intelligence updates

• Analysis of housing policy changes

• Insights from 30+ years in real estate

Last week marked a first for me: my first on-site assignment in Hawaii.

Fourteen hours of flying each way. Forty-eight hours on the Big Island. A compressed timeline to validate market analysis and inspect properties in person—applying methodology I’ve used for 30 years to a market I’d studied remotely but never walked.

I’ve spent four decades analyzing housing markets across the country. From dense urban cores in New York and Boston to rural communities in Montana, including mainland island markets where geographic constraints create similar dynamics. I’ve seen how neighborhoods transition, how policy shapes supply, how demand pressure moves across boundary lines. Island economics—limited land, supply chain challenges, seasonal dynamics—aren’t new territory. But there’s something about being 5,000 miles from your home base, walking properties instead of reviewing data remotely, that creates a particular kind of clarity.

The Big Island reminded me that you can drive from active volcano to rainforest to desert to ocean within an hour. Extreme microclimates exist side by side—dramatic shifts in conditions across a single boundary line.

Not unlike housing markets everywhere.

Clarendon recently announced our first Texas contract with Opportunity Home San Antonio, the largest housing authority in Texas. We also signed our first major brokerage contract with a top 5 public housing authority. After 30 years of operating primarily in the Northeast, these expansions feel both overdue and carefully timed.

But here’s what Hawaii taught me that matters more than any single contract: supply constraints, demand pressure, and policy lag show up everywhere, creating similar challenges across different contexts.

The Assignment: Validating Analysis on the Ground

The work was straightforward on paper: validate market analysis for a housing portfolio on the Big Island. Evaluate comparable properties, assess market rates, understand occupancy dynamics, identify opportunities and risks.

Standard methodology. Unique context.

I’d already conducted preliminary market analysis using the same tools I use for any market assessment. The fundamentals were clear from the data: Hawaii consistently ranks among the most expensive housing markets in the nation. The median home price in Hawaii hovers around $830,000—more than double the national median. Rental markets tell the same story: limited supply, high demand, prices that make “affordable” a relative term.

But data alone doesn’t tell you everything. Numbers don’t capture how scarcity shapes daily operations, how geography constrains development in ways that compound over time, how properties perform relative to market expectations.

The site visit wasn’t about learning the market from scratch—it was about validating what the data suggested and understanding what it didn’t show.

What You See From 30,000 Feet

There’s something about being physically present in a market—even one you’ve analyzed remotely—that creates different perspective. At 30,000 feet over the Pacific, patterns that can blur in routine work become visible again.

I’ve been tracking housing markets since 1984. I’ve watched neighborhoods transition from declining to thriving, seen policy changes reshape entire submarkets, identified value opportunities before they became obvious to the broader market. That’s the work: pattern recognition across time and space.

But patterns get harder to see when you’re embedded in them. When you’re operating in the same geographic markets year after year, the incremental changes blend together. You can miss the forest for the trees—or more accurately, you can miss the fundamental dynamics for the local variations.

Hawaii forced perspective in a way that felt almost uncomfortably clear.

Land Scarcity: A Familiar Dynamic at Scale

Let’s start with what everyone knows: Hawaii is an island chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Land is finite in a way that’s fundamentally different from mainland markets.

I’ve worked island markets before where geographic constraints create similar pressures. On islands, you can’t build past the shoreline. You can’t expand into adjacent counties. The boundary is the ocean, and the ocean doesn’t negotiate.

But Hawaii operates at a different scale, yet the constraints feel even tighter because of topography, lava zones, conservation land, and the sheer distance from mainland supply chains.

This creates a baseline housing cost that’s structurally higher than comparable mainland markets. Not because of demand alone, but because supply can never meaningfully expand beyond existing developable land.

For housing providers, this matters enormously. Acquisition costs are higher. Development feasibility is constrained. The math that works in Houston or Atlanta simply doesn’t work in Honolulu or Hilo.

But here’s what surprised me: the dynamics aren’t actually different. They’re just more visible.

The Fundamentals: Supply, Demand, Policy

Every housing market operates on the same core fundamentals:

Supply: How much housing exists and how much can realistically be added

Demand: How many people need housing and at what price points they can afford it

Policy: The regulatory and funding environment that shapes both supply and demand

In most mainland markets, these three forces interact in complex ways that can be hard to untangle. Supply constraints might be regulatory (zoning, permitting) or practical (labor, materials) or financial (construction costs, lending). Demand varies by submarket, by season, by economic conditions. Policy operates at federal, state, and local levels, often pulling in different directions.

Hawaii strips away some of that complexity. The supply constraint is geographic and therefore easier to see. The demand drivers are clear: limited housing supply + desirable location + relatively stable population = sustained price pressure. Policy matters, but it operates within constraints that are more rigid than most mainland markets face.

What this revealed to me: the fundamentals I see everywhere are always at work. In most markets, they’re just buried under layers of local variation.

Microclimates and Market Boundaries

One afternoon between site visits, I drove from Kailua-Kona on the west side of the Big Island toward Hilo on the east. The landscape changed every fifteen minutes.

Volcanic rock fields, barren and lunar. Then suddenly: lush rainforest, dense with vegetation. Then open grassland. Then coastal areas with resort development. Then rural residential scattered across former lava flows.

You can drive from active volcano to rainforest to desert to ocean within an hour. Extreme microclimates exist side by side, separated by nothing more than which direction the trade winds blow.

I immediately thought about housing markets.

In Philadelphia, I can drive from a neighborhood with 95% occupancy and rising rents to a submarket three blocks away with 80% occupancy and flat rents. The fundamentals are the same—same city, same economic base, same policy environment. But conditions shift dramatically across a single boundary line.

Sometimes that boundary is a highway. Sometimes it’s a park. Sometimes it’s nothing physical at all—just perception, reputation, the accumulated weight of historical patterns that shape current decisions.

Understanding why conditions shift—and more importantly, when they’re likely to shift—is the entire game in real estate market analysis.

Hawaii made this visible in a way that felt almost instructional. The microclimates aren’t metaphorical; they’re literal. And the lesson translates directly: don’t assume uniformity. Examine the boundary conditions. Understand what creates the difference.

What the Data Doesn’t Tell You

Government data is essential for housing market analysis. HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs), census data on household income and cost burden—these are the foundation of any serious market study.

But data always lags reality. By the time HUD publishes SAFMRs for a given year, they’re reflecting market conditions from 12-18 months prior. In fast-moving markets, that lag can mean the data is describing a market that no longer exists.

On the Big Island, I walked properties that looked solid on paper but told a different story on the ground. Deferred maintenance that wouldn’t show up in a database. Tenant mix that explained occupancy patterns the numbers alone couldn’t capture. Site characteristics that created operational challenges invisible in remote analysis.

This is why we walk into inspections with everything we need on our phones but still make the trip. You can’t compress the hours in a day, and you can’t replace boots-on-the-ground observation with data alone, no matter how sophisticated your analysis tools.

What I learned in Hawaii that applies everywhere: the data tells you what is happening. The site visit tells you why it’s happening and whether it’s likely to continue.

Both matter. Neither is sufficient alone.

The Consistency Beneath the Variation

Here’s what the site visit confirmed: the core dynamics matched what the preliminary analysis showed—and what I’ve seen in markets nationwide for three decades.

Supply constraints? Absolutely. And consistent with what I’ve analyzed in Boston, where zoning limits density, and San Antonio, where development costs are rising faster than rents in some submarkets.

Demand pressure? Certainly. Similar patterns to Montana’s resort towns, where seasonal workers compete for limited year-round rentals.

Policy lag? Without question. Government funding mechanisms and regulatory structures create the same challenges in Hawaii that they create in every market we operate in.

The on-site work didn’t reveal unexpected problems. It validated that the analysis was sound and added operational texture that only boots-on-the-ground observation provides.

Expansion and Strategic Timing

Last week’s announcements—San Antonio and the major brokerage contract—reflect the same evolution the Hawaii work demonstrates.

For 17 years, Clarendon has operated primarily in the Northeast. We’ve built deep expertise in markets from Boston to Philadelphia, with our more recent expansion into western markets in California, Oklahoma and Texas. That geographic focus has been a strength: we know these markets intimately.

But the housing landscape is changing. Housing authorities nationwide are facing similar challenges: aging portfolios, limited capital for improvements, pressure to preserve affordability while maintaining financial sustainability. The authorities that are navigating these challenges most successfully are looking for partners who can operate across markets, who understand patterns beyond local variation.

San Antonio Housing Authority is the largest housing authority in Texas and among the top 15 nationally. They serve nearly 27,000 families through public housing, Section 8, and mixed-income partnerships. They’re also one of only 17 housing authorities designated by HUD as “Moving to Work” authorities—a distinction given to high-performing agencies with the flexibility to innovate.

That’s the kind of client that chooses partners based on methodology and track record, not just local presence.

The major brokerage contract we signed this week represents a similar opportunity: working with a top 5 public housing authority on transactions that require both market intelligence and execution capability.

These opportunities feel overdue because the capability has been there. But they also feel carefully timed because the market conditions are right. Housing authorities are increasingly looking for partners who can provide comprehensive services—market analysis, brokerage, advisory—rather than fragmented point solutions.

Our Hawaii work reinforced a core principle: sound analytical methodology combined with thorough on-site inspection produces credible market analysis.

What Comes Next

As I write this, digesting the Hawaii work, the contrasts are instructive: island market to heartland metro, extreme scarcity to moderate constraints, resort context to urban core.

And yet: the fundamentals remain consistent.

We’re working on Clarendon’s first regular market report for rental housing owners and investors. It will synthesize rent data across multiple markets, identify patterns in rent trends and occupancy dynamics, and highlight opportunities where market conditions are shifting before they become obvious.

The Hawaii work will inform that report, not as a separate island section but as evidence of patterns that show up everywhere. Supply constraints that create upward pressure on achievable rents. Policy frameworks that lag market reality. Development feasibility challenges that require creative problem-solving.

The first report will drop in January. If you want to be notified when it’s available, drop a comment below or reach out directly.

The Lesson: Fresh Perspective Matters

Velocity and perspective both require willingness to expand into new markets—and the discipline to validate that your methodology holds up in unfamiliar territory.

I didn’t need to go to Hawaii to understand supply constraints or demand pressure or policy lag. I’ve been analyzing those dynamics for three decades. The preliminary analysis was sound before I boarded the plane.

But I needed to go to Hawaii to see them with fresh eyes. To test whether patterns I’ve observed in dozens of markets held up in a context with different constraints. To validate that methodology matters more than familiarity.

The Big Island confirmed what I expected: the fundamentals are consistent. The patterns translate. Sound methodology produces credible analysis across different market contexts.

But the reminder was valuable: don’t get so comfortable in familiar markets that you stop questioning your assumptions. Don’t assume that local knowledge is a substitute for rigorous methodology. Don’t let 30 years of experience become 30 years of routine.

Stay willing to test your frameworks in new contexts—literal or figurative—to confirm that what you think you know is actually true.

Most of the time, it is.

But the discipline of proving it keeps the work sharp.

Eve Moss is the Founder and Managing Principal of Clarendon, a commercial real estate firm specializing in housing markets nationwide. With 30+ years of experience, she operates from New York, Boston, and Cleveland, serving housing authorities, investors, and policymakers.

For inquiries about market analysis, valuation, brokerage services, or strategic advisory, contact eve.moss@clarendon.com or visit clarendon.com.

Everything at evemoss.com → Market Intelligence. Mindful Living.

Subscribe to receive:

• Quarterly market reports

• Market intelligence updates

• Analysis of housing policy changes

• Insights from 30+ years in real estate

There’s a phrase I keep coming back to lately:

patterns have a way of repeating themselves

I’ve been working in real estate since 1984—which means I’ve lived through multiple market cycles, policy shifts, and neighborhood transformations. I’ve watched neighborhoods decline and revive, seen lending standards tighten and loosen, experienced both the over-correction after 2008 and the speculation that preceded it.

When you’ve witnessed the patterns play out over 40+ years, you start to recognize the rhythms. Not exactly. Not with the same players or headlines. But the underlying dynamics—how confidence distorts decision-making, how policy creates unintended consequences, how neighborhoods change—those show up again and again if you know what to look for.

That’s why I’ve been deliberately studying historical cycles. Here’s what’s shaping my thinking right now.

Reading: The Power of Historical Patterns

1929: The Year That Changed Everything

I picked up this book after watching a market I’ve tracked for years behave in ways that felt uncomfortably familiar. The fundamentals looked solid on paper, but something in the velocity of change reminded me of transitions I’d seen go sideways before.

What struck me most wasn’t the financial mechanics of the 1929 crash—though those are instructive—but the confidence patterns leading up to it. The collective certainty that “this time is different.” The dismissal of warning signs as noise. The acceleration of speculation as validation rather than caution.

In real estate, we see versions of this constantly. A neighborhood starts to turn, and suddenly everyone wants in. Cap rates compress. Underwriting gets creative. The risk that should make you pause gets reframed as opportunity cost for not moving faster.

I’m not suggesting we’re headed for a crash. I’m suggesting that understanding how confidence distorts decision-making helps me ask better questions when evaluating properties. When everyone in the room is certain about a market’s trajectory, that’s precisely when I want to understand what we might be missing.

Who should read this: Anyone making decisions in fast-moving markets who wants to understand how momentum can obscure risk.

Find it on my Now shelf →

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

This one’s been on my list for years, and I thought I’d give it a re-read. Isabel Wilkerson’s analysis of caste systems—the invisible hierarchies that shape society—has profound implications for understanding housing markets and neighborhood development.

Here’s what matters for my work: housing isn’t just about supply and demand. It’s shaped by centuries of systematic decisions about who gets to live where, who gets access to capital, who gets written out of neighborhood narratives entirely.

When I’m evaluating markets, understanding the caste dynamics that created the current conditions matters as much as the pro forma. Why is this neighborhood “affordable” in the first place? What policy decisions and lending practices created the opportunity gap we’re trying to address? And how do we avoid replicating those same exclusionary patterns in new forms?

Wilkerson’s framework helps me see the difference between projects that genuinely expand access and those that simply reshuffle who gets locked out.

Who should read this: Anyone in real estate, urban planning, policy, or community development who wants to understand the structural forces that created the markets we’re working in today.

Find it on my Now shelf →

The Death and Life of Great American Cities

I’m back in Jane Jacob’s book again because it remains more relevant than most contemporary development theory.

Jacobs wrote this in 1961, taking on the urban planning establishment who were designing cities that looked brilliant on paper—superblocks, separated uses, wide streets—while destroying what actually makes neighborhoods function: density, mixed use, eyes on the street, the informal networks that create safety and community.

Her core argument: the experts designing cities had it backwards.

This week, I was comparing two properties in similar submarkets. Property A looked better on paper—newer construction, better unit mix, institutional backing. But Property B had what Jacobs would recognize immediately: the bodega that stays open late, the variety of people moving through at different hours, the street-level activity that creates organic security and retention.

Guess which one has better occupancy and lower turnover?

If you work anywhere that you’re shaping how people live—real estate, development, government, policy—this is foundational. Not because Jacobs has all the answers, but because she asks the right questions.

Who should read this: Anyone evaluating neighborhoods who wants to understand what makes them actually work, not just what makes them look good in a pitch deck.

Find it on my Now shelf →

Watching: How Policy Created Today’s Markets

Segregated by Design

I discovered this documentary recently, and it completely reframed how I think about housing policy and neighborhood development.

The film traces how federal, state, and local governments deliberately segregated American cities through policy—not as accidental byproduct, but as intentional design. Redlining, restrictive covenants, highway placement, public housing siting decisions. Each choice was calculated.

What makes this essential viewing: it’s not ancient history. The policies may have been written decades ago, but the physical infrastructure and wealth gaps they created are still shaping markets today.

When I’m working with housing providers in markets from Boston to rural Montana, understanding why certain neighborhoods look the way they do—why wealth concentrated in some areas and was systematically extracted from others—changes the conversation about what intervention actually means.

You can’t solve a problem if you don’t understand how it was created.

Who should watch this: Anyone working in affordable housing, community development, or urban planning. Anyone who wants to understand how policy decisions created the market conditions we’re navigating today.

Find it on my Now shelf →

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Richard Rothstein’s book provides the detailed policy analysis behind the Segregated by Design documentary. Where the film shows you the visual impact, Rothstein’s research documents exactly how federal, state, and local governments deliberately created segregation through specific, traceable policy decisions.

This isn’t abstract history—it’s the blueprint that created the markets we work in today. Understanding which policies created wealth in some neighborhoods while extracting it from others isn’t just educational; it’s essential for anyone trying to address housing inequity rather than perpetuate it with better branding.

Who should read this: Anyone who works with government housing programs, policy makers, developers navigating requirements, or investors who want to understand why certain markets have the characteristics they do.

Find it on my Now shelf →

Listening: Market Intelligence + Unexpected Inspiration

My podcast rotation lately has been deliberately eclectic—balancing market intelligence with perspectives that push my thinking beyond real estate.

The Economist and Prof G pods keep me grounded in macro trends and market dynamics. When you’re working nationwide, you need that 30,000-foot view of where capital is moving and why.

Emma Grede’s Aspire podcast was an unexpected addition, but her conversations about building businesses with intention and managing growth strategically have been surprisingly applicable to how I think about scaling our team and maintaining culture as we expand into new markets.

And of course, Clarendon’s MarketRent podcast —our deep dives into affordable housing markets and real-time market dynamics that provide context you can’t get from lag-indicator data.

What ties these together: they all challenge me to think beyond the immediate project and consider the broader systems and trends shaping decisions.

Explore my full Listen shelf →

Anticipating: The Look by Michelle Obama

I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Michelle Obama’s latest book, The Look. Her previous work has consistently offered perspectives on leadership, authenticity, and navigating complex environments that extend far beyond their immediate subjects.

What I appreciate about her writing: the ability to find universal insights in deeply personal experiences. That’s something I aspire to in my own Sunday Reflections—making the personal professionally relevant without losing either the intimacy or the applicability.

Find it on my Now shelf when it’s released →

The Thread: Understanding Cycles to Navigate What’s Next

If there’s a theme connecting everything right now, it’s this:

the patterns repeat, even when the context changes

Understanding housing policy from the 1930s helps me evaluate projects today. Studying confidence cycles from 1929 helps me ask better questions when everyone’s bullish. Learning how cities were deliberately segregated helps me see which interventions might actually work versus which ones simply maintain the status quo with better branding.

None of this is about predicting the future. It’s about developing pattern recognition—the ability to see what’s actually happening beneath the surface noise.

That’s what makes the difference between reacting to markets and understanding them.

What’s On Your Shelf?

This is what’s shaping my thinking right now. I’d love to know what’s shaping yours.

What are you reading, watching, or listening to that’s changing how you see your work? Reply and let me know—I’m always looking for recommendations.

Eve Moss is the Founder and Managing Principal of Clarendon, a commercial real estate firm specializing in housing markets nationwide. With 30+ years of experience, she operates from New York, Boston, and Cleveland, serving housing authorities, investors, and policymakers.

For inquiries about market analysis, valuation, brokerage services, or strategic advisory, contact eve.moss@clarendon.com or visit clarendon.com.

Everything at evemoss.com → Market Intelligence. Mindful Living.

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