Looking Ahead to 2021: A Year-End Reflection

Historical reflection: Anthony Luna originally published this message on December 31, 2020. It describes Coastline Equity's work and his outlook at the end of that year.

On New Year's Eve last year, I celebrated with my wife and a close group of friends in New York City. As we celebrated the New Year while watching the Centennial Ball drop, the last thing any of us could have imagined was a global pandemic. Little did we know that evening would be the last time we saw each other, our friends, and family.

January started like any other year for my real estate advisory and property management firm. Our property managers were preparing for a year full of capital projects, renovations, and property improvements.

Preparing to work remotely

By late February, our team was planning for what we imagined would be a worst-case scenario. We prepared for the possibility of working from home, created new procedures, and retrained our team on the software systems we had available. Within a few short days, it became clear that we needed to execute our plan.

Our property management, accounting, and executive teams moved to fully virtual work. Initially, our property managers went into the field only for emergencies. Our maintenance team focused on exterior projects and life safety issues in the pandemic's initial weeks.

Our entire team began meeting virtually every morning for an all-hands call. At first, those calls helped us check in on the team's well-being, get a pulse on the business, and decide what to do next. Eventually, they became a way to keep the team engaged and focused on moving the business forward.

Supporting tenants and owners

Within a few short days of the initial Stay at Home orders, our phones began ringing with tenants' requests for rent relief and lease modifications. Our executive team and property managers collected requests, pulled the necessary data, and negotiated with tenants on behalf of our clients.

During the early weeks, my partner and I were on the phone late into the night. We were doing our best to reassure our tenants that we would do all we could to help their businesses survive.

We also worked with our clients to restructure debt, negotiate loan terms, and forecast their property budgets. We knew that our clients and tenants would fall short of their expectations for 2020, but we wanted to do our best to help everyone through the initial wave of the pandemic.

Looking ahead to 2021

2020 has been a year of many firsts for us all. It is a year that will be hard to forget. As I reflect on 2020 and prepare my team for 2021, I feel more prepared for the course ahead. Our financial projections are more conservative, our ancillary income is diversified, and our team is highly trained for the work in front of us. Tonight, I raise my glass to a prosperous new year ahead of us.

Read the original December 2020 message on LinkedIn. For the related property-market discussion from that period, see Coastline's original 2021 real estate outlook.