If you pick up from my comments here and there in this letter that I believe the current environment favors privates over publics, you are correct. Other than DEI there has not been an IPO of substance in years, rather, there have been dozens of go-privates (46 to be exact, over the past two years). We are now living the best debt markets in history, but publics don't dare partake, even when privates can lever to 90% - look at Blackstone/EOP. Taking all this together is a sure sign that real estate stocks are cheap.

As I have said time and again in this letter, our business goal is to create value over a 3-5 year period and in some cases even longer. We would rather buy a really well located, empty building cheaply than a fully-tenanted, at market rent building too expensively - much rather, even though our short-term earnings would be penalized. We have dozens and dozens of assets such as these, where earnings stabilization won't occur until future periods, be it for lease up, lease rollover, development or re-development. The future growth of these in-hand assets, together with our financial capacity to add assets, is what makes Mike and me so confident about Vornado's future.