Why Building a Crosswalk in LA Is Kafkaesque

Bill McBride did not just predict the 2008 housing bubble, he helped invent financial blogging with his Calculated Risk newsletter. Zach Lasry, meanwhile, is much newer to the scene, but in his career as a real estate developer, he is already responsible for building one of LA's hottest new neighborhoods — Melrose Hill. We spoke to both of them at our live show at the Vermont Hollywood, for a wide-ranging panel discussion on LA real estate. We talk about the difficulty of sourcing construction components, the Kafkaesque process of getting a crosswalk built in LA, and how self-driving cars might help reshape the city and solve its longstanding issues with parking. Read more: Mortgage Rates at 7% Are Forcing Home Sellers to Slash Prices https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-24/mortgage-rates-at-7-push-sellers-to-cut-home-sale-prices?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article AI Data Centers Release Heat, Posing New Problem for Cities https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-ai-data-center-heat-pollution-cities/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News http://bloomberg.com/ subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots https://www.bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots?in_source=oddlotspodcast Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter http://bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots https://discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Joe Weisenthal?

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• 2:02Joe Weisenthal?

  Hello and welcome to another live episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

• 2:07Tracy Alloway?

  And I'm Tracy Alloway.

• 2:08Joe Weisenthal?

  So we're here at the Vermont Theater in Hollywood. And of course, you talk about Hollywood, but you also have to talk about the real estate industry. We know this has always been a hub, a booming real estate industry. But what do the changes in economic development and the housing market, how does it manifest itself here?

• 2:26Tracy Alloway?

  That's right. So we have a real treat for you. We're going to be speaking to an absolute legend in the world of residential real estate, someone who actually called the subprime bubble before 2008, and maybe even more importantly, called the bottom of the housing market after 2008. And then we're also going to be speaking to a relative newcomer in the world of commercial property, someone who's doing new things in LA and trying to develop basically a new neighborhood.

• 2:51Joe Weisenthal?

  So enjoy our conversation with the legend, Bill McBride of Calculated Risk, as well as Zach Lasry, real estate developer, founder of The Western Company. Thank you both so much. Zach, what do you, what do you do? What's your job?

• 3:07Speaker 05

  I'm a real estate professional.

• 3:09Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay, what does that mean? Because there are a lot of people who could say those words.

• 3:14Speaker 05

  So my goal with The Western Company, the goal that we have is that being able to say, I'm a real estate professional is more exciting than it normally is. So I come from a theater and acting background. And what I noticed was the developments that I was seeing in Los Angeles moved here in about 2014.

• 3:35Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  You know, you'd have a really exciting neighborhood pop up in Silver Lake or Echo Park or Highland Park.

• 3:40Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 05

  And then all the new, whenever scaffolding would go up for a new building, there's generally a, oh, oh no, what's that going to be? And that's not the reaction that you should have when a new building is being built. There should be some excitement. What is that going to be? What kind of new creative spirit is going to enter into that structure? And I just don't think the commercial real estate industry is that inspiring in that way. Those outcomes haven't been so inspiring. So our goal is to sort of infuse development with the art spirit.

• 4:15Tracy Alloway?

  Right. So I'm going to ask a very basic LA question, and I'd be curious to get both your takes on this. And again, Joe gave the caveat earlier, which is we've been to LA a couple of times, but we don't know that much about it. Whenever I come here, I am sort of stunned by the diversity of independent businesses compared to New York.

• 4:33Joe Weisenthal?

  I think about this all the time.

• 4:34Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, there's so, there's so many mom and pop shops. Like I passed by a linoleum emporium on the way over here, which I just don't think you would ever see in New York. And I'm sure the direction of travel for a lot of independent businesses isn't that great. But how have so many managers survived in LA so far compared to other places in the US?

• 4:55Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  Well, I went to school in New York, went to NYU, and a lot of my most talented friends left New York and moved to Los Angeles because New York just got too expensive. And LA, it's, while it's expensive to buy a home in LA, you can generally find a good rental deal in a really exciting neighborhood. It's a lot harder to do that in New York City. So you have people who are just dedicated to their craft, who can survive in LA and focus on their art. Versus in New York, it's a lot more difficult to be able to focus on your craft while being able to pay rent. So I think you just have more of an experimental, experimental group of people who are moving out here

• 5:40Speaker 05

  and who exist and trying to start and create new ideas.

• 5:44Joe Weisenthal?

  Bill, thoughts?

• 5:45Speaker 06

  Well, I would also address the density issue.

• 5:48Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 06

  In New York, you have really high density and therefore you're going to have high rent for a particular location. Here, we're really spread out.

• 5:56Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Speaker 06

  Which is an issue, by the way, we, you know, we should address zoning in LA because we can't stay spread out forever or as spread out as we are. But I think that's a reason that you see so many mom and pop shops, which is great. You know, in my community, I live right off PCH, Pacific Coast Highway, and the, most of the stores are mom and pops. There are some chain restaurants and stuff, but so, you know, I think, I think it's the density that.

• 6:24Joe Weisenthal?

  I have to say, I've talked about this, I love strip malls. I love like seeing like the Korean restaurant next to the tooth whitening place, next to the vape shop, next to the karate school, next to the, like, to me, like, that's like one of my favorite. I love driving by.

• 6:40Tracy Alloway?

  Truly multi-use development.

• 6:41Joe Weisenthal?

  But Zach, when you're thinking about, okay, you want this to be, you want to create a building that actually get people excited rather than, ah, another building. What are the ingredients to that?

• 6:53Speaker 05

  I think you have to be focused on, so the way that we're trying to approach finding tenants, we like to think of it like, almost like how A24 tries to find filmmakers.

• 7:03Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, okay.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  So how can we find someone who has a vision? We're not trying to find another Shake Shack. I mean.

• 7:10Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, thank you.

• 7:11Speaker 05

  So Shake Shack's awesome. I love going to Shake Shack when I'm at the airport, but I don't necessarily need Shake Shack everywhere else. So I think people get a lot more excited when people are trying new things and are trying to test the limits of even pastries, whatever it is. If you're passionate about a thing, then that passion usually translates into an exciting new result. So that's how we approach trying to find tenants.

• 7:35Tracy Alloway?

  How do you think about the trade off, if there is one, between taste and I guess profitability? Because I think about A24, A24 makes a bunch of really good movies. There are a lot of good movies out there that don't necessarily make a lot of money. And unfortunately, some of the movies that make a lot of money are, you know, Marvel superhero things that are the same thing over and over, as we were discussing with Hayes. But like, how do you turn taste into actual profit when it comes to property?

• 8:02Speaker 05

  Well, the lucky thing about real estate is even if the tenant fails, which is sad, but the, the real estate still maintains its value. And then a new tenant generally will come in. It's not like a movie where if no one sees the movie, you just write off the loss. So the real estate generally retains its value, even if there's a failure.

• 8:23Joe Weisenthal?

  Bill, you mentioned zoning. And one of the questions, you know, there's, we've had a lot of conversations about zoning. But, you know, people fight about, oh, is this, is this residential? Is this business, et cetera? From your perspective, like when you think about, we want to crack the puzzle. We want to make affordability, et cetera. We want this to be lively. In your research, how important is like getting that regulatory piece of the puzzle correct?

• 8:51Speaker 06

  Well, if you talk to the home builders or the apartment builders, it's the biggest piece.

• 8:54Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay.

• 8:55Speaker 06

  So I think getting zoning changed. I mean, you know, we've passed some things in California, we, California has. But the ADU laws, they're, ADUs are really taking off in a lot of parts of California. Yeah. Now, it's only, the only problem is, is that's a small increase to the housing stock. But, you know, actual zoning is really, changing zoning is really hard. You know, they, they, they have done some things like near transport centers. You can build a lot higher density. One of the things that, we're in an official housing crisis in California. So I think we're still in it. They announced it four or five years ago. And they, and you weren't allowed to reduce density.

• 9:40Speaker 06

  So if you, if you bought a six unit apartment building, you couldn't build four condos. Or in my community, what was happening was people with all kinds of money were buying two or three homes in a row and building a real mansion, not a McMansion. And, and they've stopped that.

• 9:58Joe Weisenthal?

  Huh.

• 9:59Speaker 06

  So because, because density was actually decreasing in the, in the beach communities, which, you know, is kind of the opposite of what we kind of need. And I'm speaking a little bit against my own interest in that because we'll have more traffic and stuff.

• 10:13Joe Weisenthal?

  Thank you for your publicity.

• 10:14Speaker 06

  But by the way, just to add to Zach's comment, when I'm talking with him, I think one of the, the things that really adds value to what he's doing is he's taking an area and building it into a community and, and, and making it kind of like a, you go into that community, it's like a symphony. And, and, you know, I, that's, I thought it was an incredibly exciting idea to not just build one building, which is what a lot of people do, but they are taking multiple buildings and trying to build a whole community with new restaurants and, and a real vision for that. And I think that will, you know, that, that will have a real big impact.

• 10:50Tracy Alloway?

  Right, Zach, say more about that. So what happens when you're buying multiple buildings in a single neighborhood and sort of aggregating those developments versus maybe just like cherry, cherry picking a few properties that are scattered across the city?

• 11:03Speaker 05

  So yes, the idea for what we're doing on Western and Melrose came mostly from reading this book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. And she was talking about the sidewalk ballet in Greenwich Village.

• 11:16Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 11:17Speaker 05

  And growing up in New York City, I had seen that firsthand. And Greenwich Village is one of the most exciting neighborhoods to just walk around and do nothing because you're experiencing culture by just existing. And that was the one thing I was felt like was missing in Los Angeles. There are a few of these great main streets in L.A., but there's, there's very few. And generally, when they exist, they end up sort of turning into airport shopping malls eventually. And that's just very disappointing because, speaking of zoning, New York is basically all mixed use. So if there's a street, I mean, Manhattan at this point is, is so expensive that it's hard to have independent businesses. But for a while, even if there were a lot of chains on one street, you could go to a side street and see something interesting.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  L.A. doesn't have the luxury of doing that because roughly 95% of the city is residentially zoned. So if you have a community that has their main street have all of the culture and life taken out of it, then that's it.

• 12:14Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 05

  You got, you got nothing because it's just residential around you.

• 12:18Joe Weisenthal?

  You know, sometimes there are these fights on Twitter where they talk about like, what are the best, most walkable cities? And it's like, oh, New York is very, very walkable. And then there's like, oh, L.A. is at the bottom, except it's always so nice, the weather out here, I don't mind walking an hour. So I'm actually totally, I actually think L.A. is a great walking city because I never have to worry about the weather. I think it's one of the most walkable cities. It's so pleasant to walk here. But can I, no, I love walking here. But it does not, I guess, oppose.

• 12:51Tracy Alloway?

  You'll be walking for a long time.

• 12:53Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, it's great. I love walking for a long time here, and I've taken many long walks in L.A. But I know it does not meet what most people are talking about when they say walkable.

• 13:16Tracy Alloway?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis. But sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused, and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:41Speaker 01

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• 15:47Joe Weisenthal?

  Okay, you have this vision, this community, et cetera. How much right now is your business being affected? Or how much, when you're thinking about this, are you thinking about the headwinds that we talked about with Hayes right before? The fact that there is this very big industry that is on the decline? And how does that make you think about the business, the opportunity set?

• 16:09Speaker 05

  So I think the commercial real estate industry is having a really tough time.

• 16:13Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 05

  Because for a long time, we've been able to make money by financially engineering outcomes. And now the financial conditions are not super great for those financially engineered outcomes. You can't get a cap rate and an interest rate arbitrage and make money.

• 16:31Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 05

  You can't throw a bunch of people in a room of 140 IQ and do some spreadsheets and figure out how to make money when the interest rates are higher than what you bought the building for on a cap rate. Right? So now you actually have to make the product good.

• 16:45Joe Weisenthal?

  I see what you're saying.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  And I think that's what's really exciting about what we're doing is we're seeing rents increase where we are because I think we've made a really exciting product by investing in talent. There's a lot of new apartment buildings in L.A. that I don't think many people go around going, wow, that's such a beautiful, cool new apartment building. I think most people are like, oh, God, not another one of those.

• 17:08Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  Boring, generic apartment buildings. So I think the commercial real estate industry, now we have to actually make good products if you want to make money.

• 17:14Tracy Alloway?

  Okay, so speaking of making good products, I read one of the things you're doing as part of your developing is you're building city infrastructure as well, so installing things like crosswalks.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:27Tracy Alloway?

  What's the process of creating a crosswalk in L.A.?

• 17:30Speaker 05

  Um. It's like a Kafka novel. It's just horrible.

• 17:38Joe Weisenthal?

  Can you tell us more?

• 17:39Speaker 05

  Oh, we got a great email. We got approved for a crosswalk on Clinton and Western, and it said it'll be built in a few years or more.

• 17:50Tracy Alloway?

  Wait, what's the constraint? Like, what is the actual holdup? What's your sense of the holdup?

• 18:00Speaker 05

  They, uh, there's no really process to get one. You can, you have to pay for it. That's, they're like, oh, yeah, we'll, we'll totally approve that for you, but it's going to cost a million dollars. And then we're like, just to put a, a stop, like a light?

• 18:14Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  And they're like, well, the engineering, the electrical. And then you gotta go put a vault underneath for us. So it's like, they're like, what are you going to do for us?

• 18:24Joe Weisenthal?

  Interesting. It's funny to think a few years are up. It reminds me of when I used to, as a young kid, like be a vinyl record collector, and you'd see the 90, 99 cents and up bins. And it's like, so this is the bin that contain, you could have a hundred dollar record in the 99 cent and up bins.

• 18:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:41Joe Weisenthal?

  It's truly, I'm curious, Bill, you talk to the home builders. Have they become more of the product mindset? Like, do they, are they going in the same direction where it's like, okay, it's not just good enough to have like a master plan community or something? We have to think about the freestanding home as a desirable product rather than just a place to live. Is that a thing yet?

• 19:03Speaker 06

  Well, you know, most of the home builders that I speak to are, are infill builders. I do talk to some of the larger builders that, the number one thing I've heard from them is they're, they're concerned, they were really into the build-to-rent model.

• 19:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Yes, yes.

• 19:18Speaker 06

  And, and, and that's kind of under pressure right now. So as far as building a community, I still think they're sticking with their master plan.

• 19:26Joe Weisenthal?

  Got it.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  So it's interesting to hear him say that about the crosswalk because policy and, and zoning and, and regulatory issues are the number one thing I talk, I hear from, from home builders. They, they, you know, they all feel right across, of course, good times, bad times, that's always their number one issue, so.

• 19:47Tracy Alloway?

  I have another basic L.A. question. Despite what Joe says about this being a walkable city, lots of people drive, right? Which means you have to have parking if you're doing a commercial development, right? Everyone needs to get there. And at the same time, I imagine having huge portions of the city as designated parking lots is not that attractive if you're trying to create a neighborhood or maybe even if you're trying to produce profit. How do you think about the trade-off between parking versus, you know, creating a beautiful neighborhood with many tasteful buildings?

• 20:21Speaker 05

  It's definitely my biggest blind spot because I didn't drive for most of my life living in New York.

• 20:27Tracy Alloway?

  Huh.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  So people who are from L.A. are always asking me what the parking situation is.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  And I'm like, why do you keep asking me about the parking? Don't you want to know like what the restaurants are? And they're like, well, where am I going to park? I had a friend, I have a friend from LA who will, who will park. And then we're going half a block north and he'll get out, he'll drive his car and then park half a block north.

• 20:50Tracy Alloway?

  Wow.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. But it, no, it's, it's a thing. It's a thing, especially if you have kids, like you gotta get them in the car seats, get them out of the car seats. So if you, if you can't park, it's like Fairfax is like horrendous parking. And sometimes you'll just not go to the business if the parking's that bad. But you can, you can make it work with valet.

• 21:09Speaker 06

  Let me, let me add something here too.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 21:11Speaker 06

  You know, I mentioned the ADUs and that they have picked up a little bit. But one of the rules with the ADUs is you don't have to have off-street parking.

• 21:19Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 21:19Speaker 06

  So what's happening in a lot of the communities where they are building a lot of ADUs is the streets are just packed. So even worse than they were before. So, you know, it's, parking, until we get real self-driving cars and nobody has to have a car anymore, you know, parking's a huge issue.

• 21:36Speaker 05

  Koreatown is one of the craziest parking situations, maybe on the planet.

• 21:41Tracy Alloway?

  Really?

• 21:41Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. People will, there'll be no spots. My, my wife lived in Koreatown for a little while. And then there's people who are like just sitting there all day. And then once someone leaves, they're like coordinating how to get all the spots. So Koreatown's pretty rough. But I do think with self-driving cars, parking will become less important.

• 22:01Joe Weisenthal?

  No, I'm fascinated by this question because it's like the car drives you to work and then goes to some centralized lot. Like, I want to do like a bunch of episodes because it could just end up meaningfully restructuring cities and how they're organized.

• 22:14Speaker 06

  Let me just interrupt you quickly. It also would change the way houses look.

• 22:18Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, right.

• 22:19Speaker 06

  Because right now in a lot of communities, you got these garages in front and are really ugly.

• 22:23Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 06

  You know, and it'd be really nice if those all went away. And, and, and my brother pointed out to me, one of the biggest changes, of course, would be self-driving would be police interactions go way down.

• 22:34Joe Weisenthal?

  Yes, right.

• 22:35Speaker 06

  So I'm sorry, sorry.

• 22:36Joe Weisenthal?

  It also means lower speeding ticket revenue for a lot. There are all kinds of, no, there are going to be no speeding ticket, uh, tickets anymore, which is going to hurt.

• 22:43Speaker 06

  I hope this happens in my lifetime.

• 22:44Joe Weisenthal?

  A whole lot of time. I have a question, you know, this is, this is a question that I probably would have asked very first off in like 2021 or 2022, then it faded. But I'm curious now, how hard is it to like find construction materials or like HVAC things or all, or the electricity?

• 23:04Tracy Alloway?

  Transformers.

• 23:05Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, like, because now we know there's incredible competition for a lot of that stuff. Is that showing up in your development timelines?

• 23:12Speaker 05

  Transformers.

• 23:13Joe Weisenthal?

  So what's happening up with that?

• 23:15Speaker 05

  You gotta fight for it.

• 23:17Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:18Tracy Alloway?

  What does that actually mean though? Do you pay a higher price or do you, I don't, everyone always talks about building the relationship with the supplier. Do you become their best friend? How do, what does fight for it mean?

• 23:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, you gotta find a guy who knows a guy.

• 23:30Tracy Alloway?

  Find the guy.

• 23:31Speaker 05

  And then you gotta buy it in advance and then store it somewhere.

• 23:35Tracy Alloway?

  Huh.

• 23:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's like, yeah, it gets weird.

• 23:37Tracy Alloway?

  So do you, you have a garage just like full of Transformers somewhere?

• 23:41Speaker 05

  I might.

• 23:42Joe Weisenthal?

  No, like when you were like, it's a very valuable, Tracy's gonna add that to her prepper.

• 23:48Tracy Alloway?

  I probably will.

• 23:49Joe Weisenthal?

  As my fellow, as my fellow prepper, yeah, gotta have a garage full of Transformers.

• 23:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:56Joe Weisenthal?

  Um, long-term, people are always gonna love living around here. I mean, we could talk about like, yeah, Hollywood, sure, but like, this is like heaven on earth here. This is God's country. Like in the end, like, it's always gonna be great, right? That's my LA take.

• 24:13Speaker 05

  I, I think, I think Los Angeles is, has the highest ceiling of any city in the world.

• 24:19Joe Weisenthal?

  I completely agree.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:21Joe Weisenthal?

  I'm such an LA bull.

• 24:24Speaker 06

  We, we have, we have two problems. One, one is the cost of housing, which we need to address. And the other's water. Yeah, water, water in California is a huge, huge issue.

• 24:37Joe Weisenthal?

  Another topic we could talk for a long time, but, uh, Bill and Zach, thank you so much for joining us at Odd Lots Live. I really appreciate you sharing with us all the good.

• 25:02Tracy Alloway?

  That was our conversation with Bill McBride and Zach Lasry, recorded live in LA. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

• 25:10Joe Weisenthal?

  And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at CarmenArmed, Dash O'Bennett at DashBot, Kay Brooks at KayBrooks, and Kevin Lozano at KevinLloydLozano.

• 25:21Tracy Alloway?

  And for more Odd Lots content, you should check out our daily newsletter. You can find that at Bloomberg.com/oddlots.

• 25:27Joe Weisenthal?

  And you can chat about all of these topics, including real estate, in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.

• 25:33Tracy Alloway?

  And if you enjoyed this conversation, then please leave a comment or like the video, or better yet, subscribe.

• 25:39Joe Weisenthal?

  Thanks for watching and listening.

• 26:12Speaker 09

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