One has to give Zell credit for calling the prior top of the RE market quite literally to the hour. The Lehmans of the world, flush with funding from an insane debt-issuance market were offering him such ridiculously high prices for most of his commercial holdings he could not rationally refuse. And he said so in perfectly clear language at the time, that he was being offered so much more than the properties were worth that he had to sell them. That’s when he sold most of Equity Office.
On one hand, it is not that often that a wizard like Zell gets things exactly right twice in a row. Witness Bill Ackman who made billions betting against the RE market last time but is struggling with bets that have turned out wrong, wrong, and wrong since then. I am not sure that Zell has the full comprehension of the meaning of negative interest rates because it is an utterly synthetic environment that has never existed before.
But I would not bet against him!
That's a fascinating topic. The yield on the 10-year Treasury has been sitting below 2% for most of this year. AFAIK, it's never been that low. It seems like we're in a vortex with no escape.
Your guess is as good as mine how it plays out.