Writing
Everything he has published
Twelve essays on this site and every post from his Medium and Blogger, in one list, newest first.
Richard Joseph Spinelli writes about operating student housing, the market around one campus, buying and renovating small prewar buildings, and the way decisions get made under a deadline. This index carries the essays written for this site alongside everything he publishes elsewhere, so there is one place that holds all of it.
The posts from Medium and Blogger are pulled when this site is built, not in your browser. RSS feed for the essays on this site.
Showing all 40.
- Heat in Prewar Buildings Is Uneven by Design
- Knowing One Market Beats Scanning Twenty
- A Group Lease Needs One Named Point of Contact
- Vertical Integration Grows at the Speed of Teaching
- Standard Parts Make Old Building Repairs Fast
- The First Apartment Shapes How Students See Landlords
- The Campus Housing Office Is a Real Leasing Channel
- Buying an Occupied Building Means Inheriting Promises
- Renewal Is a Verdict on the Whole Year
- Storage Space Decides What You Can Fix Same Day
- The Floor Plan Decides How a Group Lives
- What a University Partnership Asks of a Landlord
- Student Apartment Safety Is Mostly Basic Hardware
- Two Groups Under One Roof Need Two Front Doors
- Student Housing Groups Form Long Before They Search
- Student Housing Renovation Needs a Gap Before Move In
- Student Housing Operators Answer to the Neighbors Too
- Student Leasing Cycle, Month by Month
Twelve months, and the whole year turns on about eight weeks of them.
- Twenty Seven Units Is a Real Operating Company
- Assess an Old Building From the Roof and the Basement
- Fordham Housing Demand Calendar
Why demand for Fordham housing barely responds to anything an operator does.
- Guarantors and Who Carries the Lease
The questions a parent asks in February, answered in the order they usually arrive.
- What Resident First Actually Means Day to Day
- Building Maintenance History Belongs in Writing
- Fordham Off Campus Housing Supply
Five kinds of owner supply the blocks around Rose Hill, and they are not competing on the same thing.
- Vacancy Math in One Neighborhood
One empty unit, worked through properly, in a portfolio where every building shares a handful of streets.
- Fordham Housing Cost, the Inputs
Six inputs, ranked by how much they move the number and how little anyone controls them.
- Leasing to Groups Is Its Own Discipline
- Student Housing Move Out Is Where Fairness Gets Tested
- Buying a Prewar Walk Up, Offer to Close
Eight steps, and the two that actually decide whether a building is worth owning.
- Renovation Order, Closing to Move In
The sequence is not a preference. Get it wrong and the work is done twice.
- Group Showings Are Decided Socially and Decided Fast
- An Economics Degree Is Not a Manual
A claim, the strongest objection to it, and an answer that concedes most of the objection.
- Which Numbers Matter to an Operator
Two columns. What gets reported, and what an operator actually watches.
- Forty Two Miles and When to Stop
A race that asks the same question every hour until you answer it wrong or answer it honestly.
- Even Splits Are a Management Idea
An analogy, pushed until it breaks, and what is left once it has.
- A Walkable Portfolio Changes Who You Can Hire
- Storm Response Is Simpler When Every Building Is Close
- Student Housing Leasing Works Better as One Inventory
- Student Housing Repairs Need a Small Bench of Trades