Milstein Center

Professor Parinitha (Pari) Sastry is an assistant professor of finance at Columbia Business School. Her research focuses on climate change, financial intermediation, and real-estate markets. She received her B.A. from Columbia University and her finance Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has worked previously at the Department of Treasury, Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, Brookings Institution, and New York Fed. 

Brian P. Lancaster is a Senior Lecturer in the Discipline of Finance at the Columbia Business School.  Professor Lancaster teaches the following courses: Real Estate Finance, Real Estate Debt Markets, Residential Real Estate Finance:  Dirt, Debt and Derivatives, Capital Markets and Investments, Real Estate Entrepreneurship, and Debt Markets in the MBA, EMBA, PhD and MS&E programs. Professor Lancaster received the Robert. W.

As a real estate professional, you can’t avoid it—everyone is talking about data centers. Without a doubt, it is the most exciting sector for real estate investment in 2025. Over the past week, I’ve had six in-depth conversations with experts and pored over hundreds of pages of research from real estate advisory firms, Wall Street analysts, credit rating agencies, technology blogs, and newspapers. While a short piece cannot fully do justice to this fascinating, interdisciplinary topic, I will attempt to distill key insights and open questions worth considering.

There is a lot of chatter in the housing world right now about what the Trump administration’s plans are with respect to housing policy, but one thing is clear - there has not been this much attention paid to housing and this much potential for favorable housing legislation and deregulation in a long time.  This is the first time the President has been a lifelong real estate developer who appreciates the challenges of regulation and who is a big believer in private sector engagement.  Recent reports that the Trump Administration is seeking significant cuts to the HUD workfor