The New Year is here! It happened so fast, so in the last hours of 2025 year, let’s reflect a little and plan a lot.
As we enter 2026, the prevailing narrative around real estate is cautious. Interest rates remain elevated, transaction volume is uneven, and headlines continue to emphasize uncertainty. To many observers, it feels like a market still searching for direction. From our perspective, this is a familiar phase of the cycle.
Markets rarely turn with a clear signal. They turn quietly, unevenly, and often well before confidence returns. By the time recovery becomes obvious in the headlines, the most attractive positioning opportunities are already gone.
At Greenbuild, our focus is not on predicting timing, but on preparing for inevitability — by controlling the right assets, sequencing projects intelligently, and maintaining flexibility across a multi-year development pipeline.
The Market Signals Most People Are Missing
Despite pessimistic media coverage, we are seeing early, subtle signs of stabilization and recovery, particularly in housing markets with real supply constraints.
In San Diego County and surrounding submarkets, several indicators are worth paying attention to:
- Transaction activity has stopped deteriorating and is beginning to normalize in select pockets
- Builder behavior is shifting from defensive pausing to selective re-engagement
- Landowners who waited through 2023–2024 are quietly re-entering discussions
- Capital is returning first to deals with entitlements, downside protection, and realistic timelines
See my earlier post about the San Diego market in 2025
These signals don’t show up clearly in aggregate statistics, and they are often ignored because they lack drama. But historically, this is exactly how durable recoveries begin. Markets do not turn all at once. They turn asset by asset.
Positioning Before Confidence Returns
Smart investors rarely win by trying to call the exact bottom. The real advantage comes from positioning early, when uncertainty still keeps competition low. As the market cycle shifts, the highest demand will return first to assets with structural tailwinds, including:
- Entry-level and workforce housing
- Small-scale infill subdivisions
- Townhomes that balance density and livability
- Purpose-built rental communities aligned with long-term demographic demand
These assets face chronic undersupply, especially in constrained markets like San Diego. Financing cycles may ebb and flow, but housing demand does not disappear — it defers.
The critical question is not if demand returns, but who controls the assets when it does.
Control Without Overexposure: The Discipline of Optionality
One of the defining features of this cycle is that value is being created through control, not speed.
Rather than chasing immediate ownership with heavy cash exposure, disciplined operators are using tools that allow them to position assets while managing downside risk, including:
- Long escrows
- Option agreements
- Phased or refundable deposits
- Contingent closings tied to approvals or financing conditions
This approach offers three critical advantages:
- Flexibility — projects can be re-timed or redesigned as conditions change
- Scalability — capital can be deployed across multiple assets without concentration risk
- Risk management — downside is capped while upside remains intact
In this environment, patience is not inactivity. It is a strategy.
From Near-Term Delivery to Long-Term Depth: Greenbuild’s Active Pipeline
Greenbuild entered this market phase with projects already moving through the system, allowing us to both deliver near-term results and build a long-range capacity pipeline.
Near-Term Deliveries (2026)
Magnolia Heights Condos (1st Street Project)
This project is in the final stages of construction and is on track for completion in April–May. The project will deliver two- and three-bedroom units with plenty of parking starting from $469,000 to the East San Diego community of El Cajon.
Ramona Trails
Currently in framing, Ramona Trails is positioned for summer completion — aligning with the traditional selling season. Two models of 1625 and 1872 s.f. priced from $779,000 will provide desirable new construction homes in the fast growing community of Ramona.
These projects underscore an important lesson: progress through uncertainty compounds over time.
Long-Term Pipeline: Laying the Groundwork for 2026 and Beyond
Beyond near-term deliveries, Greenbuild is actively advancing — and selectively holding — a multi-year pipeline designed to provide continuity and resilience:
- A Build-to-Rent community of 160 homes in Palm Springs
- A 14-Home SFR community in Santee
- A 70-townhome project in Lakeside
- A 25-home subdivision also in Lakeside
- A 20-townhome project in Escondido
- Additional early-stage projects structured to sustain activity for the next three to four years
Not every project is meant to move at the same pace. Some are intentionally being advanced; others are being held in place — ready to move when timing, pricing, and capital alignment converge. Rather than rushing timelines, we are structuring these projects to align with the future market strength.
Why Pipeline Matters More Than Timing
Many real estate failures happen not because a developer chose the wrong deal, but because they lacked continuity. A multi-year pipeline allows for:
- Selective execution rather than forced deployment
- Smoother capital planning
- Program adjustments as demand shifts
- Long-term resilience across market cycles
Timing the market is difficult. Building a system that survives timing mistakes is far more reliable.
Capital Strategy: Conservative by Design, Opportunistic by Discipline
Greenbuild’s core focus remains residential development, where long-term fundamentals are strongest, and demand is most durable. At the same time, we recognize that market cycles also create selective opportunities — particularly in capital participation rather than physical assets.
As part of this broader strategy, we are in the process of launching Realty One Capital Fund, a private real estate debt fund designed to operate alongside our development.
The Fund will invest in short- and medium-term commercial credit for builders, developers, and investors secured by real assets, as well as selective distressed commercial assets and commercial notes with strong fundamentals, particularly where opportunities are driven by capital structure rather than asset quality.
These opportunities require discipline, not optimism. We are far less interested in “catching falling knives” than in solving broken capital stacks on otherwise good assets, in the right markets, with realistic assumptions.
First Key Foundation: Addressing Housing Beyond Development
Real estate does not exist in isolation from the communities it serves.
In parallel with our for-profit development activity, we are forming First Key Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on two related challenges in San Diego:
- Expanding housing affordability for middle-class families
- Supporting transitional housing initiatives that address homelessness
We believe durable solutions require collaboration between private capital, nonprofit structures, and public stakeholders. First Key Foundation is intended to serve as a bridge across those worlds, and it comes in the right time when both of these problems are too obvious, and the State of California hasn’t been able to find a meaningful long-term solution. We are willing and capable to do our part, if you want to contribute to our efforts, please reach out.
Building the Conversation: Transparency and Access
In the coming year, we are also expanding our efforts around transparency, collaboration, and education.
We are launching Blueprint San Diego, a podcast focused on development, housing policy, capital, and real high-level conversations about building in the complex San Diego market.
We are also launching Building San Diego, an in-person meetup group with monthly meetings beginning in late January. This community is designed for developers, investors, lenders, and property owners who want meaningful connections with other like-minded market players.
The goal is simple: foster an actively engaged community focused on housing, capital, and long-term planning.
Looking Ahead
We view 2026 less as a year of bold announcements and more as a year of quiet preparation.
Recovery rarely announces itself. Capital that waits for certainty often pays a premium for it. Those who focus instead on discipline, flexibility, and positioning tend to benefit when confidence returns.
At Greenbuild, our priority is not chasing momentum; it is being ready for it.
For those who prefer to stay close to the market, follow thoughtful progress, and engage when alignment makes sense, we welcome the conversation.
Wishing you a productive, inspiring, and quietly successful 2026. Always remember that your health and your family are more important than money! My inbox and calendar remain dangerously open.
Alex Lisnevsky and GreenBuild Team!