The national news has been pretty noisy this winter, so you’ll be relieved to know that this month’s column is guaranteed 100 percent rancor-free. Yet as I was reading the excellent special report on fair housing in this issue by MHN Contributing Editor Amanda Marsh, I couldn’t help noticing that recent events offer surprising and, thank goodness, entirely nonpartisan lessons for the multifamily sector. One of Marsh’s insights is that the direction of federal fair housing policy temporarily remains uncertain as a new administration settles in. Plenty of other matters are at stake during the next couple of years, as…

For as long as I’ve been covering real estate, the rap against the industry’s approach to technology is that it is a slow adopter. Yet in reviewing the articles that comprise MHN’s annual technology issue, I couldn’t help being struck by the variety, ingenuity and enthusiasm exhibited in these pages. The thirst for innovation clearly emerges from the roundtable conducted by MHN Contributing Editor Amanda Marsh with five leading technology executives. For anyone with a stake in the applications of technology—and that means everyone, of course— this virtual panel session will reward multiple readings. The notion of taking a virtual-reality…