Senior Vice President of Tax, Safehold
Search every verified Adam Cohen interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a September 2024 interview with Nareit, Adam Cohen, senior vice president of tax at Safehold, discussed challenges in real estate tax reporting. He stated that the industry "needs to catch up with what's happening outside the real estate industry in terms of data management and analytics," noting that transactions are recorded manually in an automated environment. Cohen attributed this to real estate companies running "lean and mean" with limited budgets and staffing, and said that "bringing in young people and trying to train them in a very complex world is almost impossible." He expressed interest in using AI and automation for tasks like computing taxable income and adjustments. Cohen also described common long-term incentive structures in REITs. He said that "L tips" generally refer to profits interests in the operating partnership, which are typically offered to senior executives, while junior employees more often receive restricted stock units. He noted that few REITs use options because REIT growth is "very long-term, very steady state," making options less attractive over short vesting periods.
“The real estate industry needs to catch up with what's happening outside the real estate industry in terms of data management and analytics which is recording transactions in a way that are not only important for SEC reporting but also for the myriad of tax reporting.”
“Most real estate companies run lean and mean; we don't have layers of people that are necessary to implement these kinds of changes and of course the budget to go with it.”
“Our transactions each are always different; each lease is different, each lease has a nuance, so we're working very manually in a very automated environment and at the same time we are starved for resources at the lower level.”
“Bringing in young people and trying to train them in a very complex world is almost impossible.”
“Broadly in the real estate and the REIT area, gaining that expertise and having the data so that we can use things like AI and other automation to eventually do things like re-testing, computing taxable income, and computing the various adjustments that we have.”
“In the RE world, L tips generally refer to profits interests in the operating partnership, which could have favorable treatment and are typically for the upper levels of the organization, the more sophisticated executives who can get K-1s and file in multiple states.”
“Few REITs use options because RE growth is very long-term, very steady state, and so few people go into options where the difference in price between what they were issued at and what they might vest at over a two or three-year period is not that great; accordingly, restricted stock is more common.”
“Typically, senior executives tend to be more on the L tip side and the more junior employees and junior executives will tend to take restricted stocks; some REITs may offer an option, choosing one or the other, and a person can make that choice for themselves as to what they think is a better or longer-term incentive f...”
Adam Cohen, senior vice president of tax at Safehold Inc. (NYSE: SAFE), participated in a video interview during Nareit's ...
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