Episodes

One of the ways to become successful in Real Estate is through the path of brokerage. There’s almost no barrier to entry and unlimited upside. You can be successful as a broker if you develop a niche, passion, and discipline. Bob Knakal, a modern legend in the NYC brokerage community, leads the Private Capital Group for JLL in New York and has brokered the sale of well over 2000 buildings, more buildings in New York City than any individual broker ever, totaling over $21 billion in sales. In the...

Investing in Real Estate syndications can be risky, especially if you don’t have the necessary years of experience and the knowledge to effectively vet the operator and the specific opportunity. As a result, many investors have lost money, especially in the last year. One way to mitigate this risk is to invest in a fund that’s run by a fund operator with a lengthy track record of success and diversified holdings within the fund. Paul Moore, Founder of Wellings Capital, is operating his sixth fun...

Although core gateway markets have the highest appreciation for multifamily over time, secondary markets also offer tremendous growth and stability, and they have smaller barriers to entry. Bobby Larsen, Principal and Founder of Vanamor Investments, has invested successfully in submarkets of Portland, Oregon and Tampa, Florida, plus others. He’s deployed a very conservative approach to acquisitions and operations that’s minimized risk and produced great returns for investors. Vanamor also utiliz...

Maintaining high occupancy levels in apartment complexes can be an ongoing challenge, especially in highly competitive markets. This is why affordable, government-subsidized housing can be a great option for investors. If the properties are in the right location, occupancy can consistently run at 100%, with waiting lists for new tenants. Not only are these properties full, but delinquencies are a non-issue because most of the rents are paid by the government. Ira Fishman of North Loop Investment...

One of the hottest asset classes right now is neighborhood retail. Although it was out of favor just a few years ago because people thought ecommerce would replace it, it has proven to be not only resilient, but incredibly stable. There has almost been no new construction for over fifteen years, so existing properties are seeing occupancy levels at way over 90%. As a result, the competition to acquire these assets has gotten fierce. Nate Melchior, Principal of Dunton Commercial, vertically manag...

Cracks are starting to show in the multifamily space. Several owners have expiring rate caps and are underwater on their properties as they face dramatically increased debt payments. This is starting to force sellers to get realistic and capitulate on price. Great deals are starting to emerge with healthy spreads between interest rates and cap rates. Julian Vogel, Fund Manager at Colony Hills Capital, is acquiring recession resilient Class B- to A- properties with 20% return targets in growth...

In the last several years, industrial Real Estate has become a highly visible asset class, mostly because of ecommerce. One growing subset of this category is Industrial Outdoor Storage. It’s a great asset class because there’s very low capital expenditure or management involved. It’s mostly land with a small, sparsely furnished industrial building, and sometimes no building at all. As a result, it can be extremely lucrative. Matt McLennan, Executive Vice President of Kidder Matthews in Seattle,...

There can be outsized returns in out-of-favor asset classes when there are still strong underlying fundamentals. Office, in particular, can still be lucrative. Matt Drouin, Partner at Oak Grove Development, has acquired great legacy office buildings in downtown Rochester that are generating great cash flow. Matt also invests in multifamily, retail, and industrial in Rochester. Tight geographic focus and intimate market knowledge eliminates a lot of risk and results in great returns. Matt only do...

In the alternative investing space, there are numerous ways to build long-term wealth. Many of these opportunities involve direct investment in Real Estate, but there are other investments that the same or even better returns. Dave Zook, Founder and CEO of The Real Asset Investors, invests in alternative asset classes including ATM machines, Oil and Gas production, Car Washes and Self-Storage facilities. Dave creates partnerships with proven operators who specialize in respective asset classes a...

As we’ve emerged from the pandemic, Americans are now travelling almost as much as they were back in 2109. In certain markets, the hospitality industry is doing as well, if not better than ever, but there are still great opportunities to invest in hotels. Paul Hassebroek, Principal of Six Four Asset management, has been successfully operating hotels in Iowa and Wisconsin and will be raising a new fund to acquire more value-add opportunities within the Marriott chain. Paul will increase profits b...

A great sector of Real Estate investing that has a low barrier to entry is land flipping. Land flipping requires very little start-up money, and the profits can be incredibly lucrative with very little downside. Mike Deaton, a successful land investor, generates as much passive income from land investing as he and his wife made combined in high corporate salaries. Buying and selling land is easier than selling a house, apartments, or other commercial buildings because it’s just land with no phys...

A well refined market niche for real estate entrepreneurs can deliver outsized returns, but it’s easier said than done. It takes a lot to discover a niche in a crowded marketplace, and it requires discipline to stick with it without getting distracted by other shiny objects. Axel Ragnarsson, founder of Aligned Real Estate Partners, buys 10–50-unit value-add apartment buildings in Southern New Hampshire directly from sellers. Axel’s completely vertically integrated and knows the market incredibly...

Over the last five years, overly exuberant investors vastly overpaid for multifamily properties. Instead of basing their pricing on in-place property performance, they based their pricing on overly aggressive proformas. In many cases, these proformas didn’t materialize because of increased renovation costs and declining rents. Because of these factors plus increased borrowing costs, we’re starting to see distress in the marketplace. Bill Hamm, Co-founder of Broadwell Property Group, was smart en...

Although there can be gains from physical improvements to a property, the most expedient value-add occurs when you buy well-maintained properties for less than they’re worth. Ben Kogut, founder of Rooster Equity, buys single tenant retail properties, office buildings, shopping centers, and medical office properties from motivated sellers at prices below market. These properties have few improvement needs and are generating impressive cash flow at the onset so investors get solid distributions ri...

With construction costs having increased for value-add properties, and better deals coming online for newer properties, acquiring older properties may make less sense than a few years ago. Older properties also have a lot of maintenance costs and higher unit turn costs. As prices continue to come down for newer properties, these deals pose less risk and greater reward. Mark Weinstein, President of MJW Investments, has acquired over $1,5 Billion of apartments, student housing, commercial building...

In the past few months, great deals have materialized across asset classes as the buyer pool has shrunk and sources of capital have dried up. As a result, more deals are generating attractive in-place cash flow. Cash-on-cash upon close is more important than IRR and Equity Multiple because cash flow is immediate and reduces risk. IRR and Equity Multiple are speculative and don’t always materialize. Irwin Boris, Head of Investments at Heritage Capital Group, has decades of experience across most ...

Prices on most Real Estate assets have come down significantly over the past year. In multifamily, class C properties in particular have gotten crushed and prices on Class A and B properties have also contracted. Too many sponsors paid too much for properties, overleverages, and got floating rate debt. Over the next couple years, great opportunities will present themselves to invest in high quality assets at discounted prices. If interest rates come down during this period, as many predict, and ...

Supply-demand imbalance is what drives value in Commercial Real Estate. In this country, we currently have a severe shortage of affordable housing in many markets. In the case of Mobile Home Parks, the ultimate in affordable housing, supply is actually shrinking because municipalities are repurposing the land Mobile Home Parks occupy for other uses. Nathan Jameson, Founder and Managing Director of ARX Capital, has an incredible track record of buying, improving, and operating Mobile Home Parks i...

When institutions like pension funds or other groups like family offices invest in Real Estate, they’re looking to invest with best-in-class operators with stellar track records to partner with. They have very specific criteria for asset classes, markets, and operators. Jon Siegel, Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of RailField Partners, has developed a strong track record in core plus multifamily assets across growth markets, and has attracted capital from large capital partners as he con...

When it comes to doing larger Real Estate deals, the power of partnerships comes into play. It’s helpful to leverage several sources of capital and specific areas of expertise in order to fund deals and execute on business plans. Scott Jacobson, Founder of Onward Equity, started out as a solo operator in smaller apartment buildings and a small office building in Indiana before joining a networking group and scaling his efforts with other members into larger multifamily buildings across several s...

It’s difficult to create value when you do whatever everyone else is doing, and hard to find opportunities others haven’t discovered. One such asset class in independent hotels is small, popular tourist towns. Many of these hotels are run by ma and pa operators who have antiquated operating processes and lack the resources to update their properties. By making simple adjustments to operations, and updating the physical premises, there’s huge upside to these properties. Jonathan Twombly, Managing...

When it comes to stable tenants and predictable cash flow, it’s hard to find a better asset class then Medical Office. As the population ages and people live longer, the demand for medical care will continue to flourish. Plus, technology will never replace the human body. Whether its dermatology practices, dentists, dialysis centers, emergency care, eye care, hospitals, veterinary practices, etc., health care is rapidly growing. Ben Reinberg, CEO of Alliance Consolidated Group of Companies, has ...

Since mid-2022, Commercial Real Estate prices have been in a freefall. Dramatic increases in Interest rates have pushed prices down, capital has dried up, and the market has come to a standstill. The lending industry, however, is varied and complicated, and no one quite knows what will transpire when loan maturities transpire. Unlike 2008-09, operations on most properties are sound, but unprecedented rate increases will saddle properties with more debt than they’ll be able to service. Brian Burk...

In the past few years, great deals for multifamily properties have been few and far between because the prices have simply been too high to make sense. As a result, many inexperienced operators relied on risky financial engineering to make deals pencil and are now paying the price. A lot of these operators are going to lose some, if not all, of their money and take their investors with them. Bruce Fraser, Managing Partner of Elkhorn Capital Partners, has avoided these overpriced assets, and crea...