Who am I?

I currently run a REPE firm that focuses on sub-institutional size commercial real estate deals across all asset classes. I created my firm lean. It's not a "volume" shop and I'm not looking to make all my money off AUM fees. I'm aim to do 1-3 high-profit home run deals per year and make all my money on the back end. As you can see in the case study directly above, so far I've been very successful.

I started my career in the institutional real estate private equity world. The firm I worked at operated in the $20MM-$200MM range, buying mostly office and hospitality assets. Office in San Francisco and hospitality all along the Eastern seaboard. I looked at everything, but focused mainly on the office sector.

From the beginning, I realized that working for others wasn’t for me. I hated taking orders from other people. I hated wasting time with stupid analyses that I knew weren’t important. I thought having someone else determine how much money I made was absolutely insane. Most importantly, I thought I could do it better myself. So I set out to prove it.

I started buying “side deals” almost immediately. My first deal was tiny, just a $200k triplex. I knew it wasn’t going to make me any serious money, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to gain a foothold. To establish broker relationships, lender relationships, investor relationships, to establish market knowledge. These things all compound and like any form of compounding, the earlier you start, the better. The point was to position myself perfectly for future deals.

I had only $2,500 of my own money at the time, so I had to raise the rest. Typically, your first deal is the most difficult to raise for and it was no different for me. I got 20 “no’s” before I got a “yes”. But slowly I raised all the money. The deal was a success, selling for $270k roughly a year later.

From there, the deals got better.

By May 2021, I was ready to leave my job and start my own real estate private equity firm – and I did. It was a tough decision as I’d worked my way up to junior partner at my firm, so by moving on I was leaving a lot of carry (equity) on the table. But I didn’t do what most people do (leave their job willy-nilly). I had a plan. I had a deal lined up under contract to be the first seed deal of my new firm.

In September 2021, I bought that deal – a 44-unit fractured condo deal for $2.6MM. The deal was bought at a 9.5% cap rate based on the Seller’s in-place numbers and for $60k/key. The day I bought it, I knew I was going to make a lot of money.

Why’s that? Because I was positioned perfectly. I knew the market well. I got the deal off-market from a broker relationship I had cultivated. And, due to those two things, I’d absolutely stolen the deal on the buy.

That deal ended up turning $800k in equity into $4.1mm in under 2 years. You can get the full case study of it HERE.

In addition to multiple deals of this scale, I also began writing my thoughts about the real estate market on Twitter which ended up developing into an education company. I've put out full primers on everything from basic real estate terminology and real estate valuations to detailed assessments of markets, how to create optimal deal structures, how to finance commercial real estate, and how to find home run deals.