In-person real estate conferences are back. Halleluiah! They are one of my favorite real estate activities, more so now because we’ve been homebound. No place else can you begin to understand the people you might want to work with. Zoom is great but nothing replaces the visual and personal experience for sincerity, connection, mutual interest, and can I work with this person for the next several years, be on weekly calls with them, depend on their commitment. From your first short conversation you know who is not a fit. Does it make you nervous to network with strangers? The right

In-person real estate conferences are back. Halleluiah! They are one of my favorite real estate activities, more so now because we’ve been homebound. No place else can you begin to understand the people you might want to work with. Zoom is great but nothing replaces the visual and personal experience for sincerity, connection, mutual interest, and can I work with this person for the next several years, be on weekly calls with them, depend on their commitment. From your first short conversation you know who is not a fit. Does it make you nervous to network with strangers? The right

How has the Covid resurgence affected your thinking? If you think it hasn’t, you’re not being honest with yourself. Regardless of your stance on vaccinations, masks, the reality is that our lives have changed, and our real estate business has to adapt to these changes. For one, and this has been agonizing for me, we can’t – or shouldn’t – be out in big gatherings. It’s 10 times harder meeting prospective partners in virtual conferences. I do miss the real ones. Eviction moratoriums on a national level look like they are behind us unless congress takes it up, but many

Where do your investors fit in to your hierarchy of real estate priorities? Are you relieved they decided to invest, ecstatic that they helped you and your team close, or do you hold the belief that they should be grateful they got into your deal? Sure, they are getting a great deal and you’re as trustworthy as they come. But who really wants to send in their hard-earned cash to a sponsor who doesn’t respect their investment decision. Why would I want to invest with you if you start off with the attitude that I should be grateful for having

I’ve become a big fan of podcasts, specifically for apartment investing. They’re a great distraction when I’m working out or spin-cycling. They always seem to provide me with at least one insight on virtually every episode, some more than others. I tuned into one on BiggerPockets recently about gift-giving in the business world – phenomenal ideas! Another featured a sponsor for a deal I was already familiar with, and another was about LLC protection for your personal assets such as real estate. These are awesome resources, covering so much ground. Even straightforward shows that just feature a different investor or

It is absolutely incredible how today’s bidding wars for houses has become so out of hand. Twenty, thirty offers? Twenty percent over asking? Where are these people coming from? And no longer just San Francisco and Seattle. But look at what’s going on in U.S. markets today. People are fleeing the pandemic, moving out of the cities, sometimes just to nearby towns but often further away to communities in secondary, tertiary markets. Builders struggle with exploding lumber costs. And job growth, abruptly halted early last year, has resumed its upward trajectory. Rental markets are seeing the results of this too.