October, 2025
I’ve had massive learnings from 15 years of owning multifamily assets, 10 years of syndicating. Anyone who sticks it out for more than a few years does. But the learnings that have brought me the best outcomes weren’t the how-to’s, they were the experiences with people. Will this person do what I need them to […]
September, 2025
Recoveries take a long time. Not like crises. A crisis may have been building up for a long time but very few of us have the insight to know it’s coming. It just happens – all of a sudden. The 2008 “great recession”? The Lehman Brothers collapse was the first indisputable indicator, but of course […]
August, 2025
Trying to buy your first multifamily property may seem like applying for a CEO position when you’re just out of school, but it’s not. Don’t underestimate your abilities but also don’t underestimate the time and commitment needed. If you don’t have the funds to straight up buy a property, you still have options. Here are […]
May, 2025
Always hunting! At Cardinal Oak Investments we have been searching for potential acquisitions. We have had Letters of Intent out to sellers, some even accepted, and a few under contract, but none got further than that. If you’re a qualified investor with us, you haven’t seen deals from us for that reason. The economic, social, […]
April, 2025
Tariffs on Canada mean higher lumber prices. Tariffs on Southeast Asia mean higher prices for fixtures, appliances, and cabinets. We won’t just start producing those things in the U.S. That takes years of expansion. It also takes a firm belief on the part of manufacturers that high tariffs are here to stay. And they aren’t. […]
March, 2025
Have you noticed you haven’t been hearing many recent real estate success stories lately? I don’t read about too many, I don’t get those stories when I talk with other investors, and those aren’t the stories I hear at multifamily conferences. Instead, what I hear is people are waiting for things like interest rates to come down, bonus depreciation to be […]
February, 2025
How thorough is your due diligence when you’re investing in real estate? Those of us in the business for a long time have heard so many stories of how they got burned, and what they should have done to prevent it. I have, and I keep track of them. Fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, hail storms […]
December, 2024
The recent spike in interest rates has finally changed my perspective. Do you watch rates? Which ones do you watch? The rate I watch most closely is the 10-year Treasury yield. This is the interest rate that the government pays the buyer until the treasury note matures in 10 years. The reason I watch it […]
November, 2024
Our winter in Seattle started off with a power outage. Several days, no electricity. My first thoughts, keeping the house warm but my second thoughts, how do tenants get through something like this. No place is free of violent storms. My heart goes out to communities hit by hurricanes this year, as many of them […]
October, 2024
Are you chasing the high rent growth markets? That feels a lot like the shiny object, and I’m wary of falling into that trap. It’s like a syndrome. We see high rent growth and we think we’re going to make some good money here. It’s not always like that. High rent growth could be one of […]