Bought-Renovated 40+ 1-4 family homes. 31 Years Old. Very High GPA in Finance. Real Estate, Psychology, History, & Genetics Enthusiast. ~140-145 Fluid IQ. 🇺🇸
Manhattan, NY
Joined September 2023
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You shouldn’t disincentive investment in buildings. Sometimes they may just collapse.
I joined @fdny and emergency crews at the scene of today's tragic building collapse on Flatbush Avenue. Two of our neighbors have lost their lives, and at least 17 others have been injured, including one firefighter.
My heart is with the families and loved ones mourning those we have lost. I am also wishing a full and speedy recovery to everyone who was injured.
This has been a whole-of-government response. I want to thank the first responders who arrived in under a minute and have spent hours working in dangerous and highly technical conditions to rescue New Yorkers. Their courage and dedication are extraordinary.
@nycemergencymgt and the @redcross have opened a reception center for impacted and displaced residents at the Flatbush YMCA, located at 1401 Flatbush Avenue.
If you are unable to reach someone you believe may have been affected by the collapse, please call 311. If you are outside New York City, call 212-639-9675.
Flatbush Avenue remains closed between Clarendon Road and Bedford Avenue. Please avoid the area so emergency crews can continue their work.
This remains an active operation, with hundreds of rescue workers on site. Information is changing by the minute. We will share additional updates as details are confirmed.
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The Greeks’ modern-day Hippocrates is Demis Hassabis. He is worth admiring.
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A lot of landlords are happy about this.
They can’t sell their buildings anyway.
So they are going to test the waters and see if they can sell to the government.
I am not saying that this won’t have net negative ramifications for the real estate world in NYC. That is yet to be seen.
Progress isn’t inevitable. It’s fought for and earned.
New York City will now give community organizations the first shot at buying eligible homes — not flippers who are just looking to extract a profit.
This is the largest Opportunity to Purchase program in the nation.
Thank you @CMSandyNurse for your leadership on the COPA bill. Our city’s tenants are stronger because of it.
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Forbes 2014 analysis of the Forbes 400: Real estate billionaires had the highest concentration of true bootstrappers.
81.48% were self-made; of those, 25.9% scored a 9 and 18.5% a 10 (grew up poor + faced major adversity).
Tech & finance had far more middle/upper-middle class starts. Nearly half of RE billionaires came from poor or lower-middle-class homes.
Source: Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes, Oct 6, 2014
forbes.com/sites/afontevecch…
(Note: This is 2014 Forbes 400 data. Later annual self-made score pieces continue the 1–10 scale but do not re-publish the same industry breakdown.)
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The older I get, the more I think, buy cash flow and never sell.
Have long term partners. They are more scarce, but they can make much more money as long term partners.
It’s up to you, to show them the magic of compounding.
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Insider trading is legal in real estate.
Find your edge.
What’s being built that people don’t know about?
Why is the area better than people think?
Is there nuance in the crime rates in the area, so pockets of the town are overlooked?
Can you buy a building that you can maximize its zoning use for, that the seller doesn’t know about?
Friends with a politician that has a clue about transit development?
Sewer pipelines getting massively hooked up in this town that’ll make its zoning profitable and actionable?
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Mitchell Morgan, the multifamily billionaire, used to structure some of his deals where, once the LP (Limited Partner / Silent Partner) is fully cash out refinanced, ownership goes 50/50.
People always ask about my deal structure with LPs:
1. 8% preferred return
2. 70/30 over 8% IRR
3. 50/50 over 18% IRR
I won’t do a deal if I can’t conservatively underwrite a (net of fees/promote) 15% IRR to LPs.
Keep in mind:
Asset class, interest rates, and deal risk are going to play a role in what is fair / acceptable to investors.
Technology can create far greater concentrations of wealth, but essential real assets can offer a more durable claim on future consumption and productive capacity—provided the owner maintains sufficient equity and control.
In Armageddon, I would rather be real estate rich, than tech rich.
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Same DNA. Different heads. Tufts biologist Michael Levin (Harvard PhD) showed that changing electrical signals between cells can make flatworms regrow two heads instead of one. His provocative idea: biological intelligence isn’t fully encoded in DNA. Human IQ link? Unproven.
Scientific accuracy: The electrical information resides in bioelectric networks of cells, not inside the genome itself. Levin proposes that these networks can store information and coordinate biological problem-solving. His experiments establish this for regenerative anatomy, not differences in human IQ, yet…
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Beauty of real estate below:
80% LTV + 4% inflation + constant 8% cap + I/O debt = automatic 20% nominal equity return from inflation alone.
$1M property → $200k equity, $800k I/O debt
4% inflation → value $1.04M, debt still $800k
Equity → $240k (+$40k / $200k = 20%)
Leverage = 5x. 4% × 5 = 20%.
Assumes constant caps + full inflation pass-through. Mechanical floor, not a guarantee.
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I’m never lonely, leadership, ambition, and building are the greatest joys a man can have. If you are lonely, maybe this isn’t the sport for you. How can you be lonely, with so many people to learn from online. With that being said, friends and family are very important.
Leadership is lonely. Ambition is lonely. Building is lonely.
Even if you have a great company or great spouse, a lot of the journey is internal & you're on your own.
It's really hard to bear, and most people will drop out over time.
You have to want it in your core.
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1/ Sometimes I keep tenants at below-market rents for their hardship reasons when my budget allows it.
2/ Have a post-reno unit that could get ~$1850+ (maybe more). Tenant is paying $700. He told me today that because the Democrats won, hopefully things will get better.
3/ What he doesn’t know: Dems taking the House and Senate raises the risk of rent regulation in my market. That could lock his rent far below market for a long time and/or limit increases.
4/ That increased risk means I now have to non-renew/vacate him so I can lock in the higher market rent before any potential law freezes it—and costs significant equity for me and my investors.
5/ I will be as gentle about this as humanly possible, but the guy now has pressure on him
*With that being said, republicans have deported so many tenants and workers in my market, and that causes issues too
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What they say in Mexico about working construction for gringos in the US:
The money is the main reason. One day there is often compared to a week’s pay back home.
Gringos mostly won’t do the hard physical work. Common comments: “son muy huevones,” “no hacen nuestro trabajo,” they want office jobs with AC.
Mexicans get hired because they’re tough, fast, and don’t complain much. “Somos duros.”
Viral videos of Americans laying brick get mocked for being slow.
“Trabajo es trabajo.”
It’s mostly anecdotes and media, not big surveys. The wage gap and labor demand are real; some exploitation and ICE risk exist too.
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Doing a punch list inspection at one of my rental apartments.
Contractor tells me we should replace all the GFCI outlets because they look old and dirty.
I’m considering it, even suggesting maybe we could just fine line paint them, since he told me it can’t be cleaned off.
Then his cleaner walks over, sprays some windex, wipes one down, and it looks brand new.
Contractor wanted to replace what literally just needed cleaning.
Landlord lesson: Always question the scope of work.
No matter how confident your handyman sounds that he is finished, or how competent you think he is, double check his work. 9/10 times he is missing stuff.
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House sales are sluggish in my area in Pennsylvania where I buy, but rents seemed to have increased.
Turning single family flips into rentals seems to be the rational move, in so far as the deal pencils.
Is the rent increase due to the lagging sales, or due to the enormous price people are now paying for multifamily properties, which increased drastically over the past few years? High rents are needed to support a high mortgage.
Remember, real estate is local, everything I just said is applied to my market, I’m not sure about other markets.
Rate hikes are intended to cool demand. But in U.S. rental housing, rates are cooling supply -- not demand.
Apartment absorption is on track for the third-hottest year in modern history, and rent growth (while still modest) has climbed up to a 3-year high, and could keep going with less supply on the horizon.
Does that mean rent inflation is about to re-accelerate? Not necessarily. But it's a plausible scenario that isn't getting the attention it probably warrants, given that rents are the single-largest variable in the CPI.
Reminder that most of us think about housing inflation in terms of home prices. But home prices have zero role in the CPI, where a survey of ~6k rental units per month (with a success rate <50%) is designed to estimate housing inflation for the two-thirds of Americans who own their homes.
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