Attended RealShare yesterday at the Westin Downtown. I’ve been to a bunch of conferences before and never really got much out of them. This one was different:
1. Met a family that makes bridge loans of the type that Jon and I can use to make our deals potentially much more capital-efficient.
2. Ran into a broker with whom I had been discussing an off-market deal that went away but may now be back.
3. Ran into a guy with a large project (which I stupidly passed on six months ago) that we may be able to help with.
Separate from the networking, it was pretty inspiring to see and hear from people at the absolute top of my business. I almost wrote “guys”. But the truth is that, while the top developers were 100% male, two of the highest-grossing brokers in the metro-LA area are women – Laurie Lustig-Bauer and Kitty Wallace.
About the only downside to the conference was the $37 I paid for parking for two hours in the morning at the City National building across the street. $0.12 / sq ft / hour is equivalent to $86.40 / sq ft / month. At that rent, I ought to be buying apartment buildings down there and converting them into parking garages!