Last week, a fellow investing geek and I journeyed to Columbia, MO to take part in the inaugural Capital Camp, a three day meeting of vaguely weird people like us. Aside from various tornado-related travel snafus, the trip was excellent. It turns out there is a small but vibrant community of finance geeks, mainly to … Continue reading “What I learned at adult nerd camp”
Category: Uncategorized
Strategic clarity, at last
Probably the most important job for the leader of any organization is to establish and communicate a simple strategy for that organization. Maybe that’s easy for other leaders. But I like to “Hamlet” things… go back and forth, see the positives and negatives of different courses of action, and generally fail to be decisive. So, … Continue reading “Strategic clarity, at last”
Why I’m nice to cold-calling brokers
Just like everyone else who owns property, my phone rings off the hook every day with brokers calling me, trying to get me to list my properties for sale. No one likes receiving cold marketing calls, including me. But I do my best to be kind to the people calling. Why? I’m not a seller, … Continue reading “Why I’m nice to cold-calling brokers”
Managing a network of capital providers
Pretty much everyone who gets into doing real estate deals starts with a single deal that looks good to her. If she manages to raise the money, close the deal, and execute, she probably gets opportunities to do more deals, and that’s how a career in real estate deal-making is born. But one of the … Continue reading “Managing a network of capital providers”
Carrying the weight
Recently, a guy I see almost every day asked me about potentially investing with us. To be nice, he caveated his request by making it clear he would understand if I preferred not to take money from someone I have to see all the time, in case things go wrong. Because I’ve never solicited capital … Continue reading “Carrying the weight”
How we think about talent
Read an article today (on LinkedIn, so I can’t easily provide a link) by a guy who had trouble finding work after taking a few years off to raise his children. Should start out by acknowledging the irony of me noticing an article about this topic by a guy… this is a problem that women … Continue reading “How we think about talent”
Where pricing is right now
Want to give you a sense for where pricing is, right now. We look at literally every deal that comes on the market in our target neighborhoods, and everything that looks close to working in other neighborhoods. For us, the renovated stuff is an obvious pass. We’re value-add buyers, so we focus on the most … Continue reading “Where pricing is right now”
Price and value
Can’t tell you how often I read / hear brokers say “Values are really going up in X neighborhood”. This drives me crazy. Why? What those brokers mean is that they have examined recent sales and concluded that prices are going up. A price is the amount of money someone pays for something. It’s objective; … Continue reading “Price and value”
Here we go again
We had a little acquisitions drought mid-2018, which meant that we hadn’t started a new project for a while. Now, we’re back in action.
Fully-upgraded units with significant upside potential
“Fully-upgraded units with significant upside potential” You’d be amazed at how often I read those words, or something like them, in broker packages. And it still drives me crazy. You’re telling me someone went to a ton of trouble to renovate all the units in an apartment building and then, when it came to lease-up, … Continue reading “Fully-upgraded units with significant upside potential”