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Recently, I had to make a really tough call regarding a new tenant. A little background: We’re finishing up a very large re-positioning deal; We’re very close to closing the refinancing, which should return ~90% of the capital invested in the project, leaving us with a >20% / yr cash-on-cash on the capital that remains … Continue reading “A tough choice on tenant approval”

Read somewhere recently that the leader of a company ought to be able to write down the company’s key strategic objectives on one piece of paper. The idea is to make sure that the preponderance of the organization’s energy is oriented in the direction of a few key goals, rather than spread across many, minor … Continue reading “The two key levers”

Seems like everyday, I find myself explaining to brokers what it is that I want to buy. And I also hear from brokers that they read this blog. So, at the risk of boring the hell out of my regular readers, figured I’d remind everyone what we’re looking for. We want to buy older, dilapidated … Continue reading “What we want to buy”

Doing good deals is all about resisting magical thinking. Hour after hour, you comb through possible acquisition targets, looking for the needle in the haystack that will allow you, if everything goes well, to deliver the kinds of out-sized return your investors expect. When something looks like it might work, you build a model. You … Continue reading “Resisting magical thinking”

Have been listening to a bunch of podcasts and reading a lot of blog posts about the venture capital / start-up space. Don’t worry, I’m not changing fields… am just curious about other kinds of businesses and always looking for analogies and ways to improve what we do. Core to the whole tech world is … Continue reading “A signaling problem in real estate transactions”

Got asked an interesting question by a journalist at the Opportunity Zone Expo, and wanted to share my answer here. Question: What is the most important thing to look out for when considering an opportunity zone investment? Answer: By far the most important thing is the quality of the deal itself. Right now, Opportunity Zones … Continue reading “The key to Opportunity Zones Deals”

Am joining an interesting panel today at the Opportunity Zone Expo at the JW Marriott downtown, regarding selecting interesting opportunity zones in which to do business. We’ve done 10+ deals in relevant locations in LA over the past few years, all of which would have qualified for OZF status, had the law been in effect. … Continue reading “Speaking at the Opportunity Zone Expo today”

Have spent the past few months mostly focused on securing a pool of capital for us to invest during 2019. As you probably know, I’m getting better at fund-raising, but it’s not my favorite part of the business. Anyway, now that I have capital to deploy, have turned my attention back to finding interesting properties … Continue reading “Back to doing what I love most”

Apologies for the slow posting; it’s been a very busy few weeks.Heard an amazing story from one of our management clients over the weekend and want to share with you all, to let you know what’s possible with a ton of hard work, risk acceptance, and good luck. For ease of storytelling, am going to … Continue reading “An amazing real estate story”

Apologies for the light posting. Have been tied up with investor calls, emails and meetings for the last few weeks. In any event, am heading down to the IMN conference in Laguna Beach today. Will be speaking on the Emerging Manager Panel at 11:45AM tomorrow (Thursday, 1/17/19). Hope to run into some of you there.