The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 565 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 7 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Kahlo: Rental property yields are definitely higher than stock dividends
“There is no way that If you look at the percentages, what you're collecting on your rent, what your rental income is, and if you measure it against the money that you put out, the percentage of dividend, if you want to call it, you're getting from a rental is …”
Muller: Aspiring artists should avoid instruction from commercially failed teachers
“I feel like if you're in art, I mean, even real estate, it's like, listen, there's very few things that feel like you need to go to a room and be taught the rules and tell someone that most likely did not make it as that profession. So that's why they're teach…”
Morris: Ten years of marketing and SEO knowledge is now obsolete
“All the people that knew all the stuff before about online marketing or SEO or whatever it is, the things that I'm working on, you know, they had 10 years of experience. It was always the same. Now all that wealth of information is all obsolete.”
Muller: Multiple people receive identical ideas simultaneously, so execution decides winners
“In my opinion, when I have an idea, I believe seven other people on the planet, 10 other people getting that same idea at the same time, who's gonna act on it first?”
Morris: Individual deal terms matter far more than macro factors
“The macroeconomic factors, which are important and influence real estate as a general rule, real estate have far less impact on a single piece of real estate than Then the deal you're getting.”
Morris: Professional developers will rebuild in Pacific Palisades in 18 months
“The pros are going to go in and they're going to build in 18 months easy.”
Gold: Celebrity real estate funds raise money without adding property value
“They're selling their celebrity. Like they're bringing some to the game because they've blessed it or they've put it together, which is at the end of the day, it probably is nonsense. Probably doesn't, it raises money, but I don't think it raises the value of …”
Morris: Real estate success depends on deal structure, not market timing
“Real estate is so deal specific that there's never a good time, by the way, and there's never a bad time... Whatever you think is the best time to buy, people are buying and losing money. Whatever is you think is the worst time to buy, people are buying and ma…”
Morris: Investors should offer agents above-market commissions for priority deals
“What I'm going to say is let's negotiate the commission upfront. I want to pay you full commission. That's my negotiation. I may want to pay you a bit more than full commission. If you're used to getting two and a half, I know a high watermark is three. I'd li…”
Morris: Investors must pay full commission to see the best deals
“If I'm not paying full commission, it's not a good enough deal. And the proof of that goes like this. You're the realtor. You come across this deal. That's a great deal. You might want to buy it yourself but you can't buy every great deal that you see. So then…”
Morris: Home inspections yield more asset clarity than tech stock analysis
“I think that when you get, when you buy that fourplex and then you pay a home inspector, you know, right, you're getting more information about where that asset is going than the expert is going to know about Apple, Apple stock.”
Scordo: Palm Springs seeks to cut vacation rental caps to 26 annually
“They're actually trying to lower the number of contracts you can have a year to 26 for even the people who are grandfathered in. It's a long, so, but I don't even hit, right now we're at 36”
Morris: Regulated short-term rental markets are safer investments than unregulated ones
“I almost think that a place that is regulated is safer than a place that's not regulated, because you never know what the regulation is going to be, and so if you come in and it's all, and they've already Put the brakes on, then at least, you know, you have a …”
Stepp: Female commercial real estate brokers have an advantage securing client meetings
“It's a, there's some benefits of being a woman in this business for many reasons. I mean, I think getting indoors where men can't get in. I mean, it's, they seem to say yes to women a little bit more than they do to men. If I say, call someone up and say, Hey,…”
Stepp: Generalizing across property types is fatal in commercial real estate
“I think being a Jack of all trades is really a kiss of death in, in, Any real estate, but commercial real estate in particular.”
Stepp: Professional CRE investors prioritize cost per square foot above all
“That's why most astute, and I'm not saying you're not astute. Investors tend to look at cost per square foot. That's the number one. The pros, all the pros do. That's all I care about.”
Stepp: Lenders Cap Commercial Real Estate Leverage at 50%
“Nobody's getting more than 50% loan. On anything. Underwriting.”
David Bailey bought a Los Feliz property at a $1M COVID discount
“So when COVID hit in early 2020, prior to, just prior to it hitting, there was a building that came on the market in Los Feliz, and I was one of three people, I think, who had looked at it and walked some of the units. Anyway, we ended up in a multiple offer s…”
Bailey: U.S. tax code is completely discriminatory against W-2 earners
“The U.S. Tax code is completely discriminatory against W-two earners.”
David Bailey says Bird Streets luxury developers now lose $5M-$7M per house
“The metrics on those homes were that the developers were generally making between five and seven million a house, and now the entire opposite is true. They're losing between five and seven million a house.”
Bailey: Fixed repair costs erode rental yields in low-cost housing markets
“So in proportion, your repairs and maintenance in proportion to your rents, even though the only reason you're getting that one percent in Kalamazoo is you have a very low house valuation. Yeah. However, when you go to refurbish that house after the tenant mov…”
Morris: Building real estate wealth does not require buying "steals"
“Every time you buy a market property, you have paid more than anyone else is willing to pay at that moment in time. And that's the way I bought most of mine. And people that are looking to make real money in real estate do not need a steal.”
David Bailey says real estate buyers should never represent themselves
“One thing I've learned through the years, do not represent yourself. You will not get the deal, and you are cheating yourself of potentially getting a good investment. So of course, I let each of the agents represent me.”
Paul Morris says chiseling a broker's commission signals an inferior deal
“When people try to chisel a realtor on a commission, if they're able to chisel a realtor on a commission, that is a sign that it's not a great deal.”
Bailey: Partial plumbing repipes waste money and owners should do a full repipe
“There's no such thing as a partial repipe. All you are doing is burning money. You do a full re-pipe, or you don't do a re-pipe.”
David Bailey is writing off a 6,000-pound exotic car in year one
“Yeah, we just purchased an exotic car for a significant amount of dollars, and we're writing the entire thing off year one.”
David Bailey skips professional property inspectors in favor of direct trades
“I do not use professional inspectors for professional inspectors. You know, the expression cover your ass. All you're going to get is a lengthy report. That's going to cite every deficiency because they're going to get paid 1500 dollars, and if they make any m…”
Bailey: Rental demand is at record highs while new building is virtually impossible
“Because cost is so prohibitively expensive in this city for housing, the demand for rentals has never been greater. At the same time, it's virtually impossible to build.”
Morris secured his deeply discounted luxury home on the open market.
“That's the myth. Because I did not buy the house. It was not off market. It was on the market.”
O'Neill: California SB 1123 permits 10 homes by-right on R-1 parcels
“Our SB-Eleven-Twenty-Three which allows for 10 homes even on an R-One site or other multi-family sites. By right, ministerial. Ministerial means you don't have to go through any planning you don't have to go through any political type of process. You don't hav…”
O'Neill: Do Not Use Architects for Initial Land Use Due Diligence
“I think you only go to an architect when you've done this due diligence that we're talking about, and you think you have something of value. And frankly, you now have to secure the site, right? So if you have a friend that's an architect, sure they can do that…”
Umbanhowar: Avoid building exterior balconies off primary bedrooms
“Don't do balconies off of primary bedrooms. Just do sliding doors that open and you have a railing, and your balcony can be inside your bedroom. I would almost say like a deductive take that you, people don't step that often out on a six foot deep balcony. I j…”
Artists starting their careers after age 50 are unlikely to achieve success
“The artist that's already 50, 60, 70, that's just starting their career or has done nothing for 2030 years, they're probably never going to make it. That's just the reality. But no matter how fantastic they are, the techniques could be great.”
Shepard Fairey is not a blue-chip artist because auction prices remain low
“Not yet in my opinion, but my opinion doesn't mean anything. I'm not an expert. I just know kind of what I like and what I can sell and what I put my clients into. Because his artworks don't go for enough money yet. And because he's, I just mentioned that, tha…”
Sani: Government funding for Section 8 in California won't dry up
“The city, the state is going to continue to receive this funding from the government, if not from the local, but from the federal, they're always going back and forth with it. What are you going to do? So I don't see the money drying up necessarily.”
Morris never underwrites market appreciation into real estate deals
“When I look at a deal, I don't build in appreciation.”
Morris: LA appreciation outperformed high-yield cash flow markets over 25 years
“And I still believe if I had started investing in Los Angeles, 25 years ago, we could do the math. You'd be a lot better off at your .6 less than one percent because appreciation would have way made up for it.”
Morris: Real estate returns matched the stock market's recent massive run
“I definitely missed a great run, for sure. I know I did just as well with my real estate investments in my self-directed IRA.”
Morris: Homebuyers learn more about a house in weeks than tech analysts know tech
“I believe, conversely, that if you're going to buy a house, you can learn more about that house in the course of A couple of weeks or a month, then the best experts will know about the tech sector.”
Morris: Class A apartment buildings leave no room to add value
“If you're buying a class a apartment building, There's no room to add value.”
Morris says immediately cash-flowing value-add properties do not exist in LA
“You're not going to find a value add property. And that's my third rule is value add. We'll get to that next, but you're not going to find, you're not going to find a value added property. That's going to cashflow in Los Angeles period.”
Romanesco: Investors should only buy property where they have local oversight
“I learned from my dad at a young age, invest in, you know, places that you would live, places that you have family, places that you have contacts, because somebody has got to manage that property or keep an eye on it.”
Romanesco says Americans buy struggling Italian and French towns' one-dollar castles
“Yeah, I think there are a lot of Americans and various other, that are investing in France in those, in Italy, In those, you know, it's a dollar, you know, a dollar for a castle because those towns are struggling and they need to bring new life in. And I think…”
Morris removed a Joshua Tree property from a fund to protect returns
“We pulled it out of the portfolio with the investors because we knew that, like, we're just going to sit on this one, and when you sit on one, it's going to drive the rate of return for the portfolio down a lot. So when we're looking at, hey, you know, we want…”
Romanesco says the LA market overlooks middle-of-the-road homes
“Look for the middle-of-the-road, because our LA market, I feel either wants done, done, done, flashy, flashy, ready, or the deal, the bargain, the teardown, the mess. And that middle of the road property is opportunity.”
Morris: Buying property without a clear plan fails with outside investors
“You're not even sure what you're going to do with it yet, and you don't need to know. And this is a terrible thesis for someone that's going to have investors,”