The Wisdom Wall

“the lowest return renovating your kitchen, renovating your bathrooms. Like those are not going to return for a short-term rental.”

“Timing is number, like, in venture, it's the only thing that's correlated to success.”

“tech is no longer a competitive advantage. It is an enabler of other advantages. And so to me, the biggest You know, what it's all about is demand generation. So the next generation of great companies will be those who turn attention into demand at scale. And that's the only thing that matters when a 13 year old can…”

“in real estate insider trading is legal. Insider trading, meaning not doing anything to break a fiduciary duty, but insider trading, meaning I can learn more about the property than the market knows about the property. So therefore I have unfair information and, and that is something that, you know, obviously you can't…”

“If our state is experiencing the most extreme housing crisis we have ever experienced because we don't add supply and all the investors are going elsewhere, what happens? Values go up. Occupancy goes up. You're in an unhealthy market. If you're just looking at where costs are, But if you're owning, that's not a bad…”

“However, a bit of knowledge In, in real estate or just aligning with somebody who has a lot of knowledge in real estate, uh, moves you from four and a half percent to conservatively, 60% or 70%. And that, uh, even a lot of knowledge moves you essentially from 10% backwards.”

“I would also argue that, that, that using that rule, that rule which is to go where it's all right, already regulated Gives you more certainty rather than less certainty, and that's important. And then also in that example, let's just say that they were allowing 10,000 homes to be, uh, in the lottery. Everybody got one…”

“short-term rentals are very restrictive now in Lake Tahoe, um, um, and that can have detrimental effects to the local economy, uh, if all of a sudden, I mean, it's, I mean, high net wealth individuals that just have their second homes there that they visit once or twice a year, versus, I mean, if you've got, I mean,…”

“Highest return thing? String lights in the backyard. It's gonna pay multiple time overs.”

“you have to be very, very careful who you invest with and do JVs with, because I'd say, 80% of the time, maybe 70% of the time, those deals go bad because you have too much, there's too much closeness for all the reasons we were talking about earlier.”

“People with equity don't get foreclosed on. They sell and they cash a check. No forced sellers. No flood of inventory. No crash.”

“Prices aren't high because of greed. They're high because we never built enough houses to accommodate the growth. That's the whole story.”

“In order for there to be a crash, you have to have four sellers and a flood of supply. Right now, we have neither.”

“if you only invest in businesses that have huge moats, you're not going to make any investments. Like very few companies truly have moats.”

“I don't think you create content to sell houses. Cause it's like a, you know, selling the house is basically a transaction, you know, oriented exercise. It's a lower funnel activity.”

“competition never kills the company companies. It's usually something internal.”

“being an absentee landlord, Trying to control a property across the country, pretty much a recipe for disaster. I haven't seen that work out well in the long run for, for lots of people.”

“skateboarding breeds genius marketers because there's nothing really different about the product we're selling.”

“At what point? I can't tell you exactly what point that's going to flip, but you know, definitely somewhere in the 10% range is already going to have, start to have an impact more than 10%. Uh, ownership by, by major corporations is going to have, is going to start to have a really huge impact.”

“Most investors, they don't lose money because they got the neighborhood wrong, right? They lose money because they bought a bad deal that looked good on the back of a napkin.”

“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?”

“the macroeconomic factors, which are, which are important and influence real estate as a general rule, real estate, um, have far less impact on a single piece of real estate than Then the deal you're getting.”

“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 making bundles of money. It is deal specific period.”

“What I'm going to say is let's negotiate the commission upfront. Um, I want to pay you full commission. Um, that's my negotiation. Um, I may, 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 like to give you three percent.”

“If I'm not, if I'm, if I'm not paying full commission, it's not a good enough deal. And, and the proof of that goes like this. You're the realtor. You come across this deal. That's a great deal. Um, you might want to buy it yourself, uh, but you can't buy every great deal that you see. So then you're going to go to…”

“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 sense of where that, where that is.”

“It's, 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, I want to come see you. I got a better percentage of…”

“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.”

“That's, 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.”

“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 moves out with new carpeting, new painting, new dishwasher, new…”

“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, and people that are looking to make real money in real estate do not need a steal.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“I do not use professional inspectors for professional inspectors. Um, 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 mistakes, you're gonna sue them. So I would much rather…”

“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. But architects are designers. They're not land use…”

“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. Um, I would almost say like a deductive, uh, take that you, people don't step that often out on a six foot deep balcony. I just find ultimately it ends up being a place where…”

“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.”

“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, then the best experts will know about the, about the tech sector.”

“If you're buying a class a apartment building, There's no room to add value.”

“I learned from my, 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.”

“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.”

“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,”

“once you're invested into the market, make sure that you're keeping an eye on what's happening at the local city council level or county level, uh, because you better believe that the locals that want to ban it, uh, are going to be the ones showing up. Um, and, and city council also needs to hear from, uh, the…”

“It's going to price you out of a lot of markets. So if I'm in a market, you're looking on some of the good ones, you might be able to get a, I'm 20% or 30% gross margin. Like if you then have to, uh, and pay that for your fee, that's essentially taking away your margin.”

“And we've seen that hiring a professional manager can generate higher returns than managing yourself. You're gonna have a full-time revenue manager. You're gonna have someone that is generating direct bookings. Uh, not having to pay the fees to Airbnb and Vrbo, uh, for those bookings. Uh, so, I mean, a lot of times the…”

“It's like most people overprice the shoulder and off seasons and they underprice holidays and events as you're like, you don't know how high you can push it.”

“go look at listings that are more than 60 days old and call those, call those realtors or have somebody, have a realtor that represents you that's going to do that work. That's the real work. That's what they should be doing. And, you know, call, call the listings that go over 60 days, and even though the headline…”

“Like where short-term rentals are going today is it's less about the interior and more about the exterior. As people are generally going there as a destination, especially a five bedroom home like I invested in.”

“Invest more in the areas that are likely to create the Instagram ability moment and spend less to a point just so long as the, the, the, the customer's not going to complain.”

“You might spend a thousand dollars on a fire pit, uh, and some plastic Adirondack chairs. Like, that's gonna pay multiple times over.”

“the general rule of thumb is you don't want to be too dependent on any one channel. Uh, so I don't want, I'm more than 60% of my revenue coming through any one spot, because then I'm, I'm dependent on them, right? If I get a bad review and Airbnb delist me, like that's, I'm putting all my revenue, I'm up, I'm at risk.”

“That's where it might make sense to be on booking.com because they're the platform of choice for Europeans. Uh, and if you're in, in Boston or in LA and you have a lot of, um, international travelers coming in, that's where they're going to be looking to book and you want to show up there.”

“So if you're getting going and, and you don't, and my suggestion is, is you, you do lower your prices at the beginning, you get five, 10 reviews. On Airbnb, Vrbo, um, that's going, and with the algorithm, if you're getting booked, you're getting reviews, they're positive reviews, you're gonna keep, I mean, staying up…”

“They'll only make, um, maybe like, all right, I want to drive direct booking. So I'm only going to make, uh, the next three months available on Airbnb and everything outside of that are going to block off. Like that is going to hurt you on the algorithm. So making sure your calendar is available further out. If you…”

“If you think you're communicating too much with the guests, you're probably not communicating enough.”

“A lot of times they'll get the cathodic nature of complaining out to you through that text message, uh, and then not do it through the review.”

“Yeah, and typically it's investing in a market that they've just gone to growing up, uh, they want to own a home there, uh, and they just buy it assuming it's going to make money, um, and then it doesn't, and then they think, um, that investing in short-term rentals is just a, a bad idea, so I do the research, I'm not…”

“Where it can run into trouble is regulation. I mean, if you are highly concentrated in single market and then regulation changes, like that's a big risk.”

“I find that the most success we have is when it is Very clean, very on trend, timelessly on trend in terms of finishes and palette as a whole. But then there's fun, interesting, unexpected touches.”

“what they're really doing is they're looking at a buyer is looking at what, what is my, what's my monthly payment. And so the monthly payment to live in one that's, you know, 40% larger, but is so generic as opposed to this one that I love and the monthly payment is exactly the same or maybe even a little less. I'm…”

“price per square foot, and this is really important, is a data point metric. It is not an end-all be-all by any means, because there is a principle called diminishing returns that is very real. Like, if you can't find another house that's sold for ten million dollars, you can't use price per square foot thinking…”

“Going out and finding a realtor who represents developers in that area so that realtor knows how to, how to underwrite those deals and can give you real, real guidance. Not the realtor that you like the best, not the realtor that sold the most homes in that area, but the realtor who's made a lot of money for developers…”

“Bad jobs report, by the way, can be good for the real estate market because as there are more and more jobs, that's an inflation pressure and also a pressure on the interest rate.”

“The deal structure and risk allocation matter as much as the headline price, and what I mean by that is a three percent loan is structure, and it's often worth more than a price cut.”

“So, I, I prefer to stress test at seven percent, because if the deal itself works at seven percent, the buy down is Total icing on the cake. If it only works at the teaser price, then generally it doesn't work unless that incentive is for the full life of the deal.”

“That's the good thing, but you've got to underwrite this new purchase at today's rate, not as a hopeful rate. So a deal only works After a future rate cut, that is not a good deal.”

“and in every case, your first line of defense isn't the entity. Instead, it is boring, and that is adequate insurance. That often will include an umbrella policy, but having a really solid insurance policy up to a certain level, then you get an umbrella policy over top of that. The umbrella is generally very…”

“And if the deal works only at some future lower rate, you don't have a rate problem. You have a deal problem and waiting won't fix it.”

“my strong bias is to buy local because information And control are real advantages. You know which block is actually improving, and you hear about the roof before the invoice lands in your email. When you buy 1500 miles away, every one of those advantages gets outsourced to someone you're paying, and in addition to…”

“The case for the ADU is there's no land cost. You already own the land. There's no new market to learn. Talk about investing in your own backyard. You are literally investing in your own backyard, and that's a big information advantage.”

“if you're buying a value add somewhere else and you need permits, the time for permitting is going to be a holding cost. But when you're building it in your own backyard, you're already paying the holding cost because it's in your backyard.”

“The rescue is not coming. Plan on today's numbers. If something better ends up showing up, that is a bonus.”

“A seller sitting at three or three and a half percent Is holding something a buyer wants more than a discount.”

“when buyers get scarce, contract terms get rich. So, sellers who won't cut the price will still concede on inspection windows, credits, rate buy downs, and closing timelines. That's where the deal lives in a standoff. In the terms of the deal, not in the headline price.”

“The investor who knows the neighborhood, or even better yet, knows the individual location or house, they beat the investor who knows the headlines every single time.”

“If the answer is only if the Fed cuts, then you don't have a deal. You have a lottery ticket with closing costs.”

“When you buy value add, which I, I try and do, I know you also try to do, um, you know, you make that big money when you add the value. And then as soon as you add the value, you could sell it for quite a bit more. But then when you hold, when you hold onto something, you're effectively the buyer, right?”

“really good, really good businesses pay a lot more than really good real estate because Real estate is such a stable asset relative to, right?”

“when my portfolio was built like that, it created, uh, it created a lot of safety in, it created safety in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, you know, disaster scenario, as opposed to, You know, luxury apartments were, were, were struggling, you know, but, but not these.”

“never underwrite on a rate cut that hasn't happened. That's the difference between data and hope.”

“in real estate, you can, you can learn a market very quickly. You can learn a lot about a particular home. It's another way that I, I like to say it, it's the, it's the one area where, you know, insider trading, and I don't mean hiding it from the public, but this is the one area that insider trading is legal, and what…”

“The war sets the oil price. The oil price sets the gas price. The gas price drives inflation, and inflation handcuffs the Fed, stops them from acting. The Fed and inflation Drive the ten-year treasury. That's the government bond whose interest rate, mortgage rates track most closely, and the ten-year treasury sets your…”

“So, if your investment plan requires the Fed to rescue you with cheap money this year, you don't have a plan, you have a hope, that's not the way to invest or buy. So, underwrite a purchase, underwrite an investment at today's rates, and if you get a decrease, that's icing on the cake.”

“I believe that gas prices have a psychological effect on buyers and sellers more so even than, even than its weighted average in the consumer price index.”

“The people who win in markets like this are not the ones who time the headlines. They're the ones who know their numbers, know their neighborhood, and act while everyone else is still scared.”

“AI is disrupting office real estate, but AI cannot and will never disrupt the fundamental need for housing.”

“it's no longer about followers. So don't worry that you don't have followers because all of the content, thanks to TikTok and like its influence on Instagram and Snapchat, all of the content gets shown to 200 people. They then use that to figure out whether it's of interest to different psychographics.”

“historically, geopolitical crises hurt markets for about a month and then recover.”

“the deal itself is so much more important than these other factors, and you can often find a deal close to home, but we're looking outside of the close to home because I get so many questions from online.”

“What I'm talking about is almost every time I buy a piece of property, There's some upside in it, um, that, that the public is either not aware of, But probably could be aware of if they did the hard work to find out. So zoning would be one of them.”

“the fact that the museum of modern art has purchased, this one has not yet affected that price, but that would be a clear indicator that something is going to happen with this artist.”

“As a general rule of thumb, bad economic news is pretty good for real estate, and really good economic news is generally bad for real estate because it affects the interest rates and what the Fed is willing to do with interest rates in the opposite direction.”

“The new edge is not I predict rates. It's I buy the right asset at the right price with the right down payment and the right debt.”

“The kids where everything comes natural to them, they almost don't cherish it because it's so easy. And then you see some of the best keyboarders actually never go anywhere with it.”

“the problem is the majority of us look at wealth through the amount of income we make. We don't calculate wealth based off how long do I not have to work and I'm still okay.”

“any successful entrepreneur, if they don't tell you that, hey man, there was some time and some luck involved in it, they're lying to you. Like truthfully, there's always a little bit of that.”

“I actually think there is some value in being a little bit naive because you don't know how brutal it's going to be, and so you just go and do it.”

“Like if you're going to build a service based business, like mom and pop, it's the reverse. They cashflow very well. They just don't get the valuation. It's why so many people in their sixties now, Are trying to offload their business, but if they're pulling in seven, 800,000 dollars a year, but they're only going to…”

“I would say most real estate investors, though, are rich on paper, And their cash flow is not crazy. That's most of us.”

“When you're putting leverage on assets, you're not paying the debt service, right? Your tenant is paying the debt service. And so now you're making a different type of calculation. Do I have enough income coming in to comfortably pay my debt service? And then if I ever want to pull capital out, it's done through a debt…”

“The home flippers are usually the first ones in. And if you start seeing the institutional investors dumping capital, you're usually on the tail end. So I want to follow the, the home flippers.”

“In the beginning, the calculation is this. You need to grow your wealth. So even though we're talking about passive income coming in, if you pick passive income over growth, it's going to be a smaller return. So in the beginning, I was focused on growing the wealth, which was going to be, how do I double my money every…”

“the PSA, the prostate-specific antigen is a very crude marker. It doesn't tell you if you have cancer or not. It's, it says the likelihood is higher if we cross that four, uh, four point or mark, right? Um, but you know, again, even benign prosthetic hypertrophy, you will still have, um, changes in your PSA. So it's…”

“You still have to work in at least a five percent vacancy. Here's why. Somebody is eventually going to move out, and you're going to have to paint, and you're going to have to make it fresh.”

“a really good rule of thumb, uh, it can be as high as 35% of your effective rent.”

“when you're at an entry level Into a great neighborhood. Here's what entry level into a great neighborhood is. You're basically, you have the nicest unit for the least amount of money into a great neighborhood. And when you've got that, you have lots of demand.”

“I really, I, I really haven't bought a building where you, you go back and you look at the pro forma and you're like, oh, you know, wow, the expenses are exactly what they projected. The expenses are, you know, a little less than they projected. That's just not happening.”

“However, if I'm looking at a deal I would not do a hotel deal or if somebody came to me and they said, Hey, I've had all the success in multifamily. It's great. I'm looking at a hotel deal. I'd be like, stop. Um, You must have someone on your team that knows hospitality very well.”

“They're taking a four, they might take a four cap, you know, that's a value add, figure out how to make it, you know, a six cap, and they've only put down 40%. I mean, you can almost do that math in your head. You've now increased the total value of the building by 50%, right? Because you're going to take it back down…”

“And so the sweet spot in our business, if you were going to build something today, it's like two, 250 Units is really the sweet spot because you can find families that right here in LA that want to own those.”

“You just, with the hotels, you just, every seven years, you just keep redoing her.”

“It doesn't have to cash flow, but you've got to have a real straight line, not like a, you know, change the entitlements in order to make it work. You know, you've got to have like, okay, so I buy the value add, it's underwater. It's not cash flowing. But I have the money set aside and I'm going to do this. I'm going…”

“weddings are amazing because where else are you going to get the opportunity to practice shooting 30 people and directing, you know, how do you get, How do you get practice to shoot a cast of a movie? Or when you do those big, you know, big groups of people. Okay, and then you have the pressure of getting the first…”

“your brain can't do two things at once. It can't say, get out, get out, get out, and breathe. They cannot occupy the same space.”

“when you're at 20%, you can still buy the shack, and, and, and I have this formula, which is like basically, you know, if you're at five percent, meaning like five percent of the neighborhood has like been, you know, Been, uh, uh, done up again. You know, it's too early, but there's a certain point where, where, you…”

“Every deal is different. Um, you can do it any way you want to do it, but there is a rule of thumb and that rule of thumb is that the general partners really must have 10% of their own money in it.”

“splitting the upside fifty-fifty sounds crazy to an investor that's used to the usual deal, but when you take no fees, it very much washes out, but it depends on how good of a deal it is.”

“there's a 100,000 dollars worth of problems. You should be able to buy that house for much less than 500 grand.”

“If it's 200 units or more, you're not, it's, this is not a mom and pop seller. They are, they're, you don't door knock those, ok? If they want to sell it, they're going to put it on the market, they're going to market it properly. Every investor that's at that level On the planet is going to see that deal.”

“the business that I'm in is a great, the brokerage business is a great business, but it's so high volume, Low margin. That if you get a little bit of a shift in, uh, in the income, it can be, it can be really disruptive.”

“if you have credit that's screwed up, uh, even if it's legitimate stuff, you can do amazing stuff in six months. But you can't do very much in six weeks. Almost nothing.”

“if your margin is so small, like two percent, if that's the difference maker, then you're doing it wrong.”

“The top 20% of the listings get 80% of the traffic. And so if you're in the top 20%, um, which if you know how to underwrite and you know how to create an experience, it's pretty easy to do. Um, the market is softened, but, uh, very sustainable and still highly profitable.”

“That, that's exactly what I tell people is when you, if you're looking at a market and whether you should invest in it, you need to go to a market that's already regulated and you need to be, the deal needs to be able to play by their rules. And so if that doesn't work, move markets.”

“Remote hospitality is significantly harder than in-person hospitality, and so starting an Airbnb investment in a location that's a really strong market that you cannot touch if you're just starting out to me is typically not the right route unless you have an in-person partner in that area that you really trust.”

“what I tell people when they're designing Airbnbs is take risks on your Airbnb design that make you think like, oh, this is interesting. I wouldn't do this in my own home, but this is interesting because that's what you want the guest to feel when they walk in the door.”

“You will see an immediate decrease in performance when you start taking bookings off of their platform.”

“I've been a food writer for many years, and, you know, I would see, like, kind of new, I'll say the word hip, restaurants kind of coming, a couple of them coming in, which I still use that as sort of a, of a factor, you know, when I see. Yeah, a barometer. I do. Like, I'm in Scottsdale a lot, as you know, and I see…”

“somebody who buys a ten million dollar house can't necessarily charge 10 times more Or five times more than someone at the two million dollar house. Like what, you know, so it's like, you kind of have to find that sweet spot.”

“if they're just a person that came from, you know, Downtown Los Angeles that wants Santa Monica or downtown Los Angeles that wants the Valley. It's just it's not a fit. It's generally speaking. So there's a lower probability of closing.”

“There's only two people in the food chain and commercial real estate do really is the pros and the mom and pops. So the buy mom and pops buy from the pros and the pros buy from mom and pops over and over and over again. It's just the way it is. So pros and pros don't usually buy from each other. Very rare.”

“when I'm looking at properties, what first thing I do is I say, what building is this similar to that I currently own? Because based on, you know, the year built, the flat pitched roof, blah, blah, blah. And I can generally find Two or three of my current portfolio that pretty well match up, and so I can go through a…”

“They could have hedged their investment if they had, Gone right into fixed rate financing. Going out 10 years, which rides you through any market, maintain your cash flow, whereas your equity is going up and down.”

“one of the additional challenges with that is you can't control when you're, when you're exiting your, your deal. You, all of a sudden, the market turns on you, and it happens to be when your house is finished, and your, your profit is quickly gone.”

“For those of you who don't know, M copper plumbing is an, is a, um, it's a cheaper form of Plumbing and it ends up getting little leaks. It doesn't do well with hot water. It's okay for office buildings. Not good for residential. And so you want L plumbing.”

“if I were starting out and I was looking at my first, um, acquisition, I would focus on a two to four unit property. Um, that's because you're gonna get, you're gonna get preferential financing, because up to four, up to four units is single family financing, and then look at a building where you can basically live for…”

“if you focus on cashflow, cashflow, cashflow. It doesn't matter if tomorrow your property drops, 10% of value. It doesn't matter because your cashflow is still your cashflow.”

“So for starters, it has to be a value add. There has to be something about the house that is chasing away The buyers. Yeah. And so one of the things, one of the terms that I use is brain damage. There's gotta be, there's gotta be significant brain damage. Uh, otherwise, in a hot market, and it's not an off-market…”

“you want to be near a great school, because that raises the value of a house. If you're, Next to a great school, that's bad. Because, you know, there's recess, there's whatever, there's kids screaming, there's traffic is terrible at drop off and pick up, you know, near a great school adds a lot of value. Too close to a…”

“developers don't want it cause it's already done and done poorly. Okay. That wipes them out.”

“Everything that looks terrible, everything that is a bummer. Is easily fixable. And the one thing you can't see, if that's not right, run.”

“You've got to get the 465,000 dollar house that really only needs 50, 60 grand worth of work to make it into the 600,000 dollar house. And you absolutely can do that. It's not going to be this disastrous thing, but it's going to be the stuff that doesn't look right. It was put in wrong. There's a lot of stuff you can…”

“If you're, if you're buying an investment property below market value, because It has stuff that needs to get done. You've got to get that stuff done right away or you're not going to get the rents that you want to get. When you're living there yourself. I mean, I've been there two and a half years. I love it. I…”

“So I would say a great realtor that knows that particular area knows when I say market knowledge knows that neighborhood. Like the back of their hand and also has rep developers.”

“I believe that you and most people involved in real estate investments, uh, whether it's office storage, multifamily across all the spectrums of the, of the different investment vehicles, they're fearful of the entitlements and especially fearful in the state of California. And then within specific cities within…”

“I think it makes total sense to get an architect and have that person on board for you as an extra set of eyes as you're looking at property.”

“Non-judgmental. I think humans in general, we judge each other all the time, and I think we need to get over that and to say we judge each other. We're not the executioner, but we're always judging each other. That's how our brain works. So I don't like when people call me judgmental because I think we all are.”

“blue chip can be really taken into two things. One, it's probably a million dollars and up is a blue chip artwork. Because if you're even a modern art or present day contemporary artists, but your artworks are selling for over a million, you're considered blue chip.”

“the emerging artists have the capability of increasing their value five, 10, even 20 X. Absolutely. Quickly. Not all of them, but they can. Uh, whereas, um, the more stable blue chip artists, you know, they increase every year, five, 10%, it keeps going up, slowly but surely, and you know, ten million dollar artwork…”

“unfortunately, your artwork is either worth all the money, four or five million, Or it's just a very nice decoration for your bathroom. There is no in between. There is no gray area in this. From my world.”

“some of the clients are extremely intimidated, especially the young wealthy clients, you know, YouTubers, uh, that are 25 years old and they want to have art. It's, it's like, it's, it's, uh, it's a bling if you want. It's, it's a buzzword that they all want. They want to have the nice car. They want to have the nice…”

“So I would buy a property just on the outskirts of Indianapolis itself. Right. So that means, you know, well, there's going to be more money. There's going to keep on coming into that particular sub economy and you're going to be fine. So versus now I go invest in Bakersfield when the recession hits, when things go…”

“And you have to understand investors who do own right in the hub, sometimes they don't want to do major renovations to the unit. Because, you know, they're spoiled. I'm going to get the premium rent anyway. So now if you do a major renovation to your unit, who's on the outskirts. They may, the tenant may be willing to…”

“what I figured out was that, that a, a proxy for the 24 hour city is you now go to a city that's not a 24 hour city. Like for example, you, you know, Indianapolis. I do not, but I know Pittsburgh, which is where I'm originally from. Pittsburgh is certainly not what this billionaire would consider a 24 hour city. Um,…”

“So you should be looking the day. The contingencies are removed on your down leg. The property that you're selling, your own property that you're selling, the day you remove all the contingencies, or the buyer for your property removes their contingencies on your property, that is the day you started looking for your…”

“When you're dealing with a realtor that is a friend, right? He's extra cautious. And sometimes that extra cautiousness could cost you a property. Like it's hard for me to, for example, to tell my friend, oh, this is a great investment because in case something does not go right, he's going to say, oh, Sam told me about…”

“I mean, businesses is another way to invest, and businesses usually gives you much more cash flow than real estate does, but the business, in 99% of the cases, you gotta pay cash for the business. Real estate, you put five, 10, 15, 20% down, and the rest is the bank's money.”

“What I mean by specialty is that even the realtors that they deal with storage units. They have their own clientele of storage unit owners, and they work together. And sometimes for you to come in, they, they'd rather deal with somebody that is familiar with that business than somebody that is Fresh off the street.”

“this is when I see people lose big money in real estate, is they're the people that are buying, and developing. They may, they may buy a great, uh, you know, a terrible house on a great piece of land. They tear the house down, and now they're in the middle of this great big, uh, uh, development. And then the market…”

“one thing I also noticed is that there was not a correlation between how much money they made and how much wealth they built. Sometimes it went in opposite directions, which means, you know, the more somebody made, maybe the more debt they had, uh, being independent contractors, taxes are generally not taken out.”

“One thing that people don't understand is even when I know we're at the top of the market, closer to the top than the bottom, after you've had appreciation for a long period of time, probably the best indicator is the affordability index.”

“So the sweet spot, I would say these are just rough numbers, you know, 20 to 25%. It's already are already gorgeous by the time you're at 75%. So now, now, you know, seven out of the 10 houses on my street are like Totally amazing. Now that one ramshackle one that's still there. Boy, the, the price, all of the price of…”

“Well, first of all, uh, savvy investors, um, will not invest in a deal unless the principles have, uh, Really a rule of thumb is 10% of their own money.”

“my first thing is invest where, you know, or invest, invest where you live really nearby. Um, but if I were going outside the area and I, and I were doing, and I made a decision to go outside the area, I would think about buying a few in the same area so that you then don't have to worry about finding, like, Numerous…”

“So, it is the first check mark To sort of look at when you're sort of underwriting a property is, is a short term rental even allowed, uh, in this area? Cause it can very quickly be like, all right, let's stop pencils down. Uh, because I mean, if it's restricted, you, you shouldn't even be underwriting it.”

“War keeps the price of oil volatile. Volatile oil prices feed the risk of higher inflation, and inflation risk pushes the rate of the bonds higher. Higher bond rates equal higher mortgage rates. So that's how the war ties directly to your interest rates.”

“when these huge luxury part properties start trading hands again, it tells you that liquidity and confidence are coming back into The whole system and that confidence eventually trickles down to the move up buyer, then the first time buyer, then the renter who's looking to buy.”

“You don't want the busiest person. You also don't want someone that doesn't have a lot of experience representing investors and approach that person, uh, and, and see what kind of deals they're finding for their clients and then become a very easy client for them to sell the deal to.”

“There are some very specific added benefits to do it with your own house. You know, you can get into it, you can get into this investment being your own home at better rates with less money down and all that sort of thing. So you can, you can add, you can add a decent amount of leverage without, you know, without…”

“It's a profession of wisdom, and I, I don't think there are young architects who have that wisdom. You can't buy it. You have to do it.”

“I came up with a mantra for it, which is, ah, the more you can do, the more you can do. So, you know, as I get better and better, now my pose gets a little, you know, I, I bend the knee closer to 90 degrees, and I could be, you know, 10 times better than I was when I first started, and I come out of there, I might, I…”

“I would spend it in the living areas. That's, that's where we do our living. Um, so kitchen upgrades, living room upgrades. Expand to the outside. Um, if, if you're a one story, make it a second story and put a primary bedroom on a second floor. I think those sort of changes in, in elevation heights can be, uh, game…”

“a great way to do it would be to uh, physically walk into a brokerage um, in that area and ask to see the manager. And then say, Hey, I want, you know, I'm a potential buyer. I'd like five minutes of your time or 10 minutes of your time... And I would walk into that office and Of whatever brand it is that has major…”

“The thing now that I'm, we do and that I'm, I'm people should be doing is the electronic, uh, guidebook.”

“If they're like, well, you know, next couple of years, two, three years, you'll need it. I'm, I'm treating it like it's happening now or certainly budgeted into the next three years. Future expenses. Yeah, that's right. I'm taking the total expense of full rewiring and I'm dividing it by three.”

“when I started, uh, selling real estate as an agent, I would represent, uh, some builders cause that's kind of a, one of the holy grails of being a real estate agent is you get the listing up front, you get the listing on the second time when they go to sell it.”

“you put up on the monitor, a hundred photos. If I put up a hundred photos of you, and 99 of them are fucking, sorry my language, are just amazing. And then there's one where your chin was in, you have a double chin. You know which one you're going to? You know which one you are lasering in on?”

“I think, uh, in the higher end homes that we do, I think having home spa amenities, mm-hmm. Really attract people because you think, when do I have time to go get a steam or a sauna?”

“In a mail situation, mailing situation, I would say that You know, you're not sending out thousands of these. So I would, I would hand write the address on the envelope so that it doesn't look like junk mail.”