Prop 33 Failed, Averting Catastrophic Vacancy Control
A little recent history lesson for LA YIMBYs: In October '24, Nithya Raman was one of the key supporters of Prop 33, which would have allowed cities across California to impose vacancy control on apartment buildings, including on newly constructed apartment buildings. As anyone who follows housing economics will tell you, the impact of Prop 33 on rental supply growth would have been catastrophic. (Fortunately for everyone in the state, it failed.)
Standardized Modeling Reveals 7% Yield, Varied Risks
A little more context: Via ReSeed, the platform some partners and I started ~3 yrs ago, I am now seeing sub-institutional multifamily and industrial deal-flow across like 15-20 markets. We have standardized the modeling and underwriting assumptions (allowing for regional variation supported...
Private Capital, Not Government, Solves Housing Shortage
What every voter and apparently, the NY Times Editorial Board, should know about housing policy: 1. Rents reflect the balance of supply of apartments and demand for those apartments in a given area. That’s it; there’s no magic. If you want...
Paying a $100 Fraud Charge Restored My Credit
About 5 yrs into my real estate career, I went to refi a building, the bank pulled my credit and the score was like 550 or something. Turned out some clown had stolen my ID, got store credit at JC Penney,...
Small Business Leadership Mirrors Team Captain Experience
Much of running a small business is stuff you learn as the captain of a high school sports team (or, in Rich's case, leading men in combat)
Let Bad News Rise—Don’t Shoot the Messenger
Applies to companies, too, by the way. You want to ensure bad news *flies* up the chain of command, and that means avoiding shooting the messenger.
Empty Western Fast
When you see a vacant fast food restaurant in the Western US, light up the Hatch Signal
LA Rewards Energy over Pedigree, Fostering Fresh Opportunities
Yes... and this is a good thing. When I got to Los Angeles (from Upstate NY, by way of London), I had effectively no network among people with capital. But I had energy and (eventually) good ideas, and, bc people here don't...
ReSeed Hits $130M Deployments, Operator Closes $30M Deal
Regular readers know I started a company called ReSeed with an incredible group of co-founders ~3 yrs ago to identify, train, mentor and capitalize emerging real estate operators across the country. One of those operators, a husband-and-wife team in the Midwest,...
Apartment Development: 15‑Year Wait, Dec
Stripped of all the financial engineering, developing an apartment building right now looks like this: Invest $$$, wait for 15-20 years for that $$$ to come back to you, then earn your profit in subsequent decades. I keep wanting to ask our...
Good PMs Prioritize Owner Interests Over Their Own Profit
Tension at the heart of property management: From a coldly rational perspective, the smart move for the owner of the PM business is to focus on maximizing revenue per unit managed. However, most of the best strategies for...
Restricting City Agglomeration Costs Nations Significant GDP Growth
The next thought in this chain is: "How much GDP growth have we, as a society, given up by retarding agglomeration effects in our most productive cities?" And the answer to this is "a material amount"... in other words, we're all poorer...
Vote Wolff to Fix California’s Broken Insurance Market
CA real estate owners: We all know the insurance market has been screwed up here at least since Covid... and that the LA fires haven't helped. We have a chance to help get things moving in the right direction again at...
Admitting Past Mistake: AMA Not Causing Doctor Shortage
[Deleted a comment alleging that the AMA is the cause of our shortage of doctors. I think this was actually true when I learned it in the early 2000s, but it appears no longer to be true. Mea culpa.]
Nurture Your First Client, Then Diversify to Survive
As a beginning entrepreneur, very likely you will have customer concentration (often, that first large customer was the reason you were able to go off on your own in the first place). Once you're up and running, you have two missions: 1....