Contributor
Miami, FL
Partner at PTB, a boutique investment bank. Teacher & writer at Opensqft.
Most pro formas built between 2015 and 2021 carried one silent assumption: exit cap rates at or below entry. That assumption is gone, and the models that still lean on it are producing fiction. Three Inputs to Re-Examine Start with the exit cap — underwrite it flat to entry at…
Two years ago, the median emerging manager ran their entire acquisitions pipeline out of spreadsheets and a shared inbox. Today, the best of them have something closer to a quant desk: automated comp pulls, AI-drafted investment memos, and underwriting models that update…
Hard costs spiked, partly retraced, and settled into a new normal that is neither the old baseline nor the peak. Underwriting either extreme gets you a wrong number. Labor Is the Sticky Part Material prices are volatile but mean-reverting. Skilled labor is the structural…
Landscape hotels, glamping clusters, twenty-key design resorts: demand is documented, returns are strong, and yet the category sits in a capital no-man's-land — too small for institutional hospitality money, too operational for most real estate funds. Who Fills the Gap The…
The distribution waterfall is where the money is decided, and it is written in language designed to intimidate. Strip the jargon and it is just a set of priority rules for who gets paid in what order. Return of Capital, Pref, Promote First, investors get their money back. Then…
When deals routinely cleared high hurdles, promote was an afterthought. With returns compressed, the promote structure is once again a live negotiation between sponsors and LPs. Lower Hurdles, Tighter Tiers LPs are pushing for higher preferred returns before any promote, and…
Every experienced sponsor has a first deal they would underwrite very differently today. The lessons are remarkably consistent across people who have nothing else in common. Reserves, Partners, Patience You will need more reserves than you modeled, your partners matter more than…
The emerging manager of 2026 does not cold-call family offices. She publishes. A weekly newsletter on her submarket, a deal-breakdown reel that gets passed around LP group chats, a podcast appearance that does more for her credibility than any pitch deck. Distribution Is…