Q&A
Real questions from readers, answered by vetted real estate experts — investors, operators, and proptech builders.
Underwrite the exit cap flat to entry as your base case, and wider in your downside. If a deal only clears the hurdle with compression baked in, you're not winning a deal — you're buying optionality on rates, and that's a different (worse) business. The way to stay competitive without lying is to find the return in…
For most individual LPs, direct exposure to the land/infrastructure phase is genuinely too illiquid and long-dated — you're underwriting a decade-plus hold with negative cash flow for years. The sane exposure is one phase down: the vertical product (apartments, BTR, retail) built within a master plan once the anchor…
Read more →It's submarket-specific, which is the whole answer. A few Sunbelt submarkets are genuinely oversupplied on BTR for the next 18-24 months — you can see it in concessions. Others still have years of runway. Don't underwrite 'the Sunbelt.' Pull the permit pipeline for your specific submarket and overlay it on net…
Read more →Underwrite the operator, not the deck. Concretely: pull title on every deal they claim, call the lender on their last two deals (sponsors sign off on this if they're real), and ask for the capital call and distribution history — dates and amounts, not IRRs. Then the soft test that predicts everything: give them a…
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