Topic
Career and operating advice from people who have done it.
Every sponsor's deck shows a wall of green. The job of a serious LP is to figure out how much of that green the sponsor actually created versus inherited from a decade of falling rates. Attribution Is Everything Ask for realized deals only, with gross and net side by side, plus…
LPs receive hundreds of decks a quarter. They do not read them; they triage them. Knowing which slides survive that triage is worth more than any design polish. Team, Track Record, Alignment They go straight to who you are, what you have actually realized, and how much of your…
Warm intro or nothing — cold-emailing a family office is the fastest way to get filtered out permanently. They invest in people they (or someone they trust) already know. So do the unglamorous work: publish your thinking consistently, show up where they gather, and get one trusted mutual connection to vouch. And know…
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Real estate is notoriously relationship-driven, which makes the first job the hardest. The good news: the paths in have widened, even if none of them is the front door. Build Proof, Not Just a Résumé Underwrite real deals on your own and share the work. Publish your analysis.…
Some skills decay and some compound. Early in a real estate career, the question worth asking is which abilities pay you back for decades. Underwriting, Relationships, Judgment Deep underwriting fluency is table stakes. Relationship capital compounds the longer you hold it. But…
Leaving a stable seat to sponsor your own deals is the dream. Most who try it underestimate the same three risks, so it is worth pre-morteming them while you still have a paycheck. Capital, Runway, Loneliness First-time sponsors run out of fundraising runway before the first…
The skills that make a great acquisitions professional are almost the opposite of the ones that make a great manager of them. The promotion is a career change disguised as a title bump. Delegate the Model, Keep the Judgment Your job shifts from building the model to building the…
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…
Turnover is the silent killer of multifamily returns — every move-out is lost rent, make-ready cost, and leasing expense. Operators chase exotic fixes while the real levers stay unglamorous. Maintenance Speed and Fair Renewals The two things that move retention most are how fast…
Family offices now write the marginal check in most sub-$50M raises. But 'family office' describes a legal structure, not a behavior — and treating them as one audience is the fastest way to waste a year of fundraising. A Field Guide The Operator-Turned-Allocator wants to…
Very realistic — engineering is an asset, not a handicap. You already understand the physical asset better than most finance hires ever will, which matters enormously in value-add and development. Close the gap on the finance side visibly: underwrite a few real deals on your own, learn to build and defend a model, and…
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