Caleb Webster

@robbiehendricks Please start posting memes on Linkedin

Had someone ask if I worry that posting CRE jokes or memes may detract from people taking me seriously. Short answer: No. Zero percent. If I can’t have fun, I don’t want to do it. One of my gripes with the commercial real estate industry is its inability to laugh at itself. Everyone takes themselves so seriously. Relax, guys. You’re playing grown up monopoly with a bunch of big words. Have some fun. Post some memes. Laugh a bit. You’re not that important, and neither am I.

@davidsawyer1 @mnolangray I think this has been proven fairly thoroughly with the decline in permitting for 20+ unit apartments post 2018 when IZ was passed.

@mnolangray @infilldeveloper what’s your perspective on this?

I'm not aware of a single instance where IZ mandates ushered in broad improvements in housing affordability, but I'm aware of loads of instances in which they crushed housing production. Blue cities/states need to take the evidence seriously and scrap these failed programs.

@robbiehendricks Definitely think it’ll lead to some seller capitulation.

This move in the treasuries has got to be breaking hearts. We had this gut feeling last year that 3.5% (on the 5 year) was a low on rates. Ended up locking a 4.8% and a 4.48% fixed on our two largest assets. Next maturity in our portfolio is in 2030. Cheers to good sleep.

@twallyweb All our offers are this way. No pushback yet from sellers.

We got an offer on some land that has like $25,000 of earnest money, but not real dollars. It’s a promissory note that converts to actual cash at the end of due diligence. First time I’ve ever seen it.

@RandallHouseRE Super valuable! How are they obtaining this info? Are they calling each property weekly to build this report? Seems like the competition might start to recognize them over time.

@TimelessArie Not sure if you got my DM but reached out to say we should grab coffee. You met my partner Mike on the Deal Junkies podcast and I'm sure we have a bunch of other mutuals.

@infilldeveloper 👊

Real estate "operations" are all the rage right now. And I get it. For over a decade, you could buy something, do minimal work, and watch it print money. Up and to the right. Every time. That era is over. Now it's choppy water. Margin compression. Flat rents. Owners learning — the hard way — that the business actually requires work. And I'm noticing a trend: a lot of multifamily people are suddenly very interested in other asset classes. Industrial. Hospitality. Self-storage. Senior care facilities. The logic makes sense on the surface. Multifamily isn't "working" like it used to — why not pivot? Here's my counter-argument: The pain you (we) are feeling right now is the education. What you're learning in the trenches — controlling expenses, creating new revenue streams, building real operating infrastructure — that's the stuff that makes great investors. It took years to learn. It compounds. Pivoting to industrial right now restarts the experience clock back to zero. I'm not saying these aren't valid plays. I'm saying: don't mistake discomfort for a signal to abandon your lane. The time to double down — to get fresh troops to the front line — is exactly now. Not after the pain passes. Now. PS photo is of the first "investment" property I ever bought. With my own money. How I could count the "wisdom" this thing has given to me. Paid for the cheapest contractor to do something, cost me a fortune. Had an unpermitted unit. But here it is, today, cash-flowing like a happy pup and in a tier-1 location in Portland. I'll be holding it forever!

Hyper niche request: any RE sponsors want to share a screenshot of their reporting dashboards with me? I'm building ours out and would love some inspiration.

@BeardyBrandon All due respect, didn't you pivot from single family homes to MHPs to multifamily back to single family SROs?

Most people don’t fail at real estate because of money. They fail because they won’t pick a lane. Multifamily? Flips? Storage? Padsplit? Pick one. Get good. Adjust later.

@Dan_Jeffries1 TL:DR you’re buying the dip

This is a ridiculous stat in a ridiculous story: "The marginal cost of running an agent, had collapsed to, essentially, the cost of electricity." The marginal cost of a coding agent is not even remotely close to "the cost of electricity." These agents are absurdly expensive to use and run. Why do you think AI labs are banning people from having multiple $200 subscriptions? Because those subscriptions are heavily, heavily discounted to drive demand. Why did labs stop folks from using their subscription costs in OpenClaw? The OpenClaw guy had five max subs and was losing 20k a month building and running his amazing project (because he was retired and had the money to set in fire) before AI labs banned this practice of having multiple subs. In case you just missed it: Because these agents are expensive as hell to run. The cost of running coding agents daily on eight hour shifts is thousands of dollars a month at API pricing and that is subsidized too. My team regularly burns anywhere from 4K-8K a month across three people using the latest and greatest for an AI driven building workflow. That's not even agents running 24x7 "making money while you sleep" which is utter and total nonsense. This is one of the most spectacularly unprofitable businesses in history so far. People talking about the end of all work because this stuff runs for "pennies" cannot do even the most basic math. New NVIDIA chips don't even break even for data centers for like 24-36 months and they are basically obsolete by then. That doesn't count power and cooling and people to run it all. Imagine if your car was basically worth zero after three years? I'm so sick of these idiotic Population Bomb level stories about the end of all work and running agents for pennies. It's a mass delusion for people who can't be bothered to bust out a calculator on their phone for five seconds.

@andyantiles_ ~10% YOC, as long as you don’t need to pack heat when you tour it’s a good deal

Would you buy this deal? 4 unit multifamily building Purchase price: $195k Cash to close: $53,027 20% down + closing costs Gross Monthly Rent: $3,300 Monthly cashflow: $1,107 (After maintenance and capex) Annual cashflow: $13,284 Cash on cash return: 25%

@TimelessArie Sweet building!

Everybody out here is saying Portland is dead. And we just acquired a 109-year-old apartment building in the core. Here's why. The Imperial Arms. Built 1917. 54 units. Cell tower on the roof. Classic brick building from the era when they built things to last — and it shows. Plus, prior ownership took great care of the property. New boiler. New roof. New windows. Upgraded electrical panels. The heavy CapEx is done. Our thesis right now is buy right and cash flow. And take advantage of a significant pricing dislocation in this property type. 1️⃣ We're going in at north of a 7% capitalization rate on the 'actual' T-12. 2️⃣ Purchase price per square foot is less than half of the replacement value. 3️⃣ 98% occupancy upon purchase. Cash flow day 1. Now — why Portland? Isn't everyone fleeing? That's exactly the narrative. And narratives like that are often where opportunity hides. Here's some data: Portland's new construction pipeline has collapsed. Permits are at multi-decade lows. The supply that crushed rents in 2022 and 2023 is not being replaced. Meanwhile, the city is 90,000 housing units short of meeting projected demand. We don't really buy narratives that you hear on X - we prefer math. This is a principle I keep coming back to: the best time to acquire real assets is when the headlines are the ugliest, and the competition has gone home. Every era of history repeats this lesson. Over and over. Washington bought land during the Revolutionary War. Smart operators bought San Francisco in the 1990s. Distressed assets in Detroit got picked up for pennies before the city came back. Fear clears the field. We like a clear field. Imperial Arms is vintage, supply-constrained, fully renovated, and cash flowing in a market that institutional capital has abandoned. That's the setup we look for. Patient capital. Operations first.

@adamstatonsmith What are you spending a day, roughly?

@infilldeveloper Sonnet for dumb tasks and 5.3 for marketing and writing and research.

I’m at the gym lifting. Clawdbot is the greatest solopreneur tool one could ask for.

@TAYVAY_ Working on this for syndication

If I had unlimited money, this is how I would dominate CRE brokerage: 1. Get Data - Hire VA's to scrape data providers - Get TLO for mobile and emails - Have cold caller's verify ownership - Build Top 150 clients list, cambridge analytica that shit 2. Top of Funnel - Built Newsletter personalized content based on FB, IG, credit card, and user intent data - Hire content team, produce 150-300 pieces of content per week - VA Cold Callers call owners to see if they would sell. Low fruit. - VA text outreach with personalization based on data - Drip email sequences, hyper-personalized 3. Client Retention - Hire people to create "unreasonable hospitality" magic moments for my leads/clients - Find charitable causes I believe in, invite owners to event for charity - Poker Nights - Client Events - Bfast Meetings with top 150 everyday - SOP's for market updates and automate news 4. Sales Execution - Mass texts with pre-market/off-market deals - AI buyer and seller match system based on previous purchase history and current buyer criteria - AI OM and single property website creation - AI Social Media graphics for listings - Mass email based on buyer criteria and data - 1031 exchange tracker and fund lifecycles 5. Team Building - Full SOP and video recordings for agent training - Team events for rapport building - Daily training calls/ meetings - Round Robin lead distribution - Personal Brand infrastructure for agents to plug into - CRM supersystem included This to me would be a tech company that sells real estate. The scale and speed would be unmatched and the amount of personalized data would be the winning ticket. The main differentiator would be the level of personalization as not to spam owners but provide real value based upon their data and conversations. These are the systems I think about when I lay in bed at night. One day, I will make this a reality.

@moseskagan This is why I got into RE. Dropped out of college (ran out of $ and didn't want student loans) and grew increasingly frustrated by how every semi-interesting job required a degree for every entry level position.

In real estate: 1. No one cares where you went to college 2. No single gate-keeper decides if you're allowed in, & 3. You don't necessarily need to leverage someone else's organization to create value You find a deal that makes sense, figure out how to get it done, & go.

@TheRealEstateG6 Exit at $240k a unit for C class is hard to imagine in all but a few coastal markets

This is a perfect example of a great mid-level deal. Pretty clear pathway to make $200k here. - 6-unit deal - Low-in place income - Huge value-add opportunity if you choose the right renovation scope Property is located in a good supply-constrained market consists of all 2-bed units and is a good piece of real estate (as far as Class C properties go). The first thing you’ll want to take a look at are the rents. Rents: There are 3 options to increase rents on a deal like this 1. Increase without renovating 2. Light reno ($10k) 3. Heavy reno ($20k) Most people would choose options 1 or 2. But since this is a higher end market, that’s the wrong choice. A light renovation would probably allow you to push rents to $1,800. A heavy renovation would allow for $2,200 rents. Given that it only costs another $10k to do a heavy renovation and that renovation yields an additional $400/month in rent, the math is pretty simple. $400 * 12 months = $4,800 $4,800 rent increase / $10,000 renovation cost = 48% return on cost Obviously if you can get a 48% return on anything, you should probably do it. Something that’s actually very important in this deal is that all the tenants are month-to-month, none of them are on long term leases. This seems like a bad thing but is actually a good thing. Reason why this is so important is one word: speed. That means you can get to the units immediately to start renovating. In a deal where the total profit is ~$200k, if you can start renovating the units immediately, that’s very impactful. Because of the month-to-month leases, you should be able to renovate all 6 units in just a few months and be in and out of the deal in under a year. Possible areas of concern: - Financing may be an issue, given how low in-place rents are and how in-place expenses are not representative of your expenses. - Exit basis is definitely a bit high at $240k/unit. This is supported by the high rents but could be a cause for concern for future buyers. Mitigant is that the cash on cash will be 10%+ stabilized so you could just hold or refinance as well. - NOI margin is high at 69%. This is largely because of the high rents. I allocated a full expense load to the asset at $8k/unit (and doubled the seller’s expense load). Less of an area of concern, more of just something to note. - In-place laundry income seems very high for 6 units. This may include some other income as well, would have to talk to the broker about this. Despite these areas of concern, it's overall a very attractive deal. I don’t invest in deals this small anymore, but if you’re just starting out, these are the type of deals you should be looking for.

@resetbasis Agree on the dispo fee but how else is a syndicator supposed to keep the lights on without fees?

People like Brandon post rage-bait on the assumption that people will be mad, but they'll be paying attention to me. Perhaps I can convert those eyeballs to LPs. Well, let's pay attention to Brandon's business. Brandon rose to internet fame through BiggerPockets, before leaving to start his own company called Open Door Capital. Open Door is a typical real estate syndicator selling the dream of passive income to retail LPs. If you're going to invest in a real estate syndication, you probably should know what the fees are. And while I thought you would never ask, I happen to have some insight into Open Door's fee structure. So, let's take a look. Let's assume Open Door buys a property for 30m Acquisition fee: 2.5% of the purchase price. Paid at closing. Asset Management Fee: 2% of gross revenue. This is paid out ahead of net cash flow, which means it's collected before LP pref is calculated. Property Management Fee: "at market" to a property management company the GP owns. Capital Transaction Fee (sale/refi): 2% of the gross proceeds. Meaning, this also gets paid out ahead of LP returns. Two important clarifications. - Deferred GP fees accrue interest at 10% per year - LP preferred return accrues, but does not compound Let's also assume the deal underperforms and generates a 0% irr, selling for roughly the 30m they paid. A not unheard of outcome in the sunbelt these days. LPs get their money back and the GP is out of the promote. However, because of the way the fees at Open Door are structured, the GP still earns roughly 3.6m dollars. Brandon's right. You need to get focused, lock in, and bilk mom and pop investors, as god intended.

@TheRealEstateG6 We’re buying the same deals on the west coast. Insane that you can get 8%+ cash on cash on stabilized deals right now.

Ended up buying 2 deals fitting this profile immediately after (250 units, ~$25MM) The deals have crushed it & will both almost certainly (yes I'm aware I'm jinxing it) be over 20% IRRs Pretty easy to make money in this industry if you use your brain & avoid groupthink

@resetbasis There were so many signs…

Feels like a good time to remind everyone that my best work was at the top of the market