Robert Brown, MSRE

I loved listening to Beardy Brandon on BiggerPockets, and I respect that he is publicly admitting failure and being open about what happened. Most people would hide, spin, or disappear. He deserves credit for facing it. That said, I always thought a lot of the syndicated deals from the 2020-2022 era were way too aggressive. Part of that is personal history. I lived through 2008 in Las Vegas real estate. My dad also lost money in the S&L era and on apartments around 1980 because of balloon debt and forced refinance risk. So I have a deep bias against any deal where survival depends on a friendly refinance window. The fair distinction is: Unexpected: rents dropping 30% in a hot growth market like Austin. Knowable: floating-rate debt + short-term rate caps + a forced refinance window can become a death trap if rates spike. Inexcusable for a GP: raising third-party capital while not fully understanding the debt instrument that is supposed to protect the deal. That is not underwriting “every insane tail risk.” That is underwriting the core capital stack. A rate cap is not fixed-rate debt. It is temporary insurance. If the policy expires and replacement cost explodes exactly when you need it most, that risk was part of the deal from day one. The real mistake was stacking too many dependencies: rent growth, cap-rate stability, cheap cap renewals, available refinance debt, and LP patience. When all of those have to work, you are not just investing. You are threading a needle with other people’s money.

My thoughts: Unexpected: rents dropping 30% in a hot growth market like Austin. Knowable: floating-rate debt + short-term rate caps + a forced refinance window can become a death trap if rates spike. Inexcusable for a GP: raising third-party capital while not fully understanding the debt instrument that is supposed to protect the deal. That is not underwriting “every insane tail risk.” That is underwriting the core capital stack. A rate cap is not fixed-rate debt. It is temporary insurance. If the policy expires and replacement cost explodes exactly when you need it most, that risk was part of the deal from day one. The real mistake was stacking too many dependencies: rent growth, cap-rate stability, cheap cap renewals, available refi debt, and LP patience. When all of those have to work, you are not just investing. You are threading a needle with other people’s money.

Too soon?

@theficouple So just stay in the house what’s the big deal great rate own the home lucky 🍀!

We know someone who paid $390k for a home in 2020. They have a 30 year, 3.75% mortgage & home is now worth ~$550,000. They're outgrowing their home & need more space but buying a new home would 2-3x their housing costs. They feel trapped & millions are in this situation.

On long flights the difference is real: proper sleep in a lie-flat seat, more space to actually work or relax, and you land feeling human instead of destroyed. Once you’re at a very high income level with an 8 figure + net worth, the marginal cost for that comfort and recovery becomes pretty reasonable.

I’ve never flown first class and I really don’t see the appeal. It doesn’t even look much different. I’m not going to eat/drink on the plane anyway. There’s a bit more leg room which is certainly somewhat appealing but not the difference of first class and economy appealing. What am I missing?

@moseskagan @mylesmarino I would like to get comfortable with a market outside San Diego and Vegas, I've looked at Phoenix for years for this reason.

@mylesmarino There are easier places to make money in apartments

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 by data), which allows us to make apples-to-apples comparisons. While the yields tend to cluster around 7% unlevered, bc that's roughly the floor we're willing to accept, the differences in the types and magnitudes of risk we have to take to get there are *wide*.

Agreed. The “it makes weird mistakes, therefore not AGI” argument is weak. Every human genius is jagged too. The only real caveat is agency/reliability. AI already has broad general intelligence. It just isn’t yet a fully autonomous professional you can trust to own the whole outcome without supervision.

The “it’s not AGI because machine intelligence is jagged” is dumb cope. It’s obviously AGI. If you had a friend who had a 130 IQ, could write production code flawlessly, could write academic papers of a high research caliber, pass any exam in any field with flying colors, create a sophisticate LBO model, draw technical diagrams perfectly, compose poetry in any language, and could find solutions to significant unsolved mathematical problems, you would call that person a world historical genius. Certainly, no single human has ever had intelligence that “general” before. Now you think it’s “not AGI” because it sometimes slips up and makes mistakes - so does any human that you would consider “extraordinarily intelligent.” The professor might forget a colleagues name that he has known for a decade. He is still considered intelligent. The math genius might be a little autistic and shy, unable to maintain polite conversation. Still intelligent. You might stare at the fridge for 30 seconds unable to find the butter, despite 5 million years of evolution perfecting your visual intelligence. We give intelligent humans a pass when they have jagged intelligence. So why the double standard? The qualities people list as “necessary for AGI” are important traits to have, but no longer pertain to intelligence. People will say things like “true AGI requires agency, long term goal setting, embodiment, self-direct action”. But none of those things are intelligence. Those are “things that humans have that AI lacks”. Raw intelligence, AI has it in spades. That other stuff - important yet, but broader than and different from intelligence. The unwillingness of people to acknowledge that AGI obviously exists and has existed for a while is due to a kind of anthropic chauvinism - a psychological need to believe that humans are superior in every respect, that we possess soft skills that no machine could replicate. Yes humans are different from machines, but if we are limiting the discussion solely to general intelligence, AI has it already. That battle is over. If you want to reframe the discussion to matters of human dignity and personhood, fine, but that’s not an AGI question. That’s something else. Just take the loss on AGI already. It’s over.

@Rigogoto @AmericanAir God! Poor people, lower standards.

@AmericanAir @multifam_VTIGUY God! rich people, poor minds

First class? Try “duct tape class.” ✈️ Paid for a premium seat and got this broken foot hammock dangling in my lap the entire flight. It’s been smacking my legs nonstop. Crew’s official response? “Nothing we can do.” This is the “luxury” experience now? @AmericanAir please 🙏 fix

@boblobrobhob @AmericanAir Found the guy who thinks getting smacked in the legs for 5 hours is ‘part of the experience.’ Enjoy economy king.

@multifam_VTIGUY @AmericanAir crybaby

@alphafox216 @AmericanAir Crazy how people will defend a multi-billion dollar airline like it’s their broke uncle. I paid for a working seat, not a DIY project from the 90s.

@multifam_VTIGUY @AmericanAir What exactly do you want the crew to do? They don’t have their A&P maintenance credentials (most likely) and any modifications would require one and maintenance logs updated. Most don’t carry extra duct tape either.

@AmericanAir First class? Try “duct tape class.” ✈️ Paid for a premium seat and got this broken foot hammock dangling in my lap the entire flight. It’s been smacking my legs nonstop. Crew’s official response? “Nothing we can do.” This is the “luxury” experience now?

@theficouple Nope $2m comfortable, $5m pretty rich, $10m semi wealthy, $25m + wealthy

The levels of wealth as we see them: $850,000- Comfortable $1.1 million-Pretty rich $1.65 million- Semi wealthy $2.3 million- Wealthy ...Do you agree?

The problems you listed are real AND they were delivered by the exact “experienced politicians” who’ve run LA for decades. Spencer Pratt lost his own home in the Palisades fire because the system failed. He’s not running for clout; he’s running because the people with “relevant experience” let the city burn (literally and figuratively). Reality TV past? Sure. But governing by résumé has produced $14B budgets and visible collapse. Sometimes the outsider with skin in the game is exactly what a broken system needs. Judge him on what he actually proposes, not the show he was on 15 years ago.

Los Angeles has an operating budget of $14 billion. It has a housing affordability crisis. A homelessness epidemic. Traffic and aging infrastructure. Crime and gang violence. Drought and wildfire risk. Spencer Pratt grew up as a "wealthy brat" on reality TV. He shouldn't even be in the running. He has no relevant experience for such an important job. There are people on Twitter who are more qualified to be the mayor of Los Angeles.

@moseskagan @pitdesi Anything else is just laundering taxpayer money to your donors, consultants, and voters. Call it whatever you want — it’s still tyranny of the connected, not the majority.

If we want to do re-distribution, ok, that's a reasonable goal. What I can't abide is laundering the $$$ through a cascade of grifter NGO ding dongs. Want to give poor people diapers? Send them through Amazon. Want to give people in rural areas internet? Buy then Starlink. And so on.

One of the least effective ways to subsidize kids! CA is spending $20M to give 100k newborns 400 diapers each, ~50c per diaper. Just send huggies on Amazon for 25c! Exempting diapers from sales tax: smart policy. This: dumb and convoluted.

@jasonjosephlee Correct ✅

Why I hate most third party property managers: They will call an electrician to fix a broken light bulb and they’ll let the electrician charge you $500 for it. They don’t care because you’re paying for it as the landlord. Real story from an old manager of mine from 2022.

The four most dangerous words in investing are, “This time is different.” The twelve most dangerous words in investing are, ‘The four most dangerous words in investing are, “This time is different.”’

@MultifamilyMad My duplex had gross rents of $560k last year.

Too many folks I talk to think they can buy a duplex or two a year or flip a house and get rich off of real estate. There is nothing wrong with that and I’m sure in the long term it could work. In reality a duplex will cashflow you a few hundred bucks a month but if the furnace goes out…there goes a year of cashflow. Or flipping a house, great profit…just to give 30% of it to the IRS. You aren’t creating any real wealth. Reality is, you need to go bigger in real estate to make an amount of money that changes something in your life. (Isn’t that the reason we are all doing this?) And I’m not talking about syndicating or using other people’s money. You shouldn’t focus on getting into real estate. You really need to focus on your income, getting it up & saving as much of it as you can. Find a way to make a strong income and allow those funds to grow your portfolio. Getting into real estate to make loads of money is the incorrect thinking. You should be thinking, ‘how can I work my ass off to make a huge income for a few years’, then use that money to buy bigger real estate that profits way more much each month and you can make a true business out of it. Doing a few small deals to try and grow your portfolio or net worth ain’t it and it isn’t worth it. Yes I know this is easier said than done and some people can’t get a larger income to scale faster. I get it and know it’s not possible for everyone. I spent the last 8 years pushing my brokerage income to the max. I had a really strong 8 years and rolled all those funds into the $13M personal portfolio I have today. I can never sell another piece of real estate for a commission check and comfortably sit back and live off the cashflow my portfolio creates. But I like what I do on the brokerage and operator side and I like nice things…so I’ll keep on keeping on ;) I hope this encourages someone to buckle down and go bigger, quicker!

@GrantCardone Truth

The legal system in America is garbage. It doesn’t reward victims it rewards greedy lawyers.

Best political ad I’ve seen this year !

Jacqueline, she had her own lawyer and still signed the prenup… then stayed married for 25 years. That’s not “bad legal advice,” that’s her making a clear-eyed decision because the life she got was better than the one she would have had without him. The existence of post-nups over the years doesn’t magically void the original agreement. Contracts can be amended, but only when both parties agree. Pre-marital assets that were explicitly protected don’t become “her contribution” just because time passed. This isn’t a one-way street. She had full agency to negotiate different terms or walk away before the wedding. Choosing to stay for 25 years and now wanting to rewrite the deal after the fact isn’t about fairness , it’s about trying to change the rules once the outcome feels inconvenient.

Billionaire divorce 25 years, 5 kids… and it all comes down to a prenup signed on the wedding day If voided, she could walk away with hundreds of millions If it holds, she gets $1 million