Stating It Real · the blog

Underwriting5 min readThe Universal Real Estate Deal FormulaWhat a deal actually makes after everyone gets paid. Total project cost, net resale revenue, and the profit between them.Read the essay → Offers5 min readMaximum Allowable Offer Is Not One NumberMAO is a range, not a figure. Knowing the range is what lets you actually negotiate.Read the essay → Offers4 min readThe 70% Rule Is a Shortcut, Not UnderwritingWhere the rule came from, what it hides, and the moment it quietly breaks.Read the essay → Financing4 min readWhat Private Money Really CostsPoints, interest, and the true annualized cost of borrowing on a short hold.Read the essay → Creative4 min readSeller Financing: Price vs TermsTwo different negotiations. Give one to get the other, and know which one you are trading.Read the essay → Creative4 min readSubject-To, Underwritten HonestlyTaking over an existing loan, what it really costs, and the risks worth naming out loud.Read the essay → Multifamily4 min readUnderwriting a Multifamily WholesaleApartments are an NOI conversation, not a comps conversation.Read the essay → Deals4 min readBuild a Cash Buyer MachineBuild the buyer list before the deal, not after. What to collect and how to sort it.Read the essay → Offers4 min readThe Instant Offer FrameworkA repeatable way to put a defensible number in front of a seller on the first call.Read the essay → Underwriting4 min readThe One-Minute Deal ReviewFour numbers, one decision, and an hour of your life protected.Read the essay → Mind9 min read One bad thing does not get to become everything One hard fact, three things still standing, one faithful next step. How gratitude keeps a bad hour from taking the whole day. Read the essay → Underwriting9 min read The real estate formulas that actually decide deals Twelve equations, each spelled out and worked with round numbers. Print it and keep it beside the phone. Read the essay → Underwriting10 min read The real estate glossary nobody hands you Thirty terms in plain words. Learn these and you will follow ninety percent of any deal conversation. Read the essay → Underwriting7 min read How to read a T-12 and a rent roll without getting fooled The two documents every deal turns on, line by line, and the six places sellers quietly inflate them. Read the essay → Underwriting5 min read Break-even occupancy: the number that decides if you survive Every asset has a fill rate where it stops paying its own bills. Know yours before you close. Read the essay → Deals6 min read The 70 percent rule, and when to break it A screen, not a law. How to build a defensible ARV and when 75 percent is still disciplined. Read the essay → Mind8 min read The twelve questions I get asked most, answered straight How much money, out of state or local, storage or apartments, bad credit, no time. Straight answers. Read the essay → Mind5 min read Guard your time: the power of no The tools multiply what you can do. Only the no decides where it goes. Read the essay → Operations5 min read Who gets paid first when there is not enough The order never changes, and it is strategy, not charity. Read the essay → Team6 min read People are the whole machine Good people, treated well, reading a fair scoreboard. Everything else is decoration. Read the essay → Mind9 min read What 456 means to me Foundation, change, and service. Why the book is 456 pages, what people mean by an angel number, and the Scripture I actually lean on. Read the essay → Mind4 min read One word, four doors Four practices, one word, ten minutes. The cheapest edge I have found. Read the essay → Market6 min read The economy we are building in You cannot time the cycle. You can be honest about the season and pick the right tools for it. Read the essay → Operations5 min read Two restaurant openings in one month Year one is a working-capital knife fight even on a two-million pace. Read the essay → Partnership5 min read The Trust Ladder: how strangers become partners Nobody wires six figures to a stranger. Climb the rungs in order and the capital conversation gets easy. Read the essay → Financing6 min read SBA 7(a) vs 504: the cheapest patient money in the room Ten percent down on a business, long fixed rates on owner-occupied real estate, and the line neither program will cross. Read the essay → Financing5 min read The five loan numbers every lender reads first Read a term sheet the way the credit committee does, and negotiate the number that actually moves. Read the essay → Creative6 min read Seller financing that actually closes Price and terms are two different negotiations. Give one to get the other, and check the senior debt first. Read the essay → Mind4 min read The Open-Loop Ledger: rent in your head is real rent List every loop, close the two-minute ones, schedule the rest. Focus is mostly evictions. Read the essay → Tax9 min read Cost Segregation and 100% Bonus Depreciation in 2025 Bonus depreciation is permanent again for property acquired after January 19, 2025. What a study does, the math on a real deal, and what the IRS now expects. Read the essay → Storage5 min read Square feet per capita screens a market. It cannot pick one. The ratio starts the conversation. Rentable square feet, behavioral boundaries, and mystery shops finish it. Read the essay → Operations6 min read The first 90 days after closing Count every unit, reconcile every dollar, then and only then touch the revenue engine. Read the essay → Underwriting4 min read Underwrite a deal in thirty seconds The first-pass filter: cap rate, comfortable debt coverage, and the one question that matters. Thirty seconds decides which deals deserve thirty minutes. Read the essay → Underwriting4 min read Cap rates and the only two ways to win Grow the NOI or ride cap-rate compression. One is in your control, one is weather. Underwrite so you never need the weather. Read the essay → Deals4 min read BRRRR with real numbers: my first one The Portland duplex where a basement bedroom pulled the down payment back out, tax free, and the two cautions the scars taught me. Read the essay → Deals3 min read Motivation, condition, timeline, price Qualify every seller on four pillars before you talk numbers. Price goes last on purpose. Read the essay → Deals3 min read Follow-up is where deals live The first conversation almost never closes. The money is in the seventh touch and a CRM with a next action on every lead. Read the essay → Deals4 min read Creative structures that earn their complexity Seller finance and terms genuinely serve both sides, or they are camouflage. The four-sentence test tells you which. Read the essay → Storage7 min read The five doors of storage demand Death, divorce, dislocation, downsizing, disaster: life-transition demand does not check the Fed funds rate first. Read the essay → Storage3 min read Economic occupancy: the number that does not lie A facility can be 95% full and bleeding. The gap between physical and economic occupancy is where lazy operations hide. Read the essay → Storage3 min read RevPAF: the one metric that runs a storage facility Revenue per available square foot rolls rate, occupancy, and discounts into one honest number you manage weekly. Read the essay → Money3 min read Boring businesses, beautiful numbers Glamour attracts competition; boredom protects margins. Storage, laundromats, and the most repeatable trade I know. Read the essay → Money4 min read The capital stack, layer by layer Senior debt, mezzanine, preferred, common: who gets paid first, who gets paid most, and where you should sit. Read the essay → Partnerships4 min read GP or LP: pick your seat before you pick your deal Most first partnerships fail at the start: two excited people, one imagined operator. Your gaps page is your partner’s job description. Read the essay → Entities5 min read Entity structure, stated plainly A holding company over per-property LLCs, when Wyoming earns its fee, and the cross-border GP/LP play for Canadians. Read the essay → Teams4 min read Your first VA buys back your week Log a week, split $10 tasks from $1,000 tasks, climb the delegation ladder, and write the job post that filters for you. Read the essay → Systems4 min read The Daily Three: the smallest system that rebuilt everything One money move, one repair move, one system move, every day. Small enough to survive a bad day, sharp enough to compound. Read the essay → Mindset3 min read The Morning Alignment: win the day before the inbox does Stillness, the board, one priority, then the world. Most people reverse it and rent their attention back all day. Read the essay → Systems4 min read The 90-Day Month: three days of output in one Focus blocks convert the same hours into triple the shipped work. The month does not get longer; it gets deeper. Read the essay → Systems4 min read The 80/20 Stack: five twenties equal a hundred If your leveraged 20% produces passable results, you do not have one career’s worth of hours. You have five twenties. Read the essay → Mindset3 min read The worry math: 99 fears, one arrival Ninety-nine percent of what you fear never happens, and the one percent that does is survivable. Run the math before the fear. Read the essay → Mindset3 min read Whose advice counts: sort every voice by scar tissue People praise you at your highest and prescribe at your lowest, and the least experienced prescribe loudest. 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