Jeff Gleiberman
If you have an 80% loan, and the values go down 20%, you have no value left in your property
March 17, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
This Accountant Built a 33,000-Unit Empire | Jeff Gleiberman | MG Properties | No Vacancy Podcast
With Jeff Gleiberman — President, MG Properties
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In this episode of the No Vacancy podcast, Taylor Avakian sits down with Jeff Gleiberman, President of MG Properties, to pull back the curtain on one of the most successful multifamily investment…
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Episode show notes
In this episode of the No Vacancy podcast, Taylor Avakian sits down with Jeff Gleiberman, President of MG Properties, to pull back the curtain on one of the most successful multifamily investment firms in the country. Managing over 33,000 units and transacting billions annually, Jeff shares the "secret sauce" behind their 30-year track record, including their hyper-disciplined approach to vertical integration and why they prioritize long-term fixed-rate financing. The conversation dives deep into the current state of real estate, comparing the regulatory challenges of the Los Angeles market with the booming opportunities in Dallas. Jeff explains the nuances of balancing private high-net-worth syndications with institutional JVs, the strategic shift toward "Heaven in '27," and the reality of navigating market cycles without losing investor capital. Whether you are an aspiring real estate professional or a seasoned institutional investor, this episode provides a masterclass in scale, reputation, and specialization. Video Chapters Chapters: 0:00 – The Golden Rule of Leverage & Market Risk 1:50 – Introduction: Meet Jeff Gleiberman of MG Properties 3:08 – The History of MG: From 4 Units to 33,000 3:54 – The Power of Vertical Integration: Keeping it In-House 5:19 – Capital Stacks: Private Syndication vs. Institutional JVs 7:45 – The Hidden Drawbacks of Institutional Capital 9:52 – Portfolio Performance: Fixed-Rate Debt & Avoiding Losses 13:14 – The Future Vision for MG Properties 14:35 – Market Deep Dive: Exiting Los Angeles for Dallas 17:11 – Regulation & Sentiment: The Struggle with California Real Estate 19:39 – New Market Strategy: Why MG is Moving into Texas & Boston 22:01 – Competing with the "Big Boys": Reputation over Size 24:29 – Maintaining a "Family Feel" in a 1,000-Employee Company 25:26 – Leveraging Relationships with Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae 26:58 – "Heaven in '27": When Will the Market Recover? 28:12 – Underwriting Conservative Deals: Cap Rates & Rent Growth 29:21 – Data & AI: How MG Stays Efficient in Property Management 31:11 – Value-Add vs. Core Plus: The MG Renovation Playbook 32:45 – Why MG Avoids Ground-Up Development 34:15 – The Best Deals: Case Studies from San Diego & Reno 37:00 – A Day in the Life: Fundraising & Company Strategy 38:22 – Red Flags: What to Avoid During Property Inspections 40:35 – Innovation in the Office: Remote vs. In-Person Management 43:01 – Investment Targets: IRR, Equity Multiples, & Cash-on-Cash 45:06 – Tax Efficiency: The 1031 Exchange Advantage 46:44 – Hard Lessons Learned from the 2008 Recession 49:16 – Exploring NOAH (Affordable Housing) & Tax Abatements 52:18 – Control & Discipline: The Pillars of Investment Success 55:24 – Why Keep Growing? The Multi-Generational Mission 57:15 – Networking as a Barbell: Golf, Relationships, & Growth 1:02:20 – Advice for the Next Generation of Real Estate Leaders 1:05:25 – The MG Superpower: Ultra-Discipline & Specialization Sponsor — Citizens Bank Connect with a banker at https://www.citizensbank.com/novacancy Sponsor — Parkup.io Parking made simple with https://parkup.io/ Sponsor - AI for CRE Collective AI for CRE Community: https://www.skool.com/ai-for-cre-collective/about?ref=3b3ff2c0ccce44ba8039fafd54bf291a Subscribe and Stay Ahead! Stay informed and empowered in the multifamily real estate market. Subscribe to the channel for exclusive insights, rental updates, and expert analyses on the Los Angeles market.
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Episode transcript
This 12,581-word transcript is matched to English (Original) automatic captions. Timestamps seek the episode player to the matching passage.
0:00–10:00
Taylor Avakian
anymore. Jeff Glaiberman is the president of MG Properties, a vertically integrated multi-family firm with more than 33,000 units, transacting up to $2 billion of acquisitions every year.
Jeff Gleiberman
We do everything in-house, actually, and that's been a huge key to our success. So, we got asset management, property management, construction management. Every year, they're always like, "Interest rates are going to go up." They would have kept going down, down, down. Till it wasn't. Yeah, exactly. That that was the big awakening. Real estate's very cyclical. It goes up and down for many different reasons that are unpredictable, and we've seen many cycles. I think that getting reps and fully understanding what you're getting into is going to be the most important things. The office market is extremely depressed right now. We really feel there's been something that's been lost with the work-from-home. There's like a saying in the industry that's going around, "Heaven in '27." And that is what we're feeling as well. We truly love our business. My father will never retire. I plan to never retire.
Jeff Gleiberman
We want to do this till the very
Taylor Avakian
end. This episode is supported by Citizens Private Bank. Citizens believes your attention is a force. It's built your world, your vision, your legacy. But wealth brings financial complexity that can consume the most valuable asset, your focus. That is why Citizens Private Bank, now in Los Angeles, gives you a dedicated team with one point of contact who understands your full financial picture, including specialized real estate financing. I'm a client myself, and I have been impressed by how seamlessly they bring everything together with thoughtful, tailored support. Let Citizens focus on your wealth, so you can focus on your world. Connect with a banker at citizensbank.com/novacancy. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender.
Jeff Gleiberman
Hey, real quick.
Taylor Avakian
If you've got parking assets that aren't making you money, you got to check out ParkUp. These guys work with property owners and managers to fill your empty spaces and turn them into a real revenue stream throughout their platform. Or, if you don't even [clears throat] want to think about it, they'll straight-up lease the space from you. Guaranteed money, no headaches. Either way, you win. Go check them out at parkup.io. Seriously, it's a no-brainer. On today's episode, we had the wonderful Jeff Gliberman of MG Properties. It was an incredible conversation. This is all things institutional real estate. They have 33,000 apartment units, are buying billions of real estate a year. We really dove deep into the specifics of the structures of how they structure deals, their capital stack, opportunities they're looking at, how they have and run a thousand-employee [Music] company.
Taylor Avakian
It was an incredible conversation, and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Jeff Gleiberman
Welcome to the show.
Taylor Avakian
My name is Taylor Vekarian, and I am here with my esteemed guest, Jeff Gliberman.
Jeff Gleiberman
Jeff, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Taylor Avakian
All right, cool. So, we I talked to you before this. You've been on some number podcasts, and you've given your background on MG a bunch, but just for like the 30-second overview, give me MG and give me the
Jeff Gleiberman
company's history a little bit. Sounds good. We are a vertically integrated multi-family investment firm that was founded by my father, Mark, in '92. Been in buying and managing and investing in apartments for the last uh almost 35 years, and we started in San Diego, where our family's from, and we've branched out now to uh seven states. The current portfolio today is 33,000 units, and we've uh grown the company to a thousand employees, which comes with a lot of uh uh a lot of things to deal with. And uh we've been extremely active the last couple years uh with acquisitions and dispositions. So, happy to dive into anything that'd be of interest.
Taylor Avakian
Are you guys um self-managed? Do you manage all everything all the portfolio in house?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yep, self-managed. We do everything in house so actually and that's been a huge key to our success. It's something that we take a lot of pride in. So, we got asset management, property management, construction management and we have all specialty departments under them, too. So, we have a legal team, special tax team, marketing and we can really focus on every detail at the properties. Mhm. And then it also teaches you so much about the submarkets and the properties that you want to buy and invest in.
Taylor Avakian
Was uh growing the company as big as it is, was that something your dad had envisioned or it just kind of like happened?
Jeff Gleiberman
Never could have imagined it. Really? Yeah, that is for sure. Yeah, he was an accountant. He saw tons of tax advantages to real estate. And so he's like, "Yeah, I want to start investing in real estate on the side." So, he did a four-unit community by himself. Mhm. And then he's like needed to get some more capital. So, he's like, "I'm going to go to some friends and family." He went to both my grandparents, to two of his friends, got four investors, bought a 38-unit deal in Vista Okay. in North San Diego, did very well and then we just kept growing it from there. He left his accounting job, started running the business out of our house. I was five or six at the time, so really got to see the business from the very, very beginning and and got to work in every aspect of the business.
Jeff Gleiberman
I started with leasing and maintenance.
Taylor Avakian
Oh my goodness. Geez, 33,000, that is so many units um to be built over what is that? Like a 30-year time period, basically?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, yeah, just over 30 years.
Taylor Avakian
Man, and so the structure of what you guys do is it I'm sure now it's more institutional investors or what does the actual cap stack look like? Um I think you said last time I listened 2,000 investors or something like that in the the Rolodex LPs?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, so we have about 2,400 um individual high net worth investors and it started with family and friends and it kept growing word of mouth similar to how we grow it today. And then once a few family and friends tell more and it's you know, it's kind of been growing a lot over the last couple years.
Taylor Avakian
Sure.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, for the first 20 years, it was all high net worth syndications. And then starting in 2010, it was coming right out of the great recession. It was difficult to raise equity. And so we started to explore institutional options as well. And so we've been doing institutional equity as well for the last 15 years. Okay. And that's been 30% of our business. 70% is private high net worth syndications, 30% is institutional JVs.
Taylor Avakian
And do you determine which bucket of capital you use based upon the investment? I assume. It's like, okay, this is a great for a pension fund or Calpers or Calsters. I don't know your partners, but you know, this would be a good asset for them versus we're trying to get a higher equity multiple or a higher cash flow or IRR, whatever the metric that the private investors look like. Is that how you know which bucket to dive into?
Jeff Gleiberman
That is the main reason. And the second one would be the deal size. So our high net worth group is focused on the cash on cash return. The yearly distribution with depreciation and the passive losses, that's all tax deferred and that is a big driver of the investment for our our high net worth syndication model. The institutions are more back-end focused, IRR, total return multiple focused. So that's the main driver. And then on the deal size, we typically, if it's above a two or 300 million dollar purchase price, we'll go for an institution that has you know, larger pockets, more equity. We can raise up to a 100 million dollars of equity on a private syndication, which gets you to
Jeff Gleiberman
a deal size of you know, around that two to 300 million.
Taylor Avakian
Man, what's the what's the drawbacks of going institutional that I think maybe people wouldn't expect or I think I know the answer, but what is your thoughts on why someone wouldn't want to go the institutional route?
Jeff Gleiberman
Um I would say from an GP from an owner perspective, we prefer private because you have more control.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
And the control is the main thing that you lose when you are with an institution that wants to retain major decision rights, buy sell provisions, other things as well. So, these large institutions, they're very smart, they have a lot of money, they do many different things. They might need to sell your deal at a time in the market for a reason that has nothing to do with you. They might have liquidity issues from a fund that has too much office that you didn't have anything to do with and so you just lose some control and you and you know, there's some decisions that might not be made that we think would be the right
Taylor Avakian
decision. Yeah, limiting. I mean, when when they got to press the the red button, eject, and you're like, "Well, no, no, no, it's not the right time to eject. Like, trust us. Like, here here's the market, here's where we're at. Give us six more months or we're about to reposition this stuff or we can we can shake some things around, get creative with it." And they press that button, you kind of have to move with that.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, and it's it's kind of top of mind right now and that's why I mentioned it. So, for our first time actually, we have an institution, their fund is coming to an end and they want to sell a deal that we bought with them about six or seven years ago. Okay. And we we you know, they they have the major decisions, so we said, "If you want to sell it, we'll go with the sale, but we would not like to sell it. We think it the market's going to recover. If we input some money into the deal, it's going to do really well." And we're actually doing our first recap.
Taylor Avakian
a recap?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, so yeah, so we'll be bringing in private investors into a deal that we owned with an institutional partner and and um we we think it's going to you know turn out really well. We know a lot about the deal. We've owned it for a long time. Like the market, the market's starting to recover. So, that might be an opportunity for us going forward.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, it's I I read or listened to, I forget which one it was when I was watching your shows, but you guys have never lost money. Is that
10:00–20:00
Taylor Avakian
still the case?
Jeff Gleiberman
That is still the case as I sit here right now. But, this will be our first loss.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, so this will actually be our first loss. It's with um an institutional investor. So, we haven't lost any money with V Private Investment Group. Don't plan on it. Sometimes I mention institutions have different reasons to sell. So, yeah, we will be selling at a loss, our first one with this deal, but we will be recapping it, bringing in new equity, and hopefully still having
Taylor Avakian
a successful story in the end. 100%. No, it's it's crazy that they're willing to just do that, right? But, again, there's bigger levers in play when these big institutional firms and they have their own timelines. And I would say more from like a perspective of being able to say you've never lost money, right? You can still say you've never lost money from the institutional investor side of things, which I think is probably more like a more valuable than these institutions cuz again, you don't have the the button to be able to really have full play over this stuff.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, there's there's just a lot of things that are in your control, but there's also a lot out of your control. So, if you can try to focus on mitigating the the risk on doing downside protection, you should be able to make it out, you know, pretty pretty safe. And luckily, we we haven't lost any money yet. And and really, that has to do with long-term fixed-rate financing.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, so of the loans that you've done, I think I listened again, I did some research, but you've done maybe three floating-rate debt deals and most everything else has been fixed rate?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, on the current portfolio right now, most most institutions use floating rate debt. So, on the institutional side, you know, we use a lot of floating rate debt. On the private side, we have two floating rate loans on our portfolio of roughly 100 plus properties. Okay. And we almost always will get to a long-term fixed rate loan, and we would prefer to put the long-term fixed rate loan on immediately.
Taylor Avakian
Why would an institution want to do floating?
Jeff Gleiberman
Uh chasing yield.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, so floating rate loans historically have outperformed fixed rate. Right, if you're looking from a yield perspective?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, so we were kind of wrong for 30 years in a row. Interest rates went down since we started our business and before. For every year, they were always like, "Interest rates are going to go up." They kept going down, down, down till Till Till it wasn't. Yeah, exactly. And that was the big awakening. So, without it, we started to look pretty good.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah.
Jeff Gleiberman
Um but the two reasons are there's yield maintenance defeasance Mhm. Um uh prepayment penalties on these fixed-rate loans. So, the institutions don't want to be caught with those. They want the ability to sell and move. And then on the variable rate loans, you can typically get higher leverage. And that can help with your IRR. So, it that that decreases the cash on cash, but it'll help with your total return, and that's what the institutions are looking for. So, most of them do floating rate loans. Some do fixed, but I would say most do floating.
Taylor Avakian
Are you looking into the future of where MG wants to go? Do you see yourself wanting to continue to do more of the institutional stuff, still have a balanced mix? Like, in a perfect world, what do you see the future for the company looking like from that mixture?
Jeff Gleiberman
There's a lot of benefits from having both, and I think we found a very good balance now with the 70% private, 30% institutional. And I plan on keeping it that way and and there's times in the market when the private investors dry up. There's times in the market when the institutionals dry up and then it's just good to have as many relationships as possible. We buy and sell from institutions all the time so we want to have those good relationships. They're with our portfolio now 33,000 units, we're transacting 1 to 2 billion dollars of acquisitions every year. We get opportunities that others don't see off-market. We know deals have traded in the past and they're not always going to fit for our private group and they're not always going to fit for our institutional clients as well. So just to have the ability to do good deals and have
Jeff Gleiberman
both buckets. That that that's our long-term vision.
Taylor Avakian
Let's talk about what we talked about beforehand of some recent trades that you guys have accomplished here in Los Angeles. You sold a couple buildings and then you bought recently a building in Dallas. So talk to me about the sales here in LA, why why you sold those and and what that looked like, maybe some buyer profile stuff, and then why your first acquisition and soon to be something else in Dallas.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, no no I will for sure. We sit here in LA so I'll focus a little bit on LA, but I'll give a little higher higher level view first. So this year we'll close about a billion dollars in transactions.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
We were targeting 1.2 billion which we knew was a little aggressive in this market. There's just low trades today and the interest rates are really volatile and there's some headwinds against us, but we started the year off with our second biggest transaction. It was just over 300 million dollars. It was a high-rise in San Diego. We've closed four other deals since.
Taylor Avakian
On acquisitions?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah. Yeah, we've bought four other deals since and we have four under contract to close by the end of the year. So it's been a very successful active year. We sold five or six deals this year and uh two of them were in LA. Yeah, and uh both of them actually went to buyers that are doing the NOAH naturally of um naturally occurring affordable housing program. So, they've been very aggressive buyers and really kind of saving the California market right now. And to for us to buy in LA today, it would have to be a very, very special, unique deal. There's just a lot of regulation and risk with um the mansion tax. Um that really put a damper on the market. And LA is just a market that we don't know if we want to have tons of exposure to.
Jeff Gleiberman
We still have a decent amount of deals left here. Um and we'll ride them out, obviously, and they're doing fine. Actually, they're performing well on on the way that rents are going. It's just their values are down.
Taylor Avakian
Isn't it funny how uh the rents are going and increasing in Los Angeles? However, everything else is going down, and the sentiment is going down, and it's uh it's been a common theme, I would say, from the conversations that I've had daily on the phone when I'm selling apartments to these owners, but also just when I'm talking to institutional owners. And it's like, "Yeah, not very many people have uh strong world belief that Los Angeles is the place where they want to put their hard-earned cash." Do Do you talk to the people who are making these decisions? Cuz you guys have, I feel like, a lot of sway or have enough um you know, leverage to be able to say, "Hey, like, we're going to get the f out of here, right?" Like, what what What are you guys doing?
Taylor Avakian
Why are you making all these changes and things to make it harder for us? Or maybe when you're talking to other institutional owners, like, is it the similar sentiment? Why What is going on at the top?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, there's a a lot of industry groups that are getting together and really trying to rally for what is what we believe is right in the regulation and in the market. But it's really difficult and you know, there is the prop that almost passed for rent control which that was a big fight and you know, luckily we won. Yeah, so and I'm sure there'll be many many more to come. Um just even investor interest in California has been going down as well. So you I just number one thing that I hear from investors is we prefer not to invest in California. And these aren't necessarily real estate experts. They're trusting us to make the right decisions, but it's just what they're reading, what
Taylor Avakian
they're hearing and just the way they feel. Yeah, the sentiment around it. Really that's the that's what I've noticed too. It's the cloud. It's like not even reality like you mentioned LA's performing the best from return perspective on your assets you have here, but it's the sentiment. It's like people don't want to get into a falling knife situation or a burning, you know, city from the outside or from the inside out. It's it's it's an unfortunate thing that I'm hopeful that things turn around and and change, but even myself as someone who wants to continue to invest in apartments, I know the market for the deals that I have like better than anyone else. I feel very confident that if I saw a really good deal, I'd know how to execute on it. And I'm asking myself, okay, do I want to put put my money in this market that
Taylor Avakian
I know so well, right? So it's it's hard to have that fact be be the truth, but you we talked also you just started buying in Dallas a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, so That's a new market for you guys?
Jeff Gleiberman
It is. Yeah, and we were talking a little bit before too and and you mentioned it that you know, over the last 6 months Los Angeles has been one of our best performers from a rent growth standpoint, but still really really hard to invest here. We are taking we added a new market. So every 5 years we've been adding a a new state. The last one we did was Colorado about 5 years ago. We did Oregon about 5 years ago before that. So, it's been kind of a model. I think over the next 20 to 30 year vision, we'd love to be nationwide and be in every market just so we can have take advantage of you know whatever is going to happen in each market. And um moving a little bit out of California, we're going to a much more business-friendly, owner-friendly state. And um we picked Dallas.
Jeff Gleiberman
So, our first one closed about 3 months ago there where we have our second one under contract right now. But, talking about where investors want to be, investors really want to be in Texas, in Dallas, and that lowers cap rates. So, cap rates are significantly lower in Dallas than they are in Los Angeles, which
20:00–30:00
Jeff Gleiberman
you would think it maybe should be the opposite, which is the way that the land is and the ocean and the valleys. I just it is pretty when you think about
Taylor Avakian
it. So, when you go into a new market, what does the process look like for you guys to determine, "Okay, this is the one we're going to go to." Is it Is the investor saying, "Hey, we want you to go look at Dallas." or is it, "Hey, let's go study the market." I mean, you have 33,000 apartment units of data. Um I know not in the a new market, but what does the process look like for you to want to go explore a new market and say, "Hey, this is where we're going to plant our new flag."
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah. So, yeah, we have 130 people in our corporate office. About 11 of them are on the investments team looking for new acquisitions. And we have deal leads that cover different states. We have our CIO, Paul Kaseburg, and then we have um analysts as well. And so, every year we do um new market studies, and we target different areas that we we monitor for about 5 to 10 years before we enter. So, we're mostly looking for job creation that's going to add more renters. And then we're looking for submarkets that don't have a lot of supply. So, we're not going to have to compete against a bunch of new lease-ups. And so, the the main targets that we've had recently have been North Dallas, where we bought our first deal in Richardson. And uh the second one's being bought right by the Galleria.
Jeff Gleiberman
And another target market for us is Boston. We we would love to break in there, have not yet, but that is is a is a next target
Taylor Avakian
market. That's a rent control market.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah. Yeah, it definitely has similarities to California. Not as bad, but definitely a lot of similarities. Yeah. But also very, very high incomes, uh very little new supply, and a lot of things that we like, too. Okay.
Taylor Avakian
And um from from the metrics you said, so when you're competing against the big boys, right? Cuz on these big deals, like you're competing against the Blackstone's, the Starwood's, the the uh the the Bob Harts of the world, True America's, like how do you win deals when you're competing at that stage?
Jeff Gleiberman
The the same way that we that we kind of founded our business around our reputation and doing what we say. So, we do tons of repeat business with the same sellers. We always want to stick to what we say we're going to do. We do enough due diligence before we put in an offer that we know what price we're going to pay. We've done you know, over 100 transactions over the last Yeah. less than 10 years. And so, really that reputation is so important in business and especially in our business.
Taylor Avakian
Do you need brokers at that level? Like what what what when you're trading hands between institutions, right? Like I guess the process is for you to create a market, but if everyone knows their price, wouldn't it just be like an internal attorney just like negotiating this stuff? Why Why do you think that brokers are important?
Jeff Gleiberman
Brokers are very important. We always use them and we always will. Okay. And they have a lot of market knowledge. We use them for market research. We But But it's different when it comes to our world, for sure. Very good question. We do not use buy side brokers. Okay. Only selling brokers. So, I haven't heard of a buy side broker in you know, in like 15, 20 years. But, on the selling side, for it creating the market, the marketing materials. Also, brokers are just really, really helpful in in finding deals and connecting with other equity and many things. And we want to keep them happy and Yeah. and it's an old tradition that and we follow a lot of old traditions that our company since we've been around a long time. But, my father always taught me, you know, you you sell with the broker that brought you the deal.
Jeff Gleiberman
And we always have kept that tradition and and it's worked out well for us and hopefully they'll bring us more deals and and connect us with more investors and people as well.
Taylor Avakian
We appreciate that. We appreciate that when when that is the case cuz I've had it be the other way and it's just like, okay, if that's what you want to do, all right. Like, there's there is power and again we're in different ballparks. I'm more, you know, smaller middle market stuff, but even that it's it's I will be continuing in the business. So, if you intend to invest whatsoever, continually like I will not forget. Um what had occurred there.
Jeff Gleiberman
And we believe that as well. I mean, it's a very long-term business. Took us a long time, almost 35 years to get here. And hopefully we plan to have another 35 plus years. So, we want to keep the relationships and our reputation.
Taylor Avakian
What's something that people wouldn't expect when it comes to running a business as big as yours?
Jeff Gleiberman
I would say, you know, the the importance of the family feel for us. So, it's a we're a family business. We're my father still works every day. We work, you know, aside each other to grow the business and make strategic moves and and and find good properties and good investments. But, as we've gotten larger, it's been harder to keep that family feel for our team members, for our employees. And that's something that we really try to do. So, I mentioned to you that we would I planned this this week in LA to get a lot done and I came up yesterday and every quarter we go to a different region and do a state of the market and talk about where our company's going. So, I met with about 120 of our on-site professionals, the maintenance, the management, and really trying to you let them know our
Jeff Gleiberman
vision so they can help us work towards our common goal of the best performance and that really the best returns for investors.
Taylor Avakian
Mhm. What is um what is the leverage that you have at your size when it comes to negotiating with um maybe lenders or banks or like is there any benefit to having your size when it comes to like the that leverage portion of it?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, for sure. Massive massive uh benefit for both Freddy and Fannie.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
On the borrower's channel list, so being on their list of their most active borrowers. So, we get you know, we have a representative with each of them and we've got very very good terms, spreads, rates. So, we actually locked a loan today. It was a 7-year fixed just over 60% leverage at 4.83. No way. Yeah, so really really good We're still getting really amazing long-term fixed rate financing. No one can compete with Freddy and Fannie. They're just really giving up Yeah. some amazing loans. But yeah, that's because of our size, our relationship, the amount of deals that we do in our portfolio with them.
Taylor Avakian
Man, that's pretty crazy. I haven't heard a four handle in a long time. Man, so I guess speaking of that, where do you see the market headed? Are we headed towards I know there's a lot of talk of interest rate cuts and you know, but then there's inflation and there's you guys probably have again, you said you have 11 analysts looking at deals. I'm sure you have more people studying markets and understanding economic the economics of what's going on in the macro market. Like, what is your number saying? What is your data telling you guys?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, there was a there was a there's like a saying in the industry that's going around, heaven in 27. And that is what we're feeling as well. So, I know it's a common thing that people are saying, but just with all the new properties that have been delivered and how they're being absorbed right now, we've got another year and a half of slow performance. And then maybe a year of okay, but then once this new supply is all absorbed and there's been no new deliveries, we're going to start to see that good rent growth again. And we're already starting to see expenses go down. The labor market, which was one of our biggest increasing expenses, has calmed down as well. So, um for property performance, heaven in 27. For interest rates, interest rates, we don't see too much movement over the next couple years.
Jeff Gleiberman
You know, they're probably going to stay elevated like they are. Maybe slightly go down, but stay about where they are right now.
Taylor Avakian
So, do we see average cap rates trading in the fives still? Do we see them compressing to the crazy numbers that they were in in 2021 and 2022 in the the threes in some cases? Like, where where do you see the the the playing field level out?
Jeff Gleiberman
Today, we're seeing most well-located, well-built institutional quality multifamily trading in the 4.75 to 5% cap rate. Okay. We do expect that for another year or two, as I mentioned. And then once the market starts to improve and things are more stable and more investors have come back, we do see it going slightly lower, but not to the crazy crazy threes or sub-three days.
Taylor Avakian
So, you're not underwriting a crazy amount of projected rent growth for these deals to work and pencil. Like, you're pretty conservative when it comes to the underwriting of how you guys look at these deals?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, we we kind of focus our historical averages which over the last 35 years we've seen about a 3 to 3.5% average rent increase per year. Okay. Over a 10-year period. You're going to have some negative years, some positive, some okay, some really good, but on average we're seeing about that. That's what we like to put in for our average 10-year hold. And that we we focus on kind of long-term 10-year holds.
Taylor Avakian
With all the data that you have, do you have any specific um systems in place? Do you have any custom software? Do you guys have some analytical juggernaut in the background like coming through all this data to make the investment decisions? Like how do you guys use the swath of data or do you use it and or are you looking to use it with all the advances in AI?
Jeff Gleiberman
It's been a big competitive advantage of ours. We can look at what submarkets are performing best for us and call owners and find other investment opportunities there. Uh I think our biggest way that we use the data is we we've been very blessed that we surround ourselves with good people that we work with and we've got many team members that have been with us over 15, 20 years that just have so much history with us and we work together so well
30:00–40:00
Jeff Gleiberman
and um that's that's one of the most important takeaways is who you surround yourself with.
Taylor Avakian
And and the team members and and whatnot. Are you exploring AI at all?
Jeff Gleiberman
We are exploring AI um for proptech property performance property management.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
And a little bit on the investment side. We we really kind of trust our own model that we made in our own list of things that we look for. So not as much on the investment side. I do know it something will happen that will it'll help us be more efficient. I haven't seen it yet, but on the property side we're using an AI bot that helps for um screen residents. Elise?
Taylor Avakian
Are you using Elise?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, we use Elise AI. I always heard the phone call.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, they do all the calls, scheduling and stuff like that.
Jeff Gleiberman
That's really good. So, he's Yeah, I've been uh you can call at midnight and I'll just schedule anything you want. Yeah, amazing.
Taylor Avakian
Which is crazy, right? I mean, when you guys go and renovate a building, what are some of the things that you're doing to the property to get it to the MG quality? Like, what what is I guess you go in and you buy a older um for the smaller stuff, mom-and-pop, right? Maybe or an institutional. Like, what have they not done that you guys can do to improve it? What do you What do you do to the buildings?
Jeff Gleiberman
We historically have had two business models. So, we have a value-add model, which is properties that are 10 years or older, and then a core plus one, where properties that are 10 years or newer, and we're doing a little bit less there. We're just kind of focusing more on purchase purchasing in the right market, a very well-built property, and then managing it correctly and having some efficiencies. Um we have done renovations up to 80, 100,000 per unit, that where we've put in washer and dryers. We completely redone gyms, clubhouses, pools, um kids areas. Um we've uh you know, completely done the interiors, obviously the flooring, the you know, lighting package and the fixtures and and the appliances. And then smaller ones as well. So, it's really deal by deal, and we want to focus on making sure we're not over-improving.
Jeff Gleiberman
So, we'll study the market extremely well and make sure that we can put in the least amount of money that's going to get us the most return. So, it's really really submarket specific, deal specific. On average, I would say we're doing mostly appliances, flooring, hard surfaces, cabinet fronts, and then a lot of uh common area amenity spaces, but not going super deep in them. Mostly, um I would say furniture and new equipment and new cabanas. Just more um more on the looks.
Taylor Avakian
Whereas, yeah, the visual Yeah. Yeah, experience, stuff like that. Yeah, that makes sense. Uh Um, why have you guys dove into more ground up? Why is it mostly value add?
Jeff Gleiberman
A little bit of my father's um personality.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
And he wants to be an expert in whatever he does, be the best at it, and focus on one thing and be super super focused on it. And that's the way that we we built our company. So, we only buy existing apartments. That's all we've done. We've done it 220 plus times. And we want to make sure that we are the best at that. Also, we're a little risk averse. We do 60 to 70% leverage. We're not going crazy on the leverage. We're doing the fixed rate loans, long-term holds. The development world brings in a lot of risk and a lot of assumptions. And it's not really in our playbook. So, we Those are the two main reasons.
Taylor Avakian
Do you ever see yourself doing sort of spin-offs or different branches of the company or like a maybe a tech arm or you guys are doing third-party management or you you spin out a development arm? Like, do you have envisionment for having different branches like Related does or Blackstone or anything like that?
Jeff Gleiberman
It hasn't been in the vision. We always every year we have strategic planning where we bring in a outside consultant and they kind of bring up these topics and what can you be doing better?
Taylor Avakian
What can you be exploring?
Jeff Gleiberman
And really, you know, I think I our company's success has been built around being experts in one thing and that's the way we want to keep it.
Taylor Avakian
What's the What's the best deal that you've ever done?
Jeff Gleiberman
That is a very good question. There's been a few of them, but uh there is one in San Diego that stands out. And uh there's one in Reno that stands stands out as well. So, um yeah, there's a 255 unit deal in the Midway area close to the sports arena in San Diego. Okay. Just really, really good purchase the time we bought it, the price we bought it. And we did a big value add there, massive one. That was one of the larger ones we've done where we put in the washer and dryers, we added a resort style pool that we took out the tennis court, we um completely took all the um the laundry rooms out as well and made big gyms and a bunch of amenities. And it's This was a really, really big success story, huge return for our partners and just really, really good deal.
Jeff Gleiberman
The Reno one was an early Reno buy in in 2012 before Tesla moved there with their uh gigafactory for the batteries. And just amazing purchase. I think we purchased it at in the right around 80,000 a unit. And then we sold it for over 300,000 a unit. Yeah, just uh a few years later after the market really took off. We put a really nice renovation plan on that one. It had great cash flow. Those are two that are standing out, but there is yeah, lots of I love thinking about the good deals. It's so fun, yeah.
Taylor Avakian
The good The good ones are the ones where you smile and you're like, "Man, if I could just have a bunch of those, that would be incredible." But it But it's like, you know, it's uh you don't get grand slams every time you go up to bat. Like, you guys are playing this for a long game. So, I think consistency is probably something that you guys pride yourself on and is your dad and yourself, are you guys very systems oriented? How Are you a deal junkie? Like, what is your personalities within the company making decisions because Are you guys similar in the way you think? Do you balance each other out? What is it like um working with family and the dynamics of how you guys think?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, it's been really amazing working together. It doesn't always work out, but luckily we we've got different personalities, so we take different tasks on. And we love working together. I saw him build this business. We worked together when I was a kid growing up. And then when I came back um around 11 or 12 years ago full-time, I went to CBRE for a few years to get some experience outside the business and went back and got my masters, but when I came back, I think we had around 10,000 units. So, you know, we were about a little less than the third of the size and we just said, you know, we've got an amazing platform. We believe in what we're investing in and we know we can grow this business. So, we um think very similarly, but we also do different things, too.
Jeff Gleiberman
So, um it's just been a It's been really great working together.
Taylor Avakian
What does your day-to-day look like? Like, what is your responsibilities?
Jeff Gleiberman
I spend a decent amount of time on fundraising. Okay. So, um you know, typically in the beginning of our business, the fundraising was the most difficult part. Yeah. And it's still difficult today, too, but, you know, that it's changed as the years have gone on. That's not the more difficult part. Now, the more difficult part is finding the good deals. But, do a lot of fundraising both on the private side and the institutional side. Do a lot of industry outreach, trying to connect to get off-market deals and find good deals, and then company strategy. So, um what departments can be more efficient, what can we bring in-house, what could we outsource, and just a lot of really kind of fun company strategy stuff. Do you live in spreadsheets or are you more uh above that and have other people We We're looking at a lot of spreadsheets. Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, and I brought I brought, you know, my my Yeah. I brought my investment committee memo, which is just full of spreadsheets. We're looking at tons of deals um every week. I mean, we probably analyze 7, 800 plus deals a year. The goal is to buy the 15 best. So, it's really just impossible to time the market. You never know what the market's going to bring.
Taylor Avakian
Totally.
Jeff Gleiberman
But, if you're buying well-built, well-located real estate, you're going to have a good return, your investors are going to be happy, and you're going to grow a successful business.
Taylor Avakian
What are some things that are red flags for a deal? Like you're walking a deal, right? I assume you guys walk all of the properties that you're going to buy. Like what are you looking for? What are the big things that really could could mess up a deal for you guys or that you in your experience have have made it a good deal, a bad deal, or it came up after you guys closed? Like what are the the the pains that you've had to learn from that you were very focused on when you're looking to acquire a deal?
Jeff Gleiberman
In the multi-family world, we believe there's there's a price that makes sense for almost any deal. But we do have a long list of things we do not prefer. So I'm not going to go through them all, but galvanized plumbing, um, asbestos, washer and dryers not in the unit with no ability to put them in, um, heavy crime areas. So we have a a long list of things that we try to avoid. Sometimes we'll look at deals that have these features, and the price would just have to reflect it, and the returns would have to reflect it. But there is a long list of things that we've built throughout the years that and you know, lessons that we've learned just from, you know, owning so many different types of properties in so many different areas.
Taylor Avakian
What um, where do you go to continuously learn? Like where do you go to improve your skills? What what How do you guys stay sharp?
Jeff Gleiberman
We try to stay in front of as many trade organizations as possible. So I was just at ULI, which was in San Francisco two, three weeks ago. A lot of interesting stuff there talking about AI, where the market's going, where the inflows of capital
40:00–50:00
Jeff Gleiberman
are coming from. A national multi-housing conference, our biggest trade organization, we're very involved in. Local ones in each area, and really just trying to you know, stay on top of the trends in the market and what we're seeing in with new supply, job growth, all those different things.
Taylor Avakian
Do you feel like you're a trailblazer or you guys are like the second or third person to see what those people are doing and then you can go and capitalize it because you have the leverage, you have the the size of scale, the advantages that maybe some of those new players don't have?
Jeff Gleiberman
I think that we are willing to be trailblazers. We're probably if you look back historically, we're maybe not the first ones to make moves, but we we definitely want to monitor them and make sure that they work. So, there's companies out there that are going completely um uh people-less at their properties right now. I believe Essex and UDR, they're two large REITs. I believe a lot of their properties do not have leasing and management on site anymore. It's just all done through apps and kind of virtually. Obviously, they need maintenance people at the So, we're we we rolled out um moving our assistant managers to the corporate office and they could cover more tasks from there. And so, we have almost done it throughout the whole portfolio moving the assistant manager to the office and it's saving a ton of money.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah.
Jeff Gleiberman
And there's some growing pains with it, you know, that our managers are getting inundated with lots and lots of residents. So, they need a little extra help, but it's been a big big savings and I think it's been a really good move.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, that's super interesting because at the size that you guys are at, right? It's like if you save a penny somewhere, that's that's a big thing at the bottom line.
Jeff Gleiberman
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we try to say that all the time and every pen, paper and it adds up. I mean, maybe there's With the scale, you said you have
Taylor Avakian
1,000 employees? Yeah. Dang, man. I heard that they're in California, in Los Angeles specifically, which you're headquartered in San Diego, so I don't think it affects you there, but um in LA, they're trying to do a tax on it's like a wealthy tax, but it's for businesses over I think 100 employees or something like that, where they would tack on another 5%. I'm like, what is the logic behind any of this stuff? Like there's It doesn't make any sense to me from that perspective. So, yeah, like a a company like your size, you would just pick up and move. You go wherever you need to buy.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, and if it's just in LA County, you just move right to the Inland Empire. Yeah. I mean, you just go right outside. Yeah, exactly. So, it's just a it's just There's some been some interesting business decisions in LA for sure. And again, as we talked about earlier, one of the reasons that we we really feel like you need to be paid a lot to invest in LA. And we still underwrite everything here. We look at it, but we haven't seen those returns that we like in LA in many, many
Taylor Avakian
years. What are the metrics that you guys are shooting for in terms of IRR and equity multiple and cash on cash? Like what do those numbers look like?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, sadly we wish they were a little higher cuz you know, the the market is very efficient. There's a lot of capital chasing our deals. But today we're seeing kind of low teens net returns.
Taylor Avakian
Okay. So, we're seeing 11 to 13 Is that after your fees?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, net to our investors. And we're seeing cash on cash in the four and a half to five and a half percent range. Okay. Usually starting off around 4% ending somewhere around six, but that average is that four and a half to five and a half
Taylor Avakian
percent. We have a sponsor for today's episode and that is AI for Siri Collective. 25 listings at the moment. We're closing four or five deals a month. It's been incredible. So, if you want to learn if you're in commercial real estate, how to use AI in your business, whether you're a property manager, a broker, an investor, really anyone, we have a huge group of 400 people in this community. And the website if you want to go check that out is AIforSiriCollective.com. So, appreciate you guys. Now, back to the episode. And are you guys doing 80/20 on LP/GP? Do you guys contribute capital? Like what does the actual capital stack look like and then the waterfall distribution that you guys typically set up?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, two really good questions. One thing that has been extremely valuable for us and I think it's one of the most important things to look for when investing with a sponsor is how much of their own capital they're actually investing. We have we never put less than 10% of our own capital, just our family's money into any deal, just so we're always directly aligned. On average we have about 20% or just over 20% of the equity of the portfolio, so Sure. Um we really have a lot of skin in the game. You're looking at these deals like, you know, very, very closely and I think that's really important for investors looking with a sponsor. Mhm. And then we haven't changed any of our our promotes or um preferred returns since the beginning. We've just kept everything the same.
Jeff Gleiberman
We have investors with us that are been with us for the full 30 three plus years and that are in um multiple, multiple deals. And also we do 1031 exchanges, too. Oh, you do? Yeah, so when we sell a deal, we offer an exchange to go in our next deal. So we have people that have invested in the our first couple deals that are now in their fourth and fifth exchange. Really tax-efficient model. Been um yeah, really beneficial for us and our partners, but that split is an 8% preferred.
Taylor Avakian
Okay. 80/20, 80 to our partner, 20 to us and that's what we've been uh sticking with. from from from day zero? Wow. That's so that's interesting that you guys do a 1031 because I know from a lot of um like more syndicate models, right? It's it's kind of hard to do the 1031 uh efficiently because you have a lot of investors and people want their money back and you got to find the next deal and you there's depreciation that has occurred. So how do you effectively do that and or why do you think that's a competitive advantage for you guys in doing that versus other funds that these people can invest their money in?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah. I do think it is been a competitive advantage and it's something that people like investing with us for. Yeah. As it's just super tax efficient. And with my father's background, he was a tax accountant, saw the 1031 exchange. So, we knew that we were in this business for the very, very long term. So, you first have to have a company that wants to be in the business for a very, very long time cuz you're exchanging all the way to the end. Yeah. And so, yeah, there's some complications that come with finding the deal, the timelines of the 1031 exchange. But with how many deals we're doing every year, we're buying 12 to 15 deals, we never have any problems with the 45-day identification period, the 180-day close period, and um it's been a really, really good model for us. What's your biggest up?
Taylor Avakian
And I say that uh not in a deleterious way, but like where you learned a lesson where you're like, "Okay, I will not make that mistake
Jeff Gleiberman
again." We had uh probably two ones where we learned some some lessons.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, the CMBS financing was getting pretty aggressive in 2006-7. Mhm. And they were offering some extremely high leverage, higher than we typically would go, but the the rates were so good and the market was really kind of trending that direction. So, the two worst deals that had the lowest returns that we've ever done were were extremely higher than we like to go leverage, bought right before the Great Recession.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
So, that's when we're That's when we took a step back and said, "Let's just keep it, you know, under 70% Yeah. maybe even closer to 60% average going forward." And that's what we've been doing.
Taylor Avakian
So, for the people who don't know, right, what obviously leverage is the amount of equity versus debt that you get in a property. Why would someone choose to do lower leverage versus a higher leverage? If you can get a loan that will give you 80% versus a loan where you guys are going to do 60%. Like, what is the the thesis behind why that matters and why you guys choose to go lower?
Jeff Gleiberman
Just generally. So, in general, real estate's very cyclical. It goes up and down for many different reasons that are unpredictable. And we've seen many cycles. We've been through four cycles in our history. And if you have an 80% loan and the values go down 20%, you have no value left in your property anymore. And it doesn't incentivize you to keep the property, to do the right things. So, when you have the lower leverage, you're not Historically, values have not gone down 30, 40 plus percent. So, we want to be in a safe place where we still have good equity in our properties. And also, more leverage means more debt service or more um ex- debt expense. And those are just very, very high expenses that you have to pay on your interest rate. So, that is another reason to keep the um
Jeff Gleiberman
the leverage lower as well.
Taylor Avakian
Do you guys do interest-only loans?
Jeff Gleiberman
We typically always do interest-only.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
Fixed rate. And it somewhere between 7 to 10-year um financing. But yeah, the interest-only, that lowers your your um obviously your payments and your expenses.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah.
Jeff Gleiberman
And then it allows you to have higher cash on cash as well cuz you have the lower expenses. So yeah, we typically always do interest-only.
Taylor Avakian
Why um and and I'm just curious because the people who bought your LA properties are these NOAH buyers, right? Which for people who don't know, NOAH is basically this new um investment thesis or or practice of of where you go and you partner with a nonprofit, right? And when you're partnering with a nonprofit, you get some benefits from your property taxes and with LA, which is the biggest benefit is you don't have to pay ULA transfer tax, which is a big one. Um which makes the the numbers a little bit juicier. Have you guys ever thought about going into affordable? I know affordable is a big, big talk right now with California and LIHTC and the way that housing has become so unaffordable that there's a lot of programs,
50:00–1:00:00
Taylor Avakian
bonds, things like that that is making it accretive from an investment model to go into this affordable stuff. Have you guys ever explored that? Do you think that that's interesting to you?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, we've explored in the past a little bit more than we've explored other things like development that we talked about and other product types because there's always been ways to partner with nonprofits and get tax abatement. Just recently they made it more aggressive and more uh and they're trying to incentivize people to do it. Yeah. So, just as we're starting to see these newer buyers come in the market, we've been exploring it ourselves too because if we can get major tax abatement and then also other benefits, too, it might make sense for us to do it on some properties we currently own or ones that we're going to buy. So, we're early in the explorations, but it's something that we just want to at least understand and see if it makes sense.
Taylor Avakian
What about LIHTC?
Jeff Gleiberman
Haven't looked at LIHTC at all. Come in and it's just a much different business and yeah.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah. It's like it's it's like um I feel like I'm working at McDonald's and I I just got hired at Tesla and you're like learning everything. It It It is Once you get it, I've been told. I had um Jeff Jaeger on this and he's Standard Communities and they do mostly everything capital A affordable, but um I've had some some deals that we've underwritten where I'm they're LIHTC deals and I'm like, I have no idea how to value these things. Like I'm calling up all my peoples and like I'm figuring out how to make these
Jeff Gleiberman
things work.
Taylor Avakian
It's It is uh textbook to understand how things move. It's just It's the way money moves, right?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, no, we've we've looked into them very little, but yeah, there's a lot of restrictions. There's a lot of requirements. There's years that you can do thing I mean, yeah, it's a whole different business, really.
Taylor Avakian
Have you ever done any sort of um commodities hedging? So, I've heard, and this This more from a buddy who used to work at an institutional industrial shop. They used to buy like um puts and calls on certain um I don't know if it was like rates, but there was basically like an a caller to help them with their interest rates to buy commodities and also hedge with their long-term rates on the debt that they have. Have you guys ever done any sort of creative money uh um manipulation like that?
Jeff Gleiberman
I don't know if that's the right word, but Yeah, no, we we really haven't. We own 99% of our loans have been Freddie and Fannie, very traditional, the same that we've always done. In the really, really aggressive rate market of the 2021, 2022 time, Yeah. we did start exploring life insurance company loans.
Taylor Avakian
Okay.
Jeff Gleiberman
And we put a couple life insurance loans on a few of our properties.
Taylor Avakian
Mhm.
Jeff Gleiberman
The loan terms and the rates were amazing. And they had a lot more restrictions on them like just a lot more tests and you could be put into cash management where they hold your cash if you're not hitting certain metrics. So, you know, now looking back, we we got some amazing loans that and the properties are doing very well, but there's a lot more requirements on those. So, you just anytime you're doing something new, you really have to understand it and you know, dive deep into you know, every detail of it.
Taylor Avakian
It sounds like being able to have control over the investments is a very um high metric that you guys look at in terms of where and what you use to invest. Like is that ability to control the situation and and change things if they need to be changed or adjust here? Is that something that's really important to you guys when you're looking at how you invest holistically?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, and then as we talked about, you know, putting 10 plus percent of our own money into every deal, we want to make sure we're not making any mistakes on the expense side, on the revenue side, um on income, really on anything. And then also we got to put the right people in place to execute well. So, that's why where the vertical integration comes in. So, we can put the right people on site from the asset management level, construction management, property management, and really execute flawlessly.
Taylor Avakian
Do you have any desire to do alternative investments just personally? Like, do you want to go invest in, um, proptech or VC or brewing company or, you know, like do you have any personal passion projects that you've thought about investing in?
Jeff Gleiberman
I've diversified my investments. Growing up in a real estate family business, we're always going to be extremely heavily invested into our company, into our real estate, but it's diversification's good for everyone. So, nothing in particular, mostly just kind of general funds and general indexes and and and more kind of general things, but, uh, I'm I wouldn't be opposed to it.
Taylor Avakian
Okay. So, you're open-minded to it?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
How do you, uh, how do you decompress? Because, um, I don't know in terms of you're running a very large business, right? There's a lot of, uh, people that you have to deal with and I know people problems are are a big thing that, um, can cause some stress, right? How do you effectively continue to come back every day? Like, I assume, you know, money's not an issue at this point in time. Like, you guys don't you could you could probably just sit back and chill with the 32,000 units and your dad could, you know, go watch grandkids grow up, all that stuff. Like, why one, first question, how do you decompress? What does that look like for you? And then two, why keep growing it?
Jeff Gleiberman
We we truly love our business and we have three big stakeholders that we just love to see, um, their lives improve in different ways. Obviously, our investors through good returns, our employees through good opportunities, our residents through places to live. So, every day we love coming. My father will never retire. I plan to never retire. We want to do this till the very end and and and that's been uh um really fun and and and really enjoyable to do. And then on the decompression, I like staying pretty scheduled. I'm a very scheduled guy. So, like waking up early, working out. I have three young kids. They can be super busy. And um and I'm a big golfer as well. So, Okay.
Taylor Avakian
All right. So, you're getting out on the links and Yeah, with that. Well, it's two birds with one stone in real estate, right? Because I'm sure you're not every golfing out outing is with a real estate person, but um there's nothing like getting on the links for 4 hours and getting to know someone, right? Like it's really hard to spend I like to call it the I'm I'm giving a talk um to our office. And it's on networking and relationships. And I think of networking as a barbell. So, there's the really short like memes you text your friends or the article that made you think of someone like these short quick bites. Um the coffee meetings are like the ideally you don't do the coffee meetings because it's really hard to build a relationship with someone in 30 minutes, right? Or you do these long stretches of time.
Taylor Avakian
So, 4 hours on the links, a weekend away, some sort of boating trip, something like that, right? Um so, golf is a is an interesting place where you can kind of get that long tail of the barbell. Um how do you think about networking? How do you think about going cuz you're networking with investors, you're networking with brokers, you're networking with maybe people you want to hire to bring on the team. Like how do you approach that?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah. No, networking is is one of the most important parts of our business for just many, many reasons. And and golf I love either way, but it's also nice that you can get to network with it as well. And we're in Century City right now. So, I was driving past Hillcrest and then LACC. Both I've played many times. I was trying to see where the pins were and it maybe maybe I should have brought my my clubs with me, but yeah, networking for uh really every aspect of the business has been a big goal of mine. And it's really helped us grow our business through investors, through other property owners that we've been able to purchase more properties from. Mhm. Uh property buyers as well and we're selling a deal as well, too. I mean, in every way.
Jeff Gleiberman
I mean, networking is is one of the main main important aspects of our business.
Taylor Avakian
100%.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, I mean, I I was just talking to Nadine Watt who was on the show previously and she's like we're talking about young people, like what is the skill set that you should cultivate and try to grow. And she was talking about networking and I said, I I completely wholeheartedly agree. When you have a relationship with someone, cuz she was talking about back back to office, cuz she owns an office building in Century City. And she's like, I think we're leaning more towards people wanting to come back in the office, because you don't get that like relationship over Zoom or when you're working virtually. It's not you don't you don't build the relationships where networking is to be leveraged if you have an opportunity or you introduce someone to someone, like there's nothing like that in-person that I think is really hard to replicate from this this um virtual world.
Taylor Avakian
Are you guys you I don't think you own any office buildings, but is that is the office market affecting you guys at at any point at all? Are you looking into the other um industrial, retail, like are you looking in the other sectors of real estate as well?
Jeff Gleiberman
We sadly own one office building. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, the office building that we office out of. So, yeah, we bought that in 2006. Um we've been there for 20 years and we should have just put that money in apartments, but uh that's okay. It's it's helped us um grow. We've grown so much and we've been able to move out, um our other tenants and grow into a really big space and and it's worked out well, but it's just a lot of work for very little return and and the office market is extremely depressed right now. So, but it's one other point that you're talking about is this the the work from home and the working in the office. Yeah, we really feel there's been something that's been lost with the work from home and and it's difficult to get people
Jeff Gleiberman
to want to network and be back in the office and collaborate, but it's something that is a big mission of ours and we
1:00:00–1:10:00
Jeff Gleiberman
plan on on doing as well. And I know that there's a lot of companies that are doing that, too. I'm I went to work at CBRE for a few years right after after college and just being in that cubicle environment and over hearing conversations and learning and looking up, it's just so important and even being here today with you, too, it's a networking opportunity and and and really appreciate it and great to be here. Of course.
Taylor Avakian
No, totally. I So, you guys are not fully back in the office yet? You know, you're working towards that? That's what you're saying?
Jeff Gleiberman
We are. Yeah, we've been slowly working back. The workforce is telling us that they don't really want it.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah.
Jeff Gleiberman
And at some point you got to rip the band-aid and make the decision. And so, it's coming soon. And then and and you know, the I know California, the government is planning on doing it next year and lots of companies have been doing it, but right now we're 3 days mandatory in the office. And those 3 days are supposed to be with your team. So, you can collaborate, have your meetings. The Zoom meetings, they work fine and they're good, but you know, there's always a little glitch where you can't hear something or you just it's just not and it and it's just never
Taylor Avakian
perfect. Ideas flow. I feel like there's this flow that when you're in the same room, like good things are more likely to occur when you're bouncing ideas off each other and with you guys trying to optimize every little piece, right? There's there's something that one person says and that sparks something inside of you and you're like, wait, we we should do that here or we there's the a new style trend that's coming up like we should add this to our apartment amenities or or anything like that. So, I'm hoping that um for you guys that you know that the employees are open to that because personally I took I think we were like 6 weeks out of the office um in 2020 and I've been in the office ever since. I live in the office if anyone is watching this and knows um they know that I'm
Taylor Avakian
a big fan of that. So, it's good to know that people are moving in that direction. Yeah, so I can tell you that you love it here. I really do. Um if we're looking 5 10 years in the future you're 30 years old. So, you're starting over, right? No family business, but you got your relationships, you have the people that you know. Where do you go to build a company? Where do you go to invest in from a real estate perspective? Like where are you going to find opportunity to build something massive?
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, Mark, my father was about 30-ish when he started our business.
Taylor Avakian
Okay. I'm 29. Holy I got a lot of I got to catch up with this
Jeff Gleiberman
stuff. I well, I know how old he is. So, he was he was 34 then because there was about 34 35 years ago that he had started the business. And um I think that getting reps and fully understanding what you're getting into is going to be the most important thing. So, going for the biggest company that's looking at the most deals, that's has the most activity, even if it maybe doesn't seem like the best opportunity or the best paying job at the time, but just if you can see the most deals, understand what you want to do, and then you can go and try to start your own thing.
Taylor Avakian
Yeah, and and go and grow it. And um I know it's I get a lot of people asking me, "Taylor, when are you going to go, you know, do investments? When are you going to go start a fund? When are you going to go syndicate?" Um and I say, "You know, I'm pretty happy right now. Um things are going well. The business is growing, but it's it's always in the back of your mind in terms of that leverage, right? The building equity. It's It's really hard to sell a brokerage business. Um You could get paid by a bigger company to come over, but it's not the same level of equity. And I'm a big believer in building something that has sale value, that has equitable value. So, the the investments are a logical, um you know, route given my knowledge and expertise in what we've we've
Taylor Avakian
done and you on the brokerage side before, too, understand how that value can then lead into you going and investing, um which is great. So, um before we wrap up, last thing, Jeff, for you, right? If you had a message to give to your kids, to younger people, to anyone listening to this, maybe people who want to start investing in real estate, maybe people institutional-wise who are like thinking of of doing their own thing, or they want to climb up the corporate ladder, like what piece of advice would you have and or what piece of advice has been given to you that has changed the way that you approach your career?
Jeff Gleiberman
I I've learned a lot of really important lessons from my father and I get to work with him every day, so I'm super lucky, but he always has taught me the importance of you're only as good as who you surround yourself with. So, really building the best team around you is going to help you have the most success. And that's been something that we take pride in and is always what we're thinking to do is always hiring the best, working together as a team, and we've had so many good team members that have lasted all the way to retirement
Taylor Avakian
or 20-plus years. Let me follow up on that. How do you find and convince good people to come work with you?
Jeff Gleiberman
That's a little bit of uh getting people to believe in your vision.
Taylor Avakian
Mhm.
Jeff Gleiberman
Yeah, so the back to the being the best at one thing and really focusing on it. We have a very, very clear vision and we can show them our past and how it's where we've gotten to and what we want to do in the future and people want to join and jump on the train and and and see where it goes.
Taylor Avakian
Okay, last question. What is What is the business's MG's superpower? Like what gives you guys the edge? And I know you said you have a clear vision, you're vertically integrated. Um obviously you have scale, but like if you really think about it, like what is the secret sauce? What is that superpower that you think gives you guys the ability to do what you do?
Jeff Gleiberman
We've talked about it a little bit, but I do think it is the hyper specialization into one thing and um just ultra disciplined is what I would say. Just unbelievably
Taylor Avakian
disciplined. Amazing. Jeff, thank you very much. I appreciate this. Um MG Properties, go check them out if you're looking to invest. They have great returns. Um they've they've done very well. Never lost money. Besides one, but we're going to institution we're going to kick to the side. Thank you very much for being here.
Jeff Gleiberman
Appreciate it. Great meeting you. Thank you.