We Bought 82,000 Houses... One By One (Here’s how)
With Marco Vartanian — Investor, Broker & Developer
Listen to the full episode1 hr 18 min
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What this conversation gets into
How do you evolve from small-scale real estate deals to building large, transformative projects? In this episode of No Vacancy, Taylor Avakian sits down with Marco Vartanian, a seasoned investor…
How do you evolve from small-scale real estate deals to building large, transformative projects?
In this episode of No Vacancy, Taylor Avakian sits down with Marco Vartanian, a seasoned investor, broker, and developer, who shares his journey of scaling in real estate through timing, persistence, and smart strategy. From his early days flipping single-family homes to his current role in large developments, Marco reveals the mindset and decision-making that helped him navigate multiple market cycles.
You’ll learn:
- How Marco transitioned from brokerage into full-time investing and development
- The role of timing and market discipline in long-term success
- Strategies for sourcing and underwriting profitable deals
- Lessons from market downturns and how to stay resilient
- Why adaptability and relationships matter in scaling real estate
Whether you’re an investor starting small or aiming to grow into large-scale projects, Marco’s story offers actionable lessons for every stage.
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I was so proud. Like 82,000 homes later, I don't believe we bought a single portfolio. No way. One by one, this thing could go zoomed out way faster than Doug and Colin and any of us. By 2014, I think at we went public. It was like this is the biggest day of my life. At our peak, we were buying like $100 million of houses a month. Jesus. I remember my commercial friends in those earliest days. They were like, "What are you doing? This is like career suicide." Like, "Why would you ever Welcome to the podcast.
My name is Taylor Avakian and I'm here with my esteemed guest Marco Vartanian." And I said that right. You did because we're Armenian. And uh I think you're the first Armenian that I've had on the show. Legend. I know. And if you haven't, then I apologize to anyone else, but I'm almost positive. Um Okay, Marco. So, you've had a pretty incredible journey from starting out and taking a portfolio from 2,000 homes, single family homes to 80,000 homes and then being acquired by Blackstone, which is crazy. And now you've been acquiring property management companies and grew Fair into 12,000 or 13,000 units under management. Can you walk me through the beginning of one, how did the jump, how did you start into getting into this real estate space and then explain to me how you took invitation homes from 2,000 to 80,000
homes. Sure. Huge thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here and uh I've seen so much your content and shout out for all the great work you're doing for us in our business. We do have one goal today. Our singular goal is to have more views than my great friend John Draman. So, whatever happens today would have to be John Draman. I was texting him on the way over.
We're going to make this good. Of course. Yeah. This sort of career evolution. I started in brokerage in 2000 and um one of the ingredients I think I'll share today is just the luck and great fortune of being surrounded by these really one-of-a-kind entrepreneurs and I had the great fortune of going to work for Kushman Realy which was John Kushman's company. So this was 2000 high-flying we were the high-flying tener repette brokers of Los Angeles.
Exactly right. Got it. So John Kushman's the great grandson of the founder of CNW and um built this amazing tenant rep, the pre-minent tener rep shop in Southern California for office. Wow. In kind of through the 80s and and early 2000s and ultimately sold back to CNW while I was there. But you had this opportunity to see firsthand what it took to be a successful entrepreneur and then blended that with brokerage. And I think there's a common theme. I think of how many guests you've interviewed and how they go on to these amazing businesses in our industry, but how many of them started in brokerage? So many. And like why, right?
Is it grit, hustle, willingness to take risk? Um, and so Kushman was just this just again opportunity set that uh I really lucked into. I grew up in the apartment business um really in Downey, which is where I'm from, but it was following my parents around one small apartment building in Downey. And um I just loved it. If you think of any size apartment building, it's really a small business, right? It has marketing, it has operations, it has people. Um, all these ingredients are in play. And now if you extrapolate that across our area, there's literally hundreds of thousands of these small operators in
And some run them better than others. Totally thousand%. Right. You and I experience that every day. And so the youth of being around that. And then I went to USC. I was in the entrepreneur program there. And I probably would have just dropped out of college and done the apartment thing right away. My parents said, "You got to finish school." And so commercial real estate was a way to kind of blend what I was raised with with a business degree. And that's what led me to Kushman Realy. Got it. And Kushman Realy was fantastic. I loved the craft of real estate. I didn't love selling it though. I just like there was something about selling it that didn't feel authentic to me. But I loved the craft of it and the curiosity of real estate operations was always running through the work I was doing.
I ended up doing mostly investment sales work with Kushman Realy and CNW and then around 2005 had an opportunity to go to work for Rob Magcguire and so that was a short stint. I was only there a year but again got to see firsthand like these legendary entrepreneurs. Rob and and John were different businesses. one in brokerage, one was obviously a developer and owner here in town, but they were the same guy at their heart. And so there again was those common threads of like why are these entrepreneurs like what makes them tick? Um, and then from there, Buchanan Street Partners was where I really learned the language of institutional real estate. And through this time, I was buying my original business plan as a young person, remember, I got out of school. Well, my original business plan was like I was going to buy one property a year.
This is the aspirations of a 19-year-old." Exactly. And um by 2011, I had built this small portfolio of rental properties. wasn't huge, but by by day I'm this like buttoned up institutional commercial real estate executive, but by night I'm most passionate about these little units that I'm turning and renting and I'm doing all these things. And I want to segue really quick. I remember a day I was in a meeting. It was at Buchanan Street. We were investment committee and I had cut my hand. I was probably like 27. I had cut my hand the night before. where I was like, God only knows what I was trying to do at that time. And I'm sitting in this meeting and I look down at my hand and there's this cut on my hand and I think to myself, "Oh my god, like I'm in this room full of executives.
Like, what in the world are you doing with this giant cut on your hand? They thought I had gotten injured in an accident." And it was just this sort of um aha moment for me that I needed to figure out a way to get these worlds to collide and like where was going to be the opportunity set that I was too passionate about what I was doing in the evenings to not make a career out of it. And then around late 2011 a company called Waypoint Homes was buying distress single family rental homes. They were based in Oakland. Okay. And they were really a pioneer. Um Colin Wheel and Doug Bryan. Doug Bryan was a field goal kicker in the NFL for like 13 years. Totally successful career there, but met Colin in San Francisco and they decided they had similar had this
like very like small business plan to buy some houses together. They realized that pizza trough values and houses were significantly higher at that time than apartments. and they asked the question why and so I viewed that opportunity and started to like understand that we had done some work Buchanan uh our co-founder of Buchanan was um an early investor in in one of their funds and so I had some exposure to it just hit me Taylor I was like this is it this is the moment this is the intersection of my worlds like what I would it took institutional real estate knowledge, knowhow, vocabulary to scale single family rental, but dare to force single family rental was this like I mean it was not institutionally owned at
all. Were you scared like cuz that seems like there's many times when you're you're probably making good money, you have a good portfolio, like if you stay on this track, whatever you're on, you're probably going to do just fine and keep buying properties every year. Was there a part of you that was fearful or was the income coming from the properties enough where you're like, I could fail at this and then not work out and I'll still be fine?
I would say half. And that's the problem with the universe, right? Like the universe doesn't always give you the exact answer. It gives you a portion of the answer. And so I could cover about half of my my expenses at that time. We had um two kids. I was pretty conservative. And remember I'd buying these for almost 15 years at that point.
Were you putting everything you had in these buildings? Cuz like, you know, I'm I'm sure you making decent money, but it wasn't like it was no money to be able to buy a property unless were you getting these loans that were 90% LTV.
Yeah. So today like that the food source was always my career. I was really focused on that. I I wanted to be a vice president by 30. Luckily achieved all of those goals professionally. But it was like my passion was in these properties and it just kept coming back to the operations of it. Mh. I love people and
it was like the residents, it was the vendors, it was the um the community of brokers and escrow and mortgage bankers and like all of the like I loved every element of it. So, it was just a matter of how do I find because as you say like my career had progressed on the commercial side. It's like well how do I find something to reconcile those two universes because they were so far apart. Mh. and um and single family rental was it. I remember the first conference IMN put on a single family rental conference in like 2012. They may have started a year before but yeah around that time like uh Waypoint was the first institutional operator to get an allocation. I think it was you know I think it was Colombia of all schools um gave us a a check
And we had this like interesting way that we could um lay off um we would buy, renovate, rent, and once it's seasoned, we could lay off a portion with a a banking relationship we had, and then we would then use that to
So you in a buy it all cash, renovate it all cash, lease it all cash, and then you can have a take out with um in that case it was a bank that gave us you know it wasn't like amazing terms but it was enough to get equity out that then you could go buy more houses.
So, but there was enough spread cuz right now it's almost impossible to like especially in apartments is which what I do most of the time like it is very hard to be able to get money out from from a refi. There's not that much juice in these deals unless you just crush it out of the park. Like it's not happening and I don't do you see
like Well, there well going back to then we were buying houses for like 80 to 15. Where were you buying them? Predom I'll use Southern California because I know our audience is more in this area. Predominantly Riverside County. Oh, okay. Um, we bought um so that was my initial job was to like run Southern California. So I leave Buchanan Street, leave behind again what was so safe and secure of what I knew. And um I remember my commercial friends in those earliest days, they were like, "What are you doing? This is like career suicide. like why would you ever trade out and they were like I remember a joke you'll relate to this they were like are you going to have your picture on your business cards like what why are you giving me like I believe in this thing and I just knew that like if you
could bull institutional operations and and systems and controls to what was like this way underserved market this thing could go and um you know it zoomed out way faster than Doug and Colin and any of us by 2014. I think at we went public in the beginning of 2013 with Starwood Capital Group. Mhm. Was our first joint partner. Yeah. I remember we went public with 6,000 houses and it was like this is the biggest day of my life. It'll never be bigger than this moment. It was like and in hindsight at the end of the ride 6,000 Houses was like one region Yeah.
Holy rip through that. Can you Okay, I I kind of want to talk about the logistics of that. So, you got to be buying a lot of homes every day, right? How do you finding these homes? How are you identifying what's a good deal? How are you like walk me through the logistics of actually growing and scaling something that quickly?
Yeah, I think um we really focused there were a couple things that went well. We were fortunate to be based in the Bay Area. We were fortunate to be based in the Bay Area at a time where uh as we were all healing from the GFC like we could get the smartest engineers, product builders on the tech side, we also were right in line with the major advent of cloud computing. M um specifically at that time we were on Salesforce. So if you if we had talked to a bunch of traditional real estate guys and said I want to scale 80,000 houses and I want to use Salesforce to do it on my front end and maybe Yardi or some backend real estate system on behind it would be like what do you that would be like you'd be speaking Cantonese wouldn't even process it.
But being, you know, based in the Bay Area was really fortunate. And then the way that we were using cloud computing, it's funny like COVID hits and like everyone's like, "Oh, self-showing and all these like autonomous and virtual ways to to show property or lease property." Um, and it's like we were doing that in 2012 out of necessity because windshield time like we couldn't possibly get a leasing person to at that time call it 20,000 acres. And so there were those moments back to that IMN conference. The first year it was just like three guys and a six-pack of beer. And then the next year I remember looking around and it was like why
It's literally one year later and that's where it kind of started to click of like okay this is you're on to something like this is and we were really focused at waypoint to your question we were really focused at waypoint on being the best operator. We wanted to buy at a pace that we could digest and at that time we had partnered with Starwood. We went public. We were continuing to build. We built that portfolio up to about 15,000 houses. I was running property management and leasing nationally at that point. And I want to get back to that why that became important in a second. But as we were building, we looked over at a company called Invitation Homes, which was actually founded in 2012. They're founded after Waypoint, and they were buying more houses than
we were. And Blackstone's mindset at that time was the market opportunity will be finite. You'll have infinite item to figure out how to optimize it and operate it, but the market opportunity will be finite. I think at Waypoint, which ultimately became Colony Starwood Homes, we did a joint venture with what was Colony American Homes, which took us to about 35,000 units. We really wanted to we were we were in the digestion business. We wanted to only buy what we could digest. And um you know in hindsight I think Blackstone and Invitation had the right strategy because the market opportunity was it it recovered much more quickly than I think
we So they were just basically like they were buying they didn't even look at it. They just knew the price was so depleted that they really didn't even need to they would see the property the price they like okay three bedrooms here's what it's going to be at. Purchase contract done.
uh peak to trough replacement cost. I mean a lot of the same variables we had in all of our careers. They were just applying it to a $200,000 three-bedroom, two bath in
Riverside. Interesting. And so are you are you buying these one one by one from real estate agents or are you guys going direct to the owners? How are you how do you buy I'm sure 100 properties a day or you know like how does it even happen?
A spreadsheet. Yeah. And again, back to like the process and like the ecosystem it took. Like we had a fleet of people that were doing this. It started at the courthouse steps. So we were buying all the foreclosures in the early. So that was its own platform and group that would go out, we would inspect, we would get the tape the day before of what was headed to auction or foreclosure the next morning. And then we would have this tight window and so we'd have a property inspection group and we called them I think they were called asset inspectors at the time. And they would like drive around to Priuses and try to get eyeballs on any home that was to be sold the next morning. and that would inform kind of our initial offer. And then we had a a desk of people
that sat behind the computers as it was at auction. They were on the line with the the bidding team and the bidding team was relaying where the pricing was at and then our analysts were crunching what was kind of the max
I was so proud. Like 82,000 homes later, I don't believe we bought a single portfolio. No way. One by one. Holy crap. One by one. Once the auction business faded and that went away
Yeah. Um then we really started embracing the local brokerage community, these residential brokers. And once we kind of shared with them um the speed with which we we were transacting, it took off again. And because anything that didn't go to full foreclosure but had a piece of distress, you know, an owner could go to a broker and the broker would say, "I can have you out of this in 48 hours."
So, um those tech companies that ended up spinning up like, um I forget what they're called today. They may still be around but the you know the companies who open doors. Yeah. I buyers was that post you guys
Jeez. Okay. So you guys you're building this and this is over what a 8 10 year period six six years you go from 2000 to uh to 80,000 with a lot of these you know mergers and and stuff like that. Then you exit that company right? Walk me through that.
Yeah just by the end. So, the co-founders Colin and Doug, they left uh they left when we did the colony deal and um what I think we all realized is there are entrepreneurs who love building enterprises and there are a whole host of other executives in our industry who like running large in this case public REIT operations and they're in total polarization of one of I like neither one understands what the other one is
Yeah. Yeah. And so by the end of 18 from 2012 to 2018, it was like can we operate these houses at scale and deliver um recurring revenue. It's funny. I remember our CEO Fred Tuwami. He used to say, "We need to turn this into a boring business every day." He's like, "We want this to be the most boring, repeatable." And he was an EQR guy. And that was our that was always our battle cry was like, "How do we make this just a set and forget it business?" And, you know, coming from a Buchanan, like we were like more like equity placement guys up to that point. We liked obviously the the buy sell. We thought we could buy on a at a good basis in those earliest days. We thought, well, we'll just put them on the shelf. Like, this is going to be great. We can buy these.
They're way below replacement costs. It'll be easy. And then it was around I took over um solely property management nationally. Um I think it was about 200 mid to late 13. Okay. And that was when we realized, okay, the business actually starts when you lease the house. That's where the real business was. Interesting. Buying it is great, right? You can do leasing it. But the operations that came with it was that's where all the complexity is in that business. It's just the and always has it. Yeah. Think of how many buildings you've sold to an owner and they're Yeah. They call you a year later and it's like it's a mess. Yeah. Because the business starts when you close.
So, back to the exit. I just by 18 felt like, you know, the we had solved the thesis. We were we had built a boring business of of a 20 billion dollar public eat and uh we had moved to Dallas and all the while where while we were scaling this single family rental business, I kept thinking about my parents' property and the types of buildings we have in Southern California. Southern California is second only to New York for highest concentration of small unit apartment buildings, right? Mhm. So, these were mid-size buildings. Think like 10 to 150 unit buildings. Pick any market in SoCal. And they're everywhere, right? Every street has these properties. And I kept thinking, you know, we built I think we were in like two dozen markets at at Invitation. That was out of necessity because, you know, there was only so much product we could take down.
but kept thinking about what if you could imply all of the IP that I had really built and designed from 2012 to 2018 in the op side. I'm like, what if you just deployed even 25% of that toward midsize multif family and where would you do it? You would do do it in Southern California. And um and so that's what started it was probably around I would say 18. It was probably a year there. I was still at invitation, but I kept wrestling with like, well, why wouldn't And then the other piece that started to come into play is I was almost 40 years old. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. I came through the entrepreneur program as I said and it was like it's kind of now or never. And um so I actually moved back to California. I left
Invitation and um moved back to California and um I initially my initial thesis was that we would just do a small equity fund and buy you know again those 10 to 100 unit buildings. Why no one had institutionalized it was kind of the thesis and I saw so many analoges to what we did in single family like high fragmentation like unsophisticated owner base like it kind of had a lot of the same attributes. Mhm. Um, and so my initial thesis was like, I'll just go do a small multifund. I promised my wife I would take 6 months off. Scaling a business to the level that we did at Oldco. Um, it does take a toll, you know, through your late 30s. For sure. I have a small a young family.
So, I imagine that when that thesis came to fruition, so you had the six months off, you decided to go and do this. Um, I think I know the answer to it, right? Because I know where you're at now. And I see it even in today's market. Like Los Angeles is still 85% small mom and pop. So like there's clearly a reason why it doesn't work in the small mom and pop or at least it hasn't worked yet. What ended up happening? Did you pivot from that or like give me give me that story cuz that's interesting to
me. Yeah, I'll go quick. We we just I started underwriting apartments and you know this was 19 like values were high are now. Obviously you had a different financing market. Um but it started as I just was saying like gosh okay great I can buy a four and a half cap. If everything I can get positive ARB on my debt if everything goes right I can dump out a six and a half or a seven current. It's like everything really had to go right. And as I started talking to equity investors, they said, 'Marco, we understand your operations background. We totally understand your ability to scale this. We're really excited to hear about your infrastructure. And that's that was the moment on those calls where I was like, I didn't have one. It was like me and my laptop, right? Uhhuh.
So I thought, well, what if I just manage some properties for other people because that'll ultimately give me an infrastructure to then be able to build an investment management platform. And so then I just set down that path of like, well, I'll just take on some some how hard could this be? I'll pick out some owners. And I had all this ops background from old go. And I knew if I could bring the right mix of people, process, and tech uh forward that I could have a compelling value proposition for owners, mid-size owners. And um I never would have thought that would become the business, but that is the business today. And um I continue to buy on my own, but we have not stood up we haven't stood up the investment management business. And so, uh, it's it's odd like I've spent more time in
client side's different. Do you think it's because you after running a property management company? Because I commend you and every property manager that I know like no one likes property management. No one most owners don't like their property managers. Um, but property management, you're dealing with tenants and like it's tough. It is a tough business, right? Was there something where the money became um such like okay I can see a path to growing a huge property management company that we're kind of already doing and my operational skills allow me to go and expand that quicker versus building the base and then going and doing this investment stuff because to me the reason that I don't think multif family in Southern California is uh institutionalized is because of rent control and because in single family homes you have the ability to then if you're doing them for rent, right?
Um because you guys were renting them out. You weren't flipping them and selling them, right? So if you're going for rent, you you're capped at your ability to increase the value of these properties because of regulations. And so you can't like everything, like you said, has to go right. And when there's these businesses like property management or single family homes where there isn't this ceiling on what you can do, you have the ability to scale that much higher. Did you feel that or did you see that or did it just naturally occur that way?
Uh I think some of it went back to um you know what risk are you taking and it was more about cycle risk interesting thing because if you look at like my background right the reason invitation homes became invitation homes is because we were able to take we got outsiz returns the timing was right during was cycle risk right there was cycle risk was low because values were so low and I just think my entry
point in 19 like there was no cycle risk in small multi and small multi was so much more durable through the GFC. It just didn't like its peak to trough was probably like 20%. Yeah. And so I looked at if I build a services company I'm taking operations risk but I'm not taking market risk. And I think when you look at apartment owners, operators who struggle, they've typically taken on both at the same time. So Buchanan, we just learned Buchanan was such a unique place to learn the craft of risk and risk management because of our institutional equity investors and partners of that business. Tim Balor used to just he used to crush us an investment committee of like
Um, so that's interesting to me because obviously the way that institutions look at risk, like they have a lot on the line. There's a lot of money on the line. Sometimes they get ahead of their britches, right? As we've seen market risk and timing risk over the last five years, six years. What do they do differently than a small mom and pop or a smaller firm? Like how do they approach risk? And you were kind of getting into it with the different buckets, but like can you dive in a little bit deeper into the the psychology behind looking at that? How do they analyze it?
period. So really assess that. Mh. And then what was interesting about with the big institutional equity partners at um I'll say old co through the waypoint ride. What I learned there is um large institutional equity investors they will create a thesis. In that case, it was we believe single family rental homes are undervalued today based on replacement costs, supply and demand fundamentals, etc. And once you have conviction around that thesis, the largest institutional equity investors, they then want to peanut butter the entire country, the entire board with that thesis. So once Blackstone's like, "This is the lane we're in. We believe in this thesis strongly.
They then leg into it in a massive way. Got it. So I believe today the reason small multif family has not institutionalized is because as I said it's second to only to New York. But the attributes of a Long Beach that has hundreds of midsize multif family building that's unique to Southern California.
you can't do that across the country. If you said take that same thesis to like Nashville, I mean, there's some areas of Nashville that have midsize apartments, but they don't have thousands upon thousands of them like we do here.
That's right. Interesting. But if you want to build an operating company, real estate services company called Fairrow Management, it operates from San Diego, call it to Santa Barbara. the TAM is got it. There's more rooftops, you know, rental rooftops 100%. For my company today than I'll ever need to look up because I'm not necessarily needing to derive a yield. Mhm. And that was the interesting thing about single family, like as the markets snapped back, what we talked about earlier where Blackstone said, "Hey, this is a finite opportunity. We had to push eastward, right? So, we started in the Bay Area, then we bought everything we could in SoCal, then we moved to Phoenix, Vegas, Colorado. We ended up with 25,000 homes in Florida. Wow. But as you're satisfying yield and the markets were recovering, we had no choice but to migrate farther
of apartment buildings across the country. There was like one other piece of this riddle that we learned from old co which was the more density of houses of units we could have the higher the density the more efficient the operations the higher the margin by region and so economies of scale basically. Exactly. And so once I thought, well, if I I have that in SoCal, the density of rentals is so high here. So it's like it totally rhymed with what we were doing there. And I thought I can, you know, apply that here. The last ingredient was to you and I, Southern California seems obvious. It's like where we're from. So like you can visualize I'll stay with Long Beach versus Downey versus Whittier. You can visualize that. But if you and I sat down with, let's say it was an East Coast real estate investor and
never spent any time in SoCal, you tried to explain it. It's actually a really complicated market. Interesting. Just because of the all the different areas. You have rent control, you have submarket risk, like it's a very complicated market to street by street even. Totally. Yeah. You could spend your whole career in one like Long We'll stay with Long Beach.
You could spend your whole career Oh man. And if you don't know Long Beach and you just buy in the city of Long Beach, like you're different buildings, man, different areas. It's it is so diverse and okay, so that's super interesting because you you the boots in the ground, the knowledge, that specificity of understanding your market better than anyone else. You have to have that in SoCal. Otherwise, you'll just I mean, you've seen people come from Chicago and New York and they buy these portfolios and I've seen it the last three years like they lost a ton of money in these apartment buildings because they didn't understand the fundamentals of who's renting them, right? People want parking or they don't want parking or how much rent you can get here or even the regul regulatory risk. Like those are some of the things you can't necessarily predict in terms of
if they're going to lower the amount in the county of Los Angeles from 5% to 8% to 1.5% right now in rent increases. Like you can't predict that. But also, you got to know that LA is a regulatory heavy
That's right. And you got to buy right in LA. You have to buy right in LA. Otherwise, I just don't see it like you don't make money unless you buy right.
And that was really so in my hip pocket as we're building the operations platform for Oldco in my hip pocket I'm thinking about SoCal and what we know about it and and as we're building out the people process and tech for these 80,000 units I kept thinking like I there's so many attributes that are sitting in in our backyard. So I thought, well, if I can just take a lot of that IP and deploy it just in this
market. Got it. Is that still on the horizon for you potentially? Could you see that being the case with with now your infrastructure of the property management?
Yeah, we continue to build. It's cool that we're probably using about a third of our playbook from Old Co. Okay. Because there are certain attributes of, you know, our largest property is I think 270 units. We obvious, you know, we've scaled up beyond single families.
Um so there are components that are are easier in some ways on site staff and so there the operating is slightly different. But so much of it we've been able to deploy. I think the thing I'm most excited about is a lot of some members of our executive management team have have joined from from old because it's been fun.
And can you pull back the curtain as to the actual operational side of a property management business? Cuz I know a lot of property managers and I would say it's not a uh tech heavy or you know operational like they're not 80,000 homes operations specialists, right? They're just like property managers and they do things kind of the old mom and pop way. So like what is the actual pull back the curtain of what goes into building an efficient property management company?
The best property management company is really split in half. And if you think about it, it's an operations resident, you know, facing day-to-day boots on the ground servicing units. Um whether that be turns, leasing, resident, ongoing resident, feedback, um business. Um so that's one half. And then the other half is effectively an accounting firm because it's paying thousands of bills. It's reconciling books each month. It's sending out distributions. It's making sure that debt covenants are met. It's paying property insurance, you know, on time. And in most small mom and pop management companies, they try to treat it as one. Mh. But they're very separate business. Like they're so different
disciplines. Um, and without scale, like how could you do that? So, typically a midsize or small management company, the proprietor or that team is trying to be equally proficient at being up to speed on AB1482 as they are tying out general ledgers and sending out cash flows and new laws and you got to take photos now. How could one person or one small team possibly keep up with all
my properties like, you know, like a professional, like an institution. How would I set up my let's say I have five properties? Sure. How would I set it up so that I run those efficiently as possible and like a professional?
Yeah, I think it starts with your your PMS, your property management software. So, you know, my company uses uh AppFolio. We've had a great partnership with Shane Trigg and that team. They've been awesome to us from the beginning. Um so, without that access, pick one. You PMS.
U there's a bunch out there. Um and then meet your resident where they are. And what I mean by that is today's resident, they want a touchless, frictionless way to interact with us. They want to select a unit on their terms. They want to visit the property when they want to visit it. You know, it's this uberization of our of our resident in today's market. And that's a that's a hard transition for someone who maybe has owned their units for a lot of years. Um and so I'd say get with um you know the nextg around you that are you know modernizing systems and controls. So that would be one and then two make sure you have a really good you know banking partner um that can help you set up your rails to you know do all your billing and invoicing and payments
etc. Mhm. And then the last piece and probably the most important piece and toughest to land is the people. And so, you know, with a portfolio of call it five properties, you're going to need uh a bookkeeper. Um, and you're going to need a property manager. As I said earlier, I would stay very focused on splitting those
activities because they're so different. Interesting. What um what are some of the things that you do to modernize an apartment? Like you go you take over a property. It's an old mom and pop. owned it for 50 years and you're like, "Hey, we're going to make this efficient." Yeah. Right. You're going to spend a little bit of money modernizing your apartment, but you're going to like it. Like what do you actually go do to the property from physical?
Yeah. In today's market, I would say even pre-COVID, it's um starts with safety and you know, safety, security, and we call it functionality. Um we always focused on this in my last company. It was like, are we making aesthetic improvements or are we making functional improvements that will, you know, will be a better product? Anybody can put a coat of paint on it and the code paint peels and
you know, and so, uh, because of the high rental rates in Southern California, um, our residents value clean, they value safe, and they value functional. So, the garbage disposal has to work. It just does. Mhm. And that's back to function. They would rather have that than some fancy can lighting
that. But are you putting in like um like are the locks right? Are the locks tech enabled? Are there uh AC that you know are they are they paying through zel? Are they paying through one system? Like what are the actual Can you get into that detail first?
Yeah. So payments uh resident communications like work order management, work order administration as far as like when's the maintenance person going to be in my unit?
All of that's happening with technology. You know, there was a big push um through single family into smart locks and smart properties and you know the IoT there were so many of those companies that spun up. Yeah. It's interesting like the resident hasn't they like them when they're there. Some percentage will pay for them. Um we use them because it makes us more efficient as an operator. Got it. because it, you know, obviously standardizes a bunch of stuff for us. But I wouldn't say today the Southern California resident is demanding
They're they are demanding frictionless interaction. Okay. They're demanding, I don't want to have to meet you to give you my movein funds. I don't want to have to come to your office ever. I don't want to have to sit in some call queue to get a hold of you. Yeah. um they're demanding a whitelabeled app that allows them to really frictionless um interact with Fairrove. And the challenge for us as a company is it has to be omni channel because we have some um residents that they're not there with us yet. Maybe they're a bit older or they're not as tech forward and so we have to staff you know call centers for for them to be called. Well, then we have others who want to text and so we have to have a whole text, you know, system behind the scenes that then ultimately all this funnels into a
Yeah, I think it'll be good. Ultimately, you're seeing so when we talk about the property management business, you're seeing um private equity has like really like waken up and said, "Yeah, we love these recurring cash flow businesses." And um so you're seeing that with accounting firms, management firms, these rollups, all that stuff. And I think the the bet there is that your labor costs will come down with AI. M any industry that has like a high percentage of labor um as an expense line as a percentage of revenue um is ripe for that. So I think AI will help that. The asterisk on it will be just the variability. I mean if you think of our call it 10,000 plus units and um the variability of your residents, the variability of their properties, the variability of the location of their properties. I think over time AI will get better and
better. We really think of AI and technology at Fairrow as more of an enabler than a replacer. Okay. So you saw a lot of tech companies um get you know big valuations over the last 5 years to you know create this like emporium of of technology around um things like property management and real estate. Um, but they were really trying to replace like full replace like you know if you're an earer how do you get a hold of we still want that
The human element and the residents do too. Yeah. It's funny. I was just at a conference this week and someone from Greyar was speaking and I'm always interested to see like well what are the Yeah. The 900 literally the 900lb gorilla are like and they said the same thing. Really? Yeah. Of course you're legging into it.
as a midsize operator. Today, my company is in is in the R&D business. So, we have to leg out all of these whatever the app is or whatever the technology or the AI. So, we have to like try this stuff and we pilot things and then we, you know, some of it works, some of it doesn't because you don't know today who the winners and losers are but you have to be ready and nimble enough to adopt this stuff because it's happening fairly quickly.
What are some of the tech like are using uh AI chat bots for that kind of stuff using call? I mean soon calling is going to be an AI thing, right? Someone's going to be able to call in and talk to an AI and they're going to say my garbage disposal is broken, right? And it's the AI is going to ask it questions and then it's going to go schedule with your guy who comes out, your maintenance man, and that'll all be done with AI. Like that is 100% going to happen in the next 3 to 5
Snapped is doing some really cool stuff on the leasing front. Um, what do they do? Smart Rent. Snapped is doing leasing. A lot of it is front of front of kind of funnel. Got it. Because you're getting hundreds of leads. Well, how do I figure out who are the best leads? How do I figure out who are, you know, who are ready to act right away?
Um, I just was yesterday at a lunch with some owners and some broker friends of mine and they they all own properties and they were saying one of the biggest issues they have is a lot of these applications are being they're fraudulent, right? These these um credit scores are not real and you have all these people like how are you supposed to confirm all this information that this tenant is saying what they they're doing what they're saying and at scale at 13,000 units, right? like you probably have so many coming in. Are you using any technology to stop leasing fraud?
Tons of companies have have spun up to do that. We're seeing less and less of it. Okay. We saw tons of leasing fraud in the earliest days of self showing. We're talking like 2013. Got it. Um but those base property management softwares, Appfolio's gotten really good there. You know, our screening rails run through Appfolio. Um because everyone views this as I it's not existential but like because of the regulatory environment especially in Southern California if you rent to the wrong or you put someone in fraudulently it'll take you know months yeah to a year to get someone out. So tons of companies out there doing that. The um the other thing we talked about earlier is you just IoT. So, Smart Rent, that was a company that was it was our chief technology officer, started that business.
Wow. Um, Rentley was very early. All these companies started single family, but now they're like, yeah, they're serving the apartment business. Um, so that's uh big. And then I think the key will be over the next few years though is um the data's got to be good because the AI is only going to be good as
as good as your data is. And so if you think of the like reams of data my company or you know Grim who's larger than mine are gathering um everything I'm hearing in the industry right now is like get your data ready over the next couple years cuz the winners and losers are going to smoke out in propt tech. Totally. But if your data is not right, you're not going to be able to take advantage of all that software.
So that's interesting to me and I think about data as well because when I'm valuing property there's certain steps that I do when I'm valuating a property, right? I have to understand the comps. I have to understand where the market rents are. I have to feel confident in my assumptions. How am I going to get there? All that stuff. And I have to come to an owner and say, "Hey, here's where I think the value is based upon everything that I know and all of my conversations and data with people." you have a very unique advantage because you have all the rents for so many of these properties which my mind goes to okay if I know where the rents are then I know I have enough data to figure out where values are for these properties. Is there any sort of like play there
I mean clearly people have been using rent data to make investment decisions since the beginning of time. I think the risk the asterisk on this and you're seeing in the market right now I think fraud and there's a bunch of noisy stuff going on on this is yeah you could potentially have enough information to price take very well. I mean, you would be able to have inside information that um is not public information, but information that you could use to inform decisions. And so, I think from a, you know, zip code perspective, we're able to say, "Hey, here's what we think average rents will be based on, you know, this property type." But it's still, as you said, it's like street to street. you're still not going to be able to get I guess if you owned enough buildings on that street you could then
um got it but similar like when you're using when we're all using whether it's GPT or any AI now they're really good at giving you these like bumpers and ranges but I always find that like it doesn't fully land the plane the question will be does it like I don't know in two years from now do they have that
street level yeah it's the visualiz ization too of the finishes and what people want and the layouts and like you know apartment layouts actually matter in terms of what you're going to get for rent and is there enough parking is it too cramped like there's a lot of these weird things that are humans what they desire and what they're willing to pay for that you have to take into account in terms
of what you can get for something and what was interesting and we learned this in single family is when you're buying something let's say you're buying a 12unit apartment building let's use something small Yeah, they're and you're competing with four other buyers and you're purely cash flow focused. It's a return. It's a cash flow instrument. There could be three other buyers that have some other non-economic interest in pursuing the property and they're going to pay more than you will because he owns the building next door or she is a nanny and has a nanny business that runs through it. she's going to rent three of the units to her her nannies or what. Yeah. And so that was the challenge with single families like we were looking at as this is as the company evolved and we were in the later cycles of
for yeah we've acquired eight small management companies which has been about 50% of our growth okay it's the organic growth that other half that I'm most proud of because anyone can go acquire management. Yeah. Overpay for, you know, cash flow instruments and screw them up. The organic growth is the validation in the marketplace like, okay, we're we're doing good work. I think I think our company's 25 30,000 units in three to five years um of fee. I do think we'll have an investment management practice at some point in our evolution, but I want to be the best at this niche. You know, they What's that saying? Like niches make riches. Yeah. Yeah. We get calls all the time to do HOA or commercial based on our commercial backgrounds. We're just like laser focused at this one piece of the
puzzle. I think in today's market, people have said, "Well, how have you scaled?" You know, we've been at it a little over five years and like, "How have you scaled this business like this?" And I think there's so much clutter in the market and so many operators are trying to be this emporium where they want to manage it, they want to buy it, they want to sell it. They, you know, they want to provide a bunch of services. We want to be laser focused on just this thing. We're never going to sell property. We're just, we're not going to finance you. Yeah. It's just this piece. Yeah. Um and I think that's really helped us cut through the
clutter. Got it. to know where you need to focus because focus is the the biggest thing that distracts people from growing something really incredible is shiny object syndrome, right?
you and we have as I said we get pitched to do commercial or by HOA management here to four it's like I think we're in the like third inning of what we're doing. I get this question a lot of, oh, are you just rolling this up? Like, this is a classic PE. You're just going to roll this up and sell it. And I want to say with certainty, no. Like, I had a great job. Yeah. I worked for this large high street and um this is legacy work. Like, I love this business. I love being home in Southern California. And I just I spent eight years on a plane building. Yeah. old co and um my daughter's just starting college and wow you know my dream is that some one of my kids or all of them could be a part
of our company someday I know running a business is not all sunshine and roses so like what are the things that actually keep you up at night what are the things that you have to worry about growing a big property management company like
this yeah someone told me years ago um there's a difference between building a business and an enterprise and I think when you run a you're like there all the time and you're you know versus an enterprise runs with other people. It has systems and controls. I think the biggest challenge for me is like at our size I can't know every owner interaction. I can't know every resident interaction, the mistakes that get made and they do. It's a tough business as you say. Yeah. And so the thing that keeps me up at night is like what are those like basic things or you know I can say with certainty our company in the time we've been talking today we've made a dozen mistakes. Yeah. We've done 50 things really well too. So so it's those you know those how do
you get better and I think it's just that you know this is the torture of being an entrepreneur that you just have this burning desire to get it right every day and um we're quick to recover. I think we do a good job at the outset. Any experienced apartment owner knows it's not a game of perfect in real estate operations for multif family. M um and I think we're pretty transparent about that. It's really about trust. And so that's the things that keeps me up at night is that and then risk management as you said in today's world in our markets they're you know highly you know there's tons of legislations every day and so um you know those things uh just how do you maintain risk management? Yeah, we learned a lot of this from
Yeah. your previous stuff. What um what do you think's the most unobstructed or how do I phrase this? What part of real estate is the needs the most disruption or where's the biggest opportunity?
You know, I just think back to um there's an ocean of real estate services businesses that support what we all do. And so I think any real estate services, whether it's HVAC, plumbing, cleaning, I mean, these are like business lines that no one wants to do. They're not sexy. You and I didn't get our triple MBAs to like, you know, I didn't ever foresee that I'd be doing what I do today. I love it. But the point is um there's this giant chasm between the halves and the have nots in the ecosystem that supports multif family of apartments across the country candidly and the tech companies and prop tech get all the headlines because they're getting high equity multiples on
I laugh at our business. I talk to our head of maintenance about this all the time. I'm like I think the highest margin opportunity across my whole business
Yeah. And I look at like the cost of labor to deliver that. And granted, that business has its own challenges, but for sure it's a people business, but it's such a like
for sure. But I I totally get what you're saying. And I think the reason why is because there's different there's like three different buckets of businesses that you can have. Um the software business, right? You build it once and it's infinitely scalable basically, right? Then there's businesses that need capital and then you have tech in there that's as well. And then you have the people aspect which is if you have all three of those then you have a business that's very hard to run because nothing in those can be automated to a level that's almost like handsoff which is why software trades at such high multiples because private equity will pay for something that's automated. What I think you were mentioning and where the opportunity is is those built those businesses that are so they're people driven right and they're hard to scale without the addition of people.
So then you become a people business and running that infrastructure that then provides the service to other other other businesses to get paid, right? And so I think if you can build uh uh that those rails, that infrastructure to be able to run a people first business like plumbing, like you know, any of that stuff business. Yeah. But then then there's opportunity there. But I think it's it's hard when you have to manage people and not
software. Totally. And the other element is just look for durable recurring cash flow because you're willing to deal with people stress. If you have this again instrument that has durable recurring cash flow so you can focus your energy there. Yeah. If you think of like building a tech business, you basically like sinkhole how much I can see through years and years with the hope certificate that it becomes. Mhm. So, you're taking a different type of risk. Back to what we talked about at the outset. Um, so I'm willing to take a bit more people risk because I have a very stable base of revenue. Got it. It's a pretty reliable business from a cash flow perspective.
Yeah. Authenticity. Yeah. If you're real and your team knows at the middle in the middle of the night if there's a problem, you're going to be there as fast as you can with them on that wall, as we say. It's rocket fuel. Like, it's unstoppable. We have a little over 200 employees and my job every day is like how do I how do I influence them and and get um that desire and passion and and ownership ownership that that thank you. How do I get that to trickle down to an on-site manager who works part-time and lives at a 40 unit? And the way you do it is through as many messaging forms as you can. And so we do we do I'll
give you an example. We do a monthly all hands call. And that's not unique. But after five years I do you know it's like 60 of them. Like there are days where I'm like now they're all hands. Uhhuh. But I always think about we start our all hands with our new associates and I always think like okay it's not it's not his 60th it's his first and it's not her 60th it's her second all hands and that is my cue like I've got to show up and I've got to bring it because Sarah she's never heard this they don't know anything about Marco or fair they got to feel it and when they feel it guess what the the other it really happens the Another piece that's really fun to watch is done right, culture runs itself. And what I mean by that is
when I see a third-year manager and they're onboarding someone and they're training them and they have that conviction, it sounds almost like as if I'm talking to them, then you're like, "This
In the business. Yeah. I love that. Um, you know, if you're successful as an entrepreneur, your goal is to like slowly remove the well-defined as like in the business risk. Yeah. But in the early days, you know, you wear every hat, right? And what's fun is as you evolve and if you have success with a company that you've built, little by little, you get out of the things that you did. I'll give you a quick example. We hired our HR person. We were about 50 employees and I remember I wrote her offer letter and I sent it and I thought to myself, I'll never write another offer letter and I haven't had to write one since because the day that she joined, she now works that and she has a team of people that do HR related things. Sure. And so little by little you get out
of the day-to-day and in the business. The trick is then you have to quickly pivot to strategic planning. So we'll call that on the business. So I'm trying to spend 80% of my time on the business. So I'm in long-term strategic planning, making sure that our executive management team is organized properly, making sure that they're motivated. The other pieces I said HR I'll stay there because I believe for us to get from where we are today to let's say 4X um over the next 3 to 5 years like it will come down to people, process and tech and our ability to um standardize as much of that as we can with as you said people. Um so I spend the majority of my time in the field. today when I head back, I'm gonna hit a property.
And it's just that's where it's at, I think. And you have to they have to feel the um energy that you have for your business. And um and then you have to be loyal to them. We pay more than anyone I believe in our area for the best team. You know, you look at the best companies. I want to be the New York Yankees, the Irvine company of Yeah. of this niche. And to do that, you know, my payroll's higher.
Just that way. Um, wait, you have to pay well, pay good, you know, value, but it's a small industry. Like when people see that I'm building a modern scaled, you know, fee management business across Southern California and it has momentum and energy. They want to be a part of it. I saw this at Buchanan Street. We did a really good job there. You know, Robert Brunswick, who founded that company, used to talk about MO and he's like, once you get MO, it it it rips. And we got MO at Waypoint.
goes. I think we're just starting to hit the J curve of our growth. The challenge is I don't want to grow for growth sake. Yeah. Um, you need the infrastructure to make sense. Totally. And you know, it's funny as of the last like two or three years, I'll get owners say, "Well, you're too big. I wanted a midsize or you guys grow, you've grown so much." And I think to myself, well, isn't that what what you would want? Like I never want to call a contractor like, "Hey, I'll be there tomorrow morning." It's like, you want to call a contractor who's like, "Hey, I can get to your project because I'm busy because I'm good at what I do." Yeah. And so, um, you know, if I didn't think I could, um, serve a customer at a high level, then I wouldn't take on the
Yeah. What's the minimum that you guys make makes sense for you to take on building size, you know? Um, 16 units and up just cuz it has 6 uh 16 just cuz you have on-site Yeah. You know, Got it. personnel, which our operating model is really geared to that. Mhm. But then we have a host of other owners who maybe have 30 forplexes. Um that's a great owner for us too because they have critical mass and we're able to staff that in a way with them. Got it. Uh we do manage about 900 single family homes. So I haven't haven't been able to fully
No, mostly mostly midsize smalls people have you know five to 25 houses. I think if you think about Fairrove, let's say you and I in partnership owned 300 units. We have day jobs. Our needs are far too great for a neighborhood management company, someone who manages maybe 500 doors. But in the same way, if we called Greyar, JLL, one of the bigs, they're not even taking our call. And so Fair's in that giant white space.
It's a very underserved. Yeah, 100%. I mean, you don't know how many people and owners I talk to who they're like, "Yeah, I've had four property managers and like I don't really like any of them, you know? They just like it's a very tough business to be in." And it's the only reviews you get on property management companies are the people who are pissed off. Like if there's very rare property management, if you go on Google, that are like three stars and above.
It's impos like which is I'm sure a very tough thing to be able to have to do because your recognition and brand if you're getting organic traffic is a lot of times coming from the internet.
yeah, and think of, you know, old co's 80,000, right? So, you could you could be fantastic for 81,000 500, but and in in my business today, it's the same. Like, I deliver really good services for more than 10,000 units every day, but we're not perfect. Yeah. If 20 of them are upset, what's Yeah, it's very hard.
If uh if you were 22, right, you just graduated college and you want to get into real estate, you don't know where, what vertical, anything like that. Where would you go and why?
Yeah, I would learn operations because, you know, everyone says, well, I want to be in developer or I want to be in private equity and build these, you know, I want to be on the investment side, but no one's ever or I want to be a developer, right? No one's ever said, "I'm going to develop a 120 apartment 120 unit apartment building and I want it to be vacant." Like, just keep it vacant. That's my business model. Yeah. I'm going to build it. It'll be beautiful. And as I said earlier, the business really starts once you close. And so I would spend I mean, you could learn more working for a company like mine in a year. Literally, you would only need to be there a year or so. Um, so I've learned real estate operations quickly and then simultaneously learn you have to learn the language
of how real estate capitalizes. So I was fortunate as I said to be with companies that I got that in my toolbox uh in my 20s. I just think of a career I tell my kids this. I think in your 20s you want to try everything. In your 30s you want to leg into something that you're interested in that you can develop some subject matter expertise in. in kind of your mid to late 30s and then into your 40s and beyond. That's where you're going to really convert all that subject matter expertise into, you know, outcomes, whether those be building a business, making money, whatever your goal
is. Got it. And when you talk about operations, what's so one, you could go work for a property management company, but let's say you're um you don't have the luxury of having a really good property management company for you to join. Is there other places tools? Like it seems like to me that a lot of the operations side you kind of have to be in it. Yeah. Right. There's a lot of nuances to it. Is there any way someone can learn um the operations side of things? Cuz I'll give you an example like I know how to value a property in the city of Los Angeles like the back of my hand. Like it's I can do this in you know 30 minutes. I I'll tell you where values are. However, if you had to come to me and say, "Hey, um, I need to renovate this whole building, right?
I need you to go find my flooring vendor. I need you to go find what faucets I need to put on here, the switches that go on. You know, I could figure it out, but like I'd have to do a little bit of research. I I I've never personally needed to flip a unit or find all the vendors and stuff for what I do in my job. It doesn't doesn't affect the ability for me to go and sell and market a building. I can learn it but I have to go almost do that right to to have that operational expertise. How do you uh how would you learn operations if you can't do the operations or is it even possible?
Yeah, I would find find that midsize owner, that midsize operator in your area. And the cool thing about my view is the apartment industry is like this is a team sport. Like no one's got it figured out. Yeah, think about it for sure. So fragmented and so just all the attributes we've been talking about. So I would just so the apartment industry is very giving in that way. Um and we all need each other. So I'd reach out to as many midsize operators in my area and I would ask them if I could be an unpaid intern. Um because you know if they're mid-stream on a building, they need help and um that's how I would learn it. But then the other piece is um there is something to be said about the institutional side that is unique and
um you know brokerage gives you exposure some exposure to capital markets. It could give you exposure obviously the transaction side which um that's very important. You need both similar to what I described about my management company. They're kind of opposite like they're two sides of your
I don't think you can go wrong with um pursuing one first like learning uh how real estate transacts first versus how real estate operates second. I don't think it matters which okay but I do think you need to learn
both. You need to understand it. Last thing um do you think cuz once once invitation Blackstone you guys started buying a bunch of homes people were like private equity taking over right the big dogs they're coming in it's going to be a big conglomerate. uh that hasn't happened. It's less than 3% 4% of the ownership, right? Do you see that continuing to where private equity starts gobbling up more and more of these properties because the efficiencies and systems or do you think that it'll always be a bifurcated market that anyone from someone who just graduated who wants to go and start owning stuff to the 85year-old can can pick up a new building?
I don't think you'll see enough um progress in the systems and the application of operating um processes to make it now okay great I can go buy 500,000 houses I don't think that will help you at the margins for things that you own. I think the only thing that will create um a meaningful portfolio um increase would be another event like yeah if there's another GFC I'm sure if it's progress invitation there's tons of inst large players they could go buy another 100,000 homes but the market opportunity would have to be there so I think That will be the limiter. I think it will stay.
Yeah, I think it will stay fairly fragmented. If you look at as we're talking, Invitation Homes has like bumped around the 80,000 for a better part of 5 years. Yeah.
So, I think that tells you Well, and the the other thing with that and the reason your rent is going up is not because of Blackstone. Like that pisses me off. I'm like, there's it doesn't make any sense, right, that 2% of the market would drive up 100% of the full market rent. Like, that is not how this business works. And it frustrates me because then that downstream effect offends affects what the regulators do to make these law changes that affect everyone and like so much more negatively than they understand and imagine, right? And I get protecting the tenant and I think there's something to be said that but like the Blackstone
is not the reason your rent goes up. Not at all. It's because you have a sophisticated owner who like is seeing their expenses go up and they think, "Well, I have to correlate it to increase rent." I I think the word is fear. So often I'll be working with a midsize client of ours and they're like, "Well, I don't want to raise the rent." And I'm like, "But Mr. Smith, like your property insurance is up. Like all your maintenance expenses are up. like we have to raise a rent to maintain the purity of of cash flow and they're fearful of it and I think um that you know does keep somewhat of a lid for midsize operators or small operators I think the market likes that generally but a larger company um knows this to be true like you have to increase rents and expenses have been increasing
So, Marco, thank you very much. This was great. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'm excited to see what you can do. 30,000 apartments in 5 years. I love it. 2030, man. It's going to be coming back. I love it.