Listen to the Podcast Here: Podcast Episode by Jason Lee – Premiered August 19, 2021
What You’ll Learn in the Podcast:
● Advice about how to learn about investing in a market and a city that is new to you
● What Leland’s first investment in San Diego was and why he decided to buy his first property
● The difference between having a broker underwrite your expenses versus an investor
● A breakdown of what an unleveraged cash yield is and what you need to know about them
● Leland’s favorite part of working within real estate in the San Diego area
● Mistakes Leland made when first investing in the San Diego area
● How having a deep understanding of a building’s costs, and how to reduce them, is a skill you gain overtime and can be a complete game changer (plus some tips on how to do this)
● Tips for how to always be learning while on your real estate investing journey.
Summary and Highlights:
Building Yourself & Becoming Well-Connected in Real Estate
As anyone in the real estate industry knows, the old saying “it’s all about who you know” rings true. In this podcast, Jason Lee discusses with San Diego real estate investor, Leland Weisband, the different elements of success in the real estate industry. Weisband details the path he took to become successful. The podcast discusses his challenges and growth opportunities he stumbled upon along the way. Growing up on the east coast in Pennsylvania, Weisband eventually ventured out to the west coast where he now resides in San Diego, California.
According to Weisband, learning how to invest in your local market all comes down to making valuable connections with brokers. He speaks on how important it is to be realistic with costs and how much things end up costing in the long run. From his years in real estate, he has accumulated a variety of skills such as loan documents, equity, proper pricing and more.
His advice to young real estate investors is to learn as much as you possibly can in real estate, even if it’s not directly applicable to your investments right now. The reason for this is because someday each young investor will have to venture out on their own, and when that day comes, these skills will prove to be very useful.
For People Wanting to Acquire Properties In the San Diego Area
Weisband admitted he probably overpaid for deals when he first started investing in San Diego. This is something that typically occurs when an investor is unfamiliar with a market and does not have strong broker connections. This reinforces how critical local connections are.
Weisband highlighted how the previous owner of a property was able to get maintenance services such as trash removal for much less than he was paying. This prompted him to go back to the drawing board and figure out how this could be so. This type of analysis builds your critical thinking skills and enables you to come up with a solution for your issues much faster.
Growth & Experiences in Weisband’s Career
Key Points
Weisband discusses the time he purchased a building of studio apartments with his partner. Each studio apartment was around 500 square feet, making them slightly larger than average. Weisband had the innovative idea to turn them into one-bedroom apartments instead, putting in roughly $30k of work per unit to achieve this. Not only was this deal profitable for Wesiband and his partner, but it also gave him fundamental experience in purchasing and renovating.
Weisband pointed out how important it is to analyze a deal before investing. For example, if an investor from Orange County comes to San Diego to buy a property, it’s likely they are going to end up significantly overpaying compared to a local investor. Essentially, this means that if an investor is called in from far away, it’s because the broker couldn’t get anyone to invest at the rate they wanted locally due to a poor deal structure or low profitability. He emphasized the importance of building relationships with local brokers and knowing the area well. This helps you identify and avoid risky deals.
Episode 11: Building Your Career with Real Estate Investor Leland Weisband
Watch the Podcast | Read the Transcript
Transcript
00:01
[Intro]
Welcome to the multifamily millionaire podcast. The show that interviews, multimillionaire real estate investors and top producers and the real estate industry. If you’re looking to create passive income and achieve financial freedom so that you can do what you want whenever you want, you’re in the right place. Our goal is to simplify and make real estate investing easy for you. For more information, you can find us at www.JLM.realestate.
00:30
Jason Lee: Hi everyone. So we have Leland Weisband joining us on the show. How’s it going Leland?
00:34
Leland Weisband: Good. How you doing?
00:35
Jason Lee: I’m good. I’m good. Thanks for taking the time. Just want to take a second just to interview you and how people hear your story, because I think it’s a pretty cool one. Just to start, would you mind just telling everyone how you got started in real estate and kind of what your background is?
00:50
Leland Weisband: Sure. Yeah and once you college to major in business thought, that was always interesting. When I got the Lehigh went to Lehigh back on the east coast, I’m from outside Philadelphia. They started a real estate program and I’ve got an uncle who is a real estate investor in Pittsburgh’s always done pretty well. So I figured that might be an interesting path to take. Joined the real estate program, did pretty well. They put me in touch with an internship in New York, I guess it was started. The real estate program was started by a bunch of people in New York guy named Mark Holiday, [01:25 inaudible] Green, [01:27 inaudible] or CVRE and our sister Darcy at the other one, there were some big backers.
There was a lot of people there that kind of, you know, really wanting to get the program off the ground. So in result, that kind of led me to a pretty good internship on the acquisitions desk with SL Green. Graduating then shortly thereafter, in 2009 the market kind of went to hell. So after a little bit, I ended up working at SL Greens mortgage REIT affiliate, a company called Grammercy capital, where we did a bunch of bridge lending’s, which at that point it was mostly workouts, restructurings, you know, all the fun stuff. Yeah, So that’s the first bit of it, I suppose.
02:11
Jason Lee: Nice and fast forward to today. What do you do now?
02:14
Leland Weisband: Right now I am trying to buy mostly multifamily, but just to in general, kind of real estate assets in and around San Diego. So far, we’ve got seven buildings about 70 units and, you know, currently adding more through the new ADU legislation, everything else, but still looking to expand the portfolio.
02:37
Jason Lee: Awesome. And how long ago did you get started in the San Diego market?
02:41
Leland Weisband: Just over four years. So moved here from New York in April of 2017 probably spent six months getting to know the market a little bit. I’d never really spent much time in San Diego. So the whole backstory is I wanted to invest. I wanted to buy multifamily. I figured I was going to put roots down wherever I did it and I could do it almost anywhere. So I might as well go somewhere really nice, but that meant San Diego, that meant a brand new market. So once I got here, I started trying to learn the markets. I met with, I think anybody and everybody I possibly could to, you know, just ask them basic questions. Like, you know if you were to buy here, what would you buy? How would you go about it? You know, does multi-family make sense? And then, you know, after about six months, I probably started putting in bids and then probably about a year in, I think I got my first deal under contract.
03:35
Jason Lee: Wow. That’s awesome. In those first six months, what were you kind of doing to do your due diligence in this market for anyone who’s looking to maybe get into a new market and figure out the ins and outs and see what the risk thresholds are and everything?
03:48
Leland Weisband: Well first it was, you know, just getting to learn the neighborhoods. I think multifamily has really kind of a block by block neighborhood, by neighborhood type of investment. So you really have to get out there and understand what you’re looking at. So it was a lot of walking around, biking through neighborhoods, just learning, you know, what’s where I’d want to be, where, you know, I saw value in owning kind of B plus C plus B plus, you know, whatever it is, multifamily units and where I thought people might want to live. And then it was taking every single meeting you possibly could. And then meeting with every broker, every investor, every debt provider, everybody, you know, architects, engineer, whoever you can meet with and just kind of talk to them and see what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, how they’re doing it and just pick their brain as much as possible.
04:42
Jason Lee: Got it. And what were some of the first challenges you face when you were first getting started in real estate here in San Diego?
04:49
Leland Weisband: Well probably just learning the market, really understanding, you know, where pricing was, what made sense, where you could realistically underwrite rents. And then there’s obviously a point of getting people to take you seriously. When you put in a bid, obviously, you know, as a broker yourself, you have two bids, both for the same price you’ve worked with one guy 10 times and some other guys new telling you, we can definitely close. You know, you’re probably going to go to the more sure thing. So it is a lot of getting in front of people, a lot of really getting people to take you seriously as an investor. And as someone who can actually close the deal.
05:28
Jason Lee: That’s huge because if you have no track record, it’s hard to have a broker take you seriously and kind of put your offer to the top, right?
05:36
Leland Weisband: Especially being younger too, it doesn’t help things. So yeah, you do as much as you can there and, you know, hope to get one. And I think once you get one, it becomes easier. Brokers call you more. Now that they’ve seen, Hey, this guy can write a check or pull the money together or whatever it might be, or he can actually get that. Or he has, he has the ability to close once you kind of prove that out gets somewhat easier.
06:00
Jason Lee: Yeah. That’s great advice. What kind of was can you just tell me more about your first deal and what it is, what building and how you got it?
06:07
Leland Weisband: Sure. It’s actually one of your colleagues Ben [06:11 inaudible] sold it to me, it’s a 3939 7th avenue. It’s right in Hillcrest, just north of a university right across from kind of the whole foods there. So he had been marketing this for a bit, you know, and went and toured it a few times. You know, he basically told me, Hey, I think you can get the deal at this number. We stared at it a bit. We kind of did a bunch of research. Does this make sense? Do we like being in this market? What can we do to these units?
You know, they are studios, they were pretty old. And we figured, is there a way to update these to actually make them they’re pretty large for studios, about 500 square feet. So we said, we can actually renovate these things the right way, open them up a little bit. It’ll be like junior one bedrooms instead of kind of large, disconnected studios. So we bought it, we put about 30 grand into each unit kind of getting the thing back in shape and, you know, we released it pretty well.
07:08
Jason Lee: How much you buy for at the time?
07:11
Leland Weisband: It was 220 a door. So 220 a door we’re in for like 250, I guess, which feels pretty good. And you know, you and I were talking about this and if I talked about it every time recently, you’ve called me and tried to sell me something that’s the market seems to pricing seems to have gotten pretty aggressive lately. So that same two 50 a door is worth 300 or whatever it is today. And that’s simply just, I think the market being hot.
07:39
Jason Lee: Got it. And you were telling me you’re having trouble underwriting these deals and helping them make sense. When you were underwriting deals in 2017 and 2018 are you using the same formulas today that you used to use three to four years ago.
07:51
Leland Weisband: Mostly what I really try to focus on is an unlevered cash yield, what I can get these things to. And some people say 150 basis points wide of where that’s trading. You know, I’ve heard other people just say, you know, if you get to a six, you’ll probably be fine. And I try to be kind of somewhere in there, but the only thing different is I think I’m being more real, you know, having bought a handful of buildings, having run some of them for almost three years now, I think I’m being more realistic on the expense side and you know, what these things actually cost to run versus what my best guess is or what the last guy did. I think I have a much better understanding of what my cost structure is. So I think I’m a little bit more conservative on the expense side, which I think also makes it a little bit tougher to put capital out when the more, you know, the tougher it is to do a deal sometimes.
08:48
Jason Lee: For sure. And I feel like when a broker underwrites expenses versus an investor, it’s two totally different things. They’ll make the water bills and the electrical bills seem much lower than they actually are and landscaping, etc. So I’m sure you can speak to that too.
09:02
Leland Weisband: Yeah, no, I think it’s, it’s really important to do all your own work and you know, talk to a management company, and talk to whoever you’re going to have actually run the thing and say, do these numbers make sense? Can you guys operate under this cost structure, especially when it comes to salary repairs and maintenance, all of that stuff, because I think each company is different. They all run them differently, whether it’s having somebody on site or being more centralized or having roving maintenance tax or tax or dedicated ones. And I think it’s really, there’s a lot of questions to ask there and a lot of ways to figure out, okay, this last guy ran it for $1,500 a unit, is that a cost structure that’s even doable for us. And I think it’s asking those questions and figuring that out because of, you know, if you have perfect numbers, you can at least make a decision. You can sit there and say, I know what the expenses are going to be. I know what I think I can do revenue wise and you can at least have, you ask yourself, is this the right, You know, is this the right return? Instead of putting something on paper that shows a good return, but it’s not actually what you’re going to get at the end of the day. I think the better information you have always allows you to make better decisions.
10:13
Jason Lee: That’s huge. And going back to real quick for a lot of people probably have no idea what it means. What’s an unlevered cash yield.
10:22
Leland Weisband: Every dollar you have to put in whether it’s debt or equity. So, you know, whatever the purchase price is, basically add that to whatever renovation dollars you’re expecting to spend. So if you’re going to buy it for 3 million, you’re going to put half a million bucks in, well, your basis is 3.5 million, and then you take whatever your NOI is divided by that and that’s your unlevered cash yield.
10:45
Jason Lee: Got it. So you buy a property for 3 million, put 500,000 into it. So you’re in it for three and a half million. And you do the, your after income minus the market expenses divided by the…
11:01
Leland Weisband: You know, $175,000, right. That would be 5% unlevered yield. You’d say that could be interesting, but I really hope that’s closer to six. So maybe you say, or instead of three five, maybe we’ll spend, instead of buying it for three maybe we want to buy it for two nine or to eight or whatever makes you feel better about the returns.
11:22
Jason Lee: Got it. I mean, that’s a very realistic return. I feel like, is that what you use today, I feel like that’s reasonable.
11:29
Leland Weisband: Try to get there, but again, it’s part of it is using realistic expenses versus broker expenses. I think every broker would sell me a five cap deal that you look at it and you realize if you look at actual numbers, it’s probably closer to a four and they’re not counting closing costs. They’re not counting, you know, any sort of transaction fees. They’re not counting renovation costs, whatever else. So it starts kind of eating away at that a bit.
11:57
Jason Lee: So it sounds like if you’re a broker, you really got to know your expenses, If you want to have a good reputation in this market. Because I feel like if an investor looks at a deal and he tell him it’s a 5 cap, but it’s actually a four cap after doing his homework, you kind of just wasting their time.
12:09
Leland Weisband: Yeah, I think that’s true. I mean, I don’t think any good investor is just taking what a broker tells them and saying, you know what, this guy, this is exactly what the financials are going to look like. I think there’s a big problem if you do that. I mean, I think the broker’s job is to just get the right types of deals in front of the right types of clients. And, you know, Hey, I’ve got this $40 million deal. It’s probably not for this group of guys, but this other group would really be interested and it’s getting the deal in front of those guys versus, you know, I’ve got a $2 million deal, The $40 million guys have no interest, but this whole other group would. And I think for you guys, it’s getting in front of the right people and the right people should again know what their cost structure is, know how they’re going to manage it. Know what returns are acceptable to them and kind of bid on it based on that. So I think if you’re a broker trying to jump to the other side of the table I think the key then would be, don’t believe what you’re putting on paper and to actually take a step back and say, no, now I’m actually investing my money in this. I need to make the adjustments that I think most logical buyers would as they kind of look at whatever numbers you prepared.
13:23
Jason Lee: That’s a great answer. I mean, the last year and a half, I shifted from being just a broker to also investing in property myself. And I feel like when I do the underwriting now, it’s just so much different. And that’s kind of shifted how I talk to investors now, because I feel like if you give them the right numbers in the beginning and are honest with it, and you know what you’re doing, I think just kind of just wastes a lot of the time that they spend on their own, but a hundred percent what you said is correct. I think any investor should know what their numbers are and know what the market rents are and know what the market expenses are. So it’s really good. Just shifting gears, What has been your best experience with real estate in the San Diego market overall?
13:57
Leland Weisband: Yeah, I think it’s mostly the people out here. You know, like I mentioned, when I came here from New York, I spent a lot of time meeting people, you know, getting to know other people in the industry. And for the most part, I think everybody is extremely helpful, extremely good people working in this industry and extremely friendly. I mean, so for 40 plus people to take my call, talk to me, meet me for lunch, tour me through markets. You know, with no expectation of anything in return, it was just, I think it’s a pretty small group of people that are all relatively nice. We’ve done business together for years. And it’s, I think that was kind of the biggest surprise.
14:40
Jason Lee: Gotcha. So the people have been the biggest thing for you that kind of kept you in this market. Have you kind of started looking at other markets or have you kind of just stayed only in San Diego?
14:50
Leland Weisband: Not so much. I mean, like I was saying before, I think, especially in the multi-family side, I think for retail or some other asset types, I may look elsewhere, but as far as multifamily, I think it’s really important to know exactly where you’re investing. Until you have the scale where your EQR, Blackstone or whoever it might be, where the buildings you’re buying [15:14 inaudible] and you can, yeah, If you buy in Phoenix, you don’t need to know what streets matter or not because you’re buying right in the center. I think until you’re at that scale, I think it really makes sense to understand. And a lot of it is also, you know, if there’s a deal from Phoenix or wherever Scottsdale, that makes it to me in San Diego with somebody telling me this is a great deal, in my opinion, that means everybody that has any clue in Phoenix or Scottsdale probably already passed on it. And now they’re looking for somebody out of market to pay a higher price I think anybody local would. And if you see that here with, you know, investors coming down from orange county and whatever else, paying numbers that you and I think don’t make any sense. And you realize that most people in San Diego probably said it didn’t make sense. And that’s how it ended up at a market a little bit further away. So I think it’s really important to be on the ground to have the relationships, you know, to know the brokers, to have looked at tons and tons of deals and to really know what you’re looking at.
16:18
Jason Lee: Yeah. And that’s a really good advice. I think the worst thing you can do is just buy up a deal out of state off LoopNet, right. Because that deal has been shot by every broker in the county.
16:30
Leland Weisband: Definitely. And I think everybody, there’s always somebody out there smarter than you that knows something you don’t. And it just goes back to, you know, and you just talked about diligence. It’s really understanding your numbers, really putting projections that you feel are real in front of you and realizing that somebody else may know something that you don’t know, and that’s the reason they’re not buying it for that price and really trying to figure out what that might be.
16:55
Jason Lee: Really good. Have you made any mistakes yourself when you first gone to this market in San Diego?
17:01
Leland Weisband: I mean, definitely. I probably overpaid for everything I bought, probably overpaid for things. I probably, you know, I think now, like I said, I’m getting better on the expense side, really drilling down, and knowing what my cost structure is. I think probably the biggest mistake is going through historical T12 for guys that may self-manage, or don’t have, you know, full blown management company in place and having a slightly different cost structure and not laying or not fully understanding exactly what mine will look like after purchasing the building. I think that is the biggest mistake.
17:40
Jason Lee: And what have you done to kind of learn from that and kind of fix what you’ve done?
17:45
Leland Weisband: Well, I think part of it is underwriting smarter going forward. I think part of it is really you’re drilling back into the numbers and saying, okay, why, you know, I had this conversation this week, why was the previous owner able to get his trash service for $1,100? And we’re paying $4,800 and you look at it. And unfortunately this one, the answer is [18:10 inaudible] been buying all the trash services in town and doubling rent, doubling their prices every other year, so that we couldn’t solve. But it’s really kind of drilling back down and saying, okay, how did they do this? How did they manage it with just this much, you know, repairs and maintenance or were they sandbagging the numbers and okay, did we miss something there? So it’s really, you know, and then kind of creating, at this point I’ve got enough units where I’m able to get a little bit more creative with the management company. They manage all my units together. So you can reach out to them and say, Hey, can we try this? Can we have one maintenance guy that does everything and outsource less and have a guy that can kind of handle more of it? Or can we reduce that and do much more outsource stuff? And work with my construction guys who I’ve developed a pretty good relationship with, as they’ve renovated almost all the units. Can I work with them to hopefully bring the pricing down and trying to figure out, you know, it’s an iterative process. We’re still going through all sorts of different ways to try to figure this out, but that’s been, you know, we talk about how it’s been tough to find stuff to buy. I’ve kind of switched gears a little bit, focus more on operations and try to kind of dig back into that stuff. You have to keep busy. Well, I think the market cools off a bit.
19:31
Jason Lee: Let’s dive deeper into that. So what are you doing to improve your operations right now? And how has your plan shifted since, you know, your underwriting isn’t, since deals aren’t making sense for you right now as much.
19:41
Leland Weisband: It’s just, I mean, it’s just kind of, as I’ve discussed, just working with a management company, trying to really drill into exactly how we’re doing maintenance calls, exactly what we’re rebidding vendors and saying, okay, this is trash bill seems like it’s high. Can we somehow let’s scour the market. Let’s find somebody else that can do it for a price that we like a little bit better. Let’s, just kind of death from a thousand cuts. It’s, you know, I don’t think in any of this stuff, there’s a real silver bullet, unless you flat out miss something. So it’s, how can we save a hundred bucks a month here or 200 there and let’s just see what we can do. Let’s see how efficient we can make this.
20:21
Jason Lee: Gotcha. And we’re also talking about how you’re starting to make ADUs or convert garage into ADU’s. So how has that process been? How has the how long has the process taking you versus how long it’s taking to convert them, the permitting process, etc.?
20:37
Leland Weisband: Well, I guess the new stuff and the new legislation that allows you to put these on the multifamily came out of kind of the beginning of the year. And then, you know, as it came out, we realized this is an interesting opportunity. And just using round numbers, I think it costs maybe a hundred grand to build one, give or take on what you’re actually doing. And then depending on what neighborhood you’re in, you’re at the beach, it’s worth 300, 400. If you’re somewhere else, maybe 200, 300, but there’s real value creation there. So we immediately, we said, this is a pretty interesting thing. Let’s go find some good groups to do it. We found a couple different architecture firms. Talk to them, talk through the process in a lot of detail. And what we’ve realized is it takes, you know, give, or take a year to get these things permanent, ready to swing a hammer, ready to start construction. So you kind of go through an initial planning stage. The city will give you generally a thumbs up and say, Hey, you’re on the right track. You should take this to, you know, get the MDMP drawings, get the construction drawings. Once you get those in, it’s probably going to take another five to seven months to get them approved. So we’re in the process of trying to get everything approved now, we’ve got almost 10 of these going up at various properties right now. So, the permitting process, my understanding is it takes about a year unless you’re subject to coastal commission. So if you’re along the water somehow it adds an extra year to the process. So at the water two years, outside of the water about a year, just to get these things permitted and then once they’re permanent, I don’t think it takes too long at all to actually build the units. You know, you’re talking three to six months, but the nice thing is you have a ton of lead time and a ton of time to be able to plan. So I think if done efficiently, you can kind of get these things up running kind of leased before that six months period.
22:32
Jason Lee: So for these ADUs or additional dwelling units of, are you doing a ground up because I’m doing a ADU right now where it’s a garage conversion on a property in north park. And the herding process took like, well, the plants look like two months and the permit process took me like three or four. It’s about to be done, are these ground up developments for you?
22:51
Leland Weisband: No, these are all garages and stuff. So it sounds like you moved through the process pretty quickly and maybe you got in there slightly before everybody else, or it’s possible that my architects are hedging a little bit, but it seemed from what I’m hearing from two of them that are working on stuff is, you know, the city’s pretty backed up with these. They’re still figuring out exactly what all the rules are and how to do it. So I think that’s actually really good news if you’re kind of seven months start to finish, you know, I’m budgeting in my head 12 months just cause everything always seems to take longer, but I mean, that’s good news if you’re able to get through so quickly.
23:30
Jason Lee: Got it. Yeah, because I remember people saying that the ground up takes a little longer, but hopefully yours get permitted soon. That’s going to be really exciting.
23:40
Leland Weisband: Yeah, no, it’ll be a busy year end, hopefully. We’re kind of trying to get all these things done.
23:45
Jason Lee: That’s awesome. So kind of closing out what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received and you know, either in your life or just in real estate?
23:53
Leland Weisband: I guess it’s not really advice. It’s more kind of what I’ve witnessed from other people. And that’s kind of just to always be learning, you know, when you’re right now, I think I’ve put a ton of different skills together from different jobs that I’ve had, whether it’s being on the debt side, working through loan documents, to work outs, to understanding how draw processes work to being on the equity side and learning how to price things or how to draft operating agreements or all sorts of things or raise capital or whatever you want to have it. And it’s like, you pick up little things here and there and you know, you wake up 5, 10 years down the road and realize, wow, I actually learned a lot and I can kind of mold this whole, all this knowledge I have into something. So it’s, you know, no matter how stupid or, you know, inconsequential something you’re working on is I think it’s important to kind of learn what it is, why you’re doing it, how you’re doing it because you know, someday, especially if you want to go out on your own, you’re going to end up doing everything. So I think it’s super helpful to really understand that stuff and to put the time in to learn it.
25:03
Jason Lee: It is really good, knowledge is power, right? So no matter what you’re always learning, you’re going to do well. What are some of your favorite books you’ve read recently?
25:11
Leland Weisband: What have I read recently? I’ve got, I read audible pretty much nonstop. I just finished the new Jeff Bezos book, which I thought was pretty interesting. I’m trying to think, they all kind of run together. Read an interesting one about a poker guy recently, this guy Stu Ungar. Let’s see, I ain’t even sure to be honest gambler story about Kirk Kerkorian pretty good. I don’t know. There’s definitely a ton of them. I have a strange app. I did one other podcasts like this and I was talking to the guy and I was looking at like, he asked me a similar question. I was looking at the recent stuff I read, one was like a book about beavers for whatever reason. It just seemed interesting. Like why would somebody write a book about beavers? And it’s a big book. I’m like, oh, it must be something, you know, I read a lot of nonfiction, a lot of stuff that I just find interesting, whatever ever kind of comes to mind. I need a new one right now. So if you have any suggestions, let me know.
26:09
Jason Lee: Nice. Yeah, for sure. I’ll suggest some, but for real estate, is there a book that kind of helped you kind of upswing your career in real estate or did not really have to do with reading really just more about meeting people and experience?
26:20
Leland Weisband: I think more about meeting people. I think the more interesting real estate books I’ve read is, you know, the power broker with Robert Moses. That’s an interesting one, especially learning how, you know, how he’s able to do so much and pretty much transform a city. And he wasn’t even an, he was sort of a developer himself. He was more of just a road builder and guy that could get things done. And then there’s, I mean I think a lot of them, I had, you know, a lot of training, whether it’s through college, through working at SL green, being on the debt side where I think I learned more about actual real estate and getting stuff done from writing credit memos or, you know, working closely with the guys that I was with. So I think that’s probably the best stuff and credit memos, if you can ever get ahold of them is to, you know, like for instance, Blackstone just bought a $1.45 billion portfolio here.
And there was probably, you know, I don’t even want to tell you how much work probably went in behind the scenes where you’ve got probably a credit memo, this thick explaining why they thought San Diego makes sense, how they were going to go about this investment, why they’re doing the investment, what risks they see of the investment, you know, it really shows you exactly and the whole point of these memos is to, you know, be able to kind of hand to the extent that you leave. You’re the guy that worked on this deal. You leave the company, you hand this thing to the next guy. It’s a Bible as far as how to look at this deal, what the guys thought they were going to get out of it and how it’s to be operated. And I think reading those, especially from investors like that, who really know what they’re doing are some of the most interesting things you can find, if you can ever get ahold of any. I think that’s the tough part being outside of the process. I don’t think you’ll ever find the one Blackstone did, unless, you know, some day you start working at Blackstone, but we’ll see.
28:08
Jason Lee: Where do you found some good ones like that. It’s really interesting.
28:11
Leland Weisband: I mean, it’s just from shops that I’ve worked at in the past kind of all internal documents that, you know, we’ve prepared or coworkers of mine who repaired, or people that worked there previously where you inherited deal and say, oh, what were they thinking here? Especially when you inherit one that’s gone sideways and you can kind of read what did they actually think was going to happen and, you know, what were they, what was the thought process behind this? It’s always pretty interesting.
28:38
Jason Lee: That’s awesome. Kind of closing things out here. Where can the audience learn more about you if you know, brokers want to send you deals, send you properties or just learn more about who you are and what you do.
28:47
Leland Weisband: Sure. I think the easiest way is to get in touch with me through email, which is Leland@bluestarmgmt.com, like management, you know, always happy to grab a coffee or, you know, take a phone call, or feel an email. So I think that’s probably the best way.
29:05
Jason Lee: Awesome. Well, Hey, thank you so much for your time at
Leland and yeah, we’ll close it out there. Really appreciate it.
29:09
Leland Weisband: Thank you. I appreciate it.
29:11
[Outro] Thank you for joining us on the multifamily millionaire podcast. The show that interviews multi-millionaire real estate investors and top producers in the real estate industry, we’re here to help you create passive income and achieve financial freedom so that you can do what you want whenever you want. We’ll catch you next time on the multifamily millionaire.
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