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Sept. 19, 2022

TLP34: Finding Opportunities in the Workforce Housing Spaces with Michael Becker

TLP34: Finding Opportunities in the Workforce Housing Spaces with Michael Becker

The world has changed over the past 2 years. When the COVID pandemic hit, people shifted from working in large office spaces into working from home, fully-remote. This has led to distortion in the real estate market as a whole. Most office spaces are left unoccupied thereby effectively reducing revenue. Limited Partners are left with a clear reason to focus on investing in housing which provides the space needed for working and living at the same time.

In today’s podcast episode we interview Michael Becker, Principal at SPI (Strategic Property Investment) Advisory, LLC. Today’s topics are focused on what excites Michael about the Texas real estate market, finding opportunities in workforce housing spaces, the biggest mistakes a Limited Partner can make and how to avoid it, and Michael’s advice for Limited Partners.

Read the FULL EPISODE SUMMARY HERE!

Transcript
JW:

The Limited Partner shares in the potentially outsized returns of a well planned and executed investment, but as a passive investor and has the maximum leverage on their most precious asset, their time. And that is why we're here together. 90% of the millionaires out there built their net worth with real estate. However, 0% of the billionaires are hands-on managing the real estate asset because there simply isn't enough time. My name is Jake Wiley and for the past 16 years, I've been investing in real estate and I've learned a thing or two. But the most important lesson is how to leverage the expertise and time of others to maximize your investment potential. Welcome to the Limited Partner podcast. Alright partners, welcome. This week, I'm joined by Michael Becker. So, he is the Principal at SPI Advisory. Michael, thank you so much for being here on the show.

MB:

I appreciate you having me. Thanks so much.

JW:

Michael, to set the stage for everybody, if you wouldn't mind, if you give a little bit of background, I know you've been with SPI for a while. But. Let's go back in time, let's learn about you and what you guys do.

MB:

Sure. Yeah. So I'm Michael Becker, I'm based here in Dallas, Texas. I run a company called SPI Advisory. My partner, Sean we have two offices. So, our head of our Dallas office, my partner's in Austin. So, we focus on Dallas, Fort Worth Austin, San Antonio. So three of the four majors in Texas. We're not big fans of Houston. We started buying apartments in about 2013. So what are we nine years into this thing now. Prior to that, I worked as a commercial real estate lender for a long time. Worked for the regional bank. Wells Fargo bought my bank. So spent several years, nearly a decade in the loaning on multifamily and really all commercial real estate asset classes. And the last, say four or five years of my banking career, I focus on doing a bridge product, basically coming out of the great recession, all the funk deals from, what are we like 14 years ago now? I can't believe it's been 14 years, but 13, 14 years ago, all those broken deals, I was making loans to fix humpty dumpty he put it back together and through that process, realized it was on the wrong side of all those deals. And that's when I went out and started our company. So we've done. 12 to 13,000 units over the last nine years, we own about 7,000 or so today. Went from workforce housing and it's scaled up into kind of Class A to Class A-. So, generally speaking, 20 years younger is what most of our portfolio consists of today. So it's been a heck of a good run.

JW:

That is a great run. Are you mostly based out of Texas? Is that where most of your assets are?

MB:

Yeah. So we're only in Dallas, Fort worth Austin, San Antonio. So only the three of the four majors in Texas. We are considering expanding outta state, but we've chosen to keep it pretty tight in the three markets that we're in have pretty large unit count. So there's about About 1,000,004 multifamily market rate apartment units across the three markets. So there's a, quite a bit of opportunity and there's quite a bit of transactional volume. So there's lots of pitches to look at, but eventually we'll expand outta the state. It's not quite yet.

JW:

Yeah. Texas is definitely one of the larger states. Here in South Carolina, we, we have to be a little bit more thoughtful in terms of our geography, but, I think probably the southeast of the US is probably equivalent to Texas in that regard.

MB:

Yeah.

JW:

But I guess as we think about it, you've seen a lot since 2013, I am sure. This past year has been exceptional. What gets you excited about the current market? What you're doing and what you're seeing these days?

MB:

I think here we are in the second quarter of 2022 and, with the last 12 months have been just an absolute on fire from both operational standpoints, as well as the investment sales market as well. What world would we think that we're gonna see, 14%, 15% average annualized rent growth. In a normal year, if we hit 3%, we're happy. So here we are at five X, what a year that would make me happy. And as we go into the best part of the leasing season right now, which is really from about March through July or so in Texas, it's, we're just towards the front end of the leasing season. So haven't seen any slow up in rental rate increases. So that's extremely exciting to of see all the, 7,000 plus units that we own today. All generally speaking are participating in that. So, that's real exciting. On the flip side, what's exciting, maybe not the best way is we're seeing some, inflationary pressures on our expenses. It's kind of the stuff that we have seen inflationary expenses for the last few years, which are your taxes, your insurance, and your payroll. So, in Texas taxes are property taxes are a lot bigger deal than some of the other places where it's of more capped in like Arizona. I know for example in Georgia are a lot more muted than say Texas on their real estate taxes. So that's a little bit of a headwind that we have here in Texas. And then you're seeing short-term interest rates start going up as well. So, we're seeing a rising interest rate environment. So everything's always changing. So it's making the debt a little bit harder where a few months ago, or six months ago, the debt was easy. Great rental rate inflation. And you hadn't seen expenses really pop up yet. Six months ago it was all gas and now you've seen a couple breaks coming in along the way. So just trying to stay on top of that and making sure we're doing the proper thing for the various investments that we're in. So just trying to stay on top of everything is exciting. I think, this, there are some great points, right? I was at the best ever conference couple weeks back, or may, maybe a month or so back now. And there's still a lot of enthusiasm about the multifamily market rank growth. I think people looking to do deals, but there was a little bit of an undertone or some skepticism about, the things that you mentioned.

JW:

Like rates increasing also inflation and really just finding the right people, as you look at the market, how are you changing the way due diligence, the way you're looking at deals, what looks like a good deal for you in this kind of current market where we're starting to see a pivot?

MB:

Everything's just tough now with the debt. Market's really what shifted say the last year to date 2022 has really shifted in particular when February kind of got here really started changing. 'Cause that's when the fed, if you go back to the fourth quarter, 2021, they were a lot more, doveish and then they got extremely hawkish on the pace of the short term interest rates going up, trying to tame inflation. So that's, if you look at the Ford SOFR curve, which SOFR Secured Overnight Funding Rate, which is what a lot of these loans ones are priced of. That's the index that took over from LIBOR. The Ford SOFR curve steepened dramatically. So if you put that in your underwriting model, you're gonna pay, higher interest rates than you would've a few months back. So that's making these deals a little tighter, and then when the lenders sizing these things is making them even that much more tighter 'cause the investment sales market has still been hot. We haven't seen any real appreciable pullback in pricing. So you're paying record pricing and your rates aren't record lows anymore, they're starting to bump up. So, it's making these deals extremely tight. So that's the biggest kind of challenge is trying how do you figure that out? And then, one of things we should probably talk about too is when a lot of these loans have been put on with bridge debt has been one of the more prevalent things in the marketplace lasts maybe 18 months or so. And when you get a bridge loan, you, you need to typically be required to purchase an interest rate cap. So it's a cap on SOFR. So if SOFR can't go over a certain strike price. So it means strike rate, meaning that, if SOFR today is, 25 basis points are 0.25%. Lender will say, okay, you can never make SOFR go over 2.5%. So, if it goes up 2.25%, the cap, you buy a cap for a certain amount of costs and that'll artificially cap it there and they'll pay you the difference. If it goes above that where if you go back a few months ago, these interest rate caps are really inexpensive. And now with the SOFR curve steepening, expectations are rising. These caps are like exploding. The cost of the caps are exploding, so it's, dramatically more expensive to purchase a cap. So, that's another little headwind 'cause it's more money up front that you gotta deal with one and then two typically if you have a ten-year loan or five-year loan, you buy a two to three year cap. The lender makes you escrow money. Then you gotta repurchase the cap after two or three years, whatever expires. And looking forward the amount that all these lenders have been escrowing for the borrower's have been woefully short relative to current expectations of pricing. There's a couple ticking time bombs out there when some of these existing syndications, if it's a floating rate loan that has an interest rate cap that maybe people aren't quite fully up to speed on. That if you're a Limited Partner, you should start asking your sponsors questions like that. What are they thinking about? If that's a reset the cap in a year or two, how much have you escrow? What's the current cost of that cap? And what's your plan to make up the shortfall? Because usually you don't have a couple, depending on the size of the deal, several hundred thousand to several million dollars just laying around by these rate caps. Yeah. That's a really interesting point. And I think one of the other things you brought up about the cost going up for the debt, and when you think about how these projects are factor, right? It's based on cap rates, which is based on NOI and NOI is not taking— I was in this argument with somebody earlier today about this, like the NOI is not taking into consideration your debt. Then the cap rates haven't really adjusted yet. So, like you do see that pressure. It's coming where like the debt's really putting a lot of pressure on these deals because it's not adjusting out on the other side yet. But I guess in terms of opportunity, you always look for like, where's the opportunity? And I think you were hitting at it is that there are a lot of deals out there where probably folks are getting ready to have to refinance or the debt's coming due or their term is coming due and it's gonna create some issues. Do you see opportunity there? What are your thoughts on that? . Yeah, I haven't seen a ton of All's good so far. However, I've been thinking there might be some dislocation at some point in the market, 15%, 20% rent growth covers up a lot of issues. So, as long as the demand fundamentals are strong, it might just get a lot to stop the dislocation of the marketplace. Now with that said, if there is gonna be some dislocation or some opportunity, I think it's largely gonna be in more the workforce housing space. Specifically you got these people who took some debt fund, mortgages, which are three-year mortgages that have floating rate, adjustable rate mortgages on 'em that had the rate caps and they had to go in and implement, certain value add strategy and then sell it to the next guy and the next guy. Cause it's been the path we've been on the last, 10 to 12 years is the value add 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. And if the ability to refinance out of these deals, aren't there 'cause the sizing rate on your lender's gonna do on a mortgage isn't your net operating income isn't sufficient to exit at your current principal balance. There could be a couple of people that are forced to sell instead of refinancing. And then if interest rates are out, maybe that might be the point where we see some cap rate expansion. Which we have not seen yet, but, I can see in the future a little bit, that's a certainly a possibility, but I've thought that a few times in the past 10 years, and it's never happened. So, I've clearly reserved the right to be wrong. But I think if there will be some level of opportunity to stress, I think it's largely in the workforce housing. Largely in the people that took the debt fund bridge loan option and they're all floating adjustable, and they come due in the next, 12 to 18 months. Those are probably where you see some dislocation on the marketplace.

JW:

Yeah. In the workforce housing. I thought that was an interesting point. I was actually talking with a lender yesterday. It was even on Sunday. Asking, just talking about where do we think the pressure is gonna come from, and from a workforce perspective, it's really the blue-collar folks that are getting squeezed by these rent increases pretty hard, right? Yeah. 'Cause the hourly rates are not keeping up with these rent increases that are coming across the board and the rent increases are real. So in, in terms of, your thoughts on. That what is the outlook and what should we be looking for in the marketplace? Is workforce housing. Something that we should really be keeping our eye on.

MB:

Yeah. I think so. That's where we started. That's where, when I was a banker that's predominantly where I lent on and, you've seen some real wage increases, but you've seen everything's costing more. So, all the lower end of the range, as you mentioned, When gas and rent and food and, everything that they buy, the necessities of life are going up is eating up a larger percentage that are, disposable income essentially. Fortunately, we're pretty high up in the priority rank being multifamily investors that they'll prioritize rent over other things, generally speaking. So we're, we'll lease some preference from an investment standpoint. But, you're seeing the rise of the syndicators out there. You know, I'm a good example of it. I've been doing it longer than most, but nine years in the business. And I have a podcast, you have a podcast, all these podcasts awareness to the space is great. So you're getting some later entrance into the marketplace that may or may not be fully as season is sophisticated put, taken into some capital and maybe not thinking through risk mitigation, 'cause the last two years they've been aware of the space. It just only goes up. So they, they maybe aren't quite thinking of some of the boogie men around the corner and and I've been thinking of that the entire time, 'cause that was the grim reaper 14 years ago trying to do problem loan workout. And it's probably cost me money over the last decade or so trying to be a little too conservative, but specifically in the workforce housing space. You know what, when I started, we did workforce housing. You buy say Dallas, Fort Worth in 2013, when we bought our first deal, you could buy a brand new Class A deal for about a five cap. A B deal was about six and a half cap. And a C deal was somewhere between eight to eight and a half cap. And this is on tax adjusted trailing numbers. Fast forward to today. Shoot, I don't even know what a Class A cap on trailing numbers is probably mid twos. Maybe four in year one prior pro forma three and a quarter three and a half. A B deal trailings, probably high twos. Forward prior pro forma, probably, upper threes to four and a C deal's probably maybe, three, low threes and a forward, maybe mid fours forward cap rate. So what used to be a really large spread is all on top of each other. And there should be a higher cap rate on the older, workforce housing, 'cause there's tends to be a little bit more risk, but from a capital perspective, meaning they're older and just functionally obsolescent. So, you have more repairs of maintenance or major capital projects, the sewer system, electrical system and all that stuff is a little bit more likely to wear out on the older stuff. Obviously the newer building. And then the tenant base and their income level is stretched a lot higher in the older workforce housing stuff than it is a class A. So, there should be a larger spread in between the various property grades, where there has not been for the last several years. And we saw that and we sold a lot of our workforce housing five years ago, not knowing that I was gonna get basically on top of each other. Could have held out a little bit longer, we took that opportunity to kind trade up and that's where I see some underlying risk. And if it's been building that pressure had been building for a while. So, if we do see some dislocation and we see some opportunity, I think the Class A, the nicer, the better the deal, the more sticky the cap rate's gonna be. I think on the lower end of the spectrum, that's where the cap rates will widen out. That potentially can, impair your ability to, return your money, basically.

JW:

Yeah. That's definitely something I've seen as well. There's guys that used to be doing, B's and C's have moved upstream and now their newer portfolio is made of A's. Because your point is valid is that the cap rates are so close. Why in the world would you take all the risk on something that's, is gonna have problems down the road?

MB:

Yeah.

JW:

So, it's been interesting to watch that from the sidelines. And then also, they talk about there being so much dry powder out in the marketplace and these institutional funds are coming downstream. Because they have to put this money to work and therefore, like what used to be. Like they wouldn't touch anything outside of an A like they've leaked into B's and then now they're even considered like smaller units and C's. It's really interesting to see maybe in the past 12 to 18 months, like where the shift has gone, especially with the Exodus from office, everybody that used to park their money, 'cause like office was, is Bulletproof as it could be. And then COVID hit and it's all of a sudden, nobody wants to be in office. Multifamily became bulletproof because it was not only the home but it was also the office, right? So you're getting a double-edge there, but I think we're really hinting at it here. But as a Limited Partner, that's getting into the game today, where do you think, some of the biggest mistakes that might be made or mistakes you're seeing people make?

MB:

Yeah. And I'll answer that question and I don't wanna be seen as all bears cause there, the fundamentals are really strong as you mentioned. You made me think of, rental rate growth is strong for a reason, 'cause there's a lot of household formation that's have been pent up 'cause basically, last year you had two years of graduating classes go into that workforce. Workforce and household formation in 2021 at the same time, 'cause I graduate in May of 2020. You basically probably stayed at home, lived with the parents. So, that was a big uptick in demand. We saw some dislocation and the ability to deliver supply. And then obviously you've seen the single family market has absolutely been on fire and, price inventories at dramatically low levels. Probably historically of all time, low levels. As we enter the peak home buying season. So, there's very little alternatives to buy homes right now. And everyone is getting locked in their mortgage now that the interest rates have come up. So, people are just gonna stay, put in their homes and not sell their houses, which drives more people, the rental pool. So these are competing factors to think of. And so to your question, where do you Limited Partners make mistakes? I think most of the success of the deal, the project matters, the market matters, all that stuff, your sponsor matters as well. So, making sure in a good environment sponsor matters less 'cause the market's gonna make up for it. And a tough environment I think that your sponsor's gonna matter, from the standpoint of how do they structure the deal? Are we at 75% leverage? Do I put a 10% prep piece behind it or mezzanine financing behind it to take the actual leverage up to 85%? Am I having, super aggressive rental rate assumptions having to have everything hit perfect. To hit a 14%, 15% internal rate of return and exit in two to three years. And is that. So if I got a structure like that, a 15% return, or I go look at an alternative structure at maybe 65 lever with no prep behind it to make a 13 on a risk adjusted basis. I think that's where a lot of Limited Partners see the headline number. Maybe don't fully take into factor all the underlying risks to get to those assumptions. And so, that's certainly something to think about, how much working capital do you have behind it? 'cause you know, one thing I've learned over doing, about, 60, 70 deals or whatever we've done at this point. Every projection I've ever done has always been wrong, right? Either you do better or you do worse, you never do exactly what you think you're gonna do, which is an educated guess going in. And fortunately, we've done well and the market's done even better. So, we look smart. On a historical perspective, we've had the wind at our backs and, the wind stills at our backs in a lot of respects with the fundamentals of, supply demand and runaway growth. But there's a couple headwinds that we haven't seen here. And quite a while that it just makes you want to be a little more cautious and maybe don't over-leverage this deal and maybe, take a little bit of risk off along the way and don't push everything super hard and it's okay to, I think, deliver a little less expected return because your alternatives are tough for everyone. You can go in the bond market, you buy bonds and the rates go up your bond goes down. You go stock markets at all time valuations. Pull back a little bit this year, but it's still historically pretty high. It's a world of bad options are if you sit in cash, you're gonna have inflation needed away. So, I still think done properly in the right market and structured, properly multifamily, still a very attractive space to be in. I just think you just need to be a little bit more cautious with the sponsor, with the structure, with the market, with the business plan. Trees don't grow to the skies. So at some point, there's gonna be some level of correction. So, what I've learned from 20 years ago, when we're ramping up as a banker making these loans, and then the aftermath of the great recession, then the. Last, 12, 13 year boom cycle that we've been in. There's gonna be a time as long as you can hold on long enough, it should go back up. But if you get squeezed out in that one or two years worth of dislocation, you're gonna lose a hundred percent of your money. And those that can hang on. Or, at, infinitely higher evaluations and returns. But a lot of people got wiped out and had to make a bad decision or the bank forced them to make a decision at the bad time. So, you don't wanna be that person along the way.

JW:

You make a really great point in there. And I think it was very subtle and I wanna make it a lot less subtle, is that you're never gonna get your projections. So, if you are a Limited Partner going to look at a deal. And let's just say, we've got two that everything looks very similar and you've got one that's projecting 14 and you've got another one that's projecting 13. Neither one of those are gonna be right. That's not the return that you're gonna get. It's gonna be something different. There's a possibility that is, but it would be, it's like when you stop your gas pump and it's exactly at 20 bucks or something,

MB:

Yeah.

JW:

And it doesn't mean that the one that's projecting a 13% return's not gonna come back with a 15% return or the one that's projecting a 14% return's not gonna come back with a 12% return. Like that is, the fundamentals of what you're looking at and how they're projecting those returns or what are so important. And to your point you are making is that you look at the headline, you just say, okay, 14's better than 13. And there is so such small nuances in the deal in the way you're looking at certain things what are you thinking is gonna happen with cap rates? Cause a very small movement in a cap rate has a very big impact on the value of the deal and the exit. Interest rates, like you gotta be conservative there too, but you can play this game, with the exact same property and play the game and movement numbers around. And one of 'em might be everything is doable. But everything has to be perfect for that to work. Whereas you may have somebody else. That's look, I'm gonna be a little bit conservative here or maybe over here. And my projections might be a little bit less, but I'm thinking about how this works, right? Because your point is, if you do need to come up with some cash, do you have some cash in reserve to pay for that? Or are we gonna be making capital calls? There's just a lot of little nuances that you shouldn't get overly caught up. The numbers that are published. More so, okay, how does this waterfall work for me? If the deal does this right, you're gonna do better than your return if it does less right? Like obviously it's gonna be a little bit worse, but I would feel a lot more comfortable, especially in this current market, looking at a deal where I can see there's some conservatism in some flexibility, to withstand some changes because there will be some changes.

MB:

Yeah, that's the one thing to take away from my experience is everything's changing always. So whatever today is, tomorrow is a little bit different. And, fortunately for the last, 12 years it's been, largely positive. If you've been investing in multifamily since 2010, it's the bottom. And then now it's just been a rocket ship straight up. And to your point, little changes of cap rate have big swing, the values. And we've been the beneficiary of that for a really long time. So, they start backing up on us. You can see some value erosion, relatively quickly. Now, obviously it's a function that NOI divided by cap rate equals your value. And if we're seeing 15, 20% rent growth, and, I think that obviously will make up for a lot of that there, if you can just drive the more controllable part of it. I think it's just to be cautious and think through, and be intentional about who you give your money to. 'cause like you said, if they don't have the reserves put in place, there could be a cash call. And in my experience, the goal always ask for money once and then give a little bit back along the way and big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Trying to ask for money twice is tough. Going back to investors, especially if you're in a group with 80 or a hundred unrelated, Limited Partners, and trying to go hurt all those cats and get them to put their 1.2% ownership into the deal of the $200,000 cash call you have, that's tough. And does the sponsor have the ability to backstop that? Can the sponsor put some cash in this deal? If the guy is four guys rubbing their nickels together, try to get deal done. It's a third or fourth deal. That's great. People have to start everywhere, but that's a different risk profile than a well heel sponsor with some liquidity backing them that can actually go fund a short term, working capital alone, if there's a necessity to do. And you as a sponsor, maybe you don't see that on paper, but that's something to think about as well. Can the sponsor solve their own problems or they go back to the LP group to get that done? And will the LP actually, if the stock market is down 40% 401ks in shambles, and then you get a cash call for 10 grand you actually step up and give a cash call for 10 grand? And not so much you it's all the other 80 people you don't know in that transaction as well. So yeah, things to think about for.

JW:

Yeah. And I do want to emphasize your point is that it's not all bearish, right? This is not all bad news. There's opportunity all over the place. The underlying fundamentals, there is a housing shortage. You can't just overbuild overnight. Now you need to be thoughtful about the markets you get into. Because there are some markets that have the capacity for new construction, and then there are other markets that don't, right? Like you just can't. Like, you've gotta build and you gotta build further out. And they'll never be, the benefit of having that good location. And then, two, there's some underlying fundamentals of a way a deal was structured originally that may get tripped up. You were a lender, like covenants are crazy. Sometimes there's covenants that were written that just don't really anticipate the current market and you start tripping covenants and all of a sudden the deal has to be restructured or has to be flipped out. And that doesn't mean that, that the property's bad or even the deal's bad, but there's an opportunity there. So there's always opportunity. And if you're looking for it. And you understand, the underlying market fundamentals, you've got a good operator. You've got a good sponsor. It's well-grounded in thinking through these things, even as we go back down, there's opportunity. Or if we go back down, sorry, I don't wanna say when we go back down, hopefully they do this thing. And it just levels out to a nice plateau and then starts a general gentle, incline again, but you never know. Anything else you can think of that we should be watching out for?

MB:

Yeah. I don't. I'm more optimistic than pessimistic. I think there's the fundamental supply-demand, demographics that coming at housing for the next decade is just satiable. We still have the wind at our back in a lot of ways. I just say there's some shifting currents, out there. So just be cautious. I think you need to be more cautious today than probably at any point in recent memory. Obviously COVID was a was a big hit, but they just papered right over that. So, those are the past sins coming today to be a couple headwinds. So just be careful and cautious with it. But I think, like I said, ultimately if done right, 5,10 years from now, I'm pretty confident the real estates gonna be materially higher than is today. You just don't want to get squeezed along the way and have some temporary dislocation in the marketplace. Come wipe out your capital in a deal so properly stretching, care and good fundamental markets with population and migration, business, and landlord friendly environments, buying the right location with the right business plan with the right structure. I think this is among the better risk adjusted returns you can seek out there. So, that would be the thing, just be careful about who you put your money with and the way they're structuring these deals. And I think if you do that right in the long run, this is a fabulous vehicle to put your capital into.

JW:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that's a great way to segue out here, but the market is gonna be strong. Real estate is a great investment. I believe in it. You believe in it. There's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of people that can go out here and really screw it up. And you just gotta be careful who you hit your wagon to, but I always like to close out this show with a bit of gratitude. Because none of us got to where we are today without help. Somebody giving us a leg up that maybe we didn't deserve. And I just wanna give you an opportunity to maybe give a shout out publicly if you haven't done so already at some point to somebody that's helped you out. Many peoples helped me out along the way, but one comes to mind just off the cuff is actually the co-host of the podcast I do, which is Old Capital Real Estate Investing Podcast, a guy named Paul Peebles who's a very successful and known commercial mortgage broker in Texas. And see, I remember when I was a banker, he was my biggest referral source and I did about 150 loans over a three-year period coming outta the great recession about a hundred of them, came through Paul.

MB:

So, it really taught me a lot of the fundamentals of the business and how to get into it and helped me get really connected along the way. He's certainly someone that's helped me out a lot professionally and personally, he is a great friend and a long time friend at this point and a business partner associated of mine. And without him, I certainly probably wouldn't be in the position where I'm at now. He's certainly one of the people that was a key mentor in my success along the way. I love that. Thank you for sharing. And Paul, I hope you listen to this because it's a really cool story.

JW:

Well, Michael, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you being here. Thanks for being on the show.

MB:

I appreciate it.

JW:

I hope you've enjoyed today's episode and I'd actually love for you to contribute to a future episode. If you have a question you'd answered or a topic or a guest to bring on the show, please email me at jake@thelimitedpartner.com. Now I realize there is a lot of lingo that's thrown around on these shows. So I've created a cheat sheet for you with the top 26 terms that come up most often, head on over to thelimitedpartner.com/lingo for the list. Enjoy, and we'll see you next time.