Here is a list of things I wished someone would have told me before I bought $500 million worth of commercial real estate. 1. A good real estate attorney is worth every penny of their $600+ an hour fee.

I've raised >$200 million for my real estate deals.

Here are my 14 rules for fundraising like a pro.

Use them to turbocharge your dealmaking.

(1/x) Before we start:

Not everybody has the same starting line.

Some people have connections that help them go big out of the gate.

But you should not get hung up on what others have that you don't.

Just play the game well, and a good track record will win out.

OK, here goes:

My PE firm owns $140M of real estate.

We got this big because we aggressively used modern technology.

Here is the tech we used to do it –

(and it’s cheaper than you think) Co-Star - Property information and listings

Their data is far from perfect, but we must buy it.

It is the best solution that exists today to get info about properties.

Cost: $23,340/yr

One of the biggest industrial tenants in San Antonio is a trucking and logistics company.

I think they have a simply fascinating business model. This company controls several million square feet of warehouse space in buildings spread out all over the city, and they provide managed storage for other companies in town who don't want to mess with operating their own space.

Some Chinese fund has been buying up industrial assets in Texas and they are talking about their investment mandate having a 1000 year horizon. They say they are buying assets for many generations down the line to own. Last deal they picked up was a sub 3 cap. Unclear if they are using Chinese debt or just paying cash, either way they are overpaying and don’t care.

Their biggest motivation is to diversify out of the Yuan and into USD cashflow.

UBS just announced they are going to buy Credit Suisse.

Just like every other market cycle, the select few will feast on the carcasses of the unprepared masses.

The key to building wealth is learning to operate in such a way that you benefit from these cycles. In the 1980s deregulation of the savings and loan industry allowed for risky investments and fraud. As a result, hundreds of savings and loans institutions failed, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill with a $160 billion bailout. Meanwhile a few banks expanded massively.

I hired a former Accenture exec as CEO for one of my companies years ago.

He created the most beautiful dashboards I have ever seen. Grew the team. Held bonding seminars. Got everyone working like a well oiled machine. At first it felt like we were going to be unstoppable. It took me almost a year to realize, but he was terrible at actually growing a business. He focused so much energy on systems, processes and appearances, but when it came down to the hustle needed to bring in new customers and find product market fit, he fell flat.

Holy crap! I found a goldmine.

I found a fax sent around the Trammel Crow offices in 1989, where the team shared the lessons learned during the company's near collapse in the Savings and Loan crisis. It is 100 pages of treasure; here are the parts I learned the most from;

I’ve had the pleasure to work with some of the wealthiest families in the country as investors. Many of whom are worth Billions. I can tell you without hesitation, these family “offices” are almost always a shit show… Just because your grandfather figured out how to launch a massive grocery store chain, or lay much of the cable TV network in America, or your dad bought an insurance company and turned it into a holdco, does not mean you know magically know how to operate an efficient operation

I am an industrial GP, and I made a painful $400k mistake on one of our deals. Here is what happened.. I am a big believer in oversize reserve funds. Many of our deals have massive 5-figure+ accounts on-hand just in case something goes wrong. The one time I broke this rule, it came back to bite me big time.

We need to talk about what is happening in Texas.

1/12 From a manufacturing the goods of the future standpoint, the Texas triangle (DFW, Houston, and San Antonio) finds itself sitting in an unparalleled position. 2/12

When the market is uncertain, long-term thinkers win.

I've navigated through many market cycles and noticed that there are some simple rules that if followed will help you win in the long run.

Here are my 30 rules for long-term success: A great life is about doing meaningful things with people you love.

Optimize for this and you can’t fail.

An interesting side effect of rising interest rates on the Texas industrial market.

As rates go up, we are seeing a correlated increase in leasing demand.

The high cost to construct new combined with expensive debt is making leasing more attractive. More leasing activity in an already historically low vacancy market means pricing pressure is getting even hotter.

Oddly, interest rate increases so far are having the opposite of their intended effect on this sliver of the market.

The truth about non-recourse debt is that there are serious consequences to your reputation if you walk away from a deal. If you are truly in it for the long haul, trying to build a generational company then you can’t afford the hit so why pay more for non recourse? Instead we opt to structure deals with over the top conservative underwriting so that they can endure the occasional black swan economic event. Go full recourse and pass through the rate savings as higher returns. Everyone gets to sleep better at night.

Assuming, for simplicity, that you could do it, how many generations deep would you want to leave wealth for? Having come from a lower class family with little to no $ management lessons and certainly no $ passed down, I bend naturally towards planting strong trees that will last for generations.

Harbor Capital completed our latest equity raise today for an 87k square foot multi tenant industrial asset in San Antonio. 🚀 We rolled this one out slower than we usually do. Starting with existing investors and then adding in waves. We raised $3.7M over 4 days and made it through 20% of our investor list.

I got a chance to preview the forthcoming CBRE Industrial market report for Houston and oh boy is it a banger. Here are a few takeaways 👇 Houston’s industrial market broke many longstanding records in Q1. 7.4M square feet of net absorption 🚀

Did a call with an investor group today. Three guys who sold a business together 12 years ago and have been LPs ever since. They said something on the call that I keep thinking about. "We don't do cattle calls, those lightning round deals are just not for us" We are in the process of changing our fundraising process to be more respectful of our investor's time and energy. Instead of a big push to get an allocation the minute they are released, we are going to start rolling them out slowly over a few weeks.

We are working on a branding update for Harbor Capital. Vote on your favorite in the comments! 1

Hit 20k today which is really weird because literally all I’ve done is reused 4 different versions of the same 7 tweets.

Here they all are in one 🧵 so I can can just retire. 1. Buy bigger/better real estate

Always be suspicious of anyone who says they know what the market is going to do next. That said, eventually, the music is going to stop for a while, and when it does there are never enough chairs.

I made a "Don't Get Hosed in Real Estate" playbook for myself. 👇 Never ever break this golden rule:
Under-promise so that you can over-deliver.