2025 Multifamily Update with Rob Beardsley

Yeah. For anyone who knows the business real well, if you told them, yeah, you could buy the deal for 75,000 per unit. The rents are 1200 and if you only put in $5,000 per unit, you can actually pop rents $250. Literally no one needs to know anything more about the deal. They're buying it.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show, where it's our goal to take your income, your investments and your life to the next level. I'm your host, Chris Larson. If you haven't yet, get a copy of our book for free at our website, nextlevelincome.com. that's www.nextlevelincome.com. just click on the book link and I'll even send you a copy if you put your address in. On today's show, we welcome back Rob Beardsley. Rob founded Lone Star Capital in 2018 and has overseen the acquisition, financing and management of over 750 million in apartment communities. As CEO, Rob drives the strategic growth of the firm while also identifying and raising capital for new investment opportunities. He leads Lone Star Capital's in house property and construction management division, Lone Star Communities, ensuring excellence in renovation, lease up and ongoing management. Rob has sold over 25,000 copies of his two books on commercial real estate and he's been on the show talking about those books in the past. And today he's going to share an update on the multifamily market and what he thinks of some of the issues that we're seeing in the market today. Rob, welcome back to the show.

It's great to be here with you.

Yeah, it's always good to see you. Always, always looking fantastic there up in the World Trade center, which we've been to a great event that you hosted up there not too recently. My family's even been up there to check out your operation. When we were coming through New York a couple of years ago, very highlight of our trip. Took us to, what was it, the best burger in the country.

Well, it was rated best burger in the country, but I actually like the wings there. But yeah, it's all good.

The wings are really good too. Yeah, yeah, fantastic. And Rob, I'm excited to have you on today because we're going to do a multifamily update. We're going to talk about the market. It's been very dynamic, you know, up and down here over the past couple years. Also want to share an update on, you know, not only in the multifamily market, what you guys are seeing at Lone Star and also what, what really is working in the market. And I know you've been on the show a couple times here in the past, but if you don't mind, for any listeners that haven't, haven't seen you or heard you before, give a little update on you, your background and Lone Star.

Sure, that sounds great. Yeah. I'm the founder of Lone Star Capital. We've been in business for seven years now, acquiring and operating multifamily, essentially 100% in Texas. So we've purchased 750 million assets. We're vertically integrated. So we operate all of our deals in house construction management and property management. And we, you know, raise capital across the spectrum from high net worth individuals, family offices, smaller funds and so on.

Yeah, And Rob, one of the things that we really like and one of the reasons that we partner with you, for those listening that aren't aware of that, is because that integration. We were just doing a session, as a matter of fact last night with our coaching, our private coaching group and. And you were going through your underwriting model and some of the things that you've seen and how you've been able to kind of fine tune those. And that was very, I think it was very eye opening for a lot of our coaching clients to see that. And it really shows the value. Have you guys always been vertically integrated?

Well, we kind of vertically integrated as early as possible. Right. And so that's a big challenge with vertical integration is scale. Right. It's really hard to just open your doors and say, okay, well we're vertically integrated and we have an HR department, we have a construction department, we have a regional maintenance supervisor, we have regional managers, director of operations. Right. I mean, it's such a people intensive business. So we vertically integrated, I would say earlier than convention, what's conventional, but still, we definitely started out third party management and then over about three years, it took us the time and scale to build up a portfolio and the expertise and kind of the relationships to actually bring operations in house.

Yeah. And one of the things I've noticed, Rob, in working with you is that specifically over the past few years, as we've seen cap rates expand in a lot of markets, rents have been flat in a lot of markets. Having a really tight grip on operations and being able to fine tune those dollars has really made a big difference. What have you seen on that front?

Yeah, this is really the story of the last few years because truly running till the interest rate changes and kind of the whole economy changing, you didn't really make money from operations. And I'M being, you know, slightly facetious or I'm exaggerating things, but essentially, if you bought property and you didn't matter really what you did with it, you could renovate it, you could not renovate it, you could manage it well, you could mismanage, it almost didn't really matter. What almost mattered more was how much leverage you put on it and how kind of cheap or give a deal you're able to buy because, yeah, that did the best. And so it was almost like, who cares about anything? Just buy the riskiest deal and you would make the most money. And so we're in a completely different environment where you're actually rewarded for your hard work. We're kind of back to get. Get rich slow in real estate, which is how real estate has always been and how it should be. Right. It shouldn't be like this cryptocurrency, get rich overnight thing. Right. Real estate's low, long and slow, and that's great. And you're totally right. It's really forced us to get back to the basics and grind for every dollar. And so we've just been focusing a ton on operations. You know, we haven't. We've been. I'd say compared to a lot of groups, we've been pretty active during this time because we've been fortunate enough to be in a strong position to play offense rather than defense. But with that being said, we haven't been that busy. I mean, we haven't bought a deal in over a quarter. We've been busy like crazy because we've just been investing so much in our operations.

Yeah. And I'll kind of toot your horn a little bit here, Rob. Last time I saw you, you're basically pulling Elon Musk, man. Sleeping in one of the spare apartments in one of the properties down there and really spending a lot of time on the ground making sure that your operations team was all over it. And guys have a heavy focus, you know, Lone Star Capital focused on the Lone Star state of Texas. Talk. Talk a little bit about, one, the markets that you guys are in and why you've chosen those, and also two, the. The types of assets that you guys are buying and. And how that may have evolved here over the past few years.

Yeah. So true to the name Lone Star Capital, we focus on essentially all the major markets in Texas, kind of minus Austin. Austin has been a bit of a growth market for us that we didn't want to go and chase and compete in that growth market. But if you look at Dallas Houston and San Antonio, those are still very big markets, very strong markets, some of the best markets in the country. And so what we've observed over the last while in those. Those cities is a lot of supply. And that's not unique to those cities. That happening across the country. In particular in the Sun Belt, where a lot of development activity was focused on because where there was growth, where there were attractive headlines for jobs and migration and so on, developers went there and built a lot as well. So you're seeing a lot of supply. However, Houston has the least amount of supply of all the major markets in Texas and actually of the major markets around the country. Houston's actually relatively in relatively good shape, which is amazing. We didn't really predict it. Houston being our major market where we own the most assets, it's really benefiting us tremendously because we saw the least amount of drop off as far as negative rent growth or concessions, vacancy and things like that, whereas Dallas and San Antonio are struggling a bit more.

Yeah. And I mean, going back just one step there, Austin, I mean, I remember 10 years ago, Austin was crazy. You know, we were seeing cap rates get down into the, you know, fours, and then they went down into the threes, and then supply really dialed up. And now we've seen Austin be one of the markets where rents have actually gone down the most and also housing prices have gone down the most. It seems like your patience in that market specifically has been rewarded. Houston, I've been a big fan. Actually. One of my first multifamily deals I ever invested in as an LP was in Houston. And it's actually one of my worst deals I've ever been in because the hurricane came through in 2015, ripped the roof off of one of the buildings. We had some management issues down there. It was kind of a problem in a lot of ways. And Houston has always been known as a real energy center of the country. Talk about how Houston has transformed its demographic base and job base over the last 10 years.

Yeah, well, I think that shift has been happening for longer than 10 years, but definitely there's continuous investment in diversifying the economy. It's one of the largest cities in the country and it's growing. And so it's pretty phenomenal that Houston over the last years has been growing, its population at over double the national average, and it is the fourth largest city in the country. Right. So it's one thing for a small city, a fast growth rate. Right. But Houston is. Its MSA is, I want to say, almost triple the size of Austin. So this is a massive city with massive growth. Right. So you've got sheer numbers and percentages working in your favor. And the city has been, like I said, working hard to recruit Fortune 500 companies, not just in the oil and gas sector, but outside of it, too. You've got a medical, you've got education, and there's a ton of stuff happening with the ports and with kind of more like downstream energy stuff. So I don't think it's such a scary thing, Houston to be the energy capital of the world, because it's not like a boom bus. I mean, I don't want to say it's not a boom bus town. I mean, it has historically been, but it correlation to oil prices has definitely dwindled a lot. And the technology and things like that, the reliance on specifically oil prices is not as much. People who are working with petrochemical and things like that, they can make money with lower oil prices, not just higher oil prices. So that's a big feature. And then to your point about your first investment in Houston, I think, unfortunately a lot of people have had those negative experiences in Houston, whether they're investing in a tougher demographic or neighborhood or just weather issues. And so that's kind of one of the reasons why Houston ended up being not as overbuilt as other markets. Because when developers were saying, do I want to build a deal in Austin or do I want to build a deal in Houston? Right. They would go to Austin because they would think, ah, Houston might be harder to raise money for it, or we might have weather issues or what have you. So it kind of got overlooked, which now has created a better supply and demand, which is benefiting. But you still have to, of course, be wary of the weather risk.

Yeah. And talking about the energy, I mean, we saw spot oil prices go negative a few years back, and it didn't, it didn't really. It had a little blip on Houston's radar. Whereas 10 years ago, when oil prices dropped from I think they were like 120 back then into like the 50s, it had a massive impact on the economy there. But yeah, the growth in medical, the schools down there, you know, it's really been impressive. And it's one of my favorite places to go. Food's phenomenal. I know we shared some, some meals and some different recommendations down there. It's, it's really grown in a lot of ways, in very positive ways. And it's set to, it's predicted to out to be bigger than LA in the next is it by 2030? You can correct me on that if I'm wrong.

Well, it's got a leapfrog Chicago, but I'm sure that both of those cities aren't doing themselves too many favors.

Yeah, yeah, they're. Yeah, I know. Chicago, la's, California's losing, I think the most population of any state in the country. We'll see if they get. They get back on track. Illinois got some issues and it's tough. It's like, well, I'd rather be in Chicago getting hammered by snow and wind, or would I rather go in the AC in the middle of summer in Houston? I think a lot of people are realizing that places like Houston, Austin, Atlanta have a lot of benefits and they don't have those drags that they have on it like some of these states that maybe not as fiscally responsible as places like Texas. You mentioned the weather touch on that, Rob. Like you said, the weather risk. I know people are probably understanding that, but, you know, you can have some storms come through there. There's been flooding in the past. How do you mitigate those risks as you look at opportunities in Houston?

Yeah, well, you know, certainly we can't control the weather, but we can definitely control where we buy.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But we can, we can definitely control where we own our property and obviously the types of insurances that we buy. And that I think has served us well. Hurricane barrel came through last July in Houston. And you know, certain areas were of course, hurt more significantly than others. Our portfolio was in better shape. We do have a couple of deals that are more coastal, which unfortunately took more damage than some other properties were, which were unscathed. So it's learning lessons and it's kind of where we want to own, where we want to be. So you have like hurricanes and flooding and kind of harsh weather risks that. But you also have other weather risks throughout Texas. When you get kind of more north and west, things get colder and you have more hail.

Yeah.

And so hail can be very forgiving to your roofs. And so insurance companies have gotten wise to that. And it used to be that you'd be able to have a hail storm come in, hit your roof, you'd be able to make an insurance claim, a small deductible, and get new roofs. And now the deductibles are so high on hail storms, you pretty much are not covered for hail damage. And so it's just, it's a kind of another thing to be battling. So it's not just insurance. It's not just Fighting insurance costs rising. You also are fighting less coverage in general. So there's all these things to stay up to date on and kind of fight for not just the best insurance price, but also the best coverage and, and positioning yourself well with the type of property that you own. So that results in wanting to own in Houston particular, kind of more towards the north and the west, getting away from the coast and then just higher quality properties, preferably built 90s or newer.

Yeah, and we were talking about that last night on that, on that same call. But you know, whether you're in Florida or California or anywhere up the coast where, you know, a lot of population has moved, these insurance risks seem to be perfect or insurance concerns seem to be pervasive across all those areas. And I think if you're an investor and you're looking at an area, you just have to understand that and make sure that the operator that you're working with has accounted for that understands it and has good relationships, as you guys do with your insurance companies, to make sure that you're not only adequately covered, but also are assessing the portfolio as a whole and potentially getting some additional economic benefit from that. Rob, the other thing that pops up, a lot of people with the, you know, the, the big immigration push from the new Trump administration coming in or the, you know, a new administration coming in, but Trump's not technically new. Is, people are concerned. Like, is, is this push, you know, this, this tamping down of immigration going to have a big effect on areas like, like Texas. What, what are you seeing? What concerns do you have when it comes to demographics in areas like Houston specifically?

Yeah, well, so kind of, first of all, I'm not concerned about deportations. I think that's more of like a headline and a fear based thing than a reality because the sheer quantity of deportations that would have to occur would, would have to be really substantial to, to make a difference. And I don't think that the government has the political willpower or will, political will or the, or the means really to execute on that. So I don't think deportations are a real issue, but it is definitely a fear. I mean, we have property that is in Houston and it kind of fits that demographic and people are genuinely scared and they don't want to, you know, leave their apartment and you know, or go out, go outside work. So, you know, because they're scared of ice. And so that's, I think, a short term issue. But obviously if people are holed up in their apartment, scared about ice, they can't Go to work and then they can't pay their rent. Yeah, I think we're working through some very minor, kind of like anecdotal issues there. But on the whole, I think basically over the last 10 years we've had so much immigration, legal and illegal. I don't think that. I think for sure the door has been maybe closed a bit. And so we're not going to see the same rate of immigration as the last 10 years. But I think that the data probably that we have today underreports the real numbers that happened over the last 10 years. So I think, yeah, there's, you know, maybe that kind of balances things out.

Yeah, that's a good point. I think, you know, we really don't have a firm grasp on the number. I just saw something a week ago. It talked about that we may be underreporting the number of people on the planet by, by a large amount. So if we can't even figure that out, then, you know, I know it's hard to figure out, you know, how many people have been coming across the borders. I think a bigger concern, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this or push back on it, is if you, if you don't have the ability to supply cheaper labor for construction, for instance, it's going to drive potentially labor costs up, new construction costs up. I think it's going to have an effect where it's going to push down supply potentially even further and costs up higher, which would be a benefit for those that own properties already, but also those that are, you know, in the markets as, as we are, which are, you know, already built properties that are more like a value add 90s early ought built properties. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I'm not an economist, but there's a lot going on right now that is very interesting. And so the tariffs that are being proposed and supposed to go into effect tomorrow, right?

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. We're recording April 1st. No joke. No joke. And yeah, April 2nd is when the tariffs are supposed to go into effect here just a few weeks before this airs.

So it's actually, you know, what's happening over these last few days in anticipation of these tariffs is really quite interesting because when you hear the word tariff, a lot of people have been equating that to inflation. Right. Oh, well, the government's going to make the costs of things go up, therefore that's inflationary. Right. And that's not necessarily true. Right. Economics is the imperfect science. Right. And so tariffs could actually result in actually decreased demand because like you said, the cost of things might go up as an example for tariffs, or maybe labor is going to go up because of lack of availability due to curbing immigration or something like that. Right. That doesn't necessarily mean the costs of inputs have to go up. It could just mean that people are going to demand less of those goods because they cost more. And so it doesn't actually have a net effect higher on prices, but it could actually have a net negative effect on GDP or are basically productivity output. And so I think the market's now starting to kind of take that position because while there's been a lot of saber rattling about inflation kind of coming back, and it even has been showing itself in some of the numbers that are being reported as far as consumer spending and things like that.

Yeah.

However, the bond markets have been actually trading down rates. So rate actually come down over the last three days, which is really interesting because usually rates track inflation. Right. Because bond owners want to be compensated on a real return. They want to have inflation covered plus a little bit of interest on top. So if inflation is ostensibly higher than people would think, they'd want more interest on their bonds. But we're seeing the exact opposite, which I think is basically showing the world that, you know what, people don't really buy this inflation tariff thing. They think that we're kind of heading into more of like a slowdown period, like you said, which result in less building, like you said.

Yeah, and that's, that's a great point. You know, we saw rates actually trend up since the election and we saw the stock market go down, and now we're seeing rates actually reverse course, which, yeah, it seems to, it seems to support that thesis that you have. So, yeah, it's a very interesting time when it comes to that and kind of shifting, you know, on that same course, but, you know, shifting to the multifamily side. We've seen a tremendous amount of, you know, variability activity with respect to rents, rent growth, cap rates, interest rates, you know, we saw, I would call it like historic storm, if you will, of interest rates as they, as they skyrocketed here a couple years ago. Let's start with what effects has that had on the multifamily market? Rob?

Yeah, it's been, it's been a big, big impact. And I think that people are. It's taken years for people to fully recognize, appreciate it and truly acknowledge it, because I think a lot of people were kind of holding out, saying, well, everything okay? Everything's Going to be fine. And just slowly but surely over time, people have now kind of been kicking the can long enough and they're starting to realize, you know what, actually things are not fine. And so we're seeing whether you're, whether someone was brand spanking new to multifamily in 2020 or 2021 or they were a seasoned. There's issues across the spectrum and I'm talking people having capital calls to fix what is effectively broken structures where the debt is just way too high for the property. You've got to bring in equity to pay down the debt and just kind of rebalance things. You have people who have been foreclosed on and for. You have people that are selling for a loss. And so this, like I said, it's affecting everyone top to bottom and operationally we touched on that. It's kind of reset the game for longer term holds really operating well because now buyers are being much more, you know, just being more nuanced as far as, okay, hey, why would I buy your deal when this guy's operating the deal better and it's in a better location. They've been keeping it up shape. So there's. So things kind of, I would say some, some sense and normalcy are coming back to the market because things did get a little out of whack and too heady.

Yeah, it was crazy, you know, because I'm, you know, when I started, as I was saying over 10 years ago, the numbers we're seeing today with expected returns and rent growth are back to where they were kind of that long term norm, which I think is healthy for the market. I know there's certain market segments that have been hit harder as rents have skyrocketed here. So we're, you know, we're at, we're at record high rents in the country and record high housing prices. Actually, rents are still relatively affordable compared to what it costs to buy a house now because, because rates are so high. How has Lone Star shifted since your founding in terms of the type of assets it goes after? And then we can transition as well into some of the unique strategies that you guys have employed to really take advantage of the affordability issue in this country as well.

Yeah, starting out life, we started many other owner operators in the country in the value add space. So we were looking at how do we buy mismanaged or underappreciated property that if we put a little love, we operate them better, we renovate them, we can get higher rents, we can get higher income for the property. And then that results in a higher property value. So did a handful of deals in that strategy. And that strategy was really the most popular strategy, was paying off the best in the times where there was very strong positive rent growth and there was cap rate compression.

Yeah. Then just to just. Sorry, just to pause there. You know, if you could buy a property like per unit at say, $75,000 a unit or 100, you know, less than $100,000 a unit, and rents were, say, 1000 bucks or 1200 bucks, which may seem really low, but that's the type of stuff that we were seeing. And you could inject, say, 5,000 of capital per unit and you could raise rents 250 bucks. It was a payoff, you know, in. In those properties. But things have shifted as. As price per units have gone up, cost to build has gone up, and then rent growth has come down. Right.

Yeah. Putting it in numbers like that is really fascinating because, yeah, for anyone who knows the business real well, if. If you told them, yeah, you could buy the deal for 75,000 per unit, the rents are 1200, and if you only put in $5,000 per unit, you can actually pop rents $250. And literally no one needs to know anything more about the deal. They're buying it. Because those are amazing numbers. And those were available back in the day.

I got a stack of prospectus in this cabinet over here. Deals all just like that.

So then people were doing those deals, and then those deals they would sell, and then they would sell that deal or a deal similar to it for 100,000 a unit, and then 125 and then 150. Well, in time, the rents didn't grow that. I mean, they were growing, but not that fast. Now you're talking about buying 150,000 per unit deal. Rents might be 1300 or 1400, and now you have to spend 10 or even 15,000 per unit on the renovations because the competition is higher. The deal down the street put a backsplash in going to quartz countertops and stainless steel. And, you know, so it's kind of.

A cost went up to.

Costs are going up. So then just simply costs went up. And so now you're spending 18,000 on a renovation and only squeezing out a hundred bucks.

Yeah.

In your rents. So, yeah, that strategy got really compressed. So we started to look around and say, you know, this doesn't have a ton of juice left. So we fortunately were able to find a really great pivot. Not necessarily saying that we would never do value add again, but we just found a better strategy for the market that we found ourselves in, which was actually an affordable housing strategy where we were preserving affordable housing by actually not renovating the apartments, but actually not doing anything to them necessarily fancy to raise rents, but actually to lower rents and stabilize the asset.

So say that again. You actually buying property. I know this, but I want, I want the audience to hear buying. We're buying properties and actually lowering rents.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's amazing strategy because in our opinion, it's lower risk and it's logical. Right. Because if you're lowering rents, you're not taking a risk as far as will the market accept these rents? And so on. So we're catering lower income households and, and, and therefore restricting the rents. In exchange, we get long term property tax exemptions. So we're able to kind of do a type deal where we're able to get a pop in our income. But that pop in income doesn't come through increasing revenue. It actually comes through decreasing expenses.

Yeah, and we're talking, I mean, you say lower income. I mean, the deal we were looking at yesterday, rents are about 1500 bucks a month, you know, on average per unit. So we're not talking about, you know, these, these class C properties. These are, these are class A deals. The one we were looking at was built in 2004. It looks great. It's got a beautiful pool. You know, the, the units look wonderful. But, and this is one of the things I love about the city of Houston. They're quite innovative in that they're partnering with groups like yours and saying, hey, we need more affordable housing. We're going to be innovative. We're going to do things that we can get this affordable housing into the market as quickly as possible. And some of these tax concessions, in turn for the rent concessions end up making it obviously a great, great deal for the city and for the residents that are getting those rents. But also it makes it economically fair, feasible for investors like ourselves.

Yeah, it's a great program. It kind of cuts through the noise. And it's not like a government grant program where you have to do this and that the money gets all just kind of frittered away. Right. This is a direct public benefit for these residents. And then obviously we're incentivized to go do this because we do the tax exemption. So it's kind of just, it's just a classic great public private partnership. And like you said, also affordable housing can look at many different ways. Yeah, some people, I feel like their mind goes to Kind of like, oh, slumlord, Section eight and kind of all the negative connotations. But even high quality assets and high quality areas, that's kind of where you need affordable housing the most. Right. So that's really our strategy is looking for great areas that actually would benefit from a reduced rent rather than just going somewhere where the rents are already low and kind of catering to that.

Yeah. And these, I mean, these are properties like that I lived in when not, not the exact property, but the same type of property that my wife and I lived in before we were married and, and owned a home. Like in the Northern Virginia market, for instance, like those same type of vintages and different things. And when you look at some of the cost to build a unit of quote unquote, affordable housing around the country, I was just looking. San Francisco is spending like 800 grand per unit. Asheville, I think it was like 300,000 a unit. You know, we're looking at somewhere like 175,000 unit. And they're coming onto the market very rapidly. And I like to say, I was just on a panel with, there was a gentleman that was doing Section 8, a gentleman that was doing, you know, you know, some more standard, like single family type housing, you know, and then we compared, you know, this strategy and people were a little confused because they're like, wait, this is affordable, but this looks like a normal apartment and it makes it very desirable for a lot of people to move into. And it also, the time it takes to bring it into the market is almost instantaneous. So it's a very elegant solution in my opinion.

Yeah, totally agree. So that we've been getting a lot of value from that strategy and will hopefully continue to do it so long as the programs exist and we can find suitable deals for the program. But also I think that in the coming years, I think value add will come back into play as the market shift and as we see rents grow again and, and the dynamics reappear.

Yeah, supply is going down. It's. Everybody seems to be projecting that rent that's going to be buoyant for rent growth to go forward. And you know, as housing continues to be expensive, unless there's a massive housing correction and supply or demand drops off, which, you know, we still look at the number of people, quote, unquote, living in people's. In their parents basements, there's still really strong household formation, especially in areas like Houston that have great job growth going forward. And as we wrap up, Rob, if you don't mind just sharing a Little bit about, you know, any updates you have with Lone Star this year. I know it's been a little slow, you know, in the past, you mentioned you haven't done any acquisitions this quarter. I know it's been challenging with the debt markets where they are being kind of up and down. What are, what are your kind of predictions? What are your updates for 2025 going forward here?

Yeah, so, I mean, the biggest news for us has been bringing on Sam Morris as a partner at the firm. It's been super exciting.

We've had a great working, great guy. I know him personally. Yeah. Fantastic.

Yeah.

So very excited to hear that.

We've all worked together, you know, for over, like almost two years now. And so he just such a seamless addition to the team because everyone kind of already worked with him, knew him, felt comfortable with him, and he's integrated so well, given that he's a local. Houston knows Houston like the back of his hand, knows the rest of Texas well as well. And he provides just another good layer for acquisition, asset management and of course, investor relations because he brings to the team decades of experience and relationships where he's been on the board of multiple banks and he has many, many investor relationships. So it really just gives us the extra firepower and means to buy the dream assets that we want to add to the portfolio and continue to partner with people like him and his investors and continue to grow.

Yeah, no, again, very excited to see Sam come on board. I think it's a terrific addition to Lone Star. When I got the call from you guys, I put a big smile on my face. And the last thing I want to end with, we're going to put this in the show notes here. Rob, share a little bit about the books you have written. I know we've highlighted that. We've shared them with actually our coaching group as well, because you literally wrote the book on underwriting. And we're going to give some free tools to anybody that is listening here that wants to take advantage of that as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So the first book that I published was back in 2020, like you said, it was about the definitive guide to underwriting multifamily acquisitions. That's a super great step by step walkthrough of how we underwrite deals every single day as. As we, you know, continue to target these multifamily strategies. So that book has done incredibly well. We have also made the under model that we use in, you know, connection with that process available for download for free on our website. That's been Downloaded, I want to say, almost 20,000 times now. Oh, I never knew it would be this, you know, I guess successful, but it's really amazing to be able to kind of share all this knowledge and resources and things like that. And so that inspired me to write the second book, which is called Structuring and Raising Debt and Equity for Real Estate. So this allowed me to kind of really put all my thoughts down as far as deal structures, how to put debt together, what debt to use for what kind of deals, and how to underwrite and model the debt. And then of course, on the equity side, how to structure the right deal for investors, how do we go out, raise that money and. And just put the best deal together.

Yeah, no, I love it. And if you're interested in that, look in the show notes here you can get the resources that Rob mentioned as well as see the two books that he's bound who's he's been on the show promoting those as well and sharing a little bit about that. So you can go back and listen to those prior episodes with Rob. Rob, always, always great to catch up. Always wonderful to have you on here. And thank you for sharing your knowledge and thoughts on where we are in the multifamily market today with our audience.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

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