A short how-to from Sarah Sullivan on conducting due diligence for private investments, with emphasis on real estate. She organizes evaluation into three pillars — people (the team/partners), market (local appreciation and occupancy dynamics), and property-level checks — and stresses continuous review to build confidence investing privately and to transfer lessons to other investment types.
Chapters
How to do an evaluation on the people first, who you're investing with. You get to be really good at doing due diligence on people. And so you always want to continuously do due diligence, especially before you're going to make your next investment with them. But also as they're holding your money, you can do due diligence on them every year. You should do due diligence on the market. The market, especially in real estate, it can save a lot of mistakes. But as long as the market is appreciating, even if you don't do any value add, even if you don't increase occupancy. Occupancy, if the market is appreciating, you'll make money on that investment. And then finally we'll talk about how to do due diligence on the property. And so I know this is really focused on real estate, but there's a lot that you can take and it's transferable to other types of investments, especially the team piece. I really want to reiterate that my goal is that I want you to feel comfortable investing in private investments, bring you confidence that not only you know what kind of investment fits your goals, but you feel confident doing.