I am currently located in St Paul/Minneapolis, MN, where I live and work I am here to network, collaborate, and JV. I manage a small mastermind, where I help newbie investors by their first multifamily apartments, I also do structured finance with stack funding where I structure and negotiate the deal for my clients & JV as capital partner, and lastly I am a licensed financial planning professional with a financial service firm, where I help my clients set-up infinite banking with ability to leverage $1 in three places; income protection (Get cover while earning interest and borrow from yourself), bank (Lend using your borrowed funds), and as collateral for a line of credit.

We just closed on a 121-unit in Fort Worth. Here are some things that a spreadsheet doesn’t tell you. Lender requirements can shift late in the process. We were initially expecting agency debt, but last minute requirements changed and the proceeds no longer worked for the deal. So we pivoted to bridge. Good thing we had already modeled bridge from the start. You may have to restructure entities to align with lender expectations. We formed a new borrower entity late in the process and updated the org chart to match what the lender required. That meant new documents, new approvals, and making sure everything flowed correctly from a legal and ownership standpoint before we could close. Multiple legal teams get involved. Lender counsel, borrower counsel, title, everyone reviewing language and redlining documents. A lot of back and forth. Signature pages get revised. Loan agreements get updated. You think you are done, then another comment comes in. Title items can surface that have to be cleared before anyone wires money. In our case, there were legacy items that had to be resolved before we could get clean title. That meant coordination and making sure everything was cleared so funding could happen. None of that shows up on a spreadsheet. Getting this deal to closing was a different animal. Glad we got it done. Now the real work begins.

This was the most difficult project in our career, and I’m proud of this story of perseverance and ultimately preservation of capital. In a time where there is much negativity towards Syndications and multifamily, this story hopefully gives hope to the operators out there doing the right thing, giving every bit of smarts and execution to protect capital. This story is a save. I don’t know many other operators that would have been able to pull off what we did and the challenges we faced, how we survived and thrived. Our strength as GP guarantors at Sharpline, our track-record, our relationships with Freddie and Fannie were the key. It’s a testament to Sharpline and the commitment of our team as well as the patience and belief from our investors. I want this post to be a reality check and not considered bragadocious but give homage to the people in Sharpline and the many partners (lenders, vendors, consultants, investors) that helped get this insurmountable project to where it is today. Here we go. 3 years ago we bought this as a heavy value-add post covid. We couldn’t get new roofs that were leaking for 7 months, so this inhibited our reposition to improve the property, which kept some of the bad elements at the community there longer than we wanted. Fire property management company 1 , Fire property management company 2 (proverbial jump out frying pan into the fire, scary). Decided to self-manage project. This was in an early stage of our self-management journey about 2 years ago (we now self-manage 1500+ units). We purchase one half of the project with cash and the other with a bridge loan with floating rate debt (our only floating rate Sharpline has ever done, we didn’t buy a rate cap either, not smart) 4% bridge loan. We begin to execute capex plan successfully (we ripped the mansards off #MansardSlayer). The process of reposition took longer than we liked because of construction delays and bad PM companies, but we ultimately had the safety net of the 24 unit townhouse project that was getting higher occupancy that we purchased with cash as part of the syndication. So we refi’d the 24 unit with a local bank and GPs personally guaranteed the loan as we continued to do projects. This allowed us to free up liquid capital to continue executing to get higher occupancy, but we were still not there yet. We were at 65% overall occupancy on 128 units and the community was improving.

It was the end of August. We spent about 6 months working on a deal. Got it under contract. It looked like a home-run. $18M purchase price. 104 doors. Great submarket in Phoenix. Numbers lined up. We toured the property in person, walked every building.  Everything looked good. But during due diligence, we found out the roofs the seller said were "brand new" weren't.  They were shot. Full replacement needed. That changed everything. We went back to the seller and asked for a credit to cover the cost. They said no.  We tried to make it work, but at the end of the day, it just didn't make sense. Moving forward would've meant putting our investors' capital at risk and hoping we could make up the difference later. That's not how we operate. So we walked away. Was a tough pill to swallow.  We'd spent hundreds of hours on that deal and paid for all the third-party reports.  But it was the right call.  Sometimes protecting capital means walking away from a deal you really wanted. Here's what that experience reminded me of: - Don't fall in love with a deal. Fall in love with your standards. - Due diligence isn't just paperwork. It's how you protect your people. - And when in doubt, choose discipline over emotion. We lost some time and money on that one, but honestly it made us sharper. Our process is tighter, our team's stronger, and our conviction in what we stand for is even clearer. Sometimes the best deals are the ones you don't close.

Kansas City operates as a single economic region, but it functions across two different state systems — each with its own tax structures, incentive tools, and development priorities. When those systems begin pulling in different directions, the effects don’t appear overnight. They show up through where employers commit, where capital flows, and how people reorganize their daily lives. That two-state dynamic is becoming relevant again. Why This Metro Behaves Differently In most cities, relocating a headquarters or major asset means crossing hundreds of miles and rebuilding a workforce. In Kansas City, it can mean crossing a street. That distinction matters. It allows: - Companies to reposition without disrupting their labor pool - Municipalities to compete aggressively without geographic friction - Employees to adapt incrementally rather than uprooting entirely As a result, movement inside this metro tends to be gradual, but durable. We’ve Seen This Before — and We’re Seeing It Again This isn’t hypothetical. Kansas City has already experienced meaningful internal repositioning. One of the most visible examples is Lockton, which committed to relocating its headquarters to the Kansas side. That decision wasn’t about leaving the metro — it was about optimizing within it. More recently, similar conversations are happening around large-scale anchor institutions, not just office users. There have been serious discussions around: - The Kansas City Royals potentially locating a new stadium and surrounding mixed-use development on the Kansas side, including sites tied to the Aspiria campus - The Kansas City Chiefs exploring the possibility of moving from Arrowhead Stadium to the Legends Outlets Kansas City area in Wyandotte County Whether or not every proposal materializes is less important than what these discussions signal. These are not fringe ideas — they are serious evaluations of incentives, infrastructure, and long-term alignment. What Happens When Incentives Start to Matter Again