In multifamily real estate, each property has unique aspects, no two properties are exactly alike. This lends itself to market inefficiency and opportunity. That’s why it’s possible to achieve alpha returns in any environment if you look hard enough. Bo Diamond, Co-founder of Caisson Capital Partners, identifies properties with value-add opportunities that make it possible to achieve outsize returns for his investors. Over the past few months, lenders have started to dispose of properties at highly discounted prices that reflect the current distress in the market.

718: Lenders Are Starting To Capitulate On Pricing Distressed Properties

Street Smart Success

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** Street Smart Success

## Participants

- **Roger Becker** (Street Smart Success)
- **Bo Diamond** (Caisson Capital Partners)

## Transcript

So today we have with us a smart gentleman with an interesting thesis and strategy around the multifamily space that I'm very excited to discuss. It's intriguing to me. This gentleman is the co-founder of Case on Capital, I should say a co-founder, none other than Mr. Bo Diamond. Bo, welcome to Street Smart Success.

Thank you very much for having me, Roger. Yeah, you bet. Give me the Bo history. Start it wherever you want. Obviously, I'm really curious to know how you got into the multifamily space in particular. There's many different flavors you could have chosen. Why, how, what, when, where, you know, take it away. Sure. I'll go through the full arc. I'm a Southerner by background, grew up in Savannah, Georgia, grew up in a real estate family. My dad was a real estate entrepreneur.

And I was originally trained as an architect and never practiced. I did what most people coming out of architecture school do. I went in and do investment banking. That's a joke, obviously. I started in investment banking at probably quite an auspicious time. I started on the structured equity desk of Wachovia Securities in the summer of 2008. Perfect. So, Wachovia went out of business pretty quickly thereafter.

So, I had a view into the global financial crisis from the ground floor, which was fascinating. But real estate was always the end game. But I did stay in banking, both with Wachovia, which is what Wachovia became, Wells Fargo, and then also at Barclays, which was the former Lehman Brothers platform in both New York and London for several years.

And then made a pivot into real estate. I spent several years at Ackman Ziff, which is a boutique real estate investment bank, and then ran real estate investments at a family office in New York City. And then my wife and I were ready for a change. And she's been in the consumer products industry her whole career with P&G. And she said, hey, we could move to Northwest Arkansas and I could join the Walmart team. And I said, where?

But I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to start my own company. And when I started looking at Northwest Arkansas and the heartland broadly, I was fascinated. Northwest Arkansas at the time was an MSA of about 500,000 people that had been maintaining population growth of 3% to 5% per annum for the last 20 years. Had three Fortune 500 companies, including the largest retailer in the world, major research university in the University of Arkansas.

And there weren't, as I could tell, and there still aren't many people forming capital around real estate deals, at least in an organized and sophisticated way. And then I also viewed the whole municipal economy as effectively backstopped. The Walton family can't let it fail. Their wealth is too tied up in the region. So I thought it was a very interesting pr...

718: Lenders Are Starting To Capitulate On Pricing Distressed Properties

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.

718: Lenders Are Starting To Capitulate On Pricing Distressed Properties

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.