Wildhorn Insights
These articles are your window into Wildhorn Capital’s unique approach to property investment, including the principles that guide their acquisitions, management strategies, and investor relations. Whether you’re a seasoned investor or just starting your journey in the real estate market, these articles offer data-driven perspectives, expert opinions, and practical advice tailored to Wildhorn Capital’s investment paradigm. Learn from the successes of a leading private equity real estate firm and discover how to make informed, profit-driven decisions in the multi-family property market.
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Unpacking Austin’s Market Shift: Beyond the Headlines
A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article with a fairly provocative title, “Once America’s Hottest Housing Market, Austin Is Running in Reverse.” That headline clearly got a lot...
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Evaluating Investment Opportunities
Identifying & Evaluating Investment Opportunities As you likely know at this point, at Wildhorn Capital we call ourselves a Boutique Real Estate Investment Firm. We are a multifamily...
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Another Winter Storm: Grading Our Preparation Plan
Proactive Measures Against Winter Storms in Central Texas Investment Portfolio In the heat of the summer last August, we wrote an article highlighting what we are doing to prepare for any potential...
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2024 Multifamily Market Headlines: Dispelling Misconceptions and Embracing Opportunities
The Road Ahead: Insights and Strategies from Wildhorn Capital This time of year there always tends to be a flurry of predictions of what’s to come in the New Year. Questions about the economy,...
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A Beginner’s Guide to Investment Properties Austin TX
Unlock the Power of Austin Real Estate Investment Opportunities in Texas A Beginner's Guide to Investment Properties Austin TX is your comprehensive roadmap to navigating the world of real estate...
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Celebrating 20 Deals Closed: Reflecting on Lessons Learned
Closing a deal is like completing a real estate marathon – it demands a lot of teamwork, endurance, and grit to make it across the finish line. We've closed 20 deals since the inception of Wildhorn...
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The Build-to-Core Strategy: Reflecting On A New Strategy for Wildhorn
Central Texas Boutique Real Estate Investment Firm: Multifamily Operators The term "Central Texas Boutique Real Estate Investment Firm" is the quick-hand version of how we describe our business, but...
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Austin’s Rezoning Journey: A Local’s View
Navigating the Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities in Austin's Urban Development Introduction Growing Up in Austin: A Unique Lens on Urban Transformation Growing up the son of a land use...
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Vertical Integration in Property Management: Striking the Perfect Balance
One part of my role that excites me is the opportunity to chat with both our current investors and those interested in learning more about what we do. I love being able to share our business story,...
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The Future of Wildhorn Capital: Embracing Growth in Central Texas
Navigating Uncertainty with Conviction and State Legislative Support Whenever we get asked about our plans for Wildhorn’s future, we always sort of shrug our shoulders. Truthfully we don’t really...
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Adding Ground-up Development To Our Menu
In January this year we launched a new type of deal for Wildhorn–our first ground-up development asset. If you’ve been following our story over the last couple of years, we’ve been talking about...
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Winterizing: Defending Against Texas’ Freezes
Here in Central Texas we are suffering through a blazing and historically hot summer, with a new record of 45 consecutive days of over 100-degrees. Our grass is all scorched, trees look stressed and...
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Wildhorn 2022 Recap
As most folks do this time of year (and every year), we spent the last few weeks at Wildhorn reflecting on 2022 and the incredible year we had. And, given the current uncertainty in the economy at...
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Investing In An Investor-First Approach
The Investor-First Philosophy at Wildhorn Capital From Day One at Wildhorn Capital, we have been an Investor-first company. I’ve often said that we’re in the relationship business—not the real...
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Leaning In (And Giving Back) To Our Local Politics
In this month’s article Cooper weighed in to take a look into the local political environment in Austin that has helped define our growth–and set to continue it. With the election upon us in the...
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Unlocking the Power of Multifamily Investments with 1031 Exchanges
The Unique Appeal of Wildhorn Capital's Investment Opportunities There are lots of reasons that investors are attracted to the investment opportunities we put together at Wildhorn Capital. Sure, we...
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Creating Incentives For Our Teams
If you have spent any time at all investing with, talking to, or just checking out Wildhorn Capital, you’ll know that we pride ourselves on being local. Our whole business is focused on...
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Growing Our Team – The Outside In Approach
When we started this business in 2016, it was a solo mission. Real estate has always been a team sport, and we found ways to create and build partnerships where they made sense. But we didn’t have...
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Staying Conservative – How We Sleep At Night
Earlier this week we had a new experience, as we were on a Zoom call with a potential investor – that he was taking from his Private Jet. The wonders of technology made it happen, and it mostly...
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Time Flies When You’re Having Fun
Editors Note: For anyone that actually reads this stuff, you’ll know that I like to write. Over the last 5+ years I’ve written nearly 100 blog posts on this site. We always hope you find them...
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Interest Rate and Economic Shifts – Our Thoughts
Over the last 60 days, we’re experiencing something that hasn’t happened in a really long time–interest rates have started to move up as the Fed is doing everything they can to battle inflation. ...
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Multiple Swim Lanes – Different Business Plans
A Business Plan for Multifamily Investing Over the last six months or so, our 8-year old son has really gotten into swimming. He’s joined a new swim team and is enjoying going to the pool three...
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Why I Love Walking Property
Of all the things I personally get to do in helping to build and run Wildhorn Capital, I have two favorite activities. First, it’s getting to know and spend time with our investors—building true...
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Create Revenue and Happy Tenants Via WiFi
As our portfolio of multifamily assets continues to expand and mature throughout Austin and San Antonio, we’ve challenged ourselves to find ways to leverage the scale that we have. We’re looking...
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2021 Year in Review
As we enter the homestretch of 2021 and start to turn the page towards 2022, we are doing what most of you are probably doing as well--reflecting on the year we have had, and starting to plan for...
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Elevating our Asset Management
When you visit our website, you’ll notice the first thing it says is that “We are a Boutique Real Estate Investment Firm Operator based in our hometown of Austin, Texas.” Our General Approach on...
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The Ramifications Of Your Debt Decisions
One of the best things about investing in real estate is your ability to use leverage. The $100 you have to invest allows you to buy $300-$400 of real estate when you apply leverage. It’s a...
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Thriving in Austin’s Hot Real Estate Market: Wildhorn Capital’s 2021 Success and Investor-Focused Strategies
A Productive 2021 for Wildhorn Capital So far, 2021 has been a very productive year for our business. We close on our 4th acquisition of the year in a couple of weeks, and we have our third slated...
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Equity Sourcing: Deal by Deal vs a Fund Structure
We buy multifamily projects in Austin and San Antonio. We spend all our time looking for deals in our hometown markets that we believe in—looking for assets we have conviction about. Austin Real...
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Vertical Integration: Construction Management
Vertical Integration seems to be a big topic these days, at least in many of our conversations. Investors want to know how we handle the varying aspects of our business, and whether or not we...
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Value Add: Evergreen Strategy
The Evolving Value Add Strategy in San Antonio Real Estate Investments In the last quarter, we closed on the sale of two of our San Antonio assets. They were both 1980’s vintage apartments where we...
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Lessons Learned: Exiting The Wurzbach Portfolio
Last week we sent out the final investor distributions and profits following the sale of two assets in San Antonio that we lovingly called the Wurzbach Portfolio. These two deals officially closed...
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Investing in Multifamily Real Estate: A Deep Dive into Property Management
Multifamily Real Estate: Our Passion and Focus As we have discussed many times in this space, a good bit of our time each week is dedicated to talking with investors both new and old. It's one of...
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Lessons Learned: Winter Storm
We woke up on February 15th to a strange and beautiful site in Austin, Texas. There was over six inches of snow in our yard and all over our state. The winter storm that had been talked about and...
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Riding The Wave
We spend a fair bit of our time on the phone talking with investors each week; getting introduced to potential new investors and catching up with current investors. I always enjoy these...
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Lessons Learned: Combining Two Assets
Last November we closed on a 264 unit value-add apartment in North Austin. It's an asset that we had our eye on for over two years as we stayed in touch with the owner and let them know of our...
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Building a Business With Multiple Pitches
Good baseball pitchers have 2 dominant pitches. All Star pitchers have 3. The idea is that you want to be able to throw different pitches in different scenarios, keeping the batter off balance so...
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Protecting Investors Interests (Why We Walked $250,000)
Wildhorn Capital is a real estate company that focuses on multifamily assets in Central Texas. More than that though, we are an alternative investment option for investors that want the security...
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Creativity in Value Add
When introducing Wildhorn Capital, the words I most often use to describe our culture are “boutique” “creative” and “relationship oriented”. The most common response I get is that those words aren’t...
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You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em…
Now six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels like the world has started to adjust. I hate the term “new normal”, but our business has a lot more going on today that it did in May. The deal...
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Responding to the Headlines
A big part of our job at Wildhorn is to be an expert in our home market. It's our competitive advantage, and it's a big reason we believe our partners choose to work with us. We’re born and raised...
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Scaling Strategically
We started Wildhorn Capital almost 5 years ago, making the transition from investing on our own into investing with and for others. Over that time, we’ve been quite fortunate to see the business...
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7.13.2020 Press Release
For Immediate Release Wildhorn Capital is pleased to announce Cooper Drenner is joining as a Partner AUSTIN, Texas, July 13, 2020– Wildhorn Capital, a leading multifamily investment firm in...
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Cap Rates, Where Are They Going?
We’ve spent a lot of time in this blog over the last several months focused on the economy, the impacts of COVID-19 and the recession we’re now in, and talking through how that might impact our...
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Investing Again – Is Now The Time?
When Do You Hop Back In? Almost every industry conference, lunch or round table dinner I attended for the last 5 years has asked some form of the question “what inning are we in?” Cyclicality has...
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Betting On Austin Through The Recession
Like the rest of the world, much of our conversation and thinking these days is focused on COVID-19. Each of our last three articles in this space have been dedicated to various aspects of our...
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Underwriting Changes In A Recession
COVID-19 has brought about many uncertainties in life. How long until we find a vaccine? What social customs and ways of life might be forever changed? When might schools and businesses reopen,...
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Being Intentional During The Downtime
Over the last 45 days, the world has changed. The Coronavirus pandemic has brought the world to a halt, closed schools, stalled the economy and changed the way we all think about simple daily tasks...
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Responding to a Pandemic: Asset Management
On March 11, the Wildhorn team sat at our favorite local Mexican food restaurant, celebrating the closing of our most recent Value-Add apartment that we purchased in Austin. Over a few enchiladas...
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Lessons Learned – Hawthorne at the District
We closed on our latest value-add multifamily project March 12th. This marks our first acquisition of 2020, and a project we’d been working on prior to Christmas. As we always do, after closing on...
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The Case for Multifamily Investing in the Face of a Pandemic
The outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has captured the eye of the media, the markets and our collective attention at large. What seemed speculative and of contained consequence back in February...
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The Opportunity in Opportunity Zones
In our last article we talked about our desire and interest to explore new strategies that allow us to be opportunistic in Austin. It’s our belief that Austin is the single best place to be making...
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Being Opportunistic In Austin
At the beginning of the year, we wrote an article about what’s in store for Wildhorn Capital in 2020. We touched on our core belief that Central Texas was the best place to be investing, and as our...
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Survey Says: The Importance of Listening to Your Tenants
Prior to getting into the Multifamily business full time, I spent nearly 15 years in the advertising and product development space, where my job involved leading the strategic direction of an ad...
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2020 Focus
The start of a new year, and the coinciding break in the action around the holidays, always provides a great time for reflection. As we entered into the twilight of 2019, we sat down to chart our...
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Value Add or New Builds?
In our last article we walked through the risks associated with attempting to transition a C-Class Property into a B-Class Property. That article was the result of many internal conversations we’ve...
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The Great Debate: Class B vs Class C Assets
If you follow the Value-Add Multifamily space you’re sure to have heard about, or been sold, the dream. It’s the reason everyone wants to get into and invest in this space. So what is the dream? ...
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What’s Going on in Austin? A Recap of Q3
The Wildhorn Team is going to be jumping into the numbers in today’s post. One of the beauties of focusing on a select few markets is that we can target our research efforts and truly see if what’s...
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Our Obsession with Investor Experience
I recently had a conversation with one of our investors, and he paid us the nicest compliment. He said “I want you to know that the communications I get from Wildhorn Capital are the best and most...
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The Abundance Mindset
Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at a real estate conference about how we’ve grown our multifamily syndication business to over 1,700 units in two years. The night before the conference...
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Lessons Learned From Buying 350-units in Austin
Last week we closed on our latest value-add multifamily project. This project represented our first closing of 2019, but also our largest in our portfolio both unit count (350) and purchase price...
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Doing Due Diligence – How To Manage Property Inspections
Over the past few weeks our team has put two new assets under contract--a 350-unit value-add property in Austin, and a 106-unit we’re buying with a 1031 exchange partner. For both assets, just like...
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Leveraging Austin Real Estate Investing: The 21st Century Gold Rush
Going to school in Northern California we learned about the California Gold Rush just about every year. The stories were all the same: John Sutter finds gold in the American River, the world rushes...
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You Make Your Money On The Sell
Everyone says that in real estate, you make your money when you buy. Conventional wisdom states that what really matters is to make sure you are getting a good deal--don’t over pay, make sure the...
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Choice is a Beautiful Thing
My favorite thing about our business is opportunities to be creative and finding new inventive solutions to problems we face. We’re written in the past about how that manifests itself in the...
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The Reality Behind a “Life by Design”
It’s no secret that Colorado is my happy place. I grew up going to the mountains for a week or two each summer, and its become a tradition I’ve carried on with my wife and kids. Luckily for me, my...
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The Right Tool for the Job
Call it leverage, call it a mortgage, or call it a liability; debt is a key tool used in the majority of any real estate investments. We call it a beautiful thing--and one of the things we like most...
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Off Market Deals–The Holy Grail or a Whole Waste of Time?
“Off Market Deal”. The three most magical words in the real estate acquisition game. If you can find an off market deal, it means you’ve won right? You got an asset without any competition, and...
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Talk the Talk AND Walk the Walk
One of my favorite things about real estate is that each investment is backed by a real, tangible asset. There is something to see, touch and feel. I can go on site and see the property anytime....
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Mastering Austin Real Estate Investing: A Comprehensive Guide to Evaluating Investment Opportunities
This is our last article in a series focused on identifying and understanding investment opportunities, as well as the underlying decisions that go into making these decisions. Defining Good Returns...
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Comparing Stock to Real Estate, Apples to Apples
Today we continue our series focused on identifying and understanding investment opportunities, as well as the underlying decisions that go into making these investments. Our last article focused on...
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What’s a Good Return? The Importance of Chasing the Right Returns
Just like in investing rewards are not always worth the risk At the end of last year, we wrote about why we intend to be net buyers in 2019 and why we trust our value-add business plan. Well guess...
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Tax Day – Another Reason to Celebrate Real Estate Investing
Congratulations, you made it to April 15th. The National Holiday known as Tax Day. A day most people loathe as they scramble to get their taxes filed, and in some cases write the government a big...
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Is your “passive cash flow” really that passive?
If you’re familiar with the Wildhorn story, you know our real estate journey all started with a search for passive cash flow and an initial investment in a duplex 10 years ago. It’s an oft-repeated...
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The Importance of Real Estate Masterminds for Real Estate Investors
What is a Real Estate Mastermind Group? Is it just us or has the term Mastermind really caught fire the last couple years? It's nothing new, with the term going back to Napoleon Hill in...
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Your apartment manager is a valuable asset in the acquisition process
Make sure you're making the best use of the folks closest to your assets, the property and apartment managers. In our last article we talked about how we apply focus to our acquisitions...
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How Focus can Supercharge your Acquisition Strategy
Despite an economic climate that’s becoming more and more uncertain, we’ve doubled down on our intent to keep buying multifamily deals in 2019. We’ve detailed extensively why we believe in this...
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Learnings from 2019’s Largest Multifamily Conference
Last week we attended the National Multifamily Housing Conference (NMHC) in San Diego. This is the biggest conference focused on the apartment industry (that we know about) all year--and it was the...
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Adding Value By Re-positioning A Tennis Court
If you’re a regular reader, you know that at Wildhorn Capital we are a creative apartment buyer, looking for the value-add that others don’t. We buy legacy communities and look for out-of-the box...
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Lessons Learned – 2018 and Our Latest Acquisition
Just before Christmas, we had a lot of good news to share. We officially closed on a 284-unit value-add apartment deal in Andrew’s hometown of Austin, Texas. One week before closing Apple announced...
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Evaluating Investment Risk – Why We’ll Be Buying More Multifamily in 2019
“We’re in the final innings of this cycle” is a refrain we’ve heard time and time again this year when describing the economy. And we at Wildhorn agree, this has been the longest bull market in...
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An Investor for Everyday of the Year
We recently launched a new investor portal at Wildhorn Capital. This portal allows our investors to review our current offerings, see and track the performance of the deals they’re invested in and...
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It’s time for young investors to get off the sidelines and into the game
This article is a guest post from Jeff Tamaru, Junior Partner at Wildhorn Capital, personal finance enthusiast and real estate technologist. The first time I sat at the closing table I felt a rush...
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Finding our own Path
A little over a month ago I attended a dinner in Houston sponsored by a local title company aimed at wooing real estate investor clients. This was the same day we closed on our last deal and I had...
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hustle
As you might have heard, we just closed on a 388-unit portfolio comprised of two fantastic assets down in San Antonio. The morning of closing day I was signing paperwork at our attorney’s office in...
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Lessons Learned – Closing 388-units
This week Wildhorn Capital closed on our latest acquisition, this time a 2-asset portfolio in San Antonio totaling 388-units. This brings the growth of our total portfolio in the last 12 months to...
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How Entrepreneurship Changed my Relationship With My Kids
I wish I had quit my job sooner. 18 months ago I went into real estate investing full time after pursuing it as a side hustle for nearly 10 years. I wanted to quit sooner. Before I actually had the...
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Why We Just Filled In A Pool. In Texas. In Summer.
Summer time in Texas. Where images of triple digit temperatures, sno-cones, ice cream and swimming pools dance in your head. When it’s consistently this hot for this long, you look for any break...
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Around the Horn – August Edition
In our business we search high and low for great sources of information every day. Books, websites, blogs, podcasts; we dig through them all consuming tons of data along the way. Some of what we...
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The Importance of a Good Email Signature (and no, "Best" doesn’t count)
I close all my emails with the following: “With Gratitude, -andrew” It’s something I started not long after we started Wildhorn Capital. In my never ending journey to better myself as a family man,...
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Around the Horn – July Edition
In our business we search high and low for great sources of information every day. Books, websites, blogs, podcasts; we dig through them all consuming tons of data along the way. Some of what we...
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The Two Types of Investors—Which One Are You?
Growing up, you’re taught to never talk politics or religion at social events-they are personal topics, best to be avoided. Personal finance is right behind, up there at the top of the list of...
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5 Keys to How I Raised 16 Million Dollars in 6 Months (In Real Estate and Beyond)
For those of you who’ve been following our adventures at Wildhorn Capital (of which we celebrated our first year this month) you know we’ve been able to accomplish some big things in a relatively...
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The Highs and Lows of Year One at Wildhorn Capital
I hate being the center of attention. Rather than have a big wedding with everyone staring at us, my wife and I eloped. When receiving recognition for accomplishments I’m the worst, a small awkward...
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Responding To Defeat To Drive Your Business Forward
In this situation I’m the guy on the left I have a confession to make. I am one of the worst losers you will ever meet. Losing is not, has not, and will never be fun for me. It’s one of my biggest...
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Why we’re looking beyond the Lone Star State (but don’t worry Texas, you’re still our favorite)
If you know me, you know how much I love Texas. It’s where I was born, where I was raised and where I’ve started a family myself. It doesn’t take a genius to look at our name, Wildhorn Capital (and...
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Lessons Learned From Closing on 253-units
Yesterday we closed on a 253-unit value-add apartment complex in San Antonio. This property sits 2 miles from a 192-unit property we closed on in November of last year. In total, we raised roughly...
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How to Live a Life By Design
When we first started buying rental properties, the goal was passive income, and I was chasing this much talked about goal of Financial Freedom. Pictures of me sitting on the beach and traveling the...
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The Top 5 Reasons We’re Selling Our Residential Portfolio
If you have followed our story, you’ll know we got our start in this business buying duplexes and fourplexes—ultimately scaling that to 76-units. You can read about how we did that here. Today, we...
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Why We’re Thinking Long-Term Debt
“You make your money on the buy” is a phrase that is always thrown around in the real estate industry. I don’t disagree with it, but I think people are using it as a crutch to stop investing today...
