CRE Broker in Maryland turned dad, turned business owner, turned investor, turned developer. Agents and Investors are my clients. UVA Lacrosse
Maryland
Joined March 2014
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This is so true. Especially if the owners have lived off the cash flow. They’ve probably not set aside cash for deal making or modernization.
Want a great investment property? Ask a leasing broker which client of theirs is slowest to respond to LOIs, lease changes and generally who kills the most deals.
A lot of people overlook properties with long standing vacancy thinking it’s a market problem but a lot of times it’s an operator problem.
Those are the properties you can pay a little more for off market if they aren’t willing to sell because the lease up is right there just waiting for someone who is a real deal maker.
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Justin Mullen retweeted
Maryland is bankrupt. So, @mddems & @GovWesMoore plan to expand the sales tax to services. It’s a massive hit on middle-class affordability.
Here’s a list of services that have been targeted in these expansions (currently untaxed):
• Home repair and improvement (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, general contracting)
• Auto mechanic and repair labor
• Childcare
• Residential home cleaning
• Dry cleaning and personal laundry
• Veterinary services and pet care
• Landscaping, lawn care, and tree removal
• Accounting, tax preparation, and financial planning
• Gym memberships and personal training
• Grocery delivery and related shipping
• Barber, beauty, and nail salon services
• Funeral services
• Real estate-related services and certain transportation/towing
These are not luxury extras. They are the routine expenses of owning a home, keeping a car running, working while raising kids, maintaining a yard, or handling basic life events.
Adding sales tax raises the price of keeping a household running.
Maryland already taxes cell phone service. Proposals would layer the same approach onto more of the services middle-class families use every month or year.
That is the opposite of making Maryland more affordable.
Justin Mullen retweeted
The pattern is unmistakable.
Every time the government tries to spend to make something more affordable, it just raises the cost.
Look at this chart every time a socialist promises they will spend their way out of our affordability crisis.
Justin Mullen retweeted
My post about France went viral. Thousands of likes. Many Americans told me: "Democrats aren't socialists. America will never be France." I want to answer that seriously, step by step.
Start with a simple observation. Look at what has gotten cheaper in America over the last 25 years: TVs, phones, software, clothes, toys. Now look at what has exploded: college tuition, healthcare, childcare, housing.
What separates the two lists? The first lives in competitive markets. The second is exactly where government is most involved: subsidies, mandates, licensing, zoning, regulation.
College. Washington lends students almost unlimited money. Universities know the money will always come, so they raise tuition and hire more administrators. The student pays the bill for twenty years. More government money, higher prices.
Housing. Why can't a nurse buy a home in the city where she works? Not because of capitalism. Because of zoning laws, permits, environmental reviews, years of procedure to build a single building. The most expensive places to live in America are the places where it's hardest to build. When building is nearly illegal, prices explode.
Healthcare. The patient almost never sees the price. A third party pays, regulations limit who can compete, and costs climb year after year with no one able to say no.
So here is the trap. The problems you suffer from are not the failure of free markets. They are the places where the market has already been replaced by the state. And the solution you're being offered is more of the same.
That's the Trojan horse. It always works the same way. A real problem. A generous-sounding promise. A program that makes things worse. Then the failure of that program becomes the argument for the next one. People who lived under communism in Poland learned to recognize the lie and the mask the lie wears. The lie never presents itself as a lie. It presents itself as compassion.
In France we are at the end of that road. Debt we can never repay. Young people who can't afford a home. Our best people leaving. And every few years our cities burn. Nobody voted for this. They voted for one more generous promise, fifty years in a row.
If you're a Republican, share this with the Democrat in your life. Not to win an argument. To start a conversation.
If you're a Democrat, I'm not asking you to switch teams. I'm asking you to look at the pattern. Wherever the state took over, life became unaffordable. Don't fix the failures of government with more government.
Stay American. Ask for less state, not more.
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Justin Mullen retweeted
Anduril is building America's largest shipyard since WWII. This space needs bold investment and decisive action.
In the 1790s, Baltimoore clippers were the fastest and most advanced sailing ships of their time. King George III didn't stand a chance. Time to run the same play.
Justin Mullen retweeted
Requirements to date my daughter:
1. Spiral a football or swing a golf club proficiently
2. Tie a proper tie knot and take your hat off indoors
3. Change a tire, jump a battery, and back up a trailer without a YouTube tutorial
4. Have a job even if your parents are rich
5. Know how to shuffle a deck of cards
6. Pay for the first few dates with zero expectations
7. Have a passport with stamps from places that aren’t Spring Break destinations
8. Have conservative values - the quiet kind, not the debate club kind
9. Reference actual books, not just podcast soundbites
10. Have a firm handshake, confident eye contact, and shoes off at the door
11. Show up on time - i.e. five minutes early
12. Dress like you intended to leave the house/gym
13. Have mastery of at least one skill or hobby. Passion is contagious
14. Know when to put your phone away, especially when talking to me
15. Laugh at yourself, and listen more than you talk
Justin Mullen retweeted
Coffee Talk Episode 13 is live.
@JustinMullenCRE sits down with Liam O’Meara of Environmental Quality Resources to discuss leadership, business growth, and restoration work across the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Watch here: youtu.be/XLrxZrI1yZY
This should be reposted by every CRE professional on X.
What every voter and apparently, the NY Times Editorial Board, should know about housing policy:
1. Rents reflect the balance of supply of apartments and demand for those apartments in a given area. That’s it; there’s no magic. If you want lower rents, you can hope for a recession that destroys jobs and, therefore, demand. Or you can add supply.
2. There is no amount of money that any big city government could feasibly spend that would add materially to supply. This is because, depending on the location, new apartments cost $250,000-1,000,000 to develop… building even a few hundred of those starts to stress any city budget, and many big cities need tens or hundreds of thousands.
3. On the other hand, investors (including pension funds and endowments, insurance companies, rich families, etc.) can collectively **easily** provide enough capital to build as much housing as we need **so long as they are confident they can get a reasonable return**.
To get those investors to fund the creation of the housing our society needs, we must do two things:
1. Dramatically reduce the time & complexity associated with securing governmental permission to develop housing. This means reviewing and simplifying the overlapping regulations that constrain housing production: zoning codes, building codes, parking, ADA, etc. But it also means changing the cultures within the relevant governmental agencies from “default no” to “how can we help you?”.
2. Provide certainty around on-going regulation of apartment operations.
The way investors get a return from building rentals is as follows: They hire managers to lease the apartments, collect the rents, pay operating expenses and any mortgage payments, and then send the investors the cashflow that remains.
But governments all over the country have been restricting the manner in which apartment buildings can be operated in all kinds of ways.
For example: Cities have been making it harder to screen tenants, while also making it much harder to evict tenants who don’t pay. You can see why both of those measures are politically popular. After all, who doesn’t want people to get second chances? And who wants anyone to get evicted? But, as a manager, the combination of those two regulations makes it much harder to predict, with any certainty, that the rent will get paid… and that makes it very difficult to get investors to provide capital to create more housing.
Another example: Rent control. Again, I understand why renters love rent control and why politicians want to give it to them. But, if, as has been the case in NY, LA and San Francisco, city governments hold annual rent increases below the rate of growth in the operating expenses of the buildings, the cashflow payable to the investors shrinks… making them much less likely to invest capital in building more apartments.
In conclusion: For ~every other good or service in the economy, we allow the market to function, and the result is that we have a surplus of choice at all price points (think of food or clothes or cars), which is spectacular for the consumer. If we want a surplus of choice at all price points in housing, we need to get comfortable with the idea of allowing the market to provide it.
And that means allowing investors to build rental apartments *and* allowing them to operate those apartments in a manner consistent with making a reasonable profit.
Remember: Every developer of rentals is either a landlord-in-waiting or hoping to sell to one.
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Justin Mullen retweeted
One thing that’s becoming very clear in commercial real estate right now:
A lot of people want to explain what happened.
Very few want to admit what they participated in.
Everyone suddenly has a list of excuses:
- rates went up
- insurance exploded
- rents flattened
- the Fed changed everything
But the truth is, most of this behavior didn’t start in 2022.
The seeds were planted years earlier when people stopped caring about what an asset was actually worth.
Back around 2014–2016, while working at Marcus & Millichap, multifamily deals commonly traded at 8–10 caps. Deals actually penciled. There was room for error. Basis mattered.
Then I saw something that completely changed the tone of the market.
We had listed an overpriced and rough 1960s vintage deal that everyone knew was overpriced. Then a buyer came in around a 5.5 cap and justified it by saying:
“The banks are lending at 4%, so that spread makes the deal works.”
That was the first time I heard someone justify permanently overpaying for an asset because of a temporary interest rate environment.
And that mentality slowly became the entire industry.
At first the logic was:
“Lock in a low rate for a long term and the deal will work.”
Then in 2022, even that wasn’t enough anymore.
People started justifying to buy with *negative* leverage while assuming rents would continue growing 10%+ annually forever.
Underwriting went from aggressive to complete fantasy.
And here’s the uncomfortable part:
Most GPs weren’t creating some revolutionary business.
They weren’t inventing technology.
They weren’t building anything unique.
Their actual skill was raising money and telling a compelling story around a deal.
Which is fine, IF your number one responsibility is protecting investor capital.
But then another layer entered the picture: feeder funds.
When you raise money from friends, family, neighbors, or your community, there’s emotional accountability. You know exactly whose money is at risk.
Feeder funds created distance from responsibility.
Now people were:
- overpaying because rates were low
- accepting negative yield because “rents always go up”
- and doing it with money that no longer felt personally connected to real people
That combination destroyed discipline.
Fast forward to today:
Many of the same people who bought absurd deals with negative leverage and fantasy assumptions are now acting like nobody could have possibly seen this coming.
That’s nonsense.
The entire job of a GP is risk management.
You don’t get to call yourself a genius during the run-up and then blame “unexpected conditions” when the cycle turns.
And honestly, watching all of this unfold has likely twisted a lot of the love we all once had for this industry.
Somewhere along the way, too many people stopped respecting the basic math and replaced discipline with narratives.
But the only way this industry actually heals is if people stop rewriting history and start telling the truth about what happened.
Justin Mullen retweeted
Elon Musk avait dit un truc qui m'avait marqué sur l'allocation de ressources. En substance : passé un certain niveau de richesse, l'argent n'est plus de la consommation, c'est de l'allocation de capital.
Cette phrase change tout.
L'économie, dans le fond, c'est juste un problème d'allocation. Tu as des ressources finies et des usages infinis. Qui décide où va quoi ?
Imagine une cour de récré. 100 enfants, des paquets de cartes Pokémon distribués au hasard. Tu laisses faire. Très vite, un ordre émerge. Les bons joueurs accumulent les cartes rares, les collectionneurs trient, les négociateurs trouvent des deals. Personne n'a planifié. Et pourtant chaque carte finit dans les mains de celui qui en tire le plus de valeur. Le système maximise le bonheur total de la cour. C'est ça, la main invisible.
Maintenant fais entrer la maîtresse. Elle trouve ça injuste. Léo a 50 cartes, Tom en a 3. Elle confisque, redistribue, impose l'égalité. Trois effets immédiats. Les bons joueurs arrêtent de jouer, à quoi bon. Les mauvais n'ont plus de raison de progresser, ils auront leur part. Les échanges s'effondrent. La cour est égale, et morte. Elle a maximisé l'égalité, elle a détruit le bonheur.
Le problème de la maîtresse, c'est qu'elle ne peut pas avoir l'information que la cour avait collectivement. C'est le problème du calcul économique de Mises, formulé en 1920. L'URSS a essayé de le résoudre pendant 70 ans avec le Gosplan. Résultat : pénuries, queues, effondrement. Pas parce que les Soviétiques étaient bêtes, parce que le problème est mathématiquement insoluble en mode centralisé.
Quand Musk a 200 milliards, il ne les consomme pas, il les alloue. SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, xAI. Chaque dollar est un pari sur le futur. Et lui a un track record. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX. Il a démontré qu'il sait identifier des problèmes immenses et y allouer des ressources avec un rendement spectaculaire.
L'État aussi a un track record. Hôpitaux qui s'effondrent, éducation qui décline, dette qui explose, services publics qui se dégradent malgré des budgets en hausse constante. Le marché identifie les bons allocateurs, la politique identifie les bons communicants.
Le profit n'est pas une finalité, c'est un signal. Il dit : tu as alloué des ressources rares vers un usage que les gens valorisent suffisamment pour payer. Plus le profit est gros, plus la création de valeur est grande. Quand Starlink est rentable, ça veut dire que des millions de gens dans des zones rurales ont enfin internet. Quand un ministère est en déficit, ça veut dire qu'il consomme plus qu'il ne produit. L'un crée, l'autre détruit, et on appelle ça redistribution.
Dans nos sociétés il y a deux catégories d'acteurs. Les entrepreneurs et les bureaucrates. L'entrepreneur prend un risque personnel pour identifier un problème, mobiliser des ressources, créer une solution. S'il se trompe il perd. S'il a raison, ses clients gagnent, ses employés gagnent, ses fournisseurs gagnent, l'État collecte des impôts. Il est la cellule de base du progrès humain.
Le bureaucrate ne prend aucun risque personnel. Son salaire est garanti. Au mieux il maintient une rente existante. Au pire il la détruit par excès de réglementation, mauvaise allocation forcée, incitations perverses qui découragent ceux qui produisent. Mais dans aucun cas il ne crée.
Regarde les 50 dernières années. iPhone, internet civil, SpaceX, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Stripe, mRNA, ChatGPT. Toutes des inventions privées, portées par des entrepreneurs, financées par du capital risque. Pas un seul ministère n'a inventé quoi que ce soit qui ait changé ta vie au quotidien.
La France est devenue le laboratoire mondial de la dérive bureaucratique. 57% du PIB en dépenses publiques, record absolu. Une administration tentaculaire, une fiscalité qui pénalise la création de richesse. Résultat : décrochage face aux États-Unis, à l'Allemagne, à la Suisse. Fuite des cerveaux. Désindustrialisation. Dette qui explose.
Et le pire c'est que la mauvaise allocation s'auto-renforce. Plus l'État prélève, moins les entrepreneurs créent. Moins ils créent, moins il y a de base fiscale. Plus l'État s'endette et taxe. Boucle de rétroaction négative parfaite. La maîtresse pense qu'elle aide, et chaque année la cour produit moins.
Dans nos sociétés, ce sont les entrepreneurs, toujours, qui font avancer la civilisation. Les bureaucrates au mieux maintiennent une rente, au pire la détruisent. Aucune société n'a jamais progressé en taxant ses créateurs pour subventionner ses gestionnaires.
La question n'est jamais qui a combien. C'est qui alloue le mieux la prochaine unité de ressource pour maximiser le futur de l'humanité. La réponse depuis 200 ans n'a jamais changé. Ce ne sont pas les fonctionnaires.
Justin Mullen retweeted
When it comes to redlining leases…
Good attorneys explain risk and tell clients “these are the risks, it’s your call”
Bad attorneys say “this is a deal breaker” on a deal that isn’t theirs without asking about the clients’ business.
Good attorneys edit language keeping in mind what is reasonable for both sides to minimize back and forth.
Bad attorneys add language they know won’t be accepted by the other side because each back and forth adds to the bill.
Good attorneys focus on level of risk + probability of risk when making edits that cost time and risk the deal.
Bad attorneys say “this is just legal language” and rush through it.
Good attorneys offer examples and deal stories from past experience to explain risks to the client.
Bad attorneys edit previously negotiated points.
Good attorneys ask what was already agreed to and discussed.
Bad attorneys focus on rarely referenced clauses without confirming dates and timelines on rents.
Good attorneys know one of the most common mistakes is sloppy language defining rent commencement dates that leaves confusion and missed rent.
Good attorneys are worth the bill and you don’t feel regret when paying.
Don’t worry I’m an equal opportunity offender and will do the same list for brokers, lots of bad actors on our end too.
Justin Mullen retweeted
☕ Coffee Talk Episode 7 is now live.
Nick Manis (Modus Solutions, LLC) on leadership, consistency, and building a strong team.
🎧 Watch + listen here:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL…
#CoffeeTalk #Podcast #Leadership – at Annapolis, MD
Justin Mullen retweeted
For all the kids who see this.
This photo looks like the 80-90’s
This is what America felt like back then
Feels good.
Let’s keep it up.
Justin Mullen retweeted
A rule I made for myself as a father is that whenever my boys ask me to play tackle football, the answer is always yes. Right now it is raining on top of slushy snow 🤦♂️
I am usually sore for days and I am probably doing long-term damage, but there are a few things teenage boys need more than this kind of contact.
Also, if it looks like I am limping, I am, this is why.