How to Profit From the Next Real Estate Downturn with Omar

Name: How to Profit From the Next Real Estate Downturn with Omar
Uploaded: 2026-10-06T15:57:14+00:00
Duration: 24 min 59 s
Channel: The Real Estate Investing Club

00:10All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Investing Club. I hope

00:16you guys are having a great day, great week, wherever you are and whatever day it is for

00:20you. As always, it is Friday on the podcast. We're bringing that good Friday energy to

00:26you. That's a good day for a second reason because we have Omar Khan with us on the show

00:31from Boardwalk Wealth. They are multifamily guys. If you guys are into multifamily, you

00:36want to know how to get into it. You want to know how to build a successful syndication

00:40and a successful firm in the multifamily space. This is the episode to listen to. They have

00:45over 2,000 units. They've taken over distressed assets from other investors and they do it

00:51well. If you guys want to get into multifamily, we're going to be diving into that here.

00:56Right now, Omar, thanks for hopping on the show.

00:59Hey, thanks, Gabe, for having me. What's going on? You've got a new kid and I'm on the block.

01:03So how's that with handling the rest of this stuff, your media empire and your real estate

01:08empire?

01:08Oh, yeah. It is good. Everybody listening to the show, you guys know that I've mentioned

01:14all the things that we've been getting into. We've been talking mostly about Halloween coming

01:18up because my daughter, she's three years old. She absolutely loves Halloween, at least

01:23the last two Halloweens that she's done. And this year, she wanted to be a bunny. So we

01:29got her a pink bunny outfit and then we asked her what our son, Vigo, he's three months old,

01:34we asked her what he should be and she said he should be a brown bunny. So we have a

01:38pink

01:38bunny outfit and a brown bunny outfit and we are ready to go trick-or-treating. So yeah,

01:43it's been fun. Obviously, it's a juggling act when you're running businesses and having

01:48kids, you know yourself. So let's start at the beginning. We always start with stories.

01:54We like to hear how people got to where they are. Why don't you take us to the beginning

01:58of your story in real estate and just tell us how you got here?

02:04Well, after hearing many people's stories, I realized I've had a very charmed life. I grew

02:08up with great parents, great family, went to college, did investment banking and portfolio

02:13management. I was in Canada and then I met a girl. She was in Austin, New York. Now

02:18we're married, luckily. And then the big thing was, okay, if I'm going to move to the

02:23U.S., this is about 12 years ago or so from Canada, I was like, I don't want to live

02:28anywhere cold again. And she was like, as luck would have it, I also don't want to live

02:32anywhere cold again. So we started going south and we ended up in Texas. Great. I mean,

02:37inadvertently, it was a great move. Texas is a great place to live. And yeah, I look at a

02:42great background. I run and structured about $3.74 billion of capital financing transactions,

02:48a lot of other transactions. So the move to real estate, I just poured it over to a lot

02:53of contacts. And a lot of the investment sales process, it kind of works the same way. Where

02:58we basically shown was that we had not just the capital market side down, but from day

03:03one, we had a big focus on operations. And that's really helped us, especially in the last

03:08four years where a lot of people are giving up their properties. That's allowed us to step

03:12in and take over assets and help borrowers and lenders. But that focus on operations

03:18was always there from the start.

03:21Yeah. And yeah, that is, especially lately with interest rates going up, you hear a lot

03:27of stories about distressed, specifically multifamily investors who are overleveraged and they're

03:34having to sell their properties because what they projected, the pro forma, is not coming

03:41true. They're not realizing what they had expected to realize. And I feel like there's a lot of good

03:48lessons to be had from this entire moment in history. And a lot of them come down to, I feel

03:57like the acquisition side is they're underwriting and being a little bit too aggressive there.

04:02You guys are on the other side, you're taking these assets into your own portfolio. What do you feel

04:07like you're doing differently than a lot of other syndicators who are having to give up their

04:12properties?

04:12Yeah, I don't think necessarily is it different. It's like I've had to explain to my wife once

04:16because she's a physician. And I was like, look, in your line of work, being intelligent

04:22makes you stand out, right? Being more intelligent, that is a barometer of success, typically. In my line

04:28of work, not doing stupid things for years on end is a barometer. So it's not like something,

04:33you know, I came up with this brilliant plan that I only know of this one secret nobody else

04:37knows. A lot of this is just emotional discipline more than intellectual discipline, right? And not

04:43chasing the bright, shiny object. And then knowing that there will be years when other people might

04:50seemingly seem to be ahead. And you just have to kind of stick to a plan. And look, hopefully it

04:55works out. But we never know at the start of the plan if a plan will work out. But the

04:59hope is if you

04:59take the right steps, you're emotionally intelligent, and you don't do stupid things,

05:03you can stand out for the right reasons. But this is a long game. It's not a short game.

05:07Yeah. Yeah, I feel like that is very good advice, like you said, specifically to real estate,

05:15because you don't need to be a rocket scientist to buy an asset. It does not require an IQ of

05:21180.

05:22But you need to not make dumb mistakes, you need to not make emotional mistakes, especially when you

05:28see those, those broker performance that are that are showing, you know, 25% IRR or some crazy thing

05:36that is that that's based on brokers and numbers. And if you're just going off of what you what you're

05:43predicting, what you're hoping will happen, those are the numbers that usually will will drag you into

05:48the ground. You guys, you have over 2000 units now that is really sizable.

05:54I think we're like three, 4000. We sold 3000 of them not too long ago.

05:58Oh, wow. Okay.

05:59Yeah, we are. We've done seven, 8000 already. But we buy and sell, right? We don't like to keep

06:04things forever.

06:05Yeah. So I mean, you guys have a lot of experience to dive into here. I want to kind of

06:11take it one at

06:12a time. Let's talk about operations. That is, you know, property management is one of the most

06:17difficult aspects of real estate, in my opinion, at least in terms of what I've experienced.

06:22Getting it right will turn an asset from a nightmare into something that is really enjoyable

06:28to own. In fact, we had a mobile home park where we had bought it and we had a bad

06:33property manager

06:34and we were literally listing the property because we were just having such a bad time. We ended up

06:39switching the property manager and it went from something that we wanted to sell to something

06:43that now it's one of our best assets. And so operations is huge. Talk to us about how you

06:49guys set that up to be most efficient.

06:51Well, I think most efficient, I don't think we are there yet because it's like an ever

06:56evolving thing, right? You get to the top of the mountain and you realize, oh, there's a horizon.

07:00I got to go chase that.

07:01So, but for us, basically, we started first principles. A lot of this is laying down processes.

07:07And the way we tell people is, look, we're going to give you great onboarding, great processes,

07:12but here's the process. If you do not follow the process, you are going to be fired. There's no

07:18ifs and buts. I don't want you ever taking shortcuts. Even when it is seemingly better to

07:23take shortcuts, don't take shortcuts. And again, it comes back to emotional discipline, right?

07:27So implementing state-of-the-art technology, backing it up with processes, and then actually

07:32rewarding people who follow the process. Because a lot of times what happens is owners start

07:37saying, okay, well, yeah, that's a process, but I want it done this way. And then that

07:42totally loses credibility for that particular function of your organization, because that

07:47functional leader can be saying something, but the employees know that if the owner decides

07:51to change something the next day, then it's not really much of a function, right?

07:54So that's the fact that we've had long-tenured employees now and partners, and we pay above

08:01market, that usually helps. I can assure you, all of the stuff that people talk about, people

08:05don't want to work, that's complete BS. People want to work, people just don't want to get

08:09paid a salary from 1995, right? What a lot of people want is that they want to keep all

08:16the upside to themselves. They don't want to pay market competitive salaries. And then

08:20they say, oh, well, you know, people these days, they just don't want to work like the

08:24old days. And you're like, no, the difference in the old days was people wouldn't call you

08:28out for your bullshit. And now people call people out explicitly. I mean, kids call people

08:32out for their bullshit now. So now you can't be BSing, you've got to pay market rate or

08:37above ideally. And people stay. If you treat them with respect, if you're consistent, nobody's

08:41going to love you, but people appreciate consistency. And you pay above market. I mean, it's not going

08:48to be easy, but it's not going to be hard.

08:50Yeah. Yeah. And that just goes into the bucket of treating people right. And in terms of how

08:57I always like to tie compensation, I mean, we're talking about compensation here as closely as I

09:02can to output to actual measures. It is difficult on the operations side in terms of property

09:10management. How do you generally, do you guys, well, for multifamily, do you guys do, it's all

09:16in-house or do you guys have third party?

09:18No, we have some in-house. We have all of our asset management and some in-house and some of

09:21this is

09:22a third party. But the third party we have, we've had a strategic interest in them for a very long

09:27period of time. So in effect, it's sort of in-house, but we have an interest in them.

09:31Okay. That makes sense. The other side of it is, at least on the larger multifamily side,

09:36is raising capital. That is something that is, you know, it's the stopper for most investors.

09:41They get to a point where they've used all their money and now they need to start looking

09:47outside, but they don't know how to raise the capital. How, I mean, I know you guys...

09:51We started from outside because frankly, I just didn't have enough rich family members

09:55to stroke me $10 million checks from day one.

09:59Okay, perfect. So let's go back to that beginning that, you know, those first few deals that you did,

10:04that you did use other people's money. You did start, I'm assuming there were syndications.

10:09Yeah, we had some funds as well. We've got syndications. We've got a couple of funds that are for

10:13the RIA Wealth Manager channel that's completely separate, the Nihai Networks channel,

10:18and we've got two or three family offices as well.

10:21So how do you go about, you know, at the beginning, not where you guys are right now,

10:24but when you just launched your first syndication, your first fund, whatever it was,

10:28how did you go about building up your roster, building up your interested investors?

10:34That's a good question. If I had a 10-step formula, I'd be rich, number one.

10:38No, it's a lot of this is, look, for me, in some regards,

10:43what was working was, it wasn't like I didn't have a job, and then I was like,

10:47all right, well, I better learn how to do this, right? I had a good job. I had a good,

10:51like a decade plus, 15 plus career in investment banking portfolio management.

10:57So one is the actual network you bring from there, which helps or doesn't help because I

11:02moved countries. But the other big thing is that now if you're meeting with other professional

11:07people, professional investors, people who can stroke a bigger check, but you've got this

11:11professional background, that ease in or speed at which they would make a decision to hopefully

11:16give you money is, is, is expediated, right? Think about it this way. If you're, if you don't

11:21have an institutional background, and let's assume you meet somebody who barely wants to give you all

11:25of their money, but then you don't have that professionalism, that edge, that experience,

11:30it'll be harder for them to give you money. Versus you could have this great background,

11:35and now you are fully equipped to go through all of these doors where the barrier to entry is much

11:40higher. So I guess in a nutshell, what I'd like to say is get experience first, add good shops,

11:46add top tier investment banks, private equity shops, if you want to scale, because that really helps.

11:52It doesn't mean you can't do it the other way. Look, it doesn't mean you can't do it the other

11:55way.

11:55But frankly, I just picked up the phone and started talking to all the people in my network. But look,

12:00most of the people in my network happened to be in private equity, investment banking, right? So

12:06that kind of helped.

12:07Yeah. And I feel like that does. It absolutely helps. And I feel like it, but it doesn't mean

12:16that if you are, if you don't have that experience in investment banking, that you can't raise

12:20capital, because we've had a lot of guys. Yeah. And I just want to make that clear for people who

12:24are

12:25listening, because, I mean, it is a leg up if you come from an investment banking world, and it

12:30you should absolutely 100% use that to your advantage. Because that is one of your that's

12:34one of your competitive edges is is the network that you've already built. If you do not have

12:39that experience, it doesn't mean that you can't raise capital. But like Omar said, it was I mean,

12:44you said calls, it is face to face, it's having those conversations with people out there.

12:49I'm sure you have my experience, right? So my that was my experience. But look, there is no one way

12:55to

12:55do things. If there was one way to do things, everybody would be doing it and everybody would be a

12:58billionaire. Yeah, that's right. Use use whatever you have to your advantage. When it comes to raising

13:05capital, do you feel it is? It's accurate to say that face to face conversations is more effective

13:12than any other digital or? It's not even close. We are not even in the same realm. You could digitally

13:21connect with somebody forever. And you can meet them once. And that once is going to be, I don't know,

13:261000x more powerful. So yes, it's meeting face to face is look, all of our back end stuff, the communication

13:35structure, obviously, that's on the cloud. That's digital, right? So sending the reports on time and doing all of

13:41that stuff on time that that's a stable stakes. But till you don't physically go meet people shake hands, literally

13:46the

13:46old school way. It's you're just it's just things are just not going to happen that way.

13:53Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's it takes a lot more effort. I didn't realize this until I started like actually

14:01getting to the deals that I needed to go get money. And I thought that if I just got a

14:06good deal, there would

14:07be people lined up around the corner to invest in this deal. And it's not it doesn't work that way.

14:13You have to

14:15start having these conversations telling people what you're doing, what you're investing in, what your

14:18experience is, get them used to you use and and comfortable with you as as an operator, many months

14:26before you actually go to them with a with an actual deal. Because even even if the deal is amazing,

14:32if

14:33this is the first time they've ever heard from you, they are not going to write you a check. They're

14:37not

14:37going to just stroke a check to some, some dude that came up out of nowhere that asked them for

14:42money.

14:43Um, so we are rounding the corner. We're about the 15 minute mark, we are going to have to jump

14:48into the quick question round. Before we do so I do want to ask what you guys you know what

14:53your

14:53crystal ball says. We are it is 2026 September 2026. There is a lot of uncertainty in terms of,

15:00you know, the gas prices, the economy, interest rates, etc, etc. A lot of uncertainty out there.

15:06What do you guys what are you guys most bullish on when it comes to to real estate?

15:11Um, well, I don't know about bullish, but I do feel there are going to be ample opportunities to

15:16acquire assets at very attractive basis, by the way, not just in multifamily, we're seeing this in

15:20self storage, hospitality, industrial, retail, and the like. But if you're asking for what my crystal

15:27ball is, the crystal ball is things are going to be much worse in the coming 12 months. But again,

15:31the counterpoint of that is the worse it becomes, the more deals you can get. But the conundrum there is

15:37the more deals you can typically get if you're an operator, the harder it is to raise equity for

15:42those deals, because you're in the depths of the cycle. And everybody says they're a value investor.

15:47But when things go bad, not everybody wants to invest. But that's, that's the best time to be investing.

15:53Yeah, it is the the catch 22. When when there's deals abounding, then not people, people don't want

16:01to be putting their money out there because they're afraid of the market. But it just means that there

16:05will be opportunity out there coming up. And so yeah, I agree with that sentiment as well.

16:10All right, with that, I'm going to push us into the quick question round. Are you ready?

16:14Yeah, I hope so.

16:17It starts with education. It could be any form could be a book you read movie you've seen conference

16:21you've been to mentorship program you've been a part of anything like that. I just need two

16:25recommendations, one for general life wisdom, and then one for real estate.

16:29I'll be honest with you. The first wisdom is, and I hope I'm not offending anyone. Please don't go to

16:33any of these mentorship schools, or any of this stuff. Please, please save your money. Please literally

16:38just go open a book. They're available for free on your library, like libraries that still exist.

16:45Okay? You don't need some con man with a YouTube video to tell you how to buy real estate. Please

16:50help me out. Don't do this. Don't. It's better to give your money to your church or your some

16:54community thing. Number one. Number two, please just get into the habit of actually physically

16:58going out and meeting people. That's it. You don't need to learn more. You just need to be a normal

17:03person and get into the habit every day of trying to meet at least one person and having a genuine

17:07conversation with that person, not with the motive that they're going to give you money. And you're

17:11going to realize if you do this, I don't know, even for a year, your life as well as your

17:17ability

17:17to raise money will both exponentially increase. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I couldn't agree with that more.

17:24Um, and in fact, the re one of the reasons why I started the podcast is because I was doing

17:28a lot

17:28of in-person networking. I was going to like those meetups and then COVID hit. Um, and I needed to

17:33keep,

17:33you know, I wanted to keep talking to people. So we started the podcast. I ended up really liking it

17:37and running with it. But before that I was going out there, I was doing all the local meetups and

17:42I

17:42absolutely loved it. Um, it also helps, you know, this was back when, uh, I was just getting into

17:48real estate or at least looking at it as a full time, something that I could achieve. And it really

17:54getting yourself surrounded with people who are doing the same thing that you're doing helps solidify

17:59the identity in, in yourself of, of, you know, an investor, a successful investor. Um, if you're just

18:04going out there, you're just talking to people, emailing, listening to YouTube videos, it's a lot

18:08more difficult to make you feel like you're actually investing or you're, you know, to,

18:12to adopt that identity. Um, and so yeah, it's another in-person, in-person events, in-person

18:19conversations cannot be replicated. Um, moving us to the next question. This is, oops, for your younger

18:28self. Um, let's go back to the Omar. I forget when you said you got started, but to the Omar

18:33who was

18:33just buying his first asset so many years ago, go back to him, look him in the eye,

18:38give him one piece of advice moving forward. I should have bought way more assets in 2015,

18:432016. That would be my advice. Stop being so cautious at that time, but buy all and sell them

18:49by 2019, 2020. Yeah. And that, that, uh, sentiment has been echoed so many times across this show,

18:56um, that they wish they got started sooner. Some version of, I wish I got started sooner.

19:00And, uh, anytime somebody does say that I always pointed back to you, the listener,

19:04if you have not bought your first deal, go out there, just get it done. It doesn't matter what

19:08it is. It could be a piece of land, could be a single family. Just get that ball rolling. Once

19:13you get that first deal under your belt, um, it's going to feel more natural. And the ball,

19:18like the snowball will just start to roll downhill, get bigger and bigger and bigger.

19:22And that's funny. I actually, I bought my first, uh, it was a duplex in 2014.

19:26And I remember going to deals here in Seattle and I would, I, you know, I didn't know what I

19:31was

19:31doing, but I was looking at houses that were like 80, $85,000 here. Well, in Tacoma. Um,

19:37and now if I just want more, man, it's crazy, but you know, share could have what, uh, um,

19:44bringing it back. This is about the U S it's a big place. There is a lot of opportunity out

19:49there.

19:50Give me the single Metro you're most excited about investing in today.

19:53So, uh, more than Metro, I think it's Georgia and Florida. There's a lot of like, um,

19:59distress. There are lots of over leverage, but Texas as well. I guess Dallas has a lot of

20:03distress right now. So I guess Georgia, Florida, Texas, lots of distress, lots of speculation.

20:09That's why there's opportunity. There you go. All right, moving us on. This is about lessons

20:14learned. Not every deal we get into goes the way we expect it. In fact, pretty much every time

20:19something goes wrong and that's when we get to learn a lesson. So what was the deal that went

20:23a little bit sideways for you? And then what was the lesson you pulled from it?

20:27Well, this is around the time of COVID. We bought it like, so we bought a deal in December 19.

20:32And what COVID started like, uh, May, March, April, right? 2020. So around that time, a couple of,

20:39and you know, initially everybody's kind of doesn't know like what to do, what the protocol is.

20:44And around say the three or four months into this, basically the government was out, especially

20:49this guarantee that we were in saying, well, you don't really have to pay your rent.

20:54You don't really got to do that. And now we have a group of people that were basically,

21:00it was frustrating for my property onsite manager, because she's like, I see these people,

21:04they don't pay the rent, but it's not like they're destitute because they have TVs and video games and all

21:10these packages coming from Amazon every single day. So it's not like they're lacking money.

21:16So that was a bit of an educated process because we had to explain, uh, and educate,

21:21well, we had to manage our processes a lot better in terms of collections and all of that stuff.

21:25That was a big learning experience, but we also had to start educating,

21:29which I thought was common sense. A lot of our resident base said, look, this is not like a,

21:34this is not the government. This is a business. We provide you a housing at a fair quality,

21:37affordable place and you got to pay the bills or we will then have to take, I mean,

21:42we don't want to do it, but we'll have to take other alternative measures. And a lot of residents

21:46to my surprise, uh, did were very good. There is always a few people, but that also helped us to

21:53tighten our cash collection processes, screening processes, and all of that stuff. Obviously a

21:58lesson I didn't want to learn the hard way, but a lesson that I did learn and we did improve

22:03from.

22:03Yeah. COVID was a definitely, it was an interesting time. And, uh, there was a lot of different,

22:08a lot of lessons that were learned from that, that whole period in time. But, um, you know,

22:13with every, what's that saying with every crisis, there's an opportunity. Um, and that is definitely,

22:19definitely true for COVID. A lot of people learn good lessons that they bring into their business

22:23today leads us to the second to last question. This is about AI. It is new and it is here

22:28to stay.

22:29And every business that is implementing it in their, their business is getting huge outsized

22:34returns. So how, what is the most effective way that you have implemented AI in your business today?

22:39We were doing a lot of like, again, some of the people in our team have a programming and scripting

22:43background. So even before AI started, we had already standardized pretty much all of our data

22:48and workflows and how we capture data, how we export it into our own systems. So we were already

22:54writing programs and scripts, uh, for a lot of the workflow automation anyways, obviously that's

22:59really helped us, but we've been doing this since 20, like 19, 20, 20. This was before the AI stuff,

23:06right? Obviously the advent of this and operations has greatly helped us. In fact, we just hired a

23:11couple of salespeople, wholesalers for our RIA wealth manager channel. To give you some context,

23:16we had to get their onboarding and what would have taken us something like a week took us like five

23:21hours.

23:22Yeah.

23:22But again, it's gathering data over disparate silos and then combining them together. So

23:27that sort of stuff we were already doing, but now we can do it much faster.

23:31Yep. Yeah. It'll, AI cuts down things that could take, you know, 30 hours. It cuts it down to

23:37a couple hours. Um, it's amazing how it can crunch data just so effectively. Um,

23:44yeah, it is, uh, it's definitely, definitely important there. Moves us to the last question. This is for

23:48the listeners you've given us a lot to think about. I'm sure people want to reach out, get in contact

23:52with you. Is it you partner? Where can they find you? And then what can they expect when they reach

23:56out? Well, look, I've actually something special for your listeners. If you want to learn more about

24:01what we discussed today or who we are, I have a hidden white paper and some video courses you can

24:06go to.

24:06You don't have to pay anything. Trust me, I'm not a mentor. If you can go to learn,

24:13learn.boardwalkwealth.com. And you can join my mailing list there and we'll send you all the

24:18stuff. Cool. I'll put that link in the show notes. So if you guys want to reach out to Omar,

24:23all you got to do is click a little more in the description. It'll pull down that full description

24:27and in there you can find his links. All right, man, that wraps it up. Thank you very much for

24:33hopping on the show. Have a good one. Bye for now. Absolutely. For everybody who's with us today,

24:38thank you guys for showing up. You are the reason we do this. So if you guys have any questions,

24:42reach out to me, Gabe at the realestateinvestingclub.com. If you guys want to support the show,

24:46just leave us a comment, review, anything like that. Other than that, I hope you guys have a great

24:51week. Keep rocking real estate and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.

How to Profit From the Next Real Estate Downturn with Omar

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