Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing

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Chris A Williams went from $12,000 and two sales in his first year to a brokerage doing $58 million in sales by 26. We break down subject to real estate, wholesaling, and the creative financing thinking behind it.

At 20, Chris had lost his American football scholarship, dropped out of community college and had $30 in his bank account. He got his real estate licence a week before the world shut down for COVID, spent his first year working 10 to 12 hour days, and closed two deals. To pay his bills, he sold every share of Tesla stock he owned. Then, one February day, four clients contacted him in a single afternoon, and his business never looked back.

But the reason I brought Chris on is the way he buys property. He uses a creative financing strategy called "subject to": he takes over the seller's existing mortgage payments and takes the deed, without applying for a new mortgage. His target is to get into each deal for under $20,000 all in.

In this episode we cover: - How subject to real estate deals work, and the due-on-sale clause grey area - Why banks never advertise this strategy - Who sells on these terms: low-equity sellers and military families on 0% down VA loans - Wholesaling explained: locking up a contract at $100K and assigning it for $150K - The max allowable offer formula flippers use to protect their margin - The daily texting habit that turned a dead year into a pipeline - Why he wishes he had listened more when he started

For Irish and UK listeners: subject to, as Chris describes it, does not transfer to Ireland or the UK. Here the lender's charge is cleared on sale, and taking over payments without lender consent breaches the mortgage terms. In the outro I cover what does transfer: finding the seller with a problem, structuring a solution others can't, and buying right on day one.

CONNECT WITH CHRIS @IamChrisAWilliams on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook

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Is now a good time to buy property? It's the question Gavin gets more than any other, so in this episode he answers it properly.

Using the market clock, he shows where sentiment actually sits (almost everyone says 11pm) and why "peak of the market" means nothing until you ask "peak of what?" Residential, office, industrial, data centres, hotels and medical are all moving differently.

From there he breaks down the three forces that decide where prices go next: the bond market and rising interest rates, the AI bubble and whether it bursts like the dotcom crash, and the 18-year property cycle that points to 2026 as the top. He explains why Ireland is more exposed than most, with around 300,000 people employed by US tech firms concentrated around Dublin.

He also covers what it means on the ground: the landlord exodus of roughly 11,000 rentals in six months, 209 applicants for a single house in Ranelagh, and why the smartest move in any market is to stay active rather than sit on your hands.

The takeaway: the market is cyclical, there is no bad market, only a bad strategy.

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Chapters

00:00 The market clock: where are we? 00:48 Why sentiment says 11pm 01:40 Peak of what? The segments that matter 02:33 Housing affordability and bidding wars 03:28 A client's cash flow deal: €40k cost, €150k income 05:02 What's really driving the market 06:00 The bond market and interest rates 06:51 The gambler vs the analyst 08:44 Government debt and the crisis on the horizon 09:37 Global rates at multi-decade highs 10:15 The AI bubble: hype vs risk 12:17 Why Ireland is exposed 13:22 The 18-year property cycle 15:40 Why 2026 could be the top 18:27 The dotcom lesson 19:26 Should you buy now? 21:46 The landlord exodus 22:46 209 applicants for one house 24:32 Buffett: fear, greed and opportunity 25:54 Final advice: stay in the game

Elite Property Accelerator is open for its next intake. Learn more: https://epa-learn-more.scoreapp.com/

Join my next Workshop: https://elitepropertyaccelerator.com/workshop

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Behind the Facade is hosted by Gavin J Gallagher, a Dublin-based property investor and developer with 30 years in the Irish and international market, and first-hand experience of three property crashes.

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Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/gavinjgallagher

Kyle McGee has raised $11 million from 50 investors. He is in his early thirties, and almost none of that money came from institutions. It came from aunts, uncles, family friends, and people who have sat in the same church as him for 30 years.

This week I am breaking down syndication: the model where you raise money from a group of investors to buy an asset far bigger than you could buy on your own. It is not new. Irish partnerships were doing it in the early 2000s, including the syndicate that outbid a Saudi prince for the Savoy Hotel Group. Kyle is doing it at a more modest scale on the Florida Gulf Coast, and the route he took to get there is the instructive part.

He started as a real estate appraiser in Key West, hated it, went home to Pensacola, and borrowed $250,000 from his father to build three spec houses. His father was diagnosed with stage four cancer and died six months later, halfway through the third build. Kyle finished it, found a financial backer, built four over-specified houses in a year and made a total of $8,000 between them, then rebuilt the whole model around cheap lots and simple starter homes. 130 houses later he hit the ceiling every small builder hits, and went looking for a way to scale.

The part of this conversation worth your full attention is his warning about raising money too early. Nobody wants to fund your education. Investors are not backing your deck or your model, they are backing you, and if you have no track record they will tell you to come back once you have exited a few deals. Kyle has heard no far more often than yes.

We also get into workforce housing and why it is close to the most recession resistant thing you can own, why he runs a property management company at a deliberate loss, how the general partner and limited partner split and the preferred return actually work, why he is taking bridge debt at nine and a half percent, and what happens when an event nobody modelled for arrives. I tell the story of watching the second plane hit on the first day of my honeymoon, and what that taught me about stress testing a portfolio.

A note on timing: this interview was recorded in 2025 and sat unpublished after I pivoted to episode 268. The market references are from that period. The lessons are not.

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Connect with Kyle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylemcgee/ Kyle's business Sunchase: https://www.sunchaseco.com/

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Chapters

00:08 What syndication is, and the Irish syndicate that outbid a Saudi prince 01:14 Why this episode sat unpublished for a year 03:35 Pensacola, "lower Alabama", and hurricane season 05:10 From appraiser in Key West to contractor's licence 11:05 The $250,000 loan from his father, and three lots 12:35 Stage four diagnosis, six months, and finishing the house alone 15:24 The couple who backed him before he backed himself 17:46 23 years old, no credit, no way to scale 18:45 Getting a financial backer and a line of credit 20:48 Four houses, $8,000 profit, and what went wrong 21:47 The pivot to cheap lots and starter homes 22:18 COVID in Florida: $205k to $335k on the same house 24:18 Why you cannot out-build DR Horton 26:26 The first 14 unit apartment deal 30:02 General partner, limited partner, preferred return, promote 32:04 Why nobody wants to fund your education 33:43 What changes when the money is not yours 34:47 The rejections he does not talk about 35:47 50 investors, $11 million, no full cycle exits yet 37:18 Exiting investors into a new partnership 39:14 Time in the market, not timing the market 40:02 Bridge debt at 9.5% and a two year stabilisation window 42:00 9/11, Barbados, and the risk nobody models 45:01 A locations, C properties 47:44 Running a loss making management company on purpose 49:36 Discipline will take you where talent and hustle will not 50:41 Where to find Kyle 51:20 Free monthly workshop and how to work with me

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Elite Property Accelerator is open for its next intake. Learn more: https://epa-learn-more.scoreapp.com/

Join my next Workshop: https://elitepropertyaccelerator.com/workshop

Behind The Facade is hosted by Gavin J Gallagher, a Dublin-based property investor and developer with 30 years in the Irish and international market, and first-hand experience of three property crashes.

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Support the channel: https://buymeacoffee.com/gavinjgallagher

My father died in November 1993. When we finally opened the pile of post he had left behind, one letter showed the interest rate on the family home mortgage. It was 16%.

In this episode I build what I am calling the Interest Rate Ladder. Every rung of ECB policy since the bank was created in 1999, priced against the same loan so you can see exactly what each rate does to a real monthly payment. The loan: €300,000, 25-year term, tracker at ECB plus 1%.

We start where we are now, at a main refinancing rate of 2.4% and a payment of €1,486 a month. Then we climb down through the cutting cycles, the Troika years, the NAMA fire sales, six straight years at zero, and the negative deposit rate era when savers were paying banks to hold their money. Then we climb back up through 2006, through the point where development appraisals stop working, through Trichet's 4.25% hike two months before Lehman collapsed, to the ECB's all-time high of 4.75%.

Then we go further back than the ECB exists. Irish Central Bank rates in the early 1990s, overnight rates that briefly touched 100% during the currency crisis, and a 12% mortgage that would cost €3,160 a month on the same loan. Then Volcker's 20% at the Fed, and three centuries of Bank of England history including Black Wednesday.

The swing from the ECB's lowest rate to its highest is 1.7x on your monthly payment. At the Bank of England it is 4x. At the Fed it is 4.5x. We have not seen desperate times.

The practical takeaway is at the end. Stress test every deal at 2% above the rate you are being offered. If it does not survive that, do not do the deal.

I have spent roughly 30 years in property across Ireland, Spain and Dubai. I lost a portfolio in 2008 and rebuilt from nothing, which is why rate history is not an academic subject for me.

If you want the frameworks I use to underwrite and stress test deals properly, that is what we work through inside the Elite Property Accelerator: elitepropertyaccelerator.com

REGISTER FOR WORKSHOP - https://elitepropertyaccelerator.com/workshop-registration

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BTF Episode: 276. Irish Property News Roundup for Week Ending 12.06.26

All the news impacting the Irish property market in one place.

If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review!

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BTF Episode: 275. From Six-Pack to Seven Figures with Rob Lipsett

Rob Lipsett has built Ireland's biggest fitness brand from his iPhone 5 and a few hours of grind after a 9-to-5. But this conversation isn't about health and fitness, it's about what comes after you've built your audience.

We sat down in Marbella to talk business, property, and what it really takes to turn a personal brand into a long-term asset. Rob is one of the sharpest operator-creators I've come across — and his journey from college dropout to Villa Lipsett has lessons that go far beyond the fitness industry.

We cover:

• How he built and monetised his brand from zero
• What most influencers get wrong about business
• His approach to property and long-term wealth
• The mindset shift from creator to entrepreneur
• Why Marbella — and what the lifestyle actually costs

This is a different episode. If you're building a brand, a business, or both — this one's for you.

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BTF Episode: 274. Is the 5x Income Mortgage a Dangerous Sign?

Ireland's mortgage market is shifting again, with Nua Money now offering up to 5x income borrowing. In this episode, we break down the history of Ireland's lending rules and explore the potentially dangerous second-order effects of expanded credit colliding with rising construction costs and housing shortages.

If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review!

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My guest this week is Chalie Fitzgibbon who built a construction and development business in Edinburgh, Scotland, scaled it to a staff of 110 before grappling with some serious challenges that drove him to the decision to sell the business. All before his 30th birthday - this episode will open your eyes.

If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review! Thank you

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Support the channel: https://buymeacoffee.com/gavinjgallagher

Is a property market crash coming in 2026? After a five-month break from the podcast, Gavin J Gallagher returns to make the case that we have just entered year one of a new 18-year property cycle, and that year one historically starts with a downturn.

The episode opens with a personal story. In January, Gavin and his family stayed in the Fairmont on the Palm in Dubai, in a city-view room overlooking the car park. Weeks later that exact spot was the first impact site of the Iranian drone attack on Dubai. What followed has reshaped the risk picture for property investors in Ireland, the UK and across Europe.

Gavin breaks the market into two opposing forces. On the risk side: geopolitical conflict across Iran, Russia and Ukraine, and the US and China AI arms race; interest rates pushed higher for longer by energy-driven cost inflation; a debt overhang spanning government balance sheets, roughly three trillion in private credit, and AI and data centre overbuild; and the fragmentation of NATO and the Western alliance. Any one of these is manageable in isolation. The argument is that they are converging.

On the counterbalance side: a structural housing supply shortage. Ireland is delivering around 30,000 units a year against a requirement closer to 80,000, with a population up roughly one million since 2006, a planning system that slows delivery, and a construction labour market still hollowed out by the 2008 crash. Rent controls and the six-year rule have pushed landlords out and tightened rental supply further. Scarcity is holding the market up.

Gavin also covers continuity bias, the cognitive trap that makes investors assume the current system will simply persist, and the Dubai contrast, where 120,000 units are landing into a market that has just seen high-rise towers emptying out into low-lying villas.

He closes with who is positioned to win: developers, planning gain specialists, commercial-to-residential conversion operators, affordable housing providers, and anyone structuring capital conservatively across multiple funding sources. The message is not to get out of property. It is that luck no longer works, and downturns are where mispriced assets and distressed sellers create the best deals for investors who know what they are doing.

Chapters

• (00:00) Straits of Hormuz reopened, then closed again
• (02:04) Back after five months, and the question: is a crash coming?
• (03:14) Dubai, the Fairmont, and the room that became a drone target
• (04:57) When European airlines started cancelling Middle East flights
• (06:19) The two-week ceasefire, and why it may not hold
• (08:32) Continuity bias and why investors miss the turn
• (09:32) The 18-year property cycle: 1990, 2008, 2026
• (11:51) The four risks: geopolitics, rates, debt, fragmentation
• (12:52) The US and China AI arms race
• (15:04) Hormuz controls 20% of world oil and gas
• (16:03) How energy costs feed inflation and interest rates
• (17:53) Government debt, US debt servicing, and private credit
• (19:22) AI overinvestment and the data centre five-year problem
• (21:05) NATO fragmentation and what it means for Europe
• (25:15) The counterbalance: structural supply shortage
• (27:10) Irish planning delays and the missing construction labour
• (29:11) Population up one million, housebuilding down
• (30:05) Rent controls, the six-year rule, and landlord exit
• (32:08) Dubai: 120,000 units into a nervous market
• (33:55) Who wins in this cycle
• (38:01) Why luck is finished and deliberate investing starts
• (38:58) The cycle map: 2026 to 2029, 2030 to 2036

Mentioned in this episode

• The 18-Year Property Cycle episode
• Episode 271 with James Askew

Elite Property Accelerator is open for its next intake. Learn more: https://epa-learn-more.scoreapp.com/

Behind The Facade is hosted by Gavin J Gallagher, a Dublin-based property investor and developer with 30 years in the Irish and international market, and first-hand experience of three property crashes.

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Support the channel: https://buymeacoffee.com/gavinjgallagher

LEARN MORE 👉🏼 https://epa-learn-more.scoreapp.com/

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BTF Episode: 271. A Conversation on Property Development with James Askew

In this episode I discuss property development with James Askew of Aspinel Homes. We cover the UK property market and the challenges faced by many developers who are trying to scale in a difficult market - I hope you enjoy!

If you enjoyed this podcast please like and subscribe!

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Support the channel: https://buymeacoffee.com/gavinjgallagher