Real Estate Investing for Cash Flow with Kevin Bupp

Commercial real estate acquisitions doesn't simply mean finding a deal, underwriting it, and hoping for the best. Often, having the discipline to act on what you find will make you wealthier than even the greatest properties you could buy. Every investment has skeletons in the closet, and even if the problems you inevitably uncover are fixable, some just aren’t worth fixing. So when do you draw the line even after you’ve fallen in love with the deal?

Today, I’m speaking to my partner and CEO of Sunrise Capital Investors, Brian Spear. We started as a two-person team, running everything from acquisitions and due diligence to operations and value-add. Now, our team has grown substantially, and we’ve acquired nearly $500M in properties that fit our buy box and provide peace of mind to our investors.

Even after decades in the investment property and commercial real estate space, we still get stuck. A recent deal looked profitable on paper and had a clear, solvable solution for problems, but it was too much for us to stomach, so we walked away, even with $60,000 spent in pursuit costs. Exiting was a painful but wise move, so how do you know when to do the same?

Today, Brian and I talk about how to run acquisitions the right way, control your investment’s outcome, and explain what happens when a deal's mechanics change while you're under contract. If you can build your system and team to protect against the downside, prepare for upside, and weather the in-between, you can scale smarter than the competition. 

Insights from today’s episode:

• When to walk away from a deal even after tens of thousands in pursuit costs 
• Why a “solvable” problem is not always worth fixing in a property 
• How much can you truly count on infill value-add when acquiring a mobile home park?
• How the quality of your mobile home community can dictate how fast you recoup your investment 
• Selling properties that were once cash cows due to a changing landscape 
• The people are the power: how your team dictates your result on any real estate deal 

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Hear More from Brian on The Sage Investor

Subscribe to Brian’s Channel on YouTube

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Chapters: 

00:00 Intro

02:33 The "Infill" Upside

05:53 Control Your Investment's Outcome

09:53 Challenging Value-Add (Worth It?)

12:56 When to Walk Away (Real Example)

20:00 Sunk Costs (Gained Knowledge)

22:00 Never Think Short-Term

24:40 When the Budget Gets Blown Up

30:30 Is the Value-Add Worth It?

37:16 Controllable Often Beats "Fixable"

38:56 Selling What Used to Work

42:47 Your Team Controls Your Destiny

49:04 My Sage Acquisition Principle

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

What separates a piece of commercial real estate that doesn’t survive from one that endures for decades—and through multiple market cycles? It’s a question Ed Pitoniak, founder and CEO of VICI Properties, has spent the last several years working to answer.

Today, Ed leads one of the nation’s largest owners of experiential commercial real estate. But he took an unconventional path to get there, starting at a ski publication before moving into hospitality and, eventually, real estate.

Along the way, he forged the skills and perspective needed to navigate some of the industry’s toughest challenges, from the rising costs of capital to tenant concentration risk. Ed shares how he underwrites real estate deals to account for today’s high-interest-rate environment and the two-part strategy he’s using to slowly but surely diversify VICI’s tenant base.

He also breaks down how his team evaluates not only the properties they acquire but also the triple-net lease tenants occupying them after closing. Plus, Ed shares the thesis behind a real estate category he believes will be one of the more durable asset classes over the next several decades.

Insights from today’s episode:

• The real “durability test” for any piece of commercial real estate
• How Ed weighs risk and reward when underwriting new opportunities
• The biggest challenges when working with triple-net lease tenants
• The two-part strategy for mitigating tenant concentration risk
• How to vet operator and asset quality before buying a property
• Criteria for determining if a real estate category has real staying power

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VICI Properties

Connect with Ed on LinkedIn

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Chapters: 

00:00 Intro

01:05 Transitioning to Real Estate

06:08 The Birth of VICI Properties

15:04 Property and Operator Quality

20:43 Triple Net Lease Tenants

25:45 Weighing Risk & Reward

30:46 Mitigating Concentration Risk

33:09 The Future of Experiential Real Estate

36:33 The Ultimate Durability Test

41:29 Connect with Ed!

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

Real estate investing demands conviction, but when market conditions shift—sometimes even mid-deal—do you stick to your guns or walk away?

August Biniaz, CIO and co-founder of CPI Capital, found himself toeing this exact line shortly after underwriting and raising capital for a large, build-to-rent community in Tucson, Arizona.

When interest rates spiked, the deal no longer penciled, but exiting meant sacrificing significant time and over $100,000 in sweat equity. On the other hand, moving forward meant potentially putting investor capital, and their reputation, at risk.

Rather than rationalizing what had become a “bad” deal, August and his team made the difficult decision to change course and abandon the deal. Had they not, the fund would likely have been wiped out. Instead, CPI Capital has grown to well over $225 million in value-add multifamily and built-to-rent, single-family assets under management in the last several years.

In today’s conversation, August shares how these early lessons shaped the way they approach risk and opened the door for even greater investing opportunities.

Insights from today’s episode:

• When to walk away from a deal when the numbers no longer work
• Why August and his team opted for a co-GP approach on their first few deals
• How to stay competitive in large markets as a middle-market operator
• How to properly structure a cross-border investment
• The main differences between built-to-rent tenants and other renters

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CPI Capital

Connect with August on LinkedIn

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Chapters: 

00:00 Intro

00:47 Pivoting to US Real Estate

10:20 Cross-Border Complexity

15:05 The Co-GP Approach

19:37 Finding Opportunity in Big Markets

25:25 How to Stay Competitive

28:37 The Build-to-Rent Model

34:17 Walking Away (And Losing $100K)

41:41 Advice for New Investors

46:57 What Has Changed?

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

After more than 50 years in commercial real estate, Bill Cummings has built an 11-million-square-foot portfolio spanning 12 communities around Greater Boston. But he did so by ignoring many of the conventional rules of real estate investing.

When his peers suggested he explore new markets, he stayed local. When others urged him to sell, he continued to hold for decades. And when other developers steered clear of neglected buildings, Bill saw opportunity, transforming overlooked properties for enormous profits.

This contrarian approach hasn’t just helped shape the culture at Cummings Properties; it’s also caused Bill to rethink his entire philosophy about business and wealth. Having arrived at his own definition of “enough” long ago, Bill has since turned his attention to a much bigger purpose: the Cummings Foundation, which has awarded over $650 million in grants to nonprofits throughout the suburbs of Boston and beyond.

But to understand how Bill built an empire, we have to go back to the beginning. In this episode, he shares the early successes, failures, and the simple conversations with his father that influenced his views on price, value, opportunity, and what actually makes a great investment.

Insights from today’s episode:

• Why Bill repeatedly buys properties most developers pass up
• The $500,000 commercial property no one wanted (that made a fortune)
• The key to maintaining high occupancy in commercial real estate
• The one type of commercial building Bill refuses to buy
• How to define “enough,” and what to do once you reach it

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Cummings Properties

Cummings Foundation

Starting Small and Making It Big

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

00:00 Lessons from 50+ Years in Real Estate

05:43 Local, Buy-and-Hold Investing

12:01 Building Strong Culture

16:18 The Property "No One Wanted"

25:59 Bill's Recent Deal

31:14 How to Improve Occupancy

33:13 Property Red Flags

36:20 What Is "Enough"?

40:11 The Cummings Foundation

43:24 Connect with Bill!

Early on, most real estate investors are chasing the same thing: more. More properties. More units. More cash flow. But eventually, “more” becomes a trap.

Every acquisition brings new challenges and risks. At some point, the smartest move isn’t buying more. It’s pruning. Chris Lopez, co-founder of Property Llama and host of the PassivePockets podcast, argues that investors should act more like fund managers by routinely reassessing, rebalancing, and reprioritizing their investments.

Because the “buy and hold” strategy has a potentially dangerous blind spot: not enough investors consider the exit, or whether an investment is still the best use of their capital, time, and energy.

Chris learned this lesson when he decided to finally cut ties with rental properties that no longer aligned with his long-term goals. After selling multiple rental properties and moving much of his capital into more hassle-free, passive real estate investments, he had just one regret: not doing it sooner.

Chris shares exactly what prompted the pivot toward passive investments, what he looks for when evaluating sponsors, and how to curate an investment portfolio that helps you build wealth without losing sight of your end goal.

Insights from today’s episode:

• How Chris tripled his cash flow by moving from “headache” rentals into passive investments
• How to offset your capital gains taxes with the “lazy” 1031 exchange
• Why “passive” investing isn’t nearly as hands-off as many assume
• The biggest red flags to avoid when vetting a sponsor
• A cautionary tale for investors banking on future rent growth
• Real estate’s biggest investing advantages over stocks and bonds

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Connect with Chris on LinkedIn

Property Llama

PassivePockets

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

Tax liens are often pitched as a passive way to earn double-digit returns from investments that are backed by real estate.

This is only half true.

While these investments average 13%-18% annual returns, they may actually be one of the least passive investing strategies. With roughly 20 years of experience as a real estate investor, attorney, and title professional, Stephen Morel understands all that this strategy entails better than most.

The truth is that most investors are thinking about these investments the wrong way. Tax liens aren’t a shortcut to acquiring cheap properties. In fact, only 1% of these properties ever get foreclosed on. Rather, tax lien investing is a yield play. Unfortunately, due to the complexity surrounding these investments, institutional investors with access to large amounts of capital have long had a stranglehold on this industry.

Stephen is on a mission to change that. Through his tech startup, JurisDeed, he’s breaking down barriers and finally bringing these strong returns down to the level of the “small” investor. Today, he shares exactly how he and his team are simplifying the entire process—from acquisition to liquidity.

Insights from today’s episode:

• How to make double-digit returns in 2026 by investing in tax liens
• Tax lien investing explained and how the auction process works
• The two phases of due diligence for every tax lien deal
• Why institutional investors have long dominated the tax lien marketplace
• How Stephen is bringing new investing opportunities down to “small” investors

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Connect with Stephen on LinkedIn

JurisDeed

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

America’s affordable housing crisis is well documented. We’re currently short millions of homes, and the number doesn’t seem to be going down.

The problem is more complicated, but more solvable, than it appears. Factory-built housing—such as manufactured and mobile homes—has helped fill the gap for decades, and the capacity to build substantially more already exists.

Now, new products are entering the market. Galiano Tiramani, co-founder and CEO of modular home manufacturer BOXABL, is spearheading the effort to produce their own model of affordable housing at scale.

But as you’re about to hear, the greatest obstacle isn’t manufacturing, construction, supply, or even shipping. The real constraint is regulatory. Zoning restrictions, entitlement delays, and density limitations continue to determine where—and how—homes can be built.

Unless these outdated policies evolve, we’ll be discussing the same housing shortage five, 10, or even 20 years from now.

The technology exists, the capacity exists, and the demand is undeniable. The future of affordable housing is here; now we need to make room for it.

Insights from today’s episode:

• The state of affordable housing in 2026 (and why it’s still an issue)
• Why innovation alone won’t solve the affordable housing crisis
• The model BOXABL is using to bring mass-produced modular homes to the market
• The different types of factory-built housing solutions (and how they work)
• How regulatory constraints have created an affordable housing bottleneck

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Connect with Galiano on LinkedIn

BOXABL

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

Real estate investors spend years mastering skills like analyzing deals, raising capital, and improving operations, but far less time thinking about one of the most important decisions they’ll ever make: the exit.

Mike Hart, chief financial officer here at Sunrise Capital Investors, believes you should start planning your exit roughly a year prior to the actual sale, as this affects when you’ll pay taxes, what you’ll pay, and depending on the strategy, if you’ll pay at all.

With over 30 years of commercial real estate experience, Mike has helped countless investors make smarter capital allocation and tax-efficient investing decisions. In this conversation, he unpacks some of the best real estate tax strategies used to defer capital gains tax and depreciation recapture, starting with the well-known 1031 exchange.

He also breaks down some lesser-known alternatives, including Delaware Statutory Trusts (DSTs), and explains how they can help investors transition from active property management to passive ownership while continuing to defer taxes.

Whether you’re looking to peel back from being a hands-on operator or preserve your wealth, this discussion will help you think more strategically about your next sale.

Insights from today’s episode:

• The best strategies for deferring capital gains taxes and depreciation recapture
• The number one mistake real estate investors make when planning their exit strategy
• How to pivot from active owner to passive investor with a Delaware Statutory Trust (DST)
• Key rules and deadlines to be aware of before doing a 1031 exchange
• How to perform due diligence on a DST trustee before committing capital
  
  

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Connect with Mike on LinkedIn

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

Many get into real estate with the goal of scaling a massive portfolio. Not enough stop to ask whether they should. The truth is that success doesn’t come from chasing every last opportunity. It’s about identifying where you have an edge, choosing your partners carefully, and having the discipline to walk away when a deal doesn’t quite fit.

John McNellis is the founder of McNellis Partners and author of the commercial real estate classic, Making It in Real Estate. Over the course of a 50-year career, he’s completed roughly 100 real estate deals—most of which have been ground-up commercial development projects. Through thick and thin, John has stuck with retail real estate—even while others were predicting its downfall—and the asset class has made him very wealthy.

But stay in real estate for long enough, and you’re bound to lose money. John opens up about the disastrous deal that nearly wiped him out, the three critical mistakes that caused it, and why he no longer works with big financial partners on his development deals. He also discusses the biggest mistakes new real estate developers make early in their careers and the million-dollar question every investor is trying to answer: what is “enough”?

Insights from today’s episode:

• How John scaled a large commercial real estate portfolio through strategic partnerships
• Crucial lessons learned across a 50-year real estate development career
• When to stop accumulating assets and start pruning your portfolio
• How retail real estate has evolved over the last few decades
• What to know before structuring an investing partnership
• The three most common mistakes made on commercial development deals

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Making It in Real Estate

Connect with John on LinkedIn

McNellis Partners

Recommended Resources:

• If you’re a high-net-worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months and you want to build passive income and wealth with a trusted partner, click here for opportunities to invest in real estate projects alongside Kevin and his team. 
• Accredited Investors, you’re invited to Join the Cash Flow Investor Club to learn how you can partner with Kevin Bupp on current and upcoming opportunities to create passive cash flow and build wealth. Join the Club!
• Looking for the ultimate guide to passive investing? Grab a copy of my latest book, The Cash Flow Investor at KevinBupp.com. 
• Tap into a wealth of free information on Commercial Real Estate Investing by listening to past podcast episodes at KevinBupp.com/Podcast.

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional before making any investment decisions.

One of the biggest mistakes investors make is confusing uncertainty with risk. When a deal looks “messy,” most operators walk away. They treat temporary problems as if they’re permanent and, in the process, overlook some of the greatest investing opportunities.

Today, I’m bringing you another Sunrise Capital Investors case study: the Meadows of North Lewisburg and South Towne Meadows, a pair of manufactured housing communities roughly 30 minutes outside downtown Columbus, Ohio.

On the surface, this 323-unit portfolio looked like a complicated deal with questionable management and an inflated asking price. Not to mention, most of these sites were park-owned homes, something that would usually fall outside our buy box. But rather than writing the property off, we identified its biggest “weakness” as a potential value-add opportunity.

When other investors passed on this $20,000,000 deal due to its perceived risk, we trusted our numbers, backed in our leadership, and got to work.

Nearly three years later, these two communities have already become some of our portfolio’s strongest performers, with NOI, occupancy, collections, and rents all outperforming our initial projections. But we didn’t get lucky. I’m sharing exactly how our team pulled this off, the biggest hurdles we had to overcome along the way, and what far too many operators get wrong: that strategy without execution is just theory.

Insights from today’s episode:

• Case study: our $20 million manufactured housing deal in Columbus, Ohio
• Why these communities are performing 15% above projections
• The one thing you can’t fix about a property after purchasing it
• How to mitigate perceived risk with “conservative” deal analysis
• Turning an asset’s “weakness” into its biggest value-add opportunity

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Ridgebrook Hills MHP Case Study

Real Deals: The Biggest Mobile Home Community We’ve Ever Bought | Ep. 990