Today’s guest is Ben Lapidus. Ben Lapidus is the Chief Financial Officer for Spartan Investment Group LLC, where he has applied his finance and business development skills to construct from scratch a portfolio of over $500M assets under management, build the corporate finance backbone for the organization, and organize over $200M of debt capital from the firm. In addition to completing over 50 real estate transactions at and prior to Spartan, Ben is also the founder and host of the national Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference and managing partner of Indigo Ownerships LLC. Best Ever Conference Code Use code “INVEST” for $300 off any ticket type at https://www.besteverconference.com/ Show summary: In this episode, Ben Lapidus joins Sam to discuss the nuances of the commercial real estate market, with a focus on self-storage and investment strategies. Lapidus shares his expertise on navigating the current market, the importance of robust business plans, and the challenges of finding attractive yields. They also talk about the Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference, detailing how it adds value for passive investors and the innovative strategies used to attract them. -------------------------------------------------------------- Self-Storage Market Insights (00:00:00) Introduction and Background (00:00:37) Current State of Self-Storage Market (00:02:03) Investment Strategies and Passive Investors (00:03:34) Conversion Deals and Opportunities (00:05:18) Shift from Office to Self-Storage (00:06:00) Interest Rates and Debt in Self-Storage (00:07:14) Pricing Mechanism and Market Response (00:08:36) Commercial Real Estate Market Overview (00:10:33) Alternative Investments and Portfolio Allocation (00:11:57) Best Ever Real Estate Investing Conference (00:13:46) Strategies for Attracting Passive Investors (00:15:41) Conference Organization and Team Management (00:18:28) Closing Remarks and Special Discount (00:20:16) Best Ever Conference (00:20:30) Contact Information (00:20:50) -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Ben: Web: https://www.benlapidus.com/ Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Ben Lapidus (00:00:00) - If your business plan can survive 2 or 3 years of negative leverage, because you can take a low enough IRR that you can store enough cash on the side, then it is a great time. If your business plan is overly aggressive or you're trying to seek a very high IRR at a at a velocity of capital deployment, that's unachievable, then now is a bad time to make an investment. You might want to wait 12 or 18 months to do so. Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big. Sam Wilson (00:00:37) - For those of you that don't know Ben Lepidus, you need to know him. I've known Ben. Now. What? Man? What's been seven, eight years at this point? Yeah. About to go about that. I met you normally, Ben. I love to do a long winded introduction about how great the guest is. You are a great guest. I'm. It's my honor to have you on the show today, but before I give you my own introduction, I'd love for you maybe just to come on the show today and tell us a little bit about who you are, and then we'll get into it from there. Ben Lapidus (00:01:03) - Yeah. I'm the founder and host of the best ever Real estate investing conference., not the brand, just the conference. And,, was a founding team member of Spartan Investment Group, which bought a half a billion assets under management in self-storage, recently retired, but have a long history of buying single family multifamily self-storage assets over the last 12 years., recently or prior to that,, was in the adtech space, learned a lot about big data, started a study abroad company Costa Rica., and have tried several other startups that failed. So I'm an entrepreneur at heart and can't wait to talk about whatever you want to talk about. Sam Wilson (00:01:36) - Dude, that's that's a whole lot. I mean, my gosh, that's a lot of moving pieces there. Most recently you were like you mentioned a,, a partner there at Spartan ...
