Owns many apartment buildings w investors. Manages many more for other owners. Co-founder: @reconvenela & @reseedpartners. Join my mailing list here ⬇️
Joined February 2008
- Tweets 121,610
- Following 4,336
- Followers 212,584
- Likes 508,088
2,640 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
10 Oct 2021
Our strategy is simply to do what smart families have always done:
- Acquire great assets in supply-constrained mkts
- Leverage them conservatively
- Steward them well
- Refinance them opportunistically to return capital tax-efficiently
- Hold them indefinitely
275
268
3,318
Legislators who impose mandates like this drive me insane.
Do they realize this is going to require upgrading tens of thousands of electrical panels across SF?
Have they ever dealt with getting a single panel upgrade through PG&E?
16h
Death of housing supply by a thousand cuts in San Francisco
If you want to renovate an apartment building to improve or expand the housing stock in San Francisco, it just became more expensive and complicated
Despite how expensive it is, the housing stock in San Francisco (particularly for rentals) is already so old with infrastructure that that falling apart. Now new hurdles further disincentivize improvements
Regulations like this are a minor inconvenience for well-to-do homeowners renovating homes. But will make improving rental apartments a non-starter
The city is simply not serious about the housing crisis where there are not enough homes and not enough quality homes
Obviously doing things like this makes housing more expensive not less expensive, so that’s what we’ll continue to get in San Francisco
“Starting July 1, most property owners seeking permits for gut-level renovations that also replace major mechanical systems, such as water heaters and furnaces, will be required to ditch natural gas and install fully electric systems”
“The San Francisco Department of the Environment estimates that the new rule will affect the equivalent of roughly 261 single-family homes and 293 multifamily units a year”
12
6
90
12,312
BREAKING: Amazon data centers used 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025
Community note
Amazon's data centers withdrew 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025, down 2% from 2024 despite expansion, or less than 0.1% of annual U.S. landscape irrigation. aboutamazon.com/news/sustainab…
18
1
154
24,834
Sorry, I can't help myself... this line of argumentation is so f'ing dumb
6
53
4,079
One of the best things my brother ever taught me:
If someone tries to deadline you arbitrarily in a negotiation, the first thing you have to do is blow through the deadline.
The alternative, accepting the deadline, surrenders your leverage up front.
(Corollary: Don't impose arbitrary deadlines.)
Jun 12
Just a couple of days after I tweeted that real estate brokers primarily use their persuasion skills to convince you to take a bad deal rather than to negotiate with the opposing party, the senior broker accidentally copied me on an email to his junior broker doing just that.
When I replied, instead of apologizing, he just doubled down.
Not all brokers are like this but many are because that’s how the incentives work.
Many service providers have bad incentives as part of what is considered “market” or generally accepted terms.
When that happens, you can partially solve this problem through a mutual reference or sourcing the service provider through a community they share with you.
That forces them to think more long-term than transactionally.
33
19
828
243,223
Jun 12
He could have spent the next four years methodically making the case to Angelenos that he can be trusted with the levers of power (the way Reagan did in the 1970s, before finally winning the presidency).
Instead, he chose to throw red meat to the ~25% of voters who are Republicans, and thereby alienate the centrist Democrats who simply must make up the core of support for any moderate campaign with a chance of winning here.
128
9
208
81,971
Jun 12
Like, you can disagree vehemently w Karen and Nithya (I do!) without calling them "communist animals"
23
62
6,012
Jun 12
A (rare) meta-comment about X:
It's cool the ~new algo gives wider distribution to interesting pieces of content, but the fact that the content is divorced from its context (namely, the other stuff that poster has written) means you get a ton of ill-informed replies from people who haven't read anything else you've written.
Jun 12
The next trillionaire will undoubtedly get there by solving some very important problems (like advancing electrification of global personal transportation by a decade or more, dramatically cutting the $/kg of taking stuff to orbit, or supplying wireless broadband internet to the entire planet).
I want to live in the world that person will help create.
3
2
69
10,139
Jun 12
50 yrs of NIMBY policy-making driven by homeowners raised the price of single family homes and condos in coastal cities, lengthening the period during which even well-educated, upwardly mobile people remain tenants, creating the conditions in which tenant class-consciousness emerged.
Optimistic that recent YIMBY moves in CA and elsewhere to speed the production of for-sale product will reverse this trend, but it's going to take decades.
Jun 11
It's amazing that a top reason to send someone to Congress is "I am a tenant."
10
7
120
15,101
Jun 12
In fact, you can see the emergence and success of the YIMBY movement as a bunch of highly effective people being shut out of homeownership opportunities and getting angry enough to do something about it
1
1
43
3,037
Jun 12
And, actually, now that I think about it, the emergence of a much more effective tenants movement is the result of the exact same dynamics
4
21
2,011
Jun 12
The next trillionaire will undoubtedly get there by solving some very important problems (like advancing electrification of global personal transportation by a decade or more, dramatically cutting the $/kg of taking stuff to orbit, or supplying wireless broadband internet to the entire planet).
I want to live in the world that person will help create.
Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire.
Let’s make sure he’s also the last.
51
90
2,089
136,582
Jun 12
Leftists: "First, we assume prosperity"
Jun 12
"... the political left has long had a remarkable lack of interest in how wealth is created. As far as they are concerned, wealth exists somehow and the only interesting question is how to redistribute it."
— Thomas Sowell
2
3
57
5,273
Jun 12
Wish they taught this in school:
If you begin your career focused on building wealth, you can easily pursue something else later.
If you begin your career focused on something else, gets harder & harder to build wealth (since you have surrendered the benefit of compounding)
17
15
330
43,176
Jun 12
My first job was in banking, but I didn't really understand any of this until my late 20s, so I blew through the money I earned, rather than investing it.
V stupid!
1
34
3,889
Jun 11
~Infinitely better than the standard LA new construction apartment building
Kudos
Jun 11
Rendering vs Reality. Delivered under $300/ft on rentable. 4 levels of resi over parking with floor to glass glazing and stylish interiors.
I think reality beat the render!
4
2
149
15,999
Jun 11
Very excited to announce our next speaker for Reconvene ‘26:
Francis Greenburger, CEO of Time Equities and author of Risk Game, which is, in my opinion, the single best book ever written on real estate entrepreneurship.
Francis started as a small-scale entrepreneur hustling NYC apartment deals. His break came when he grasped, very early, the possibilities inherent in the co-op conversion strategy, giving him a differentiated lens through which to view potential acquisitions, allowing him to outbid ~everyone else.
The resulting tear put his company, Time Equities, on a steep growth path. Today, he controls a diversified, international portfolio encompassing tens of millions of square feet of residential, commercial, and industrial properties.
Separately, and almost unbelievably, while he was building Time Equities, he was also helping grow Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, the small literary agency he inherited from his parents, into one of the more successful businesses of its type in the country (they represented Dan Brown when he published The Da Vinci Code, for example).
Along the way, he went through more than his share of family struggles, built an incredible art collection, and had a ton of fun.
In this off-the-record, mainstage talk, Francis and I will discuss:
- Getting his start in a business family and his entry into real estate
- How the idea for co-op conversions came to him and what this powerful, differentiated lens allowed him to do
- How he made the leap from NYC co-ops to other asset classes in other markets
- Where he thinks opportunity exists in today’s market (you will be surprised at the breadth of his operation and knowledge)
- And any other lessons Francis cares to share from a life so well and colorfully lived
Ever since we conceived of Reconvene ~six years ago, because his story is so fascinating and his book was both so raw and also so consonant with my own experience in value-add real estate, I have dreamed of getting Francis to come speak to me on stage. Finally, with the help of my friend Michael Rudder and some others, we’ve managed to make it a reality.
I sincerely hope you will join us. More info available at reconvene.com
18
4
125
10,977
Jun 11
[Deleted a reply to a post bc the risk-reward for posting it was sharply asymmetrical to the downside.]
5
1
52
7,294