Diary of an Apartment Investor
New to apartment investing? This podcast shows you exactly how to start—from first deal to raising millions in capital.
You’ll hear from people just like you—busy professionals who stopped watching from the sidelines and started closing deals, raising capital, and changing their future.
Each week brings:
- Candid interviews with investors who pushed through fear, doubt, and failure
- Action-focused episodes with clear strategies to help you move forward
- A community-first message: you don’t have to do this alone
The host has helped hundreds make their first investment—and he can help you, too. Take the next step here 👉 https://www.thetribeoftitans.com
Diary of an Apartment Investor
Why Chasing Hot Markets Breaks New Investors
Most investors think market selection is about opportunity, when it’s really about avoiding problems they don’t see coming.
New multifamily investors spend an enormous amount of time asking where to invest, but far less time thinking about what their choices will demand of them operationally. The real risk isn’t picking the “wrong” market — it’s building a portfolio that’s impossible to manage, scale, or support.
If you want to go deeper on these same operator-level decisions, this conversation continues inside the Tribe of Titans multifamily investing community, where we break these topics down live, apply them to real situations, and work through questions in real time. Learn more at thetribeoftitans.com.
What You’ll Learn in This Multifamily Brief:
- Why spreading across multiple states early creates hidden operational drag
- How geographic focus affects broker access and deal flow
- The difference between data-driven investing and execution-driven investing
- Why reputation and consistency matter more than chasing trends
- How market selection impacts capital raising and investor confidence
This episode challenges the idea that investing “everywhere” is safer or smarter. Drawing from personal experience, Brian explains how tight geographic focus creates operational efficiency, stronger relationships, and long-term durability — especially for newer operators.
About the Host:
Brian Briscoe is an apartment investor, operator, and founder of Streamline Capital, focused on acquiring and operating multifamily properties in the greater Salt Lake City metro. He hosts the Diary of an Apartment Investor podcast, where he shares operator-level insights and real-world decision frameworks for aspiring multifamily investors.
If this Multifamily Brief helped you think differently, there’s a lot more where that came from. Inside the Tribe of Titans, we go deeper on these same topics every week, applying them to real deals and answering questions live. If you’re serious about building momentum instead of just consuming content, that’s where you belong. Visit thetribeoftitans.com to learn more.
****Capital Raising Course Starting on January 29****
Learn more and register at www.thetribeoftitans.net
Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor Podcast, the show where we cut through the noise and talk about what it actually takes to build a real multifamily investing business. I'm Brian Briscoe, apartment investor, operator, and founder of Streamline Capital, and this podcast is built for the aspiring apartment investor who wants more than just theory. We talk about raising capital, closing deals, managing assets, and making the decisions that separate dabbling from building something that lasts. Now, if you're serious about taking the next step, this conversation continues inside of the Tribe of Titans multifamily investing community where investors work through real deals together with live discussions and direct support. So let's get into today's episode. Hey everyone, welcome back. This is another multifamily brief. I'm Brian Briscoe, host of the Diary of an Apartment Investor Podcast. And today I want to share a story and talk about some hard-earned insights about one of the most important decisions that newer investors are going to have to make. And that's market selection. You know, it's something that every one of my coaching clients spends a lot of time focusing on. Which market do I invest in? And quite frankly, everybody who's new to this game is going to go through this particular decision-making process. So, story time now. Five years ago, I went to a conference. There was a guy there that I really respected. I hadn't known him for very long, but he was head and shoulders above me as far as where he was at the time. And he's still head and shoulders above me as far as what he's done with multifamily. He invited me to do a dinner with a few of his investor friends. You know, basically he had formed a mastermind with other people that were roughly the same age and same level as him. Now, at this time, I think I was right around the six or seven hundred unit mark. And I yeah, I did just say six, seven. And within my coaching program, I was doing extremely well. I was sort of the poster child. You know, I was invited to speak at this conference. And as I was sitting at this table, I realized really quickly that I was a small fish in a very big pond. And so what I did is I decided to listen and not talk. And I spent most of the dinner just paying attention and I realized something. Everybody at that table had something that I didn't, a very tight geographic focus. Meanwhile, I had deals in several different states and had just started a fund to raise for deals in, you know, any random state that I find. Now, part of the conversation that has really stuck with me was from a guy who said he hadn't bought a marketed deal in a decade. And I remember looking at him thinking, wow, you know, that's all we've bought. Everything we've bought has come with a nice, you know, shiny offering memorandum from a broker who probably blasted it out to his distro list of several thousand people. But when I really started thinking about that, it made sense. He had a very strict geographical area that he would operate in. One single city. Now, it was a fairly large city, which is important, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. He had a very good reputation for closing, and he also had a very strict deal criteria. He was only doing B-class multifamily value ads, you know, with a certain unit count, right? And so what was happening is whenever a broker had a deal that they knew would sell that met his requirements, they would pick up the phone and they would talk to him first. Now, you don't get that kind of treatment from brokers if your criteria is I'll buy anything in Texas or Florida. All right. It just doesn't happen. All right. Now, in my in my first company that I formed, we own properties across South Carolina and parts of Georgia. All right. Sounds pretty manageable, right? I mean, South Carolina geographically is a relatively small state. And the two properties in Georgia, we're in Augusta, which, you know, you cross the river and you're you're in South Carolina. All right. But, you know, we had three or sometimes four different property managers on this portfolio. And there wasn't a single property manager who would cover our entire portfolio. In some cases, it was because, okay, this one's too small for us to do, or this one's too big for us to do, or we don't operate in that city, but we do operate in this city. And to compound things, you know, we couldn't, you know, once again, we're talking just to say to South Carolina with, you know, Augusta, Georgia added, you know, driving from one property to the next. And by the way, I strongly recommend you visit every single property at least once a month. Okay. But driving from one property to the next took days, not hours. Okay. It was a logistical and operational headache. And so, you know, at this dinner that I went to, I started formulating, you know, next steps for me. I think I was already, I had already left that first company or I decided to leave that first company. Maybe hadn't 100% done it yet, but I decided to focus on Utah and make it a Utah-based investing firm. You know, why Utah, you may ask? Well, quite frankly, I had a competitive advantage there. Okay. There's something that I had that other people investing from the outside in did not have. All right. I was born and raised there. I've lived there most of my life. You know, I know the areas, I know the neighborhoods, I know what's important, and I know the culture and the people. Okay. Which, like I said, it gives me a competitive advantage, but also it's a competitive advantage that I can continue to grow. All right, get to know local contractors, CPAs, investors, brokers, all of that, you know, deepen relationships in one single metro instead of trying to do that everywhere. Okay. What I decided to do is just essentially scale smarter, you know, and not chase every hot market across the country. And when you look at deal selection, I think there's two philosophies, you know, and they're diametrically opposed. Philosophy number one, Neil Bawa is a subscriber to this philosophy. And he he told me he came on my podcast, you know, a while ago and said that uh, you know, it's it's extremely difficult, but he's built his business around this philosophy. Philosophy number one is chase every hot market. Look at the data across the country. And if the data says you invest in Scottsdale, Arizona, you go to Scottsdale, Arizona. Okay. Now I think the opposite is double down in one metro and go deep. Okay. Now the second option is going to give you operational efficiencies, okay, that you're not going to be able to have if you're opening up shop in a new metro every single year. You're also going to build your reputation with brokers and not just brokers, but everybody involved in the trade, property managers and everything. All right. And now you you can build your systems, you can build your teams, and you're not starting from scratch every time you pick a new metro, every time you buy a new property. Okay. And one other thing is it's a lot easier to raise capital, especially if you're leveraging that one single market to raise capital. You know, you can find local investors. And this is a truth that I think exists almost everywhere. I guess debatable if it's a truth, if it exists almost everywhere, but we're just going to ignore that philosophical discussion right there. But this is something that I that I think is largely true. You know, people like to invest in their own market. And part of convincing people to invest with you is convincing them that the market that you're investing in is a good, solid market. Okay. Now, if you're raising money in the same market every single time, you don't have to keep on reconvincing your investors and familiarizing them with a new market every time. Now, there's also the question, you know, what things should I look for in a market? You know, number one, you have to have that competitive advantage. Do you have a competitive advantage in that market? And I think first and foremost, that is the most important thing here. Okay. And if you don't necessarily have a competitive advantage, can you establish and build one? Okay. That's second, but you know, still good. All right. Population size, it has to be a large enough city where you can actually build something, all right, where there's enough apartment complexes where you can build a company. Now, case in point, I live in Idaho Falls. It's a very small city, but it's not big enough to support our goals, you know. So maybe later I'll buy a couple of properties here, but my primary focus is still Salt Lake City because it checks all the boxes. The last thing, which is also important, is growth trends. You want to invest in a growing market. Okay. Now, are all of these absolutely vital? Can you do well in a market that's not, you know, top of the line in growth? Yeah, you can, is the answer. You can you can really, if you understand the markets, you know, which that competitive advantage comes in. If you understand your markets, you can build almost anywhere. But man, having population and economic growth really, really do help. Okay. Now, end of the day, if you're an operator or planning to become one, consider stacking your properties close together. Okay. That's going to allow you to grow your relationships. It's going to allow you to grow your systems and your influence and all in one particular spot. You know, so don't necessarily chase trends and try to invest in that hottest city, you know, on whoever's top 10 list. Try to build something sustainable. Now, if you're looking for a place to grow alongside other serious investors, check out the Tribe of Titans. It's uh thetribe of Titans.com. And we'll see you next time. If this multifamily brief helped you think differently, there's a whole lot more where this comes from. Inside the Tribe of Titans multifamily investing community, we go a lot deeper on these same topics every week, breaking them down, applying them to real world situations, and answering questions live in real time. The Tribe of Titans is where investors stop just consuming content and start actually gaining trait. If you're serious about building momentum, that's where you should be. Learn more about this at thetribo Titans.com, and that link's in the show notes. I'll see you there.
