When Your Lender Becomes the Biggest Problem with Joseph Bramante

The deal wasn’t the problem—the debt was, and it nearly took everything down with it.

Most investors focus on finding the right deal… but very few are prepared for what happens when the lender becomes the biggest risk in the room.

In this conversation, we get into the realities operators faced over the past few years—where rising rates, shrinking margins, and rigid lenders forced hard decisions: inject more capital, negotiate under pressure, or risk losing everything.

This isn’t theory. It’s what actually happens when deals get tight.

If you're serious about building a multifamily business that survives market shifts—not just thrives in good times—this is the level of thinking you need.

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Join the Tribe of Titans multifamily investing community where we break down real deals, navigate challenges like these in real time, and help you make better decisions with experienced operators in the room.
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What You’ll Learn

•  Why early lender conversations can completely change outcomes 
•  How “lender discretion” quietly shifts control away from operators 
•  The negotiation strategies that actually worked in a down market 
•  What happens when multiple risks hit at once (and how to respond) 
•  When it makes sense to inject capital—and when it doesn’t 
•  How to vet lenders before you commit to a deal

About the Guest:

Joseph Bramante

Founder of TriArc, a full-cycle multifamily developer-operator focused on Texas markets, with a concentration in Houston. Former ExxonMobil project leader managing $1B+ in contracts on a $22B LNG development. Since 2013, has acquired and developed thousands of units, with a goal of reaching 10,000 units by 2030. Focused on disciplined execution, creative capital structuring, and long-term investor partnerships.

Learn more about him at: https://www.triarcrep.com/, or https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephbramante/

About the Host:

Brian Briscoe is an apartment 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 real-world operator insights and decision frameworks for aspiring multifamily investors.

If this conversation resonated, there’s more happening inside the Tribe of Titans. It’s where serious investors move beyond surface-level content and into real discussions that drive action. Visit https://www.thetribeoftitans.com/ to learn more.

Transcript

Show Setup And Purpose

Brian Briscoe 0:06

Welcome to the Dire Even 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. Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor Podcast. I'm your host, Brian Briscoe with Streamline Capital. Very excited for today's show. We have fifth-time guests. I've lost count how many times, but Joseph Ramonte is with us today. So Joseph, welcome.

Joseph Bramante 0:59

Good to be here. Good to be back again. Yeah, I don't I've kind of lost track myself, but yeah, it's always good to be on the show. You have such a great podcast, and uh it's just great to be back. Thanks a lot.

Personal Update And New Marriage

Brian Briscoe 1:08

Yeah, about once a year is what you've come on. And for the listeners, you know, Joseph was the reigning champion on the podcast for the most downloaded episode for like a three-year run before somebody finally overtook him. But you still probably have one or two top 10 episodes here. See if I can top it this time around. See if I can if I still got some some juice in me. Let's see. Yeah, I'm excited for that. So, you know, right now we're in 2026, you know, the last couple years for anybody involved in multifamily and most commercial real estate's been difficult. But hate to start things out like that, but I'm gonna. So, what's going on in your life right now and what's going on in business?

Joseph Bramante 1:44

So, life's actually pretty good. Personal life's good. Got married in February, and we're talking about that earlier, and it's been it's been good. And it's been challenging because, and like so many leaders out there, you know, you your identity as is of yourself and your business are usually one, right? And professionally, when things aren't going so well, it can be really hard to separate the two to like be okay, I got this personal stuff going on, and especially something big like a wedding, right? We had a beautiful destination wedding in Colombia. We had 100 people show up, which we weren't expecting that many people to show up because we're thinking, you know, destination weddings usually are pretty small. We almost lost everybody because uh the wedding was in February and uh all that Venezuela stuff happened like January. Well, we thought maybe we weren't gonna be having a wedding.

Brian Briscoe 2:28

Now, where in Colombia was it?

Joseph Bramante 2:29

Uh Medellin, Colombia.

Brian Briscoe 2:31

Okay. It's far enough away from the Venezuelan border, but you still get wrapped up in travel restrictions, all that fun stuff. Yeah.

Joseph Bramante 2:37

Especially when I've got a lot of family, doesn't travel that much. And so for some people, this was their first time leaving the country, and they don't realize that there's actually some distance between Venezuela and Colombia.

Getting Evicted As An Operator

Brian Briscoe 2:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Cool. Well, congratulations on the wedding. I did see the pictures, that's awesome. You mentioned this before, and you know, since we're talking personal stuff, I'm just gonna throw this out. You told me you just got evicted. Tell us a little bit about that story, I think that'll be fun.

Joseph Bramante 3:01

Yeah, so it wasn't it didn't just happen. We're actually just wrapping up. It happened uh like two years ago. Okay. And you know, I was staying at this high-rise property in in Houston, big developer, real famous brand. I just split up with my ex. And so we'd been together for a while. We lived in this unit for like five years, and so I, you know, I was transferring out of that unit. I went to a unit upstairs, and she was just leaving the building. And so we're we do our move out and everything's clean. I even have my own maintenance people come and clean it up for me. I move out, and then I'm in my unit for like a week, and they hit me, they send me this bill for like ten thousand dollars, and I'm like, excuse me. And they're like, Oh yeah, you damaged all the cabinets. Uh, I was like, first of all, no, I didn't. I got photos, and second of all, eight thousand dollars. I can replace every cabinet in that entire unit for that price. So I don't know what you're what's going on here. And the funny thing with those transfer agreements is it didn't exactly allow them, but they're saying it did because it allows you to transfer credits. It didn't say damages, but they inferred that you can do damages as well. So anyway, they transferred the damages, and then when I didn't pay the damages on my new lease, they said, Oh, non-payment of rent, because everybody knows the first dollar of your rent goes to pay the balances that you may owe. Yep. So uh got evicted, actually got evicted on my birthday, May 6th. I just couldn't believe it. So I've been on that side, right? I've I've evicted I don't know how many thousands of residents over the years. Yeah, and uh I've actually now myself been evicted, and it really sucks and it was really embarrassing. Uh fought it, got an attorney involved. Uh they actually won the first two trials because technically, technically they are correct. I I didn't pay uh the rent because I the of these damages. And so uh, but we got appealed uh and won, and I had another attorney counter sue for wrongful uh damages and wrongful eviction. And um, they've been delaying it and delaying it for two years now, and the summary judgment is in April and the jury trial is in May. So I'm looking forward to that. It might actually be the largest payout, you know, if we win, right? I think which I think we will because they've not produced any pictures or they've gotten pictures, but no pictures that show any damage uh and no invoices or no proof of payment, no nothing that they actually no photos of them doing any repairs. So uh our attorneys and I are pretty you know confident about going into it, but uh it could be uh one of the largest wrongful eviction payouts. I'm with the research it once it happens, and I'll let you know, but I think we might be up there.

Brian Briscoe 5:41

Yeah, well, good luck with that one. I mean, as an apartment owner, I mean, we go after people for damages, but it takes a whole lot of damage to hit that ten thousand dollar mark. And you're right. I mean, you you've probably replaced cabinets many more times than I have, but you know, ten thousand doll gets you a lot more than cabinetry.

Joseph Bramante 6:00

It was a big unit, but still, um ironically, I actually spoke with the owner of the company like before all this went down and let them let them know. I was like, hey, I got this thing that's going on, like your managers are really off here. Like, let's just like can you just settle this so we don't this doesn't get ugly? And he said, Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. And then nothing, and here we are.

Surviving Refinances And Tough Loans

Brian Briscoe 6:19

So still gets ugly. All right, yeah, yeah. Well, good luck with that one. Kind of interesting turn turnabout of events, but uh yeah, hope that works out for you. I I've never been evicted, you know. I have been stung with some unreasonable, you know, damage fees on the back end. But uh the way I've always looked at that, that's the price of having five kids, you know. Every time I've moved out, it's been like, yeah, you're right, that's broken. Yeah, you're right, that's broken too. Yep, that too. But uh all right. So besides the the the eviction wedding, you know, so congratulations on one, good luck on the other. What else is going on business wise?

Joseph Bramante 6:57

Business wise, you know, I think we're kind of like everybody else, we're just you know, we're surviving, just cleaning up the mess from the last couple years. We had a big refinance uh in February. February was a huge month for me. Had to this huge refinance, got married, you know. So I kind of had the both ends of the spectrum was were doing well. And um I I think everybody got the experience how how difficult loans can be, right? When you're as rates go up. Uh, and you got to really know your lender very well. And we, you know, we did so many modifications across our portfolio and you know, some tough lenders, firm lenders, but fair, you know. We had some we and we negotiated some great modifications for both sides, right? Like we obviously wanted a little bit more than what we got, and the lender did as well, but ultimately it was a good negotiation, and everything worked out, and the deals uh the deals are good.

How To Start Lender Talks Early

Brian Briscoe 7:50

Well, let's dive in on that one real quick. So just to set the stage for people listening, you know, values have gone down significantly in the last couple of years, uh, rents have gone down significantly in the couple of years, and expenses have kept on going up, right? So that puts a lot of people in a pinch. Even with like a 1.25 DSCR, you know, you lose 10% of income and you add 10% to your, you know, your your expenses, you you get into a bind really quick. So let's go back into that. You know, you're you have a property that's struggling, you're having issues with the loan. What do you recommend? What's the first steps? You know, how do you navigate that?

Joseph Bramante 8:26

Early conversations. You know, that was the one of the comments that we got from our lender was like we're talking to them six months ahead of time. Like, hey, this is about to happen. Like, we're already anticipating some challenges. Let's start talking about it now because lenders do not like surprises. And also, they don't like negotiating in very short windows. They move slow, particularly on stuff like this. It's gotta go all the way up to a committee a lot of times, and that requires a lot of conversations. So the more you can be proactive about it, is better. Also, I think just from a negotiating perspective, the earlier you can flag something, then the earlier you can bring it to the lender's attention, then you just kind of let time negotiate also for you, because now you've both parties are feeling the weight of what's to come. And so both parties are getting more and more willing to negotiate as you get closer to that deadline, versus like if you just wait to the last minute and you say, Oh, by the way, you know, whatever, that's it, nothing's gonna happen. You know, it's it's too late, and the lender always has all the power anyway, and so you're just you're just cooked, right? Versus if you let them know ahead of time, gives both parties opportunity to let the pressure kind of build and and negotiate and steer things into a better situation.

Brian Briscoe 9:45

Yeah, awesome. So you you start early, you start talking about what's going on. You know, what types of things uh have have you seen lenders willing to negotiate, and what things have lenders been, you know, more or less, you know, holding still on?

Loan Modification Options That Work

Joseph Bramante 9:59

What I'm gonna say is probably irrelevant for today because we're in a different market, right? It's yeah, you know, the things that you're able to negotiate were just as or were very relevant to the times, you know, when because from the lender's perspective, they're looking at, hey, I don't have an exit either. Like nobody has a parachute here. Whereas in today's market, the lender most likely has a parachute. And so, and that's why you've seen maybe less of a willingness by lenders to negotiate with you because they know that push comes a shove, that at least they're clear. But in in situations like we were going through the last couple of years where both parties were in a losing situation, we were negotiating stuff like we had loans that were amortizing and we stopped the amortization payment. Uh that's helpful. We had loans where we had a rate cap expire. We couldn't afford to buy a new rate cap. So we negotiated with the lender to basically give us a hard and soft pay component. So we would pay a flat rate and they would accrue the delta for us, and then they would charge us interest on that delta. And so we did that for a couple of years with one lender, and we did stuff like reallocating reserves and budgets and stuff like that, uh, which are harder to do. I mean, granted, sometimes and sometimes it's just a flat. No, you know, I don't think there's really any secret sauce to it, it's just asking a bunch of questions, and that's the other reason for starting early, because the earlier you start, the more time you get to think of all the different ways and creative ways you can come up with solutions, versus if you don't give yourself enough time, then you might only see one avenue here. And I think for us, uh, and that was partly why I was because I didn't, you know, I didn't know the answer either. I was just flagging it to the lender, like, hey, I don't have an answer here or a solution, but in six months we're gonna have a problem. Yeah. And let's start talking about what all of our options are. And so the lender will come to you and say, Hey, here's some of the things that we can do. And then I was okay, cool. And then from there, you you just start a conversation and you start spitballing off each other, and hopefully you find something that works for both parties.

Brian Briscoe 11:58

So you're talking about these loan modifications, you know, that have happened in the past. Fast forward up till now. I mean, have have the loan modifications ended up working for both parties? Have you gotten the results you've wanted? Did the lender get the results they wanted?

When A Lender Freezes Draws

Joseph Bramante 12:10

Yeah, I mean, we're still in some of these loans. We're working on exiting them all right now, but everybody's alive and moving forward. We've uh we had to pay down some loans as well. I mean, we did a fair amount of that. We've injected lots of equity into our deals, uh, which is never fun, right? Money's been going the wrong direction for the last couple of years. True. Um, but you know, that's just the market is. And these were all some of these were deals that we had bought you know during COVID, you know, it was just the product of the times. We've gotten good results with them. I think we we took lenders for granted because up until the last couple of years, like the worst lender I had was during COVID. And we had gotten into lockdown, we were doing a big renovation, and we couldn't, you know, you remember like you couldn't, nobody could do anything. Like COVID had just happened, and so everybody was just in lockdown. You could and we had like 30 units that were down for renovation on a 200 unit property. Uh, and everything up until then was going great. Like it was all on the business plan, but then we had that vacancy, and then so our interest reserve, we just burned it up for like six months. You know, it was a frustrating thing because you go to the lender and we're like, hey, like there's nothing we can do here, and we're trying to come up with solutions, and they're like, We want to help. And then so I give them all these different options. They're like, Yeah, we wish we could, but we can't. But but we want to help you, and so it's very frustrating. You'd you'd I give them a solution or give an option, and they would just bat down everything. So basically everything was a no, but fortunately, we we were able to exit out of that loan. We got a new lender, and um it worked out, but uh that so that was my worst experience. It was just like going through COVID, and we we were able to get out. Luckily, rates were still zero back then, but lately, I mean, we went through this deal, it was a big, you know, almost a about a 400-unit deal. We're doing a big renovation on uh not honestly not that big of a renovation. The rehab was like about it's like 20,000 a door, kind of right down the fairway for us, kind of a normal size rehab. And we got into this deal, and right out of the gate, something had happened prior to closing. We kind of should have known there was some issues there because we like two days before closing, they back out of the deal and we're like, what's going on? So we make some phone calls. I'm actually at that time I was in Greece on vacation because you know I'd already made the vacation and the closing was supposed to be done deal, and then next thing I know, like they're backing out. So I'm like up to like five in the morning having this conversation. And anyway, we make calls and they go up to the top, and people make phone calls and then they close. Uh, but anyway, we close this deal and we submit our first draw for mobilization fee and to get going. And they're like, Nope, we don't do mobilization payments. Yeah, we're like I hate those. But we we just had a kickoff dinner. You told all of us that you would do the mobilization payment, and that was two weeks ago. What what happened? And they're like, Yeah, we no longer do that. We fought them over it, but uh anyway, we we end up just raising the money ourselves and we funded it, so we thought.

Brian Briscoe 15:03

What was that first payment? Uh, how how what dollar amount is that was 700k? That's a good chunk.

Joseph Bramante 15:08

$7 million rehab.

Brian Briscoe 15:09

Yeah, yeah, you're doing you're doing larger rehabs than I am, but uh and all of that goes for deposits, right?

Joseph Bramante 15:14

Because when you're doing the exterior work, because we always start the exterior first, as you as you should.

Brian Briscoe 15:19

Every contractor wants a deposit, yeah.

Joseph Bramante 15:21

Yeah, and you know, you're you're spending half a million dollars to paint the exterior of the property, and so they want 250 down, and so anyway, we we fund it and we start work on the interior draws, and and they take like 10 weeks on the first draw, and we're like, whoa, guys, what's going on here? So it's it's fine. I mean, we we figured just like an educational thing, there's always a little bit of friction the first few draws, but just continued. Uh, we averaged about eight weeks over an 18-month period for like eight draws, and they just shut down the project three times. We had to restaff it, it just led to all kinds of chaos, and they just manufactured all these defaults on us, you know, just screwing a whole project up. Of course, they say they didn't do anything wrong, you know, it was always justified. And I learned firsthand, you know, there's this term in these loan docs called lender discretion. And you know, I always just kind of glossed over it. I didn't, you know, because usually they they all negotiate from good faith, right? Yeah, so you think like what's good for you is good for me, and vice versa. So, like, why would you not fund the draws? This is this is stupid, you know. Like you gave me the loan based on me performing this business plan where I said I was gonna do this me renovations, this me units. So, you know, we were in agreement anyway. You know, it defied logic and reason, and you just don't think that lenders would do it, but they do, and uh, for whatever reason, we we nobody really understands why they acted the way they did today.

Brian Briscoe 16:48

But I got some advice yesterday from somebody, and uh for people listening, go back and listen to the episode with Mark Kenny because he said the same thing. He said, every time there's a lender discretion in a loan document, strike it out and get them to quantify it, you know. But uh when they will. On our most recent value ad, we had similar problems. They didn't fund the deposit. Um, we had to come out of pocket 86,000, and I remember that number, but uh about 10% of our total number, and the and the first draw request took them, you know, six, eight weeks, and our our contractor was getting antsy. But after that, you know, everything's been like clockwork. But to keep on doing that, that's painful. You know, I I mean we we sat through that pain for the you know the first one or two draws, and then after that it was uh, you know, we submit a draw request, and probably a week later.

Joseph Bramante 17:39

An hour with a new lender, they find our draws in 48 hours. Oh, we're like, you know, you've been beaten upside the head for so long, you know, it's like a an abused dog or something, and you just yeah, somebody goes to pet you and you just pull your teeth out, and now you're like you forget that there are good lenders out there.

Brian Briscoe 17:56

Yeah. Uh we we had a really good credit union in South Carolina, and they were fast funding the draws and very minimal amount of proof, you know. Send them pictures that it was done, and you know, usually they're they're paying really quickly, but anyway, yeah, it can be painful. So yeah. So do you still own that property or are you still still own the property?

Storm Damage And Insurance Games

Joseph Bramante 18:18

Uh, I mean, that particular property we also we swear that deal was built on an Indian burial ground because we were like dealing with this horrible lender, and then right around we just did this modification with them where they agreed to start funding uh draws on time, and part of that modification was we had to agree to sign recourse. It was a non-recourse loan. We didn't want to, but we were forced into basically signing recourse, but were promised like they would fund draws within 30 days, which is still slow, but better than you know, yeah, 90. So we get going, and then two months after that modification, we got hit by the Derecho storm and the barrel. We had 160 units go down on a 300 or 372 unit property. So it's a huge storm or huge event for us, and then we got our adjusters involved, and the insurance came out. What the insurance tried to do is so we had the first storm and we had it passed. We had our adjusters out, we had the the water control, we call it where we go in and we dry out the units, so we'd already pulled all the wet sheet rock out and we're already drying things up, had our logs going, and then three days later, the second storm hit, and the insurance company submitted a claim for us on that second storm and then denied that claim on the second storm. And we're all like, what just happened? Like, we never submit a claim for this second storm, and what they tried doing was taking the damages between the two and spreading them and so that they can stay below the deductible, uh, and they so they can and basically keep all the so you pay it all instead of them so that we pay it all. Man, and uh no, that that's not happening. So we're we've got attorneys involved on that one, and so um we're in mediation with that, so we'll see how that plays out. But it's uh it's a several million dollar multi-million dollar event, and uh so you have all this happening and with like the worst lender possible, and you're just like crap. Uh any other lender, we we're when we've done this before is they you just we go to them, you say, Hey, look, I want to reallocate some of my budget, I want to get these units back online, and then when the insurance pays out, we'll then correct everything and we'll we'll fill you back up. And uh we tried making that same pitch to them, and they just uh they said they don't see how that improves our collateral. And so it's like okay, uh, they said that's a borrower problem. Okay, and so we uh raised money and we fixed it ourselves, uh, which ended up kind of working out, I'd say, in some regards, because now that we had to raise the money, we fixed all the units. Uh the insurance company does nothing to kind of come back to and and reinspect because it's like we fixed everything, uh fixed the roofs, fixed all the well, fixed most of the units. We left like the really heavy ones down. There's about 40 units that we just uh we couldn't get back up. They're $50,000 per unit. So we just left them. But I know a lot of you know, some of my mentors in the space, like that's what they do. Like they don't when an event happens, one, they're you know, they're flush with cash. So when a storm event happens, they just go and they fix it. And then they I mean they get all the paperwork for the claim, submit everything, then they fix it and they move on. And um, it's a better way to do things if you're able to.

Deductibles Reserves And Lender Fit

Brian Briscoe 21:29

If you're able to, if you're able to. Now, now just curious, you know, every time we renew insurance policies, there's always the deductible versus the premium, and um, you know, higher deductible comes with lower premium, and vice versa. Where do you guys like to land on that one? Do you like to have a lower premium higher deductible or vice versa?

Joseph Bramante 21:47

Well, a lot of times the lender's gonna dictate that to you, so you don't really they they'll have minimums, right? So for us, I mean, we're usually right in line with with the lender. Okay. Uh, and then also the other caveat to that is you've got namestorm versus. As non-namestorm for us, a hurricane, you know, hurricanes are named storms, they are much different, much bigger deductibles.

Brian Briscoe 22:06

We got hit with one, and you know, it's one of these things that you don't realize you want to look at this until you have to look at it. But we had one property where a namestorm came through and did a lot of damage. And what we didn't realize is each building was insured separately, and each building building had it had its own deductible. And when push came to shove, it wasn't that bad. I mean, we didn't get hit that bad. We had $100,000 worth of work. The insurance company with all of our deductibles applied was only going to give us like $20,000, you know. But uh anyway, speaking of lenders, I mentioned I had a really good lender where we still this was this was with one of the good lenders where we still had construction reserves or renovation reserves, and they used our renovation reserves to cover to pay for everything else.

Joseph Bramante 22:52

What a thought. You know, what an idea.

Brian Briscoe 22:54

Yeah, it's like, hey, do we still have money? And and we had done all of our renovations, we had under budgeted and we still had money in that pot. And you know, I called, I called the POC on the loan, and I'm like, how much do we still have there? He gave me the number. I'm like, the hurricane just you know tore our roof off. Can we use those funds for a roof? He's like, Yeah, you can use those funds for a roof, even though it was a hurricane. He's like, Yep, even though it was a hurricane. Anyway, they're a very small lender, you know, and sometimes I think the the bigger the lending shop or the bigger the the organization you get, the less willing they are to play ball with you. That's my my take on it.

Joseph Bramante 23:33

So I mean, I'll tell you, we're in the middle like doing some new deals, and we're actually getting references on lenders now. You know, I want to talk to some borrowers you had during this period and how you were to deal with because yeah, you just get burned. And you know, there's what's in the documents, and then there's who the lender is at the end of the day. True, you know, and it's like because they don't, I mean, of course, you hope they follow the rules in the document, but if they don't, what are you gonna they're huge, you know? Then usually you're usually you're the the small man on the totem pole. So uh you really want to get references and have lenders that uh are good lenders to work with.

Brian Briscoe 24:06

Yeah. Something I've been doing, I mean, we've used a lot of loan brokers in the past. Eventually, I want to get away from loan brokers. You know, I want to have my own in-house guy that that's his job. But I've actually been giving feedback six months, 12 months later to the loan brokers and just say, hey, these guys are terrible. These guys are awesome. That way, you know, the loan brokers have that information. Because I think, you know, most loan brokers know how easy or hard it is to work with somebody up till closing, and then they disconnect, right? It started out with a lender that I didn't like, you know, and hey, these guys are terrible. But uh now I'm trying to do it on everyone and just say, hey, look, you know, after closing, everything's been really smooth, they're really easy to work with, or if they're not easy to work with, I'll give them the examples. These are the things we've been having problems with.

Joseph Bramante 24:57

Um really ought to be some sort of like website that's got all these lenders listed and people and borrowers and it's like leave reviews. Yeah, you know, and uh hopefully people leave good reviews, uh meaning like seldom, usually you only leave a review when like something bad happens.

Brian Briscoe 25:13

You're pissed off or somebody asks you.

Joseph Bramante 25:14

Yeah. So hopefully people would leave a review like when good things happen, because man, that would be really useful.

Brian Briscoe 25:21

Yeah. So I'll just say it out loud: Greenville Federal Credit Union and Greenville, South Carolina, they've been amazing, you know. They really have throughout the entire process, but they have a very, very narrow range. But you're right. I mean, when you when you put these reviews up, it it's like the same on your properties. When somebody's pissed off, you know, that's when they put the review. And so, like every one of my properties has either one-star reviews or five-star reviews, and nothing in between, you know. So that should tell you something.

Joseph Bramante 25:48

Yeah, you get five-star reviews? When we ask, yes, when we ask, yeah, I'll just get it. Yeah, no, it just seems like you it's just our team does a good job getting five-star reviews as well. We you know, one of our metrics is the Google reviews, so our whole portfolio is over four stars because you know, people look at that stuff. I think it's an important metric, but yeah, it just it's hard to get those five stars.

Brian Briscoe 26:11

Yeah. And we found out recently that it is possible to get some of the one stars removed. We had one case where three people put negative reviews about the same thing. You only have one tenant, right? Only one person signed on the lease. But anyway, long story short, we were able to get two of them removed because they weren't actual customers.

Joseph Bramante 26:35

There's there's that, and there's several ways to get them removed. So yeah, so yeah.

Brian Briscoe 26:40

Anyway, yeah, the review thing's fun. We have things set up where we we we're not tracking that on a on a normal basis, but we do have some automation set up. Whenever a review happens, it triggers something, and we look at it and we respond.

Joseph Bramante 26:52

And but uh are you responding, or do you have the an AI pre-drafting and responding?

Brian Briscoe 26:58

It's one of the partners on the deal. So, you know, it's you know, syndication. We brought in a couple people that were quote unquote capital raisers, and you know, it's just one of the jobs we assigned, you know, to one of the people. And I mean, every time they get a review, they're sending me an email, and we'll make sure that we respond to everything too. And that's the other thing we're doing. We're we respond to every single one of them, you know, positive or negative.

Joseph Bramante 27:22

Yeah, you gotta respond. People got to see that you're there, you're you're gonna that if somebody puts some crap on your page, like you're gonna respond to it.

Brian Briscoe 27:30

Yeah, and if it's factually inaccurate, most of the time, you know, you can figure out who it is pretty quickly, but if it's factually inaccurate, we'll try to get them to take it down.

Joseph Bramante 27:39

You can usually figure it out, and you can and that's just strange how usually there's there's a weird correlation between people leaving negative reviews and them owing you money. It's just it's just weird.

Fraud Screening Deposits And Skips

Brian Briscoe 27:51

It so is, it so is, yeah. Eviction, people who get evicted, you know, usually because they owe you money, but yeah, people who are getting evicted are usually gonna give you trash reviews.

Joseph Bramante 28:00

I don't know about your portfolio, but the delinquency has been through the roof. I mean, it's just the amount of fraud applications we get. I mean, we just switched to um this screening called Snapped, okay, and it's you know, a lot of people are using it, it's supposed to be really good. I'll let you know. Uh, we just changed from what we were using, but it's just crazy, you know. I guess the AI has make it as good and bad, right? And now it's made it so easy for people to put in fake applications, fake bank statements, fake pay pay pay stubs, all that stuff.

Brian Briscoe 28:30

So, our property manager, they are still manually verifying that stuff.

Joseph Bramante 28:36

That's not good enough. That's telling you that doesn't work with the fraud with what they got these days. It also depends on your properties, too, because we got some where it's there's no problem, I guess, because people aren't trying to sneak into that one. But our nicer properties, we find there's a lot of fraud, people are like trying to fake things just to get in.

Brian Briscoe 28:54

Yeah, we're we're on the borderline between C and B class. So, you know, we'll we'll buy C plus B minus. We've had some prop for like fraudulent proof of income statements, and in most cases, you know, we've been able to, you know, property managers have been able to make a phone call and you know verify it faults. But uh are you guys using like what are you guys doing for security deposits, for example? Like we my my property manager has this system where they enter everything and it spits out a number. Is that what you guys are doing, or are you guys doing something else with with those?

Joseph Bramante 29:26

It varies per property, but generally it's just a flat rate per uh uh the payment. It's one, two, or three bedroom. The deposit will be like two, three, or four hundred dollars, something like that. Yeah. And then uh depending on what their numbers come back at on that on the qualification, we'll then have either like a high risk fee or we'll have some double deposits or something like that.

Brian Briscoe 29:48

Yeah. Well, we I mean, I I've started noticing a trend. I mean, you mentioned there's there's a high correlation between people who owe you money and bad reviews. There's also a high correlation between low security deposits and skips. You know, so we've had uh this system that weighs the risk come back and say you only need to collect a $200 deposit from these guys, and then three months later they skip. You know, 200 bucks isn't enough for them to you know stay in the world.

Joseph Bramante 30:17

One of the things that I mean, if you're able to try looking at increasing your income requirement to like three times instead of two and a half.

Brian Briscoe 30:24

So we do we do three X on ours, yeah.

Joseph Bramante 30:27

Yeah. So Salt Lake City, you know, we've got we also look at applying the the discount uh to the second month.

What’s Next And Mentoring

Brian Briscoe 30:36

Yeah, we'll split discount a lot of times between first and second. But yeah, that that's something we do. But Salt Lake, fortunately, they have a really high income to rent ratio. So usually getting the 3x isn't that hard, but yeah, lots of lots of things there. Well, uh geez, we've been we've been talking for a good you know 40, 45 minutes, so we should probably close this up. So, last three questions that I always ask. First one, what's next for you?

Joseph Bramante 31:01

So, for us, we are just cleaning out the roster with the deals that we've had that kind of got bat backlogged. We got a couple of developments that were all breaking ground this year, and so we're getting those going, doing a little bit of mentoring for some people trying to break in the industry, which is it's fun. I like doing that. You get to see it, just kind of reminds you of that spark you used to have, you know, that naive naivety, you know, people coming in. Like I had a guy that's so proud of this underwriting model that he built over the last two years. And I was like, look, dude, it doesn't matter right now. People have AI, I don't care how good your model is, AI is better. So, I mean, and the other benefit is in this market, anybody's gonna make money. You buy anything right now, you're gonna make money on it. It doesn't matter. It's like in uh when I started, but my first deal in 2011, my underwriting was terrible, it was absolutely horrible. I was off on everything. Uh and it didn't matter because I bought it a 14 cap and I was fine, and I sold it for a five cap. So, like, you just can't lose. And so that's why I was like, you just need to buy something and get something in for a good basis. Uh but anyway, so we're doing a little bit of mentoring, but mostly just trying to get our raises in and automate a lot of things at our company.

Advice For New Investors Today

Brian Briscoe 32:17

Awesome. Yeah, automation. That's that's one that we're really working on too. So, all right. Next to last question. If you had to give advice to somebody who's just starting out, what would that advice be?

Joseph Bramante 32:28

Yeah, so if they're starting out in today's world, I would say just get in, you know, get in the market, learn AI, learn the industry, and go to some events. Because, you know, one of the things I was telling to the to this uh mentee is there's a lot of good deals out there. And unfortunately, a lot of us, like myself and others, we're so busy still just restructuring our portfolio from the five years that we just went through that we just don't really have a chance to you know go after all these deals. Yeah, but you give it another six to 12 months when we're all in a back at it, yeah, it's gonna be gangbusters again. So I was like, you better get after it now while we're a bit distracted, if you will, and get it while the going's hot and raise you know a lot of new equities coming into the market, which is good. There's a lot of equity that's never coming back to the market. I just got burned, and totally understand that. Happens every down cycle, every time people lose. So yeah, I would say it's like when there's blood in the streets, even when it's your own blood, you need to get back in there. You know, it's like when you're playing sports, you know, if you get injured or something, we've all played hurt right now. We gotta play hurt.

Where To Learn More And Free Training

Brian Briscoe 33:40

We're playing hurt, everybody's playing hurt right now. So yeah, I'm glad you're saying that because a lot of people don't want to talk about it, you know, and that's something I've seen recently. You actually responded in my LinkedIn post where I said, uh, you know, out of the last 25 people we've asked to come on the podcast, we've only got like two or three yeses. But uh glad to have you on. Anyway, last question for you is how can listeners learn more about you?

Joseph Bramante 34:03

Yeah, uh, the easiest way, go to our website, triarkarip.com, or just go to josepramante.com and you can they'll take you to the website as well. Uh we actually just finished redoing it. There's a bunch of great content on there. We've got this education hub for investors, which has like 20 some odd videos. Yeah, and you remember from the different past investing uh conference to host that past investor conference. And so I went through the couple years that I hosted it and I grabbed the very best courses out of it, and it's on the on the website for free for people to watch. And because we're right now, we just really want people to get some education, especially after what we've get gone through. I mean, you've gotta know what you're gonna need.

Subscribe And Join Tribe Of Titans

Brian Briscoe 34:45

Yeah, and I and the the hope for everybody is that they remember the lessons they're learning right now. So, you know, next time, 10, 12, 15 years from now, whenever it happens again, you know, we're all positioned a lot better. But uh well, thanks for coming on the show again. And uh for people listening, the links that he mentioned, um, we're gonna put those in the show notes. So if you're interested in learning more about the amazing Joseph Ramonte, you know, click one of those links. Thanks for coming on again. Thanks, Brian. Hey, I hope you got a lot from today's conversation. Uh, if you did, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. We're on all major podcast platforms and YouTube as well. Now, if you're ready to move from listening to actually doing, check out the Tribe of Titans multifamily investing community. That's where investors go deeper with live discussions, real time QA, and practical support around capital raising, finding deals, asset management, all of it. All right, you'll find everything you need at thetriboftitans.com. That link's in the show notes, tap it, and we'll see you there.