# How to Pivot in Real Estate? Lessons Learned in The Last Year

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Commercial Real Estate Investing from A-Z
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts04Yg1X6wo
- **Дата:** 13.02.2026
- **Длительность:** 20:22
- **Просмотры:** 9
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/45717

## Описание

How to decide what to invest in next? Is it ok to pivot to another asset class in real estate? How to look for and create opportunities where disaster strikes, and lessons learned in the real estate business over the last year. Bronson Hill, Managing Member at Bronson Equity, shares his insights.

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Read the entire interview here: https://tinyurl.com/eaxja8vf

How do you decide what to invest in next, and what are you working on right now?
The biggest factor for me is that I’ve had over 25 one-on-one phone calls with high-net-worth investors. A lot of times on these calls, I’ll ask, “What are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish?” And most investors don’t know. Then, I’ll ask, “Do you want cash flow? Do you want tax benefits? Do you want appreciation?” And they’ll usually say, “Yes, I want all of them.” And I get that; I want all of them too. But the real question is, what’s most important right now? The challenge for many o

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Bronson, thank you so much for being here. I think this is the second quote unquote new year uh that you come on the podcast. Uh you've been here a few other times, but recently I mean in the beginning of the year, this is the second time. So, I'm so happy to have you check in with you in 2026. Why don't you tell us a little bit about you? — Yeah, awesome. Well, great to see you, Steph. Obviously been great being your friend over many years actually and just really we've done everything from running conferences together to all kinds of different things. So grateful to for you and your friendship and your impact in the world. Um yeah so I um basically was a well- paid medical sales professional for years. Um, I made good money, was making over 200,000 a year, but uh, you know, didn't like the that I had to be somewhere for a job at a certain time, didn't wasn't able to travel as much, and I worked with a couple physicians that made, uh, over a couple million dollars a year each, and yet they were working 60, 80 hours a week every week. And I just thought that doesn't feel like freedom, right? So, I started to learn about uh, more about real estate, started doing single family. And then I had a mentor come around and say, why don't you do apartments? And I was like, well, I don't have the money. And he said, you can raise the money. So, I learned about raising capital. Uh now fast forward I quit my corporate job about four years ago. We've raised about almost 60 million for different projects and done you know a variety of stuff in multif family real estate. We're doing a lot of stuff now and oil and gas and debt funds and buying businesses and so some development things as well. So, we're doing a lot of different things, but I just really love helping investors to, you know, find the best option for them because a lot of times as an investor, um, you don't have to be committed to one asset. You know, be like, you know, I do multif family all the time. I was like, multif family could be great, but today multif family is tougher, right? So, maybe there's other assets that could work really well. So, we like kind of looking into things that provide cash flow and tax benefits for people. — That's great. Um, a great amount of asset classes as well. How do you decide what to invest in next and what are you working on right now? — Um, yeah. Well, I think the biggest thing I've had over 2500 one-on-one phone calls with high net worth investors and I run an investor community where we have called the wealth forum and so have a lot of conversations with wealthy people and a lot of times this call when I get people on the phone kind of what are your goals and what are you looking to try to accomplish and most investors really don't know. They like do you want cash flow? Do you want tax benefits? Do you want appreciation? And they'll kind of be like yes I want all of them. It's like this, okay, them too, but like what's most important? And the challenge for a lot of us is like we don't really know what we want. And so for investors, it's really important to get clear on what you want. And in my book, Fire Yourself behind me here became a Amazon bestseller. We talk about this of cash flow. Cash flow is really, I think, the most important thing because a lot of money someday is great, but it doesn't help you pay bills today. leave a job. It doesn't help you to cover expenses, but cash flow will. if you can increase your cash flow uh by a few thousand dollars every year just you know per month how much you're making every single year I mean that's huge right you can basically get to where you know work is optional and so um so I think you know it comes from that standpoint a lot of people today are like yeah real estate used to produce cash flow it's very hard to find cash flow now so what are the assets that are producing cash flow and so when we look at that when I actually identify okay my goal actually is cash flow there's a few things to do it today we actually like real estate debt funds um for a while I didn't really understand this even as an operator I'm really getting okay what's the big deal about debt funds how do debt funds work we can get into that but basically we have a partner you know there are debt funds out here that provide uh cash flow typically on a monthly basis and these days we're seeing stuff paying you know uh 10 15% you know kind of annual returns paid out monthly right so this is something that's typically a lower risk position so we like first position or senior debt means there's no other uh you know creditors below that it's just hey this is what it is if it's low leverage it's even better 50 60% loan to value that makes it a very safe real estatebacked uh asset that you're basically becoming the bank or maybe it's a pool of loans to you know you're basically providing lending uh for people buying properties and so we like that we like oil and gas for the cash flow benefits we also actually one thing uh we love talking about is private businesses private there's a you know they say it's 10,000 boomers are turning 65 every single day and a lot of people have businesses and most of these businesses people don't know how to sell them they don't want to get rid of them nobody wants the kids don't want to take over the business and they're not huge businesses. You can't really sell them to some big private equity, but they produce 500k or a million dollars per year in profit and that's a pretty good business, right? So, uh we like buying businesses because they sell for, you know, sometimes three times profit, which is crazy. Like if you converted a cap rate, you know, from a multif family be a five or six cap, this would be like a 30 cap or 35 cap. So, it's incredible cash flow. So, those are a few things we like in the cash flow department there. — Yeah. No, uh cash flow is definitely important. uh and sometimes it comes at a cost obviously right so the return may be less than let's say a groundup development where you have to wait to get a return later but it's a little

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

bigger uh return so I think is really what the goals are right so some younger people may prefer they're fine waiting and some older people that are about to retire they just want the cash — like you said it's really depending on what people's goals are And it seems like you have to guide a lot of investors on okay, what are your goals? You can't have it all. — Yeah. — You know, just like in a mate apparently, you can't have it all. — Hopefully. Yeah. But, you know, you got to Yeah, it's really true. I think even with dating, you know, you got to find out what's important, right? There's certain things that are like these are the most important things. And again, there's so much shiny object uh syndrome in investing and probably in dating as well. Like — a lot of shiny object better, right? There's objects, right? Yeah. So, I think uh I think it's good to get clear on what you want, what your goals are, and just keep coming back to them because often we'll get presented all these deals, and we have to really run it through the filter of, hey, okay, this is a deal that does whatever it does, but let me go back to what my goals are and say, does this actually get me closer to what I want? And if the answer is no, it may be a great deal, but it may just not be for you. And that's okay. We say no to at least 95% 98% of what we see. And that's pretty normal. you should be saying no to almost everything — and so that you can find do the right deals. — Absolutely. Um and as far as baby boomers retiring, obviously they also own real estate uh and a lot of their kids don't want to do or manage the real estate. So there are also a lot of opportunities on buying not at 30% cash on cash or cap rates. Uh but yeah, the opportunities are there and I see a lot of deals coming up from people that are retiring as well. — Just wanted to comment on that. — Absolutely. Yeah, it's and there's always opportunities. Every market presents different opportunities. It's just you got to be willing to look sometimes other places. And — I don't love real estate. We think you know we talked about this. I don't love real estate. I love what real estate does for me. I love what investing does for me, right? If it provide if it gets me where I want to go, there could be other assets to get me there faster. So that could be better for — sure. Um and you were briefly mentioning you have a some development coming up in Palisades or where the fires were in California. — Yeah. So um so yeah I a little bit of story there. I the fires happened I think it was January 6th of 2025. I live in Pasadena um and so I kind of live in North Pasadena. The fires mostly hit Aladena which is just a town up near the foothills here and then also the Palisades which is near the water. So the difference between the Palisades and Altadena. Altadena homes are typically a million to a million5 and the Palisades these are like three to five million homes um pretty commonly. So uh where I live it's much more workforce housing. And of course across the country that sounds outrageous a million and a half but that's just kind of LA what it is. And so I started to really brainstorm and say uh and again thank God my house was okay. evacuated for a few days. There was a lot of smoke, came back, had a bunch of friends that lost homes and just got me thinking, man, what can I do to help? Like, this is such a big issue. And so, I actually went down a big rabid trail and just what are some things that are out there? And I've learned that you actually can build a house in a factory. Uh, you know, they build these in seven days. Um, you know, they're considered pre-fabricated or manufactured homes. And this is a long way from the metal boxes that people think of when they think of like, oh yeah, you build a mobile home or something. This is like I mean it's it's 2x6 construction. It's R21 insulation. It has the same roof you get the same windows. Everything is like it actually appraises for normal value when you're done. And these are not tiny homes. These are not ADUs. These are basically 2 3,000 foot homes. They build them in two, three pieces. They put them on trucks and they bring them in. They build them in seven days, install them in one day. And they appraise for about retail value, which is amazing because they're about 50% of the cost of building a regular stick built house. And so I started to say, "Wow, that looks really interesting. " So we're in the process now. Um we got approved to do a fund. We're a little bit early recording this in February of 26 and we're a little bit early of uh actually no there's no new sales comps there. We're going to do with investors and go build, but we just don't see, you know, we're basically appraising against other older properties rather than new ones. So we don't want to be early because if we're early, we're not going to be able to do more rounds. And so, uh, my plan now is to build, uh, build one as a kind of owner builder one to do private tours there and be able to have people walk through and see the 9 foot ceilings and quartz tops and the tile backsplashes and see they can actually see themselves living there because you walk in and they're actually very, very nice. And so, uh, that's something we're working on. So, we're really excited about that project. — That sounds very interesting. Are the lots being sold at a discount nowadays or not? — Um, yeah. Yeah, I mean right now I think at any given time we've been watching it pretty closely the last year and it's um you know there's over 100 lots typically always for sale. I mean there was over I think four or 5,000 single family homes that

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

burned. It was about 40% of the single family homes in the entire city. So there's a lot of homes and the challenge is for a lot of people you know if you're over the age of 50 uh the thought of building a house yourself is absolutely overwhelming. Not only did you lose your like oh my gosh what am I going to do? So most people have already moved they already figured things out. So, a lot of people, they've said at this point 43% of people have submitted plans or have a plan to build, but that leaves, you know, uh, close to 60% that are not. And so, there's a lot of people just like, hey, let me get the insurance money or they were underinsured. And so, that's actually kind of what we like our option, too, is that we want to build one. And we have kind of two ways. We want to we do want to get land and help uh to build and help, you know, kind of have more, you know, put more units and more opportunity for housing, but we also want to help people that have lost homes. We are underinsured. A lot of people didn't have insurance and the national average is 40% of homes are owned outright. So if you had a home and you owned outright, you didn't have a loan on it. Maybe um and maybe you were underinsured, you had some equity there, you just want to get the equity out, you want to leave, or you want to actually be able to rebuild. Well, if the cost for stick building is, this is pretty commonly quoted, it's 450 to 650 a square foot and that doesn't include, you know, some things like permitting and other things like that versus ours is less than $300 a square foot. So we can do it so much cheaper and so much faster. And so there's some people that would not be able to rebuild that we actually can really help them to rebuild. And so that's what we're most excited about. — Yeah. I think we I sometimes suffer from the fact that oh I wouldn't want that. So of course nobody else would want that. Like I don't rent storage myself yet I own storage, right? Uh but other people will they will want a cheaper home and like you said some people are older and they don't want to deal with the entire hassle uh with contractors and architects and permitting and everything else that is involved in building something right. So for them is it's worth it to have a home for the rest of their lives. — Uh that is cheaper but looks and feels exactly like an actual home. — Yeah. I don't And again I think you look at them I feel like they look like a modern home. I mean, you know, in the Palisades it might be like you may not put it in the Palisades just because of the cost of right just generally the homes around but here u and we're not city of Los Angeles or actually county of Los Angeles and they're very open to building new things and so I think for a lot of people you know when you build a house normally you build a stick built house which is normally the way they build homes on site there's typically a general contractor and around 22 subcontractors right you got the plumber you got the person doing the forge installation you got the drywall you got the taper whatever Basically, there's very few subcontractors. They literally build it. The person who uh is the general contractor usually does subcontracts the foundations. They the foundation work um and then basically you place the house, you hook the utilities up, and then you place the flooring in and you're done, right? They have to usually patch the drywall a little bit just from the moving it. But it's very simple. Like it's not like you have all these different people involved for a long period of time. And so, um, I think that's why a lot of the stuff can drag on because you're trying to coordinate so many things versus in a factory, the same guy who always does, you know, the putting the water line in or doing the plumbing or doing the electrical, it's the same guy doing that every single time. And you literally see just working down the line and these guys push out something like 13 houses a week from the factory, right? They're just pushing down the line just keep, you know, and you see it's really fun to see. So, um, so I think that for people it really is a great solution. Um, and I think we're planning to offer, hey, we can just sell people the as a dealer, we can sell people the units themselves and then work with the general contractor. They can do that or we can do the whole thing. We can say, we'll basically be an owner agent for you. We'll come along and kind of help you with some of this. You'll still be doing it, but we'll be doing kind of permitting and getting some of the work done for you and just so that it's much more manageable for people. — So, you'll be selling directly to the buyer in this case. — Um, yeah. So, again, there's two routes we find. One is we'll just do this ourselves with investors or we'll do it ourselves with land, whatever. The other thought is, yeah, with people that have homes that burn down that want to rebuild, we'll help them. — And then with the investors, are you going to keep the homes and rent it out? What are you going to do there? — Um, it it's kind of yet to be seen. I mean, ideally, if you can keep something, it is valuable. So, if we're going to keep them, we'll probably build a little different. We'd probably say, "Hey, we're going to do this as we'll um have a 2,000 foot — house that internally will have maybe 300 ft. That's a junior ADU that we can rent out in the back. — Um and then we'll have also maybe a detached ADU. So, we'll get several units on each property — and that would probably make the most sense. And then you can do something called midterm rentals, which midterm rentals are like furnished rentals where you'll have um you know like nurses, other folks, and you can get sometimes 50 to 60% more in normal rents or even higher than that for people that are staying for you know they're not long-term tenants, but they're staying for eight weeks. They're kind of, you know, maybe for six months or something

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

like that. — Okay. Awesome. what what's um something that you learned in the last year maybe in real estate or in owning your own business that you think is important for people to also learn from your experience not their own maybe — I think reinvention is really important I think it's really important to be able and willing to learn and try new things and I think that's true as a passive investor as we mentioned that sometimes it's great to be a certain type of investor and other times it's great to do something different. And so um you we and also in our business like we've continued to reinvent where it's like okay well you know this multif family worked well for us for a while and then uh we were raising capital and doing deals and then we just realized you know like we're just not seeing the cash flow there and also investors a lot of them have lost appetite for doing a lot of multif family stuff right so we're doing different things so we're doing things that actually we find exciting and that um we feel like a lot of investors are there just wanting to try to find ways to make it work so um so I think you know being willing to uh look at new things. I mean Chad GBT is amazing too, right? Just to ideate, just to kind of come up with ideas. And so this is something for an individual. I mean, you know, somebody said if you were to write down what the biggest goals are in your life, right, personally, uh your legacy, with your kids, with uh your spiritual life, your health, and then you had somebody sitting right next to you that had a one in 10,000 person IQ, and they were helping you to solve these problems. That's what chatt is. Now, it doesn't always get it right. It does hallucinate. you got to filter everything whatever but in a way like it just the ideation is huge and so a lot of times we fail because in life at different things because we're not willing to keep coming up with new ideas and keep trying new things and I think Chad is really great to help with that. — That makes sense. That's that that's a big one. So the more you do how often do you use it every day? — I use it every day. I used to, you know, I kind of use it like I used to use Google all the time, but now — I just want to know anything. And I I was, you know, it's funny growing up like my brother and I would argue I have an older brother. We'd argue about something. Oh, what's right? Whatever. Oh, we'd both be super convinced we're right. And when you, you know, we were young, it's like we didn't, you had to like go and like find an encyclopedia or find somebody new that could really settle the dispute. Well, now it's like you can just get on chat. It will just pretty definitively tell you whatever the answer is. And so it it's really nice. And then even the idea of like internet research, you know, I used to spend time researching a certain thing. Well, now what used to take you 20 minutes, it's like it takes you five seconds. You just go in and put it in there and it's like, "Oh, I got it. You know, here's what it is. " So, I think that is really valuable. Um, but, you know, it's just amazing. Um, I think the people that really do well going forward are going to find ways to use it in their business, life. And I think the more fluent you are in it, the more value it's going to give you. And I think it will change. The interface will change. It won't always be you're using your phone or you're using it, you know, you're typing in or maybe you're talking to there may be other ways. It might just be able to make connections in your life and point things out that you're doing. Um, and that's just interesting. I don't know. We don't know what that's going to look like, but I think just being able to — continue to innovate in it is helpful. — Yeah, that that's a big unknown that some people can't potentially predict that are super involved in it, but it's going to be fascinating what will happen in the next five years. Yeah, for sure. — Well, Brunson, is there anything else that you think is important for our audience to know? — Um, yeah. I mean, I think we talked about reinvention, just continuing to learn, can grow. Um, I think, you know, 2026 is going to be uh, you know, we're going to continue to have opportunities. There's going to be volatility. We've seen I'm a precious metals investor. I don't know if we you talk about precious metals on here, but uh actually the event we met on years ago that uh the real estate event we went to. Um they were talking about buying metals and I bought a bunch of physical silver and gold and some of the stuff has gone has done very well. So that's been one of my best investments over the years is just like I think gold has probably tripled at least and then I think silver has gone up even as it's come down recently but it was — probably at least five six times where it was. So it's been very good. So, so it's amazing what you'll learn getting around people and doing things. I actually have a free gift for your audience if it's okay to offer it. I uh my favorite cash flow investments of 2026. We talked about a couple of them here. There's a couple I didn't mention. And if you text the word cash flow, just all one word cash flow to the word to the number 33777. So, you just text it's 33777. You text the word inflation. I'm sorry, cash flow. I've got different ones. You text the word cash flow. that'll send you that guide. It'll ask for your email and let you know kind of what we're working on. But um that that's something I'd love to offer to your audience. — Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Bronson. How can our listeners get in touch with you? — I think that's the best way that the free guide there. You can we're on all those socials as well, but love to connect with anybody in regards to uh real estate, investing, passively, actively, anything we do to help. We also have an investor community that does um you we have like a meetup that you've been to as well, Stephanie, called the wealth forum that's basically

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 20:00) [20:00]

just nothing's pitched there except the group and we just get in the room and try to help each other and try to figure out what's happening in the world and how we can make sense of it and make, you know, a good return on it. So, — Bronson, thank you so much for coming over again. I really appreciate your time and your friendship. — Thanks so much, Steph. Good to see you.
