Ritter on Real Estate How Purpose and Profit Align in Real Estate with Matt Picheny
On this week’s episode, Kent is joined by Matt Picheny. Matt shares his journey from actor and web developer to real estate investor, revealing how one condo purchase in New York City turned into a 15+ year career and a portfolio touching over 10,000 apartments. He and Kent unpack the surprising similarities between Broadway show syndications and multifamily deals, including how he invested in Hamilton and what that taught him about sponsors, markets, and deal mechanics. Matt also opens up about painful lessons from floating-rate debt and aggressive supplemental loans, why he now favors long-term fixed-rate financing, and how his philosophy of “purposeful investing” shapes everything from community-building events to green upgrades and resident-focused value-add strategies.
Where to find Matt:
- Website: https://picheny.com
- Backstage Guide to Real Estate: https://picheny.com/backstage-guide/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/picheny
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattpicheny
Key Takeaways
- A single condo purchase in NYC that more than quadrupled his down payment convinced Matt that real estate could outperform his six-figure salary and launched his investing career.
- Broadway productions are structured very similarly to real estate syndications, with clear roles for general partners/producers and limited partners/investors and a heavy focus on sponsor, “location,” and deal mechanics.
- For both theater and real estate, Matt evaluates opportunities through three lenses: Who is running the deal, where it’s located, and how the economics are structured.
- One of his toughest passive deals involved multiple planned supplemental loans and floating-rate debt; when rates rose and valuations fell, rescue capital came in and early investors were heavily diluted.
- That experience reinforced his preference for fixed-rate, longer-term debt where the deal works on today’s numbers without relying on refinances, interest rate bets, or aggressive underwriting.
- Matt stresses trusting your gut—he’s had deals where something felt “off,” invested anyway, and later wished he’d listened to that intuition.
- Purposeful investing for Matt means improving communities and residents’ lives while still generating strong returns, through value-add improvements rather than simply slashing expenses.
Books mentioned
- Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Principles-for-Dealing-with-the-Changing-World-Order/Ray-Dalio/Principles/9781982160272
- Backstage Guide to Real Estate: Produce Passive Income, Write Your Own Story, and Direct Your Dollars Toward Positive Change by Matt Picheny: https://picheny.com/backstage-guide/
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Production by Outlier Audio