21. The Economy, Inflation, A Sow’s Ear and Real Estate with Eric Sussman

Eric is a Founding Partner of Clear Capital, LLC and an Adjunct Professor with UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management. He is the host of Focus on Facts Podcast and was a guest at the May 24th Left Field Investors monthly meeting.  In this episode, Eric talks about sourcing deals, abundance of liquidity in almost all markets, inflation now and in the future, wealth inequality and how all of these things effect real estate.

Eric discusses how he got his start in real estate investing in various asset classes until he got into multifamily apartments, where he has focused his efforts for the past 20 years.

Eric talks about the abundance of liquidity right now in almost all markets, not just real estate. He mentions that one of the biggest challenges is sourcing deals in the current market – and that they have to evaluate a lot of deals before they find one that works. 

Eric discusses inflation and how it is a popular topic right now. He thinks inflation will be around for a year or two because of Covid causing supply chain issues combined strong demand. Longer term there are multiple trends that point to deflation.

Eric talks about the Three A’s - Amazon, Automation and AI (Artificial Intelligence) that are increasing productivity and lowering costs. He discusses how these affect multifamily real estate. He discusses housing shortages and difficulties in building affordable workforce housing and introduces the Three H’s – The Haves, Have-Nots and the Homeless.

Eric is concerned about the effect of wealth inequality on the economy moving forward – he thinks it’s the single greatest systemic risk to our country. 

Eric talks about bridge debt and interest rates caps as a way to control expenses if interest rates rise and how to evaluate a sponsor.  He mentions the most important metric in multifamily investing – loss to lease and its Importance in evaluating a deal.

Podcasts he recommends:

Focus on Facts

Passive Investing from Left Field

Publication he recommends:

The Economist

To connect with Eric go to www.clearcapllc.com.

If you would like to contact Jim Pfeifer, you can email him at jim@leftfieldinvestors.com or if you would like to find out more about Left Field Investors go to www.leftfieldinvestors.com. 

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