What do you do when deals that looked perfect on a spreadsheet run into a lender who wants more parking, a $600,000 elevator nobody saw coming and an office market that won’t come back?

Brandon Vrosh is Head of Enterprise Investments at Oliver Properties, a real estate investment and development company in St. Louis, and a principal at PartnershipNW, a Vancouver, Washington-based commercial real estate investment firm.

He left pharmaceutical sales for residential real estate, spent about a decade as a residential broker in the Pacific Northwest, then moved into commercial investing through the Commercial Academy. Today he works on the acquisitions and investment side of a vertically integrated multifamily and mixed-use business in downtown St. Louis, and he teaches people who are just getting started in commercial real estate.

In this conversation with Faria Ibrahim, Brandon breaks down how he decides whether a deal is worth doing, what actually moves a building’s value, and what he looks for in an operator before he invests alongside them.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Any Deal Looks Great on a Spreadsheet

00:45 Meet Brandon Vrosh

01:20 From Pharma Sales to Real Estate

02:40 Why He Left Residential

03:19 Finding the Commercial Academy

03:57 Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results

06:01 How He Got Into Multifamily

07:37 One Market or Three?

09:13 Why They Bought the Whole Block

11:55 How Historic Tax Credits Work

13:51 When a Deal Is an Absolute No

15:20 How Much Contingency to Build In

16:12 When the Plan Breaks: The Parking Lot

17:58 The Office Building Deal

19:56 The Only Two Ways to Create Value

21:49 Keeping Tenants Through a Renovation

26:16 Budgeting for Tenant Concessions

27:47 When Sellers Don’t Disclose Everything

31:57 Telling Investors When Plans Change

33:56 How to Spot a Sketchy Multifamily Deal

36:03 What First-Time Investors Get Wrong

37:47 Why Systems Beat Experience

39:40 What He Looks for in an Operator

42:28 Multifamily vs. Retail and Industrial

43:20 What a Trip to Romania Taught Him

46:02 How His Underwriting Evolved

48:16 Inside a HUD Loan Assumption

49:20 From Broker to Owner Mindset

50:11 The Office Building That Wouldn’t Lease

52:37 What’s Brandon On The Edge Of?

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On The Edge with Faria Ibrahim explores the ideas, decisions, and relationships shaping the world of business and investment. Through conversations with investors, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders, Faria brings forward the perspectives and experiences behind consequential decisions.

Each conversation offers an opportunity to examine how leaders think, navigate uncertainty, recognize opportunities, and approach the challenges shaping their industries.

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