Most real estate content is written by people who don't buy real estate.
I do. For over 20 years. So here's what this newsletter is going to be instead.
Who's Writing This
I'm Jeremiah Boucher, founder and CEO of Patriot Holdings. We're a commercial real estate private equity firm based in Las Vegas with over $420 million in assets under management across three asset classes: self-storage, mobile home communities, and small bay “flex” industrial parks.
Over two decades, I've bought more than $1 billion of real estate assets — acquisition and development, across pretty much every asset class: apartments, retail centers, office buildings, large industrial warehouses, small bay warehouses, self-storage, mobile home parks. I even bought a gas station and got a Nevada gaming license to run slot machines.
Today we own 100 properties and over 3.5 million square feet of storage and commercial flex. Our realized deals have averaged a 20%+ IRR and a 2x+ equity multiple. I'm not telling you that to impress you. I'm telling you so you know the deals in this newsletter aren't theoretical. They're the actual pipeline crossing my desk every week.
What This Newsletter Is
Every issue is one real deal we underwrote, framed one of two ways:
“Why I Passed on This Deal” or “Why I Bought This Deal.”
Real numbers. Real operating expenses. Real property tax reassessments that quietly kill returns. I'll show you the broker's operating statement, then show you how we rebuild it — line by line — into what the property actually costs to run. You'll see exactly how a deal that looks like a 6.3% cap rate on the flyer (that's the property's net income divided by the price — and remember, price moves inversely to cap rate) turns into something very different once an operator scrubs the numbers.
Every issue follows the same skeleton:
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The deal snapshot — asset class, market, size, asking price, the story being told
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What I liked and what I didn't — three bullets each, no hedging
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Seller Motivation Check — a permanent section in every issue. Why is this seller really selling? The answer is almost never in the listing.
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Read the P&L Like an Operator — the broker's numbers vs. our rebuilt numbers, and what the gap does to the price
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The verdict — pass or buy, and the one or two factors that actually decided it
Deals I don't currently own are anonymized — out of respect for confidentiality with brokers and owners. The lessons aren't.
Why Small Bay Flex Industrial
You'll see all three of our asset classes here, but small bay flex industrial gets the most focus — because I think it's one of the most overlooked opportunities in commercial real estate right now.
Small tenants. Diversified rent rolls. Chronically undersupplied because nobody's building 2,000 SF bays — the development math typically only works on big box / high bay industrial backed by high-credit tenant leases.
And management is still a challenge. The bar has been set low. Individual and even institutional owners drop the ball on the operational blocking and tackling — marketing, leasing, maintenance, friendly and attentive communication with tenants. That means mispriced deals for operators willing to do the work, and a true opportunity to become best-in-class by serving the tenants first. That's exactly the setup I look for: an asset class where operational skill, not financial engineering, moves the NOI.
It's the primary focus of our current fund, and this newsletter is where I'll show you — deal by deal — why.
Mobile Home Parks: Later Innings
MHP can be an outstanding asset class — but I believe we're in the later innings of the game. Many of these assets have been bid up to ridiculous pricing, and a lot of them sit on 50-year-old infrastructure that's a ticking time bomb of capital expenditures waiting to hit.
Yes, it solves a real need for affordable housing. But much of what's on the market now is bid up, a nightmare to manage, and located in places that aren't worth the time, energy, and effort over the long haul — not without getting paid a high yield for it. I'm going to be critical of these deals, because I don't want either of us to lose on them. Discipline is more important than ever in this asset class.
Self Storage: The Thesis Still Works — With Caveats
The concept behind self-storage still works: a metal box, customers on autopay, recurring revenue with fewer site visits and less tenant involvement than almost any other real estate asset class.
The problem is capital has chased it aggressively for the last 10 years, so oversupply risk is always on the table. And storage, any way you slice it, is a commodity. When oversupply hits, it's a race to the bottom on pricing.
So I'll be hypersensitive to demographics and barriers to entry. And don't let anyone tell you it's passive — it's still high-touch management, with lots of move-ins and move-outs, and income that can swing dramatically with rent increases and rent declines. If a deal comes on the table, we have to get paid for the risk taken in this category and see a protective moat that maintains the stability and durability of the asset over the long term.
What You Won't Get
No guru content. No “passive income” fantasy. No broker pro formas repeated with a straight face. If we misread a deal, got outbid, or hesitated too long, I'll tell you that too. The mistakes are half the education.
The First Rule
Everything in this newsletter runs through one filter: protect capital first. Every deal gets evaluated downside-first. What breaks it? What happens in the bad scenario? Am I getting paid for the specific risks I'm taking?
You'll notice a lot of these issues end in a pass. That's not indecision. That's the discipline that produced a lot of hard lessons — some successful wins and some painful losses.
Let's Dive In
If you're an investor, an operator, or just someone who wants to learn how deals actually get evaluated — not how they get marketed — you're in the right place. You're subscribed; every issue lands here.
Next issue: a real deal, a real P&L rebuild, and a verdict.
— Jeremiah Boucher
Founder & CEO, Patriot Holdings