Billion Dollar Portfolio: How to Create a Real Estate Empire

by Brent Sprenkle

We admire them. We want to be them.But we don’t understand how they do it.How do commercial real estate investors create portfolios worth billions? As an experienced investor, you know that patience and hard work are equally as important as trying to take your available cash and leverage it toward your next deal. But according to real estate advisor Brent Sprenkle, building a substantial portfolio requires a unique drive to weather any storm and keep pushing forward.In Billion Dollar Portfolio, Brent shows you how to purchase multiple investment properties and maximize your growth by leveraging your resources—even the ones you didn’t know you had. You’ll learn how to find the right properties, finance and reposition them, increase their value, and sell or refinance them for a profit. With the stories of his most successful investors, you’ll see how you too can endure the ups and downs of the business to ultimately build your own billion-dollar portfolio.

262 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 19, 2021

Reviews

[Clay Brumley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid starting point for any ambitious but real estate inexperienced investor looking to diversify into the section. It lays out the fundamentals well, including how to begin with limited capital and gradually scale your portfolio. One thing it does particularly well is explaining the dangers of being over-leveraged. It breaks down how taking on too much debt too quickly can crush you if you’re not careful, and explains how to avoid that trap. Everyone is scared of selling, mostly because of the tax implications. Despite this, holding too long can kill annualized returns. You should not be fearful of selling/refinancing and redeploying capital, especially with as powerful of a tool as the 1031 exchange at your disposal. Leveraging that capital into several/bigger deals is the key to scaling your portfolio exponentially faster than any other investment is capable of. It emphasizes valuing your time and outsourcing lower-skilled tasks so you can focus on growing your business and finding new deals. However, it falls short when it comes to financial analysis. The numbers often feel too generalized or unrealistic, and it’s explanation on confirming things like expected rent increases or return on upgrades is subpar. Overall, it’s a helpful read for beginners, especially those trying to understand the big picture and what they’re getting themselves into, but it may lack depth for more experienced investors or real estate professionals.

Epilogue: This book released in 2020 and in the 5 years since that time real estate valuation is up almost 50% nearly across the board (sorry office space) and debt is more than twice as expensive.
Takeaway: Timing is everything, and real estate is cyclical. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. However, only those who have the money to buy a ticket are able to get on the next time the train comes around.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Think and Grow Rich book equivalent to multi family investing!

Thorough, professionally crafted, and wisely tailored to the aspiring investor, this book is the wisdom needed to navigate the multi family investment process. Thank you Brent!

[nate wampler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often times the advice felt overly repetitive