Robert Boucai & James Broyer – Tax-Efficient Multifamily Real Estate at Newbrook (EP.475)
Episode
48 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Relationships, Investing
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Fixed-Rate Financing Strategy: Newbrook uses 7-10 year fixed-rate debt at 4-5% to buy properties at 6% cap rates, creating 100-200 basis points of positive leverage from day one while eliminating interest rate risk and ensuring predictable income streams over the hold period.
- ✓Market Selection Methodology: The firm underwrites 100 deals monthly, focusing on landlord-friendly Midwest and Sun Belt markets with compressed rents and zero supply within 10-15 miles, prioritizing rent growth potential over population growth to identify mispriced opportunities below replacement cost.
- ✓Tax Efficiency Structure: Investors receive depreciation-sheltered income that effectively doubles after-tax returns compared to public equities. The strategy requires long-term holds with fixed-rate debt to maximize tax benefits, unlike typical opportunity funds serving tax-exempt institutional investors with floating-rate debt.
- ✓Renovation Economics: Properties receive 12,000-20,000 dollars per unit in capital improvements over four years, renovating 10-20% of units annually. The Charlotte deal achieved 13% rent growth in sixteen months while maintaining 96% occupancy, with 400-500 dollar spreads to market comps.
What It Covers
Robert Boucai and James Broyer explain how Newbrook Capital Properties uses fixed-rate financing and long-term holds to generate tax-efficient multifamily real estate returns, targeting 8% cash-on-cash yields with depreciation shields for taxable investors.
Key Questions Answered
- •Fixed-Rate Financing Strategy: Newbrook uses 7-10 year fixed-rate debt at 4-5% to buy properties at 6% cap rates, creating 100-200 basis points of positive leverage from day one while eliminating interest rate risk and ensuring predictable income streams over the hold period.
- •Market Selection Methodology: The firm underwrites 100 deals monthly, focusing on landlord-friendly Midwest and Sun Belt markets with compressed rents and zero supply within 10-15 miles, prioritizing rent growth potential over population growth to identify mispriced opportunities below replacement cost.
- •Tax Efficiency Structure: Investors receive depreciation-sheltered income that effectively doubles after-tax returns compared to public equities. The strategy requires long-term holds with fixed-rate debt to maximize tax benefits, unlike typical opportunity funds serving tax-exempt institutional investors with floating-rate debt.
- •Renovation Economics: Properties receive 12,000-20,000 dollars per unit in capital improvements over four years, renovating 10-20% of units annually. The Charlotte deal achieved 13% rent growth in sixteen months while maintaining 96% occupancy, with 400-500 dollar spreads to market comps.
Notable Moment
Boucai analyzed his personal investment returns in 2020 and discovered real estate partnerships generated his best after-tax performance due to depreciation shields, prompting him to reverse-engineer an optimal tax-efficient multifamily strategy rather than continue investing with existing general partners.
Episode Transcript
When I started looking at my own returns of my investments in 2020, I'd invested in a bunch of real estate general partnerships over the last ten, fifteen years. My best after tax returns were coming from real estate because of the depreciation shelter and the growth in income. I was getting attractive returns on an after tax basis. We came to the conclusion that we really need to create this ourselves, and we couldn't invest more with other GPs because the other GPs don't have the things that we are looking for. We needed to reverse engineer the optimal solution for ourselves and find a partner to help us implement it. I'm Ted Saides, and this is Capital Allocators. My guests on today's show are Robert Bucaille and James Breuer, cofounders of Newbrook Capital Properties, a multifamily real estate investment platform built to generate optimal, long duration, tax efficient income. Robert is also founder of Newbrook Capital Advisors, a hedge fund he launched twenty years ago that today manages a billion dollars across long short and long only strategies. He was born with sensorineural hearing loss, and today serves on the board of the Hearing Health Foundation, which is dedicated to preventing and finding cures for hearing loss. Our conversation covers Robert's path from real estate to hedge fund investing and back to real estate. We discussed the real estate strategy he designed with James, including alignment, market and asset selection, property improvement, and supply demand drivers to create durable rental growth. We close with risks, synergies with Newbrook's public equity business, and plans to scale the real estate platform. I hope you enjoy the show, and if you do, this week, why not reach out to that friend of yours? You know the one I'm talking about. They're someone you've known forever and trust and love so much. You probably only see each other maybe every year or two these days, but whenever you get together, it's like no time had passed at all. Go ahead. Reach out to them and just say hi. When it comes up what inspired you to reach out, just tell them you thought of them while listening to the Capital Allocators podcast, and maybe they wanna have a listen too. Thanks so much for spreading the word. Please enjoy my conversation with Robert Buckeye and James Breuer. Robert, James, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for having us. Alright, Robert. Let's kick it off with you. Take me back to your upbringing that led you to get into the investing world in the first place. I grew up in Boston. Parents were immigrants from Lebanon. I had the fortune of growing up in the eighties and nineties. I enjoyed reading things like the Wall Street Journal, business book. Wanted to go to a business school for undergraduate. When I saw Wharton in the 1992, I said, this is really where I wanna go to school. I applied early. I got in. …
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