Brett Layser

Brett Layser Fly higher financially by owning bigger pieces 🥧 of better deals—together.

Join other pilots ✈️ & professionals pooling capital💰 to invest in multifamily assets—earning 8–15% annually, 1.6–2.8X equity on exit at 18-36mos, plus unmatched tax savings.

An 8% preferred return sounds like a floor.It isn't.I've read enough offering memorandums to know the word "preferred" i...
08/21/2026

An 8% preferred return sounds like a floor.

It isn't.

I've read enough offering memorandums to know the word "preferred" is doing a lot of quiet work. It suggests income. Predictability. Something close to a bond coupon with better upside.

Then you read the fine print.

If the deal underperforms, the pref doesn't disappear. It accrues. Sits there. Waits.

And you only see the money when the property sells or refis. Could be year 3. Year 7. Never.

So here's the question I ask every sponsor now:

→ How many of your last five deals actually paid current pref in cash?
→ Not accrued. Not projected. Paid.

The answers get quiet fast.

Because "8% preferred" on paper and "8% hitting your account this quarter" are two very different things. One is a promise on a spreadsheet. The other is a distribution.

If a sponsor can't name three recent deals that paid current pref in cash, the 8% is a story.

Ask the question before you wire the money.

Agree? Like & comment "PREF" if you've ever been sold an 8% that quietly turned into an IOU. 👇

Between airline rotations, I run the same three days on repeat.Monday → deal review.Wednesday → investor calls.Friday → ...
08/17/2026

Between airline rotations, I run the same three days on repeat.

Monday → deal review.
Wednesday → investor calls.
Friday → site visits.

That's the whole system.

People keep asking how I fit real estate around flying. They expect some hack, some stack, some optimization trick.

It's more boring than that.

I do the same checklist. Every week.

Discipline isn't intensity. Intensity is what people reach for when they haven't built a rhythm yet. It burns loud and dies fast.

A rhythm is quieter. It shows up on Monday whether I feel like it or not. It doesn't care that I landed at 2am.

Most weeks feel unremarkable. That's the point. Boring weeks are the ones compounding.

If your calendar rearranges itself every seven days, you don't have a system. You have a scramble in a nice outfit.

What's your anchor day? Drop it below if you actually have one 👇

A $21M multifamily deal can legally hand LPs $4M to $6M in first-year depreciation.Most passive investors never see this...
08/14/2026

A $21M multifamily deal can legally hand LPs $4M to $6M in first-year depreciation.

Most passive investors never see this number explained clearly.

Here's how it actually works.

A cost segregation study breaks the property into its component parts. Roofing, plumbing, land improvements, personal property, structural elements. Instead of depreciating the whole building over 27.5 years, big chunks get reclassified into 5, 7, and 15-year buckets.

Then bonus depreciation pulls most of that into year one.

On a $21M property, that typically frees $4M to $6M of depreciation immediately.

→ That deduction doesn't sit at the fund level.
→ It flows through the K-1 to every LP.
→ In proportion to their capital.

So if someone owns 5% of the deal, roughly 5% of that depreciation lands on their return.

Real dollars. Real offset. Against passive income, and sometimes much more depending on their status.

This is why sophisticated investors ask about cost seg before they ask about IRR projections. The tax outcome often shapes the actual return more than the operator's pro forma does.

Numbers on paper are one thing.

Numbers on the K-1 are what matter.

Like & comment "K-1" if you'd rather see real mechanics than another pitch deck. 👇

Before I wire a dollar next to LP money, I ask the sponsor four questions.Not references. Not IRR projections. Not the p...
08/12/2026

Before I wire a dollar next to LP money, I ask the sponsor four questions.

Not references. Not IRR projections. Not the pitch deck.

Four questions.

→ How much of your own net worth is in this deal?

If the number is small, or vague, I'm done. "Meaningful" isn't a number. I want a percentage. If they can't say it out loud, they're not aligned. They're collecting fees.

→ What is your worst outcome case?

Most sponsors have a base, upside, and downside. I want the case where everything they didn't plan for happens at once. Rates stay high. Rent softens. The lender doesn't extend. If the answer sounds smooth, they haven't modeled it. They've marketed it.

→ Who signed the loan?

Recourse tells me who actually feels the pain if this breaks. If it's an SPV with no guarantor, the sponsor walks and I don't. If a real person signed, their name sits on the line next to mine.

→ Who fires the property manager?

Sounds small. It isn't. Whoever controls that decision controls the asset when things get uncomfortable. If it's the lender, the sponsor is a passenger. If it's the sponsor, they still have the wheel when the road gets bad.

Four questions. Ten minutes. They filter out more deals than any spreadsheet I've ever built.

If a sponsor gets defensive on any of them, I already have my answer.

What question would you add to the list? Drop it below if you've ever written a check into someone else's deal. 👇

Multifamily insurance premiums in Tennessee and Texas are up 40 to 90% since 2022.If a sponsor hands me a proforma using...
08/10/2026

Multifamily insurance premiums in Tennessee and Texas are up 40 to 90% since 2022.

If a sponsor hands me a proforma using last year's number, I already know the deal is off plan before closing.

That's not pessimism. That's math.

A 200 unit Class B in Nashville that penciled at $450 per door in 2022 is quoting closer to $800 today. Sometimes more. Insurance alone can eat 100 to 200 basis points off your projected yield.

And most decks I still see have the old figure sitting quietly in the OpEx line, untouched.

Here's what I check before I even open the returns page:

→ The actual bound premium on the current quote, not the trailing 12
→ Wind and hail deductible in percent, not dollars
→ Loss runs on the specific asset for the last 5 years
→ Whether the insurance escalator matches reality (3% won't cut it)

If any of those four are missing or soft, the rest of the model is decoration.

Plenty of deals still work in TN and TX. The ones that survive the next two years are the ones where the sponsor already priced this in... not the ones hoping the market resets on its own.

The gap between a proforma and a bound quote is where LPs quietly lose real money.

Like & comment "sharpened" if you're an LP asking harder questions on OpEx these days. What number are you seeing on your deals?

Your K-1 distribution number is not what saves you tax.Box 2 is.Every year investors flip straight to the distributions ...
08/03/2026

Your K-1 distribution number is not what saves you tax.

Box 2 is.

Every year investors flip straight to the distributions line and skim past the one number that actually reduces what they owe. Ordinary rental loss. Sitting quietly in Box 2 of the K-1 from your real estate partnership or LLC.

Here's where it should land...

→ Box 2 flows onto Schedule E, Page 2
→ From there it hits Line 5 of Schedule 1
→ Then it reduces gross income on your 1040

Simple on paper. Messy in practice.

Passive activity rules can suspend that loss entirely. If you don't qualify as a real estate professional, or the property doesn't meet the short-term rental exception, the loss gets parked on Form 8582 and does nothing for your current year tax bill.

The number is right there on the K-1. Whether it actually saves you money depends on how it's reported downstream, and whether your material participation hours, grouping elections, and STR classification are properly documented.

Distributions feel like the exciting number. Cash in your pocket. But they don't lower your tax bill. Box 2 can, when it's handled correctly.

Ask your CPA one question this year: "Where did my Box 2 loss end up on the return?"

If they hesitate, you have your answer.

Agree? Like and drop "Box 2" in the comments if your CPA should be double-checking this before April 👇

"5% annual rent growth" sounds conservative.Run the math.Five years of 5% compounded is 27.6% above today's rents.Now pu...
07/31/2026

"5% annual rent growth" sounds conservative.

Run the math.

Five years of 5% compounded is 27.6% above today's rents.

Now pull up your submarket. Austin. Phoenix. Nashville. San Antonio. Rents are flat or down year over year in most of them right now.

So the sponsor isn't projecting steady growth. They're projecting a 28% jump from a base that's already soft.

That's a forecast. Not a plan.

A plan has levers. Renovations tied to specific unit counts. Loss-to-lease burn-down with a timeline. Concession rollback tied to real occupancy data.

A forecast has a percentage.

If a sponsor can't tell you which of the next 60 months carry the growth, and why, you're not underwriting a deal. You're underwriting a mood.

Ask them to defend the 5%. Month by month.

If the answer gets vague… that's your answer.

What are you seeing in your submarkets right now? Drop the city 👇 like this if you're passing on 5% pro formas until the math shows up.

A 22% IRR over 2 years and a 12% IRR over 5 years can return the exact same dollars.Let me say that again.One number sou...
07/24/2026

A 22% IRR over 2 years and a 12% IRR over 5 years can return the exact same dollars.

Let me say that again.

One number sounds twice as good. The math says otherwise.

Here's the trap most people fall into: they chase the rate and ignore the multiple. A 22% IRR on a 2-year hold with a 1.4x equity multiple means you turned $100k into $140k. Nice. But not life-changing.

A 12% IRR over 5 years at 1.7x? Same $100k becomes $170k.

That extra $30k is not a rounding error. That's a year of private school. That's a used car. That's your kid's freshman year of college covered.

IRR flatters short holds. It punishes patience. And the industry knows this... which is why pitch decks lead with the rate and bury the multiple three pages deep.

So next time someone waves a fat IRR in your face, ask the boring questions:

→ What's the actual equity multiple?
→ How long is the hold?
→ What lands in my account when this thing wraps?

Rate tells the story. Multiple pays the tuition.

Agree? Like & comment "MULTIPLE" if you've ever been sold on a shiny IRR that didn't actually pay for anything real.

Before I wire into any deal I run 12 checks.Item 4 is the sponsor's worst deal, not their best. If they cannot name one,...
07/22/2026

Before I wire into any deal I run 12 checks.
Item 4 is the sponsor's worst deal, not their best. If they cannot name one, that is the answer.

Everyone rehearses their wins.

Very few have sat with a loss long enough to explain it without flinching.

That's why item 4 does more work than the other eleven combined. The question isn't hard. The silence after it is.

What I'm actually listening for:

→ Do they own the decision or blame the market
→ Can they name the specific moment it turned
→ Did they exit clean or ride it into the ground
→ What did they change in the next deal because of it

If the answer is "we've never had one," diligence is over. Not because losing is required. Because pretending you haven't is disqualifying.

A sponsor who can walk you through their worst deal calmly, in detail, with the lesson baked in... that person has already survived the thing you're worried about.

The rest is just math.

What's your version of item 4? Like & comment if you run a filter that saves you before the paperwork ever starts. 👇

A 737 captain earns $410K on paper.He keeps about $260K.That's roughly $150K gone before it ever hits the account. Feder...
07/14/2026

A 737 captain earns $410K on paper.
He keeps about $260K.

That's roughly $150K gone before it ever hits the account. Federal, state, Medicare.

And the part that quietly bothers me:

Almost nobody shows W-2 pilots the one thing in the tax code that can actually shift that number.

Depreciation.

Real estate depreciation specifically. Legal. Boring. Written into the code decades ago. And rarely explained to salaried aviators because the default assumption is that a W-2 income can't touch it.

That assumption is wrong more often than people think.

→ Bonus depreciation on short-term rentals
→ Cost segregation studies
→ Non-passive treatment when material participation is met

None of this is exotic. It's just unfamiliar territory for someone whose CPA files the same return every April without asking harder questions.

Now do the math on $150K of tax drag over a twenty-year career.

That's not a rounding error. That's a paid-off house. College tuition twice. A retirement runway that doesn't depend on the next contract cycle.

I'm not saying every pilot should go buy a rental tomorrow. I'm saying the conversation almost never happens in the crew room, and the silence carries a real cost.

If the income is high and the tax approach is passive, something is off.

What's your read on this? Like and comment if you've ever felt the gap between what you earn and what actually lands in your account. ✈️

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