Investing in multi-family real estate and opportunity zones w/ Michael Episcope

Michael Episcope is co-CEO of Origin, co-chairs the Investment Committee, and oversees investor relations, marketing, and company operations. Michael brings 25 years of investment and risk management experience to the company and believes that calculated risk-taking in inefficient markets is the key to building wealth. He frequently shares his knowledge with individual investors on Origin’s blog, Forbes, ValueWalk, and HuffPost, and his expertise has made him a frequent speaker on real estate investment panels and podcasts. Michael learned about the physical aspects of real estate in his youth as he helped his grandfather manage his apartment buildings on Chicago’s west side. He began college at DePaul University and a year later was introduced to the floors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He continued to work full-time on the trading floor for the next sixteen years while attending night courses to complete his undergraduate degree. After rising from runner to broker, Michael was given an opportunity to become a floor trader by a Chicago-based hedge fund, Tradelink, LLC, and then had a prolific nine-year trading career, twice named one of the top 100 traders in the world by Trader Monthly Magazine. Join Michael, as he walks us through his role doing ground-up multifamily development and discusses current market conditions and qualified opportunity zones. --- Episode Links: https://origininvestments.com/ --- Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today I'm joined by Michael Episcope, who is the principal at origin investments and Michael is going to be talking to us today about his role in doing round up multifamily development in today's current market conditions. We're also gonna be talking about inflation, and qualified opportunity zones. So let's get into it.   Michael, thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I really appreciate you coming on.   Michael E.: Thanks for having me, Michael.   Michael: My pleasure. So I know a little bit about your background. But I would love if you could share just a quick and dirty Spiel who you are, where you're coming from and what is it that you're doing today in real estate?   Michael E.: Yeah, how is the quick and dirty so I'll take you back. Well, I'm CO-CEO of origin investments were a real estate investment firm, located in Chicago, we primarily focus on ground up development in what we call the smile states tax friendly, climate friendly, business friendly states. Even though we're located in Chicago, we don't do any investing here and my real estate career if I want to, you know, take you kind of far back started God, I didn't realize this, but I was about 10 years old and I used to go and work for my grandfather in the summer and he was somebody who was pretty gritty bought buildings in the west side of Chicago and if anybody knows, the west side of Chicago, it's not a good area, it hasn't been a good area. Never was and he bought buildings out of tax sales and that was at a time when people didn't take pay their taxes, you can go in there and buy, I mean, a 25 story building for $100,000 and that's what he did and in order to run those, though, you had to be hands on you had to be gritty and so I used to spend my summers with him and, and then I had another friend too, that his dad was in construction. So I love swinging hammers and the bricks and sticks and putting up garages and things like that