Dan Brisse is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Granite Towers Equity Group, a multifamily investment firm with over $500 million in assets under management and over 3,000 apartments. Dan oversees the company’s operations, acquisitions, and investor relations.
Prior to co-founding Granite Towers, Dan was a professional snowboarder and 4-time X Games medalist.
Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Dan Brisse. He is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Granite Towers Equity Group, a multifamily investment firm with over $500 million in assets under management and over 3,000 apartments. Dan oversees the company’s operations, acquisitions, and investor relations. Prior to co-founding Granite Towers, Dan was a professional snowboarder and 4-time X Games medalist. Dan, thank you so much for being on the show!
Dan:
Thank you so much. Excited to be here. Appreciate it.
Charles:
So you have a much different background than a lot of guests that come on the show, and I’ve had a professional skateboarder on before, but this is the first time having to snowboarder on. And can you tell us a little bit about yourself personally and professionally, and how you got into real estate investing?
Dan:
Yeah, you bet. So, like many of your listeners, I had big dreams as a kid, you know, growing up in Minnesota, I wanted to be a professional snowboarder. And looking back, I had a unique gift of two leaders in my life who really believed in me. And so when I brought this idea to them, you know, it was my dad and my mom, they looked at me in my eyes and just said, go for it. Do what you love. And growing up in Minnesota, I heard from them so much. They never did what they really loved to do. They didn’t follow their passion. So for me, when I found snowboarding, I really just, you know, decided to go all in on it. After three or four years of riding at the local resort, I learned about professional snowboarding and I learned it was a possibility to make a living at it.
Dan:
And so by the right around the age of 15 or 16, I pretty much made this very clear decision where I’m gonna make it as a pro snowboarder, I’m gonna die trying. It was very committed at a pretty young age. And so I move up to Salt Lake City after I get done with high school, and I think within a year I’m gonna be this big time pro snowboarder and reality sets in pretty quickly, is that I’ve got a lot further to go than I thought I did, and nothing happens. And I’m eating peanut butter and jelly, working at Blockbuster, like I’m broke living paycheck to paycheck here. So there was a lot of love and support from my parents, but very little financial, actually no financial help. I go back home to Minnesota and save work at home, live at home work work for my dad, head back out year two, and I think this is my year.
Dan:
I’m gonna make it. Nothing happens again. I’m gonna eating peanut butter and jelly and I’m working at Red Robin or Red Lobster. And year three comeback thinking, this is my year and I get seriously injured. I dislocate my kneecap and I tear my meniscus. And I have a season ending my career that, that season ended because I needed knee surgery. And so I moved to California and I biked and rehabbed. And it was at that point right there where if I wasn’t fully committed, I think I probably would’ve hung it up. I’m on about year seven or eight of really grinding and having a lot of fun doing it, but a lot of setbacks, a lot of failures. And so year four, I come back and a good friend of mine says, Hey, you need to go to Aspen, Colorado, Dan. There’s a contest called the Aspen Open.
Dan:
Anyone can enter guys from all over the world fly in for this, and they pay their $250 entry fee, and you get two runs. If you finish top 10, you go to finals. If you don’t, you go home Day one, I finish sixth and I go back to my hotel room that night, visualize my run for the next day, and the next day I come back and I end up winning this contest. And my snowboarding career just took off. So I ended up having this really challenging grind for eight or nine years. And finally I win a contest. And one guy at one brand who’s been watching me for years starts to invite me to professional events. And I always like to say what luck is when preparedness meets opportunity. And I was really prepared. I was good on my snowboarding, I stood out pretty quickly.
Dan:
So my career launched and I had a 15 year run traveling the world as a professional snowboarder. Yeah, the, the peak of the career, I was in X game six times. I’ve got two gold medals and two silver medals, and I was on the cover of pretty much every magazine. But your question is how I got into real estate is that at the peak of my career, I got to know a lot of these guys who were my heroes, and, and they were five or 10 years in front of me and I saw their careers wind down and it was so brutal to see. It was so sad to see, you know, I saw their homes being taken from ’em, I saw their cars being repossessed, I saw them going back to working at the grocery store, and it scared me. So I started to learn about money and what I could do with it. And read a bunch of books, learned about passive income, learned about the Cashflow Quadrant, and learned about how to save on tax. And so that was really my introductory to finding real estate.
Charles:
Wow. Well that’s, that’s quite the story, man. I think three times out. I mean, I think a lot of people would have definitely not made it out there. I mean, that’s really sets you apart from other people that you’re competing against. Yeah,
Dan:
Yeah. You know, I think the biggest piece for, for, for an athlete is your why. You know, if you’ve got a big why and when challenges come, because it’s not if, it’s when, when challenges come, how are you gonna handle that? And for me, you know the, the reality was is, is once I got into the sport and started making good money, they say that the status, 78% of all pro athletes, they’re broke after three years. And I can tell you in snowboarding, it doesn’t take three years for a lot of these guys. So I was terrified. And you’ve got listeners that are here tuning in right now, and you’re thinking about a change coming, retirement coming, something big is coming or are just not happy where you are. And I can relate to how that felt, and it was scary. And, you know, I learned three things, and these three things changed my life forever from being a snowboarder to being a real estate investor. And those three things were how to create multiple streams of passive income, how to hedge inflation, and how to use depreciation to help reduce my tax bill legally. So my effort after or midway through my snowboarding career was focused on those three things. And still today at Granite Towers Equity Group, those are the three things I’m still, we’re still focused on as a company. Wow,
Charles:
That’s a lot of, that’s, I mean, that’s a lot of great information. There’s a, the story that you have there, and yes, I think it’s with a lot of professional athletes that you have that they get outta their sport or whatever it is. They’re younger. I mean, people, you know, younger per se. I mean, it’s just something that they have their others, another half of their life to live, you know what I mean? And I don’t think they’ve planned for that. And obviously in a sport that’s very physical, whether it’s snowboarding, whether it’s football, whatever, whatever it might be, I mean, it’s not something that you’re gonna be doing like, you know, a senior PGA tour, you know what I mean? So,
Dan:
Right. No, that’s exactly it. Yeah. And that’s where multiple streams of passive income and this idea of cash flow changed my trajectory completely. You know, I remember riding up the chairlift at Mount Hood and learning about what passive income was and how to acquire multiple streams of it. And it wasn’t like it was a light bulb moment that I was ending, but for me, I was like, oh my goodness, what I’m doing as an ordinary earned income athlete in the s quadrant, paying the highest in tax is very inefficient if I want to have freedom. And that’s my biggest thing for me, you know, Charles, was how do I go from a passion and freedom to my next passion and freedom and still maintain, you know, that level of, and that style of living. And so passive income for me is I take the capital I’m making, I live below my means.
Dan:
A lot of the snowboarders and my friends were like, yeah, Dan’s doing decent, but you know, here I’m making five, 600 grand a year and I’m living on 75 of it, and I’m ply plowing the majority of it into passive income real estate deals where I own, I control. We have the ability to potentially affect rents through some value add plays, basic value add plays. And I start to see this passive income flowing in. I start to see checks coming in for me, doing very little work. And that moment was, I don’t have to work and I can get paid, I can go on vacation, I can be doing other things and still be getting paid. And that was something I wish I would’ve learned in high school or earlier than I did. And I was 28 when I found what, what passive income was.
Charles:
Yeah, I mean, still pretty young. I mean, there’s people that you know, decades later are doing it. Before we get right into what you guys are doing now, I had one question regarding either snowboarding and training. It’s what does a regimen look like for that? I mean, when you’re, when you’re saying I’m training what does that include? I mean, what are you doing? What, what parts, what’s what’s happening activity wise for that to do, do the training? Yeah,
Dan:
So snowboarding is not like, you know, football, basketball, baseball where you meet up with your coaches and there’s a, you know, very strict training program. For me though, I took it more as a, I’m an athlete, you know, and, and I want to hit big features. This stuff I was hired to do for my brands rockstar, GoPro Capita Volcom was some of the most dangerous urban features anyone was doing at the time. And still really kind of to this day. I mean, we were jumping from roof to roof gaps. We were hitting huge wall rides, huge handrails. And so for me, my training program looked like a lot of off season training. I do a lot of running, a lot of biking, a ton of biking. I did a lot of muscle training, muscle toning. I wasn’t looking to be bulky but strong, you know, a lot of yoga. And then when the season would come, it would just be literally ride every single day. You know, there was very few days in the winter where I would take off, even if I was tired, we would just go to the resort and we would just casually ride and then make it about, you know, having fun. So summertime, a lot of training, a lot of physical activity for me in the wintertime it was just ride every single day.
Charles:
And you were in Salt Lake at that time? What mountains were you guys skiing? Yeah,
Dan:
Correct. We were in riding at Brighton. We were riding at Snowbird and I rode for Park City for six or seven years. They had a Park City snowboarding team. We would make movies for the resort every year. And I rode for them for quite a long time.
Charles:
Yeah, I have family out there. We ski writing, but I, I have to say snowbird’s probably Snowbird is probably my favorite one out there, I have to say. But it’s, it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty great resort. But anyway, so we can’t get to Altria, right? Because for your <laugh> skiing only. But anyway, getting into what we’re talking about here today in real estate can you explain a little bit about kind of what you guys are doing now at at Kind Grant Towers? So you guys are in multifamily. Can you explain a little bit about really your current investment philosophy and strategy and what you guys are working on?
Dan:
Yeah, you bet. You know, when we’re buying deals, we’re buying very specific assets. We have a buying box or criteria that we’ve developed over the last decade of doing this. And we are acquiring these deals and then bringing them to our investor database. So we focus on Dallas and Fort Worth and Nashville, and then strategic parts of Minnesota. Mike and I grew up in Minnesota and there’s very strong sub-markets, even though there’s some challenges up there that really bode well for apartments. So when we find a deal, our typical deal is 130 units to about 250, maybe 300 units, anywhere between 30 and $50 million purchase price. You know, we’ll come in and do a very rinse and repeat value add strategy. We’ve got a system and process and principles that we found work efficiently, and we live in that box.
Dan:
We’re not out to really recreate the wheel. So we’ll potentially do upgrades into interior units, you know, five to $7,000. We’ll potentially do some LED lighting upgrades, some backyards, you know, interior unit upgrades that can be a little bit deeper with flooring and, you know, new LED lighting water conservation throughout the property to help save on utility. And so we will, we’ll upgrade exteriors, we’ll paint, we’ll do some landscape and we’ll take care of the parking lot. And our goal whenever we buy a deal is to be as good or very competitive in the submarket with our comps. You know, real estate is very local. I get the question all the time of, would you buy a deal in Charlotte? Would you buy a deal in Kansas City? And I’m like, I, I don’t know. I don’t know that submarket because the submarket is gonna dictate what we can actually do with the property.
Dan:
And when we’re buying a deal, what can we do that has already been done and verified, done and verified successful that we can go recreate? So we’re I don’t, I don’t wanna say we’re copycat, but we’re really looking at the submarket real time and of course industry data, what’s likely coming, how many new builds, what jobs, job population growth, rent growth is projected, but what can we do with our CapEx plan to upgrade our unit to, or upgrade our property to be as good or better than the best comps or the competitors in that submarket? And we just do that over and over again with many, many deals.
Charles:
How have your kind of your underwriting and kind of your business plans differed since interest rates have gone up and since where we are now over the last, say, 2, 3, 4 years?
Dan:
Yeah, great question. You, you know, multi-family real estate went through a major recession from 2021 or early 2022 all the way through 2025. And we are seeing in late 25 and 26 values kind of stand flat and starting to rebound. And so, you know, we had a huge supply wave come through back in 21 and 22. You had many new supply new builds started, new per permits started and that supply hit. And when that supply hit, it offered a lot of opportunity for residents to you know, go lease units elsewhere. And we had interest rates rise and when interest rates rose cap rates followed, and so simply putting it values came down. And so when looking back when we’re buying, we were seeing 15, 20% rent growth. And now moving forward, the next three to five years we’re projecting flat in 2026 and maybe 2% come 20, 27, maybe 3%, 20, 28 and 29 and into 30.
Dan:
But the bottom line is, is that multifamily cycled and reset, and it’s a healthy reset, actually, you know, things were far too frothy back in 21 and 22 and everyone and their mother was buying very unsophisticated companies were taking control of huge assets, 50 to a hundred million dollars assets that really had no business owning these deals. And when the market shifted, the opportunity that we’re seeing now is a lot of these deals coming to market. You know, if you’re selling a deal right now, you’re likely very likely taking a major haircut and hopefully getting out for just the debt. Most likely your equity is being wiped at this point. So the pain is severe, but the opportunity is the best we’ve seen since 2012. So for the folks who could be buying now at this time of the market versus back in 21 and 22, most deals in the right mar location, right? Underwriting, great asset management and property manager and experience are very, very likely, far likely to do better these next five years than, you know, the last five. Yeah. Yeah,
Charles:
I think it’s, it’s one of those things where we had so much supply come on, and I think that’s really weeding its way through right now. And as it filters through and we are kind of that slowing down as we start seeing stuff where like now we’re gonna have less than 300,000 or like 320,000, something like this kind of deliveries coming up in the next year or so per year. I mean, it’s gonna be, we’re gonna start seeing those increases again. And I think it’s a smart way you’re saying it’s just gonna be a couple percent, you know what I mean, down the road, not you know, not getting back to that, the, the three year tr the 3% trap, which you start seeing used to see all the time in underwriting where it’s like, oh, every year just interest, you know, just rates just go up or rents just go up 3%. Yeah,
Dan:
No, a hundred percent. I, I, you know, so much of investing in any asset class is where are you in the cycle? Every asset class cycle, you know, single family that goes through cycles, stock market cycles, gold and silver cycle, crypto cycle, multi-family went through a cycle. So I’m extremely excited and optimistic about these next two or three years of being able to get in the market at a much lower cost basis per door 30 to 40% discounts compared to where we were in 21 and 22 and here we’re in 26 with less supply coming and interest rates very likely to come down with Trump’s commitment to figuring out how he’s gonna make that happen. And if and when that happens and you reduce the supply, it’s gonna put pressure on rents. If rates come down, it’s gonna put pressure on asset values, especially single family homes.
Dan:
You know, I’ve been, there’s a lot of talk of this 401k being able to be used as down payments on single family homes. Great. But what’s gonna happen with the effect of that is it’s gonna push asset prices, it’s gonna push single home prices. So if I’m looking at buying a single family home, I’d be looking at doing it in the next three to six months because I think we’re probably lower than what we’re gonna see. I know it still feels expensive, but I think it’s lower than what we’re gonna see in the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years.
Charles:
Yeah. usually when the government gets involved in anything, it kind of makes it worse. It’s just with the 401k that’s not bringing down prices and it’s really 50 year mortgages aren’t gonna bring down prices and 10 year car loans aren’t gonna bring down the cost of cars. I mean, it’s just they these days try to go for these easy ways out where really you just need more supply. And if you don’t believe that, you can see what happened to your rents. If you were a tenant over the last three or four years, what we’re talking about here probably hasn’t been going up. And if it has it’s one or 2%, you know what I mean, very in your wage growth, that’s probably outpaced that. So it’s one of those things. But you guys own a lot of properties in different states. It’s always interesting when I speak to operators that do this kind of how they effectively handle their property management and asset management at those properties.
Dan:
Yeah. Oh man. Such a good point. And before I go into that in too much detail, I think the piece that I would just make sure if you’re listening to this right now is you take a look at inventory of your life of how your dollar is holding up over the last five years and over the last 10 years. You know, the thing I see happening, the thing that concerns me by far the most is the average investor who is potentially IRA 401k saving dollars, living a smaller and smaller living standard because the dollars get eaten up, eaten up by inflation. And as we go later into the debt cycle, like we are Ray Dally who’s got a phenomenal book changing world order highly suggest you read that, get clarity on where we kind of are in the US right now with what stage debt cycle we are and get on the side of inflation because the money printing at this part of the stage of, you know, where we are in the country generally doesn’t slow down based on history.
Dan:
And I’m purely based on this, on data, doesn’t matter if you’re red or blue just looking at the data. And Ray Dalio’s got phenomenal data of past countries that have risen and fallen into kind of how they performed when things have been somewhat similar to this with other countries. And unfortunately dollar what you’re gonna see happen is more of a divide between the folks that are on the side of inflation and the folks that are not. So that’s something that I think is really critical. And just get to back to your question, I actually gimme, gimme your question one more
Charles:
Time. Yeah. Just seeing about how you guys are handling asset management and property management in multiple states, multiple markets.
Dan:
Yeah, that’s such a good question. If you are gonna be an owner of multifamily here, this you guys, I, we’ve owned 30, we have 3,300 units. We’ve owned over 32 deals. Currently are managing deals in Dallas-Fort Worth deals in Nashville and deals in Minnesota. And the way we have found to be most efficient with this obviously is you want to have some boots on the ground. So you want folks that are local. Our team, our asset managers are local to Dallas and so majority of our assets are located in Dallas. But you wanna have very clear KPIs, key performance indicators that you are monitoring and watching every single week. And when you’re tuning into those key, key performance indicators, excuse me, they will tell you which way the asset is trending, they will tell you how you’re doing compared to the comps.
Dan:
And so my suggestion to you if you’re going to buy a multi-family deal is go with somebody who spent time developing systems and processes so that they’re very efficient at leading the, the deal. Because buying a deal is one thing, closing a deal is one thing, and that’s a celebration time, but the work begins the day you close. How efficient can you implement the CapEx? How critical is it? Will it be received by the residents? Is it needed? Is it money that’s well spent? You know, what are you doing with the property manager to make sure that you’re following the business plan that you created? There’s so much to it. To do it part-time really feels dangerous. And I got lucky, you know, during my snowboarding career, I bought some smaller properties located here in Washington and I had third party management. I got lucky ’cause I bought at a time when the market was at the bottom.
Dan:
It was 2012, 2013, 2014. So I was buying at a very cheap cost per door and I got lucky and put some great property managers in there since then, in order o owning over 31 deals, 32 deals, we’ve seen it all. We’ve had some great successes, we’ve had some great pain, but those pains have been very great in teaching us what to be looking out for and what not to be looking out for. And you know, there’s, there’s a lot to know when it comes to managing apartments that unless you’ve had the experience, I would strongly suggest you tag along with somebody who’s already done it. Yeah,
Charles:
No, it makes perfect sense. When you consider yourself being a data-driven firm, can you tell us what that encompasses? Yeah,
Dan:
So we’re, when we’re buying deals, man, we are so in the weeds on the data, you know, what is CoStar saying? What’s hello data saying, what’s Archer AI saying? What are all of the major brokerage firms, Marcus and Millichap, CBRE, bellwether, you name it. What are their reports stating and what can we see real time on our portfolio? You know, when you’ve got 3000 units in a market, you’ve got a pretty good read, real time of what’s happening. And so when you can see real time what’s happening, and you can look at the data permits being pulled and you can see the population growth and job growth, you get a pretty good understanding when you take all that, put it together, what’s likely to happen for the first 12 months of ownership. After that, we’re relying heavily on the industry data. And I’ll say we work with a great family office that did a ton of data analytics for JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and they have very private data where they’re able to get clarity on you know, what the residents on site spend their money on down to their shoes, down to their shopping, down to their, you know, vacations, discretionary money.
Dan:
And so that information is available and when you take all that and you get that data, you start to get a pretty clear picture of what your next 1, 2, 3, 4 years are gonna look like on that asset. Beyond that, it’s really challenging, you know, like there could be a, a major change in politics. There could be a war that breaks out, there could be major currency destruction. So we do our best to take the information we have and make the best decision we have. The thing that we don’t wanna do is let our currency just sit in the bank account and just get eaten up by inflation because it is the silent wealth stealer, and it is, it is tearing, you know, a lot of older folks, you know, my grandma, she was such an amazing woman. She worked so hard, she died at 93 years old, but when she was in her early forties, she had five kids at home and she lived through the Great Depression and her husband ended up committing suicide and she was responsible for five children. And this woman worked so hard, she saved her money, she put her money in, in a savings account, and when she got older, she had to go into a assisted living facility and within six months it drained her entire savings account from her life’s work. So when I saw that, I realized that’s not gonna work. I can’t be on that path. I can’t go down that road. So that’s where you, when you get on the side of inflation, like I’ve been talking a lot about here you hedges the destruction of the dollar.
Charles:
Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s a lot, a lot of great information there. One of the things I guess you would say is that when you are, if you were like talking to a past investor and you were providing them maybe like a checklist, something to work through on how to perform due diligence what would you consider would be on the top of that list?
Dan:
Yeah, there’s a few things I would look into right outta the gate. You know, first and foremost I would do a run on the company through chat, GPT gr any of the AI platforms and just see if anything major pulls up. That’s kind of just high level is is it worth looking into further. Next beyond that is I would look to connect with the founders and owners on a call. You know, Mike and I are 50 50 owners of Granite Towers Equity Group and we take a lot of investor phone calls direct, we hop on Zoom with people direct, you know, within 15, 20, 30 minutes, we can usually get a pretty good feel if that’s a good investor for us and if they like us or not. And if they do, they, you know, go in our database. You know, you could definitely ask for track record information, you could ask for referrals, but the biggest thing a passive investor has to do is they gotta pick the right jockey.
Dan:
You know it’s, it’s not, it’s, it’s, the, the deal could be a great deal, but if you got a poor operator, it doesn’t matter how good the deal is. So it’s, it’s so much more about who is operating the deal. And of course timing of cycles, like I talked about a little bit, 21 and 22, you might be a great operator, but if you purchased at that time and price was too high and the market sunk, you’re underwater, your value has come down. It doesn’t matter how well you operate cap rates, rose values felt. But beyond that, if you’re buying at the right time and you’ve got an operator that’s got experience and you can see they’ve been through a recession, they’ve got some great wins, they’ve had some challenges and they’re still here I think you’re in a pretty safe time to allocate capital, you know, the next two, three years.
Dan:
And ideally sooner than later, I don’t know how quickly rates come down. I don’t, you know, how quickly values come back, but right now we can see cost basis per door is extremely inviting and cash flows there. The debt market’s pretty dang consistent with Fanny and Freddie. So, but, but those are really the things I’m looking for is, is is there anything major online of, you know, illegal Ponzi scheme stuff? Unfortunately that can’t happen in our industry. Beyond that, their track record talking to some referrals, do I mesh with core values and, you know, get on their mailing list and start watching some of their deals come through. Because if you’re a legitimate company, you’re gonna have 4, 5, 6, 7 opportunities a year. This isn’t a, hey, this is the last deal, run to the back of the room and sign up or you miss it. And if that is the case, that’s a red flag to get out as well. So those are some of the things I’m looking for and, and just move slow. There’s no rush, you know I’d rather take my time and make certain I got a great operator who’s operating well, who’s got integrity than rush into something and, and realizing I I gave some money to somebody who just wasn’t equipped to handle it.
Charles:
Over the years of growing your real estate firm, what have you learned about hiring and organizational growth?
Dan:
Yeah, hiring is so key, you know, and we went through EOS, which is an entrepreneur organization system. It’s phenomenal. And when going through EOS, we created some very clear core values for Granite Towers equity group. And then whenever we’re hiring, we are sharing a core values speech is what we call it. And we’ll run through the core values on exactly what mean, what it means to be a Granite Towers equity group team member. Then one of our core values is be relentless. So a lot of times when I’m interviewing somebody or Mike’s interviewing somebody to come on our team, you know, we will tell the story of how one of our asset managers was absolutely relentless, and it can be a quick story. It goes, she was driving out to Tyler, Texas to look at one of our assets, this is a true story, and she’s going to take a peek at it.
Dan:
And I get a call from the broker who says, Hey Dan, those 25 units have got to be done by Friday and they’re coming out Friday morning at nine o’clock. They are going to inspect 25 units and verify that they’re done. And I’m asking Don how we’re doing on those? And she said, well, they’re not gonna be rent ready. And I’m like, well, that’s what needs to have happen. And she’s like, okay, that’s news to me. It’s Tuesday morning, that means I got Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to be done. And so she rallies vendors that are on our team that have done a lot of work for us, she goes out there and stays out there. And by the way, when she went out there, she went out there with her computer and a briefcase and expected to be there and back. She stays and she calls me that night and says, Hey, I’m going to Walmart.
Dan:
I gotta get a a a a bra and a toothbrush. And she stays three days, she’s worked with the vendors diligently and boom, Friday morning the buyers show up and they inspect and we pass and we close a deal. And so that doesn’t happen all the time, but that’s one example of being relentless. And when I share that story with people, if they hear that story and they’re thinking, I would never do that and I wouldn’t wanna be a part of that, that’s perfect because that’s an opportunity for them to just move on. And that’s an opportunity for us to not hire the wrong person. We’re not looking for a lot of people, we’re looking for the right people. And so the core values clarity on the ownership side, and that clear speech really helps the potential employee see into the company and decide, is this someone I wanna work for? Is this someone I wanna be associating with? And if it’s not better to part ways right now than to do that 6, 8, 10, 12 months down the road and realize it’s not a good fit and waste everyone’s time and everyone’s money. Yeah,
Charles:
No, that’s, that’s quite the story of relentless property management asset management. We talked a little bit about passive investors kind of the checklist to work through some of the mistakes they would make if passive investing. What would you say now for active investors and common mistakes you would see or you currently see or you’ve seen before you know, active multifamily investors make?
Dan:
Yeah, I would say the biggest thing for active is how much time and effort do you have? How much training and experience do you have? The huge benefit of being active is you’re likely a real estate professional, and if you are a real estate professional, you can qualify for bonus appreciation and you can take some major, major losses on capital invested. When you do a cost segregation study, and most everybody knows in the big beautiful bill that was passed there is a hundred percent bonus depreciation back and it’s set to be here for a long period of time. I don’t know if we’ll ever see it go away, is is what my CPA shares with me. So, you know, biggest part is do you have the experience and the time it actually takes to lead a deal? And if you do, fantastic, how can you execute quickly and efficiently based off of that sub-market to get the CapEx project done?
Dan:
For us, it’s a team project. This isn’t just Mike and I, this, we have 18 people at Granite Towers Equity Group, plus our third part party management team helping to asset manage these deals. And so if you can do all that, now you have the opportunity to receive some depreciation, which is huge. And I’ll just tell you guys a quick story. During my snowboarding career, you know, I was making good money as a snowboarder in 2015, I think I was making right around 350 grand or so. And you know, at that time it was a lot more than it is today. But my wife, she’s working at a restaurant she doesn’t like, and my CPA says, Hey, can your wife qualify as a real estate professional? And I’m like, I don’t know. How do you do that? And he says, well, 750 hours is her main role and she manages your 55 60 units.
Dan:
If she can do that, she can qualify as a real estate professional and you can now invest your capital into these deals and you can take losses right out of the gate right now and reduce your tax bill legally this year. So my gross income, I’m making three 50, I got expenses of 72,000. I have a taxable income of right, right around 250 k and my federal tax on is right around 50,000. And so I’ve got a 50,000 tax bill. Now you enter real estate losses with 350 k. I got my real estate depreciation now because I’m a real estate professional of capital. I invested of 140,000 written off. I got the expense deductions the same as if I didn’t, which was 72 grand. And my taxable income now is 113 and I owe tax of 17 grand. So I got 35 grand in savings, savings year one right there that I can take and I can invest into future assets instead of just completely giving back to the government. And this is done legally. This is what the government wants you to do, to take care of assets to, you know, provide clean, safe, clean housing for residents around the, around the country. Yeah.
Charles:
That the tax code is, it’s made for people to invest in real estate and I think also to hold their money in real estate. Obviously when you’re getting out of those investments, that’s where you have to be a little bit more diligent and knowing it’s not just you invest in it’s done, it’s investing in keeping the money invested in those properties or moving it to a similar property, but not to get too much down the tax hole. I mean, yes, the active way of becoming that real estate professional is a very, a very attractive way for a lot of investors to offset some of their other income. Yeah,
Dan:
A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, if you guys, if you’ve got listeners that are here and they want more clarity on how that looks, reach out anytime. There’s no you know, to, to have a 10, 15 minute phone call to see if you can qualify for this. We’re worth the risk on both of our ends of saying, okay, it’s not a good fit all good. Or, Hey, you might have found a way that you can drastically change how you’re set up in the tax code to change your family tree and your investing for the rest of your life. Reach out. There’s, there’s no, there’s no, there’s no loss of 15 minutes. That’s not worth getting clear on this information. Well,
Charles:
Dan, thank you so much for coming on today. How can our listeners learn more about you and Granite Towers?
Dan:
Yeah, you bet. Just go to www.granitetowersequitygroup.com and slash contact us. So that’s just granite towers equity group.com/contact us. There’s a little form 3, 4, 5 questions. You’ll come into our database. Hop on a call and see if we can help you out.
Charles:
Okay, Dan, thank you so much for coming on today. We appreciate meeting you and all the information and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future.
Dan:
Thanks so much, Charles. Appreciate you having me on.
Dan Brisse is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Granite Towers Equity Group, where he provides strategic leadership and oversees the company’s operations, acquisitions, and crucial investor relations. His background is rooted in real estate investment, with a focus on optimizing asset performance in multifamily properties, and successful capital raising and capital markets execution.
Dan is a highly accomplished former professional athlete. As a professional snowboarder for over 13 years, he took home multiple X-Games gold medals and was recognized as one of the top urban snowboarders in the world. His seamless transition from the high-stakes world of professional sports to real estate investment demonstrates his drive, discipline, and commitment to success. Dan’s athletic excellence and focus on execution directly transpire into Granite Towers’ real estate portfolio.
He is also an active voice in the real estate community, serving as the Co-Host of the podcast Keeping It Real-Estate, and the Co-Author of 4 Steps to Successful Passive Investing. A resident of Southern Washington, Dan is married with three children.
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