The R.E.I. Diamonds Show
The Real Estate Investing Podcast for Experienced Investors

2025 Year in Review Last year I proclaimed that we would double our profit. While that didn’t occur, we did have our best year ever: 20% Growth: While we didn’t double our profit, we did grow by more than 20%. We also have 35% more inventory on the books, somewhere in the range of 140 deals. This is the best position the company has ever been in. Biggest Deal Ever: We did our largest deal ever, reaping multiple seven figures on a single deal. The Goal for 2026 The goal, once again, is to double the profit of the company in 2026.  More & larger deals means more & larger profit shares for every partner on team assisting in making

What are YOUR Real Estate Talents? Here’s a summary of the Parable of the Talents. You can read the full story here. The Setup: A master entrusts his property to three servants before traveling: five talents to one, two to another, and one to the third, “to each according to his ability”. The Investment: The first two servants trade with their talents and earn an equal amount more. The third servant buries his single talent in the ground. Note, there is SKILL in investing successfully. More to come. The Return: Upon his return, the master praises the first two for their faithfulness and rewards them, but condemns the third servant as “wicked and lazy” for doing nothing. The Consequence: The

Why are Mortgage Rates Still Above 6% (as of Friday, Dec 12) Mortgage rates are actually set by investors who view risk & reward in the same way you do. To illustrate the reason why mortgages are still above 6%, allow me to do a demonstration: (assume you have $300,000 to invest) Would you loan me $300,000 at 12% interest? Many readers actually make loans like this to Diamond Equity (my company) often. I assume this is because the 12% is an attractive return compared to competing opportunities AND our track record and strong balance sheet offers lower risk Would you loan me $300,000 at 6% interest? Most readers would NOT make this loan. They have better opportunities to earn

The Fireplace Fallacy: Why You Aren’t Getting “Heat” Imagine standing in front of a cold, empty fireplace and screaming at it to keep you warm. It sounds ridiculous, yet this is exactly how the majority of aspiring real estate investors approach the business. They stand before the marketplace with a sense of entitlement, believing they’re just going to find a deal for sale that is profitable at the list price. Don’t Mistake Movement for Progress Even those who are willing to put in effort often fall into the trap of dragging heavy stones into the hearth. They exhaust themselves carrying the dead weight of busy work—perfecting logos or organizing desks—genuinely confused why their backbreaking labor yields no sparks. In this

The Grind vs. The $1.8 Trillion Wall There is a misconception that real estate is a “passive” game. We are sold the dream of sitting back and collecting checks while the market does the heavy lifting. But in 2025, the investors who relied on the market to do the work for them are in trouble. The era of “lazy capital” is over, and the era of the operator is back. The “Easy Money” Crash Between 2020 and 2022, too many investors got comfortable. They bought properties with short-term bridge debt, assuming low interest rates were a permanent law of nature. They didn’t hustle to create forced appreciation; they leveraged cheap debt to fake it. Now, those bills are coming due.

No One Wants to Buy Your Property To 99.999% of buyers in the market, your property is a pass. They simply aren’t even interested enough to notice it’s for sale. To that remaining .001% your price is too high, except for that single buyer willing to pay the price, clear due diligence, and follow through on closing the deal. When searching for a buyer, it can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. It’s even worse when a seller’s price expectations are above what a buyer is willing to pay. This has been the situation over the past 2 years in both commercial & residential. Most buyers aren’t willing to pay record high pricing, leaving us in a