The Multifamily Real Estate Underwriting Model Behind Rob Beardsley’s Best Selling Book

by Thomas Herd

Rob Beardsley is a Principal at the New York based multifamily real estate investment firm, Lone Star Capital. Beardsley’s ability to create a proprietary underwriting model in order to de-risk and analyze potential investments in multifamily real estate properties, has helped him grow Lone Star Capital as fast as he has despite his young age. Further, Beardsley has been recognized as a thought leader ever since he published his book, The Definitive Guide to Underwriting Multifamily Acquisitions, explaining his proprietary underwriting model and analysis process; Beardsley wanted to write a guide to help make the model more accessible to people who want to break into the industry and do not have a mentor. This model has successfully aided Beardsley in acquiring over $100MM of multifamily properties as well as authoring a best selling book. Beardsley’s model is widely accessible and can be downloaded from Lone Star Capital’s website, as it has been thousands of times. Further, one does not necessarily need The  Definitive Guide to Underwriting Multifamily Acquisitions to understand the model, however it is an invaluable resource to anyone who wants a deep education on the model and it is advised for anyone trying to break into the industry professionally as well as for passive investors. The book actually lines up with the model input by input and discusses in great detail all of the positive & negative externalities pertaining to how to professionally structure an investment partnership in order to help individuals invest safely and intelligently. According to Beardsley, most people rave about the simplicity of the model. To the uneducated eye that may seem like an insult, but in the multifamily real estate investment space — as well as in finance at large — simple models are highly coveted. By being simple and easy to use, Beardsley’s model is better able to help as many people as possible, which has always been one of his goals.

One example of this simplicity is Beardsley’s decision to put all of the inputs on one tab and all of the calculations and outputs on other tabs. This helps the user because they do not need to keep track of various tabs or struggle to understand the effect of a calculation. Of course, Beardsley also includes the most important formulas for multifamily real estate investment underwriting such as formulas for break even occupancy. Specifically, Beardsley loves the idea that potential investors can do a simple, quick analysis or a more robust analysis for a prospective investment using his same base model. Clearly, if one is serious about getting into the multifamily real estate investment space, casually or professionally, then Beardsley’s  model and book would be great places to start. Further, Beardsley releases educational content about his model and the industry on his LinkedIn page to learn more.

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