I got on four roofs before I sent the subscription check

Trades background, so the only diligence I'm actually good at is looking at buildings. A manager raising a second fund of about $25M had 11 assets in the first fund and I asked for the addresses. He gave me six and said the other five were under contract to sell.

I drove three of them. Two were 1980s garden style in a second tier southeast market, one was a 1970s brick walk-up. On two of the three the site manager let me up on the roofs, and on the third I got up on two buildings out of nine, so four roofs total. Modified bitumen, ponding at two drains, one section patched at least twice with mastic that had gone brittle. I'd price those roofs at replacement inside three years, call it $2,600 a unit spread across the buildings I saw.

His fund two model carried a capex reserve of $1,100 a unit for acquisitions of the same age and construction. I sent him photos and the numbers I'd charge, not as a negotiation, just because I thought he'd want them. He came back a week later saying the reserve line for pre-1990 product had moved to $2,200 and that he'd added roof age to the checklist his acquisitions guy fills out. Whether he did that because of me or because someone else said the same thing, I have no idea.

I put in $30k. What I'd keep: the manager's response to being shown a hole in his own numbers told me more than the track record did. He could have explained why I was wrong. He looked at the photos instead.