If there’s one thing all real estate players love, it’s X.
The platform formerly known as Twitter has become a way for brokers, developers and even billionaires to share advice, score leads and close deals. Some have amassed tens or hundreds of thousands of followers.
Take StripMallGuy, who has one of the most discussed and admired accounts on the social media site. The real estate player, who the world recently learned is Don Tepman, has amassed more than 223,000 followers, largely by ruminating about things like why strip mall owners should target karate studios and think twice before leasing to Chick-fil-A.
Tepman launched StripMallGuy anonymously but eventually realized it could be a boon for his business. Many others had that goal from the outset. The online community that grew from their collective efforts has come to be called #RETwit. Its popularity in the industry has made some of them stars in their own right.
The Real Deal reached out to some of #RETwit’s most prominent participants to ask why they started posting on X and what they get out of it.
Beth Azor
@bethazor1
Known for: Advice on retail leasing (example: if garbage cans are overflowing, eliminate them) and being one of the only women in the real estate Twitter community.
Visit every tenant in your property. Sample their merchandise. Eat at the restaurants. Introduce yourself.
Ask them how they’re doing. How can you help them get what they need? This goes a LONG way toward establishing good relations.
— Beth Azor, “Canvassing Queen” (@Bethazor1) March 25, 2024
Azor, a retail broker in South Florida, started posting at StripMallGuy’s suggestion. She was tuned in to LinkedIn, which she saw as more professional, but he told her she needed to be on Twitter.
The benefits were immediate.
“People would DM me and say, ‘Can you call me? I have a center that’s got 30 percent vacancy and I want to hire you,’” Azor said.
She added that she never got any direct business from LinkedIn.
Bob Knakal
@BobKnakal
Known for: His New York City map room
Knakal, an investment sales broker based in New York, started posting heavily a couple of years ago. Now he’s friends with StripMallGuy, hosts live events through X’s Spaces feature and reminisces about his days at his first brokerage, Massey Knakal, which he sold for a reported $100 million.
When word surfaced in February that Knakal had been terminated from his investment sales role at JLL after a glowing profile in the New York Times, he took to X to comment.
Hi, friends.
You may have heard that I am no longer with JLL. If you would like to connect with me via email, please contact me at:
bobknakal@knakalmaproom.com
I look forward to staying in touch.
— Bob Knakal | NYC Investment Sales (@BobKnakal) February 15, 2024
The post scored more than 287,000 views. All of the #RETwit players, including Chris Powers, StripMallGuy and Bobby Fijan, extended their sympathies and congratulations.
StripMallGuy
@realestatetrent
Known for: Dishing out hot takes on the retail world (and his cartoon profile picture)
StripMallGuy is perhaps the most famous real estate account on X. Tepman, a principal at retail investment firm University Avenue Partners, has used it to dish out all sorts of advice on buying and operating strip malls.
The laundromat is the most underrated tenant in the strip mall world.
Not to be confused with its evil cousin, the drycleaner.
— StripMallGuy (@realEstateTrent) March 23, 2024
Tepman decided in January to reveal that he was StripMallGuy. Over the past three years, he has also helped others in the industry capitalize on the social media platform.
“Most of us do it because it adds value to our businesses,” Tepman said. “It leads to real dealmaking.”
It also helps connect people in the industry who would otherwise never meet.
“It’s like Tinder for your intellectual partner,” he said.
Chris Powers
@fortworthchris
Known for: Texas takes and his podcast, “The Fort with Chris Powers”
Powers first got onto Twitter in 2016, after the presidential election. At first he was a lurker, viewing others’ tweets about finance and business. But there weren’t very many people sharing knowledge about real estate.
“We kind of became our own little community,” Powers said, referring to himself, Moses Kagan, Nick Huber and Keith Wasserman. “We’d get up every day and tweet several times a day, all in that real estate mindset.”
The irony for NIMBYs:
If you want to crush developers, let them all develop, nonstop.
The end.
— Chris Powers (@fortworthchris) March 22, 2024
Powers was there when the term #RETwit was born in 2021: “RETwit just kind of landed, and nobody ever questioned it again,” he said.
Powers sees mass benefits in using X, comparing it to the way Warren Buffett has blasted out his annual letter and written op-eds detailing his investment philosophy in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
“He was using his own form of Twitter before Twitter became Twitter,” Powers said.
Moses Kagan
@moseskagan
Known for: Being a founder of the real estate Twitter community
Kagan, an apartment owner based in Los Angeles who runs property management firm Adaptive Realty, is credited by many as one of the founding fathers of #RETwit. For him, it was about finding community — and realizing it was a networking tool.
“The real estate private equity world can be quite solitary for a deal sponsor,” Kagan told TRD’s podcast Deconstruct in 2022. “You interact with your lawyer and general contractors and your investors, but you often either don’t interact with other deal sponsors, or if you do, you tend to be guarded because those people are your competitors.”
Kagan also noted that he’s “raised a hell of a lot of capital from people we’ve met through Twitter.”
“It’s really about building relationships at scale,” he added.
Reminder (bc some people seem incapable or unwilling to get it):
In general, landlords are price takers.
In other words:
We don’t set rents; rents are set for us by the balance of supply and demand in our markets.
— Moses Kagan (@moseskagan) March 22, 2024
“He’s the godfather, in my opinion,” Powers said of Kagan and #RETwit. “He’s the most active — just by following him, you would learn a lot, but you would [also] be exposed to a lot.”
Bobby Fijan
@bobbyfijan
Known for: Floor plans and office-to-residential conversions
As remote work took hold, many owners of old office buildings began thinking about whether they could convert them into rental apartments or condos.
Office to residential conversions are extremely challenging … but worth it
Here’s a photo thread of the renovation process of one of the first projects I worked on: Turning a 275,000sf Art Deco Office Building into 200+ apartments, retail, pizza & kickboxing
Enjoy 📸🧵 pic.twitter.com/5BHGPaG8V6
— Bobby Fijan (@bobbyfijan) February 23, 2023
Fijan, who runs Form Developers outside of Philadelphia, delivered the sobering answer on Twitter that many buildings are not fit for conversion. “You need to find the right floor plate,” Fijan told TRD last year.
Fijan’s bread and butter on X is showcasing floor plates. He also shares with his 40,000 followers what sort of floor plans work best for different types of renters — couples, roommates, families and singles.
Nick Huber
@sweatystartup
Known for: Self-storage expertise and entrepreneurship how-to’s
Huber, based in Athens, Georgia, has worn many hats. He’s built a moving business, developed thousands of self-storage units and started his own podcast. But he credits X with “changing his life.”
Big news:
I’m buying controlling interest in a company at a $52 million valuation. 6x earnings.
I’ll be raising $20 million to make this happen.
I’m looking for intros to family offices and individuals who typically invest $1m+ into operating companies.
My DMs are open.…
— Nick Huber (@sweatystartup) March 12, 2024
“Twitter is a country club with exponential membership and a ton of people who are doing big deals,” Huber said by email. “It is a massive opportunity for real estate investors and people in the business of transacting real estate.”
He joined the platform in 2019 and was focused on sharing knowledge, notably how his firm structured and closed deals. He now has more than 360,000 followers.
Omar Morales
@OmarMora1es
Known for:Being #RETwit’s Miami expert
Morales started posting on Twitter in 2017 after finding LinkedIn “stuffy.” Twitter seemed more casual and real-time, said Morales, a multifamily broker at Berkadia. But it wasn’t until the pandemic, when people flocked to Miami, that people started noticing his account. Before long, he realized its professional value.
“I started getting leads for multifamily deals,” Morales said. “Before I knew it, I was getting listings and closing deals that all started with a random person DM’ing me.”
One thing is meeting Charles Kushner and another is receiving this email afterwards !
Great reminder to be grateful, hard working, & passionate about wherever you are in life!
People notice.
That mentality will continue opening doors for you that you didn’t even know existed… pic.twitter.com/GbrJcuK3gu
— Omar Morales | Miami Multifamily (@OmarMora1es) January 15, 2024
Take Patterson Court, an Orlando apartment community that Morales helped sell for $108 million.
Max Sharkansky, a principal at California-based multifamily firm Trion Properties, had sent Morales a direct message on X, saying he was a West Coast buyer seeking some exposure to Florida.
“Within four or five months of him introducing himself to me, he’s under contract to buy the $108 million property that we were selling in Orlando,” Morales said.
Keith Wasserman
@Keith_Wasserman
Known for: Sharing multifamily advice and retweeting posts with his seal of approval, “Truth”
Tepman, aka StripMallGuy, said that when he wakes up in the morning, he wonders, “What’s Keith Wasserman doing?” To find out, he checks X.
Truth https://t.co/LPcln6uRwh
— Keith Wasserman (@Keith_Wasserman) March 22, 2024
Wasserman, who runs Gelt, a multifamily buyer in Los Angeles, is another founding father of #RETwit. He announces Gelt deals and shares financing advice and the occasional meme.
“Historically, real estate has been this old boys’ network, very guarded and not talked about openly,” Wasserman told TRD’s podcast in 2021. When he started posting, he realized there was an opportunity to help younger developers or wannabe deal sponsors learn about the industry.
“[I was] opening peoples’ eyes to this wonderful asset class that a lot of people don’t have access to,” Wasserman said.
The Real Estate God
@TheRealEstateG6
Known for: Being one of the last popular anonymous #RETwit accounts
Anonymous real estate accounts proliferate on X. However, many of their hosts have stepped into the limelight, revealing their identities to the press or to their followers.
Not the Real Estate God. The account, which was started in 2019 and has more than 114,000 followers, focuses on case studies.
Looking to get into real estate with a $1 million deal? The Real Estate God will detail one of its own — $230,000 in equity plus a seller-financed $800,000 loan at 5 percent interest.
“I want to make a lot of money, what career should I pursue?”
Go to a wealthy country club near you. Ask around and see what the members do for a living. Make a list and pick one of the most common paths
Really simple
— The Real Estate God (@TheRealEstateG6) March 15, 2024
Staying anonymous allows individuals to share more freely.
“If I had an anonymous account, I would share 10 times more than I share now,” Powers said. “But people want to identify with a human that they know and trust and can do due diligence on.”
The Real Estate God did not respond to a request for comment.