Breneman Blueprint: Real Estate and Entrepreneurship Podcast · Drew Breneman

From Buying Duplexes to Building a Large Multifamily Portfolio | Jonathan Barr

·47 min·3 clips

Jonathan Barr says three duplexes made more money than 400 flips.

1. Breneman Blueprint: Real Estate and Entrepreneurship Podcast focuses on Jonathan Barr’s move from house flipping to multifamily investing. 2. Drew Brenneman hosts Jonathan Barr of JB2 Investments, and Barr matters because he says he has owned about 420 units and roughly $35 million in value. 3. The episode asks why holding duplexes and apartments can outperform repeated flips, especially when taxes, depreciation, and appreciation are included. 4. Barr says he started in 2009 after the GFC, joined his family’s flipping business, and worked on foreclosure auctions after graduating college in 2008. 5. He says his family bought about 400 homes in Los Angeles over 10 years, mostly from auctions and REOs. 6. Barr says he also held a few duplexes in good parts of LA, and those three properties eventually produced more money than his share of 400 flips. 7. He says that comparison changed how he thought about appreciation, debt paydown, and holding equity over time. 8. Barr names one big mistake from the auction years: they bought a second lien when they thought they were buying a first. 9. He says construction risk was constant on gut jobs, and the costly items were sewer, foundation, roof, electrical, and plumbing. 10. Barr says a broken sewer line in the street can cost at least $10,000 in LA and can run higher. 11. Barr and Breneman talk through depreciation, and Barr says he did not know accelerated depreciation existed until he entered multifamily. 12. They note that regular depreciation runs over 27.5 years, while accelerated depreciation can create a paper loss in year one. 13. Barr says Kansas City became the first Midwest market when he exchanged into a property there in 2019. 14. He says that Kansas City deal was a 14-unit property that took his monthly cash flow from about $1,200-$1,500 to about $5,000. 15. Barr says the property had a 10-year loan with the first three years interest-only and a rate around 4.8%. 16. He says a later Oklahoma deal in Norman was a 72-unit property bought for about $3.2 million and sold for about $5.2 million. 17. Barr says the Norman property needed better operations, some branding changes, and an added unit, and he describes the result as about a 60% IRR. 18. The conversation stays conversational and technical, with Breneman and Barr comparing cap rates, sale costs, 1031 exchanges, and reserve assumptions. 19. Listeners who own rentals, compare cash flow to equity, or track tax strategy will get the most value. 20. Listeners who want a light overview without numbers or property details may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical look at deal math, exit timing, and the discipline behind rolling capital forward.

Jonathan Barr keeps the focus on the practical side of real estate investing. He gets into how to decide whether money should stay in a deal or move into another one, using conservative value estimates and sale costs to make the call feel less fuzzy.

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If you want the math behind a 72-unit multifamily deal and the exit that followed, press play now.

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