Question for active syndicators here —

[Ryan Surjnarine]

I'm working on improving my underwriting workflow and trying to understand where the real bottlenecks are at scale. Curious what eats the most time when you're evaluating a new value-add deal.

If you had to rank these from most painful to least, where would you put each one?

1. Modeling the rehab budget and stabilized NOI

2. Building the LP/GP waterfall and preferred return structure

3. Generating an investor-ready memo for LPs

4. Running scenario analysis (price, rate, exit cap sensitivity)

5. Tracking the deal through closing and asset management

I'm asking because I keep seeing operators rebuild the same Excel models for every new deal, and I'm wondering where the actual time sink is for people doing this at scale.

For context: I'm a multifamily investor in South Florida, just starting to look at syndication structures, trying to learn from operators ahead of me.

What's your biggest pain point — and what do you currently use to solve it?

[G. Brian Davis]

I run a co-investing club, and my full-time job is  talking with operators and vetting deals to find the right fit for our members. From my experience, the biggest time sink is pressure testing the assumptions behind each deal. A lot of operators already have templates for waterfalls and investor memos. The real work is figuring out what could break the deal. That’s where I see the best operators spend most of their energy.