JF 3897: Building a Family Business, Mastering Empathy, and Scaling with Multifamily ft. Michael Kramer

The Best Ever CRE Show

Best Ever CRE

Realestatepodcast, Entrepreneurship, Business, Realestate, Investing, Realestateinvesting, Realestateinvestingpodcast

4.8 • 983 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Best Ever CRE, Joe Cornwell interviews Michael Kramer, founder of Freed by Real Estate. Michael shares his deeply personal journey from losing his father and building businesses to ultimately discovering a more balanced, family-centered life through real estate. He discusses how a life-altering accident and a failed first marriage reshaped his priorities, leading him and his family to scale a vertically integrated multifamily investment and lending firm. Michael also explains how his leadership philosophy—rooted in empathy and influenced by Chris Voss’s negotiation tactics—drives both his family business and investment strategies. Michael Kramer - Founder - Based in: Omaha, Nebraska - Say hi to them at linkedin.com/in/michaelkramerfbrefreedbyrealestate.com Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/cre. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Post your job for free at ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/BRE⁠. Terms and conditions apply. Join the Best Ever Community The Best Ever Community is live and growing - and we want serious commercial real estate investors like you inside. It’s free to join, but you must apply and meet the criteria. Connect with top operators, LPs, GPs, and more, get real insights, and be part of a curated network built to help you grow. Apply now at www.bestevercommunity.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.1	Best ever listeners. Welcome to the best ever CRE podcast. I'm your host, Joe Cornwell.
0:34.6	And today I'm joined by Michael Kramer. Michael is the owner of freed by real
0:38.9	estate. It's a family-owned business. They invest in multifamily and single family with a little over
0:43.9	400 units, 40 million in assets under management. They have an equity fund. They have a hard money fund,
0:49.4	mainly based on the Omaha market. We're not sure if he's been on the show, but if it has been,
0:55.9	it's been a long time. So Michael, welcome or welcome back. And how are you doing today?
1:01.0	Good. Thank you, Joe, for having me. So since it's been a while, why don't we start with this?
1:05.4	What is your background, you know, where are you from, and how did you initially get into real estate?
1:10.0	Yeah. So really it goes back to when I was a young man. I'm one of 10 kids,
1:15.8	uh, born and raised in Nebraska. And, um, in 1992, my mom came to me the night after,
1:23.8	excuse me, the day after my dad had passed away in our living room and told me that
1:27.8	she didn't have $600 to pay the back co-operator to dig his grave. And I remember thinking,
1:34.7	you know, I'm the youngest son. I've got four older brothers and five sisters. And I remember
1:41.2	thinking, how does a business owner die broke? My dad owned a collision repair shop for years, very well known and very well respected. And I also remember the look on my mom's face of she's grieving the loss of her husband of 40 plus years and now she's faced with this reality that she has no money. And Joe, I promised myself that day that no one in my family would ever feel that pain
2:03.4	again.
2:04.3	I had no idea what that meant or how I was going to solve that problem.
2:08.0	But it led me to starting to buy and build businesses.
	...

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