Here is your Forbes Daily Briefing for Friday, October 4th.

Today on Forbes, this ex-Shrew salesman built a 5.5 billion dollar fortune in aging apartment buildings.

It's two hours before the inauguration of his firm Morgan Properties gleaming new

headquarters in Kanchahawkin, Pennsylvania, and Mitchell Morgan still hasn't cleared out his old office.

Walking past rows of empty cubicles, the 70-year-old real estate mogul sits down at a round

table next to a desk cluttered with awards and piles of papers.

He pulls out a weathered document from 1985, a bond offering for his first deal to buy three apartment buildings,

including one visible from the window of his soon-to-be vacated office

in the Philadelphia suburb of King of Prussia.

He says, quote, I just found this.

I was cleaning out my office yesterday. I borrowed 55 million dollars and I was off to the races. I owned

1400 units, three apartment complexes. This is one of them. These days, his Morgan properties spans more than 95,000 units across 19 states.

About half of those are majority owned by the firm,

with the rest split with outside investors.

It's still enough for Morgan Properties to now rank as the third largest owner of apartments

in the country, behind fellow billionaire Bob Faith's Greystar, and publicly traded mid-America apartment

communities.

And it's enough for Morgan to land on the 2024 Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans for the first time at number 240 worth 5.5 billion

dollars. This year's Forbes 400 list was released earlier this week.

Morgan's firm's success has also elevated his profile.

He joined the group backing Josh Harris's $6 billion purchase of the NFL's Washington

commanders last year and is making a name

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