Joseph Bramante landed in the multifamily real estate industry by accident. In 2010, two years after the US housing market collapsed, he was working as a business team lead for ExxonMobil in Papua New Guinea. His colleagues were investing in real estate, and Joseph’s interest was piqued. With a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and 4.0 in mathematics, he had always been a numbers guy. He developed a spreadsheet and estimated he would need a loan for $3M to buy 80 rental houses over a two-year period. Bank after bank laughed as he tried to secure a loan from the other side of the world to finance the acquisitions, but one lender said, “Why don’t you buy an 80-unit apartment complex instead?” In 2011, he purchased his first multifamily property, sight unseen, while still living in Papua New Guinea. It was supposed to be a private investment, but it morphed into a business.

Six months later, he was back in Houston with his property at 25% vacancy and four units under renovation when he was notified the insurance he’d purchased was a scam, his property had asbestos, and his job at ExxonMobil was being eliminated. The next day, he paid for a membership at a local real estate education club where he met his partners, Carrie Breneman and Deborah Newsome, 30-year property management veterans. The club advised Joseph to sell his property and take a loss. Instead, he and his partners leased it down to zero, executed a massive $30k/unit renovation, and then leased it back up. It was the most stressful nine months of Joseph’s life, but it was the right decision, as it paid out over a 200% return. In 2013, they partnered and acquired three more multifamily properties, spent $5K to $30k per unit on renovations, and increased the NOI across all by over 80%. In 2016, they rebranded under the name TriArc, establishing the foundation on which to build a wholly integrated multifamily investment company with the goal of acquiring over 20,000 units in the next 10 years.