Limited Partner (LP) Investing Lessons

When "senior" isn't senior

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:27:04 GMT

Happy Thursday!

When LPs evaluate a deal, they focus (or at least should focus!) on which instrument type they’re investing in.

This gets a little tricky, so I wanted to dig further on the topic today and explain how small nuances in the instrument you’re investing in can cause fairly drastic consequences to you as the investor.

First, let’s do some simple definitions - when there’s cash available (typically from a sale) the order of who gets paid is:

Senior Debt - first in line. Gets paid before anyone else and has the strongest claim on the asset.
Mezzanine Debt - sits between debt and equity. Higher return, and often has rights to take over the equity if things go bad.
Preferred Equity - equity with priority over common. Typically earns a fixed return (sometimes in cash and sometimes PIK) before the GP participates.
Common Equity - last in line. Highest upside, highest risk … and this is where the vast majority of syndications lie.

How It’s Supposed to Work

In a traditional structure:

An LP invests into a lender or pref equity position
That entity is independent from the sponsor (we’ll come back to this in a bit but this is critical)
If the deal underperforms, that investor (on behalf of you!) can:
- Enforce remedies
- Take control
- Protect capital
Note that the entire purpose of investing higher up in the capital stack are the remedies that come with that benefit (otherwise why would you accept lower returns than equity without the additional downside protection - right?)

Example:

You invest in a mezz fund or a single mezz piece in a building
That fund lends to a third-party sponsor
Sponsor defaults
Mezz lender forecloses on equity and takes control - notice that you, as LP, are “riding along” with the mezz lender and are now in control of the building together with them

What Happens Frequently

In many deals I come across, the lines begin to blur:

LP Digest #85

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:00:37 GMT

Last premium posts: Underwrite using our free Claude Skill
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by Fondu:

This one's pretty personal, because I've known Itai for over a decade*

Itai is the founder of Fondu, and has made promotional videos for some of the largest companies around the world.

Some examples of how he could help:

Annual meetings
Testimonial videos
Product launches
Ad campaigns
PS If you’re a GP, check out the work he has done for investment management firms

If you’d like to grab a time with Itai, here’s the direct link to his calendar!

* - If you’re bored check out this video of me Itai made (video production, voiceover and the works) back in 2015 😀

To advertise with us, please reach out to aleksey@gplpmatch.com

An interesting deep dive on studying sub markets

Link

Great post on Claude capabilities (see more using the link) - also see the free Claude skill we recently published

Link

Useful post with a lot of great commentary and discussion on underwriting multifamily in prime markets

Link

Really important for LPs to remember that rents don’t always go up, and in some cases when a lease expires the new rent is lower than the existing rent (aka gain to lease)

Link

Relevant for LPs considering deals with many coGPs (see #9 in Top 15 syndication mistakes)

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

Full article index - Q1 2026

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:24:30 GMT

Welcome back!

At the end of every quarter, I like to summarize all of the articles in one place. I hope this helps you make the most of the 120+ article/podcast archive.

Below you’ll find the following indexes:

Topic Index - index of all articles listed by their respective topics
Reverse Chronological Index - index of all listed by their publish date

Sponsored by (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

Looking to reach a 12,000 person GP/LP audience with an ad? Please reach out to aleksey@gplpmatch.com

Topic Index

Below you’ll find all the articles and podcasts, listed by topic.

All articles in bold are new. To see all the weekly digest articles, please scroll down to the next section - Reverse Chronological Index.

Being a premium subscriber gives you access to all the articles in this index, along with the weekly articles I publish.

Subscribe now

Reverse Chronological Index

Below you’ll find all the articles, listed from newest to oldest. All articles in bold are from this past quarter.

Being a premium subscriber gives you access to all the articles in this index, along with the weekly articles I publish.

Subscribe now

Second, the following are the free weekly digests I send out that have links to anything that’s relevant to an LP. All free articles are paywalled after a month. Again, all bold articles are new.

Thank you for all of your support! If you’d like to share this index with someone, click the button below.

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
- Find GPs in unique property types, markets, all filtered by their experience level - takes 1 minute to register.
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

Subscribe now

Underwrite using our free Claude skill

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:33:07 GMT

Happy Friday!

We just released a free Claude Skill that turns Claude into an underwriting analyst for you.

We built this for GPs, but (just perhaps - hear me out) the most interesting use case might be for LPs as I’ll explain below.

Here’s the launch post, you should go follow Ryan for more updates by the way:

If you haven’t already looked at a ton of investment decks I recommend that you do - we have 60+ deals up currently and it’s the best way to learn LP investing skills in my opinion.

A natural next step for diligence after looking over a deck is understanding the assumptions that led the GP’s thesis - so you request a model from the GP to take a look.

Looking at a model is super helpful for an experienced LP, but I’d argue it’s far less helpful to someone who’s just starting out - you don’t know how the model was constructed, how it works, etc.

So at that point, you have to take one of two paths:

Spend a ton of time understanding their model
Build one from scratch yourself

Now let’s be honest - #2 sounds a little crazy and out there. Build your own model from scratch for an LP investment?! That seems like an overkill, right?

I think it’s an extremely helpful path, for 3 reasons:

You’ll learn the deal and the investment inside and out - far better than you’d be able to if you were just playing with the inputs on their model
Building the model yourself will allow you to extrapolate to other deals and compare them to one another (whereas comparing one GP’s model to another’s is more complicated)
The best part - while building a model from scratch was a cumbersome task before, it has gotten much simpler and more accessible

This Claude skill lets you take any deal and model it yourself.

Right now the skill is built for multifamily, but we're actively adding more asset classes based on demand. Plug in the property address, the unit count, the purchase price. The analyst builds a complete underwriting model with a 10-year pro forma, amortization schedule, sensitivity tables, returns analysis, and a full GP-LP waterfall. Every cell is a live formula.

Then you start asking questions (you could do this in Excel, or even ask the chat!):

"What happens to LP IRR if exit cap is 5.5 instead of 4.75?"
"What if rent growth is 0% (or negative!) instead of the 2.5% they're projecting?"
"What does this deal look like with 12% vacancy instead of 8%?"

How to get started (5 min from start to having a full model)

You need a Claude Pro plan ($20/month). This will not work with ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other AI.
- I recommend the desktop app for the best experience
Download the skill for free at claudeskills.gplpmatch.com/multifamily-underwriting
Click Customize in Claude, then Skills, then the + icon to add the file
Open a new chat, type /gp, and the onboarding starts!

The skill is free and we’ll update it regularly. Leave your email on the download page to follow other announcements and we'll let you know when new versions ship.

We really look forward to your feedback!

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
- Find GPs in unique property types, markets, all filtered by their experience level - takes 1 minute to register.
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

Subscribe now

LP Digest #84

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 21:26:21 GMT

Last premium posts: Seeing past the pitch
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

To advertise with us, please reach out to aleksey@gplpmatch.com

Google Maps launched a few new upgrades that are helpful for both GPs and LPs

Link / Link / Link

Related party transactions in challenging times are happening in the real estate world as well, which I wrote on at length

Link

For those who are active in multifamily these are some useful statistics across a decently large sample size

Link

Both funds and deal-by-deal opportunities have pros/cons that I’ve written about. Worthwhile to think through the below as well.

Link

Very far from an AI expert but some of the rest news have blown my mind - I posted on that below at length

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

Seeing past the pitch

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 01:05:14 GMT

Happy Thursday!

I posted this today and it went (slightly) viral within the real estate community on Twitter - there’s an entire thread which you’re welcome to look at by clicking on the image.

I think every deck comes along with a pitch and one of the hardest things as an LP is seeing “past” the pitch, so to speak.

I tell LPs that when you see any metric or “directional statement” and it doesn’t immediately come with support you have two options:

If it’s important and a potential catalyst - look into the support to see if you agree
If it’s not important - don’t let the statement sell you and move to next point

A “directional statement” essentially means that when you read something that a GP wrote you should immediately say “the GP wants me to think in this direction, but do I have enough support to believe that this is actually the case?

Let’s dive into five examples of this:

Benefits of posting publicly as a GP/LP

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:23:55 GMT

Happy Friday!

Over the past few years I’ve intentionally built an audience on both LinkedIn and X by writing about real estate investing, GP-LP relationships, and how Limited Partners evaluate deals.

Being the Excel nerd that I am, I even tracked my follower base daily (feel free to laugh, I can take it 😊) and wrote about this publicly back in 2023.

Daily follower growth on X, with some holidays in between :)

What this post didn’t touch on, though, are the benefits that I’ve seen through this exercise and how this could be valuable to both GPs and LPs.

So today we’ll tackle two topics after some brief context:

Posting on LinkedIn/X as a Limited Partner
Posting on Linkedin/X as a General Partner

First, some context

Originally me posting on both channels wasn’t a “marketing strategy.”

I started writing because LPs were asking the same questions over and over again. Instead of answering them one at a time, I began writing publicly. This actually led me to starting this newsletter as well - LPs were (literally) asking me for Lessons from other LPs and “LP Lessons” was born from that idea.

Over time that content turned into a community of GPs and LPs who follow the same discussions about deals, risk, due diligence, and capital raising.

Being public has been incredibly valuable, but it also has downsides that people don’t always think about to both sides of the capital aisle. Overall I think the pros outweigh the cons, and there’s still tremendous value to be gained that’s currently more or less untapped.

Below are a few observations about how I use these platforms and how they could help you as a GP/LP.

Posting on LinkedIn/X as an LP

Most of the content I write is aimed at LPs.

LPs face a difficult problem: they’re constantly evaluating opportunities from sponsors they may not know very well.

That’s why a lot of my posts focus on how LPs should think, rather than telling them what to invest in.

Typical topics include:

How to evaluate a GP track record
What questions actually matter in due diligence
How to think about alignment of interests between GPs and LPs
Why deal flow matters more than most LPs realize
Mistakes LPs commonly make when evaluating deals

The goal is to give LPs better frameworks so they can evaluate opportunities more efficiently.

But the truth is this: many LPs could produce similar (or even better!) content.

Pros

Regardless of whether you sit at an institutional seat or investing personal capital, these posts would attract other LPs that will inevitably either:
- Invest alongside you
- Challenge the way you think in a positive way - which will help you move alongside the due diligence experience curve (worthwhile to mention LP principles here as well)
- Tell you about some of their experiences with other GPs

LP Digest #83

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:16:32 GMT

Last premium posts: Are side letters helpful to an LP? and 8 Legal Red Flags for LPs
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

To advertise with us, please reach out to aleksey@gplpmatch.com

One complicated topic in investments is concentration - should you double down on your best GPs or take the diversified approach? The answer, of course, depends on both conviction and the amount of risk you’re will to take. This was a thoughtful perspective on taking concentrated bets

@JoshuaKushner.\n\nJosh started Thrive in 2011 and the firm now manages ~$50 billion. We cover the iconic investments that defined it: Instagram, Stripe, GitHub, and spend a lot of time on OpenAI. He explains how Thrive thinks about investing","username":"patrick_oshag","name":"Patrick OShaughnessy","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1964115465065664512/ZFQbGjIU_normal.jpg","date":"2026-02-18T13:00:02.000Z","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":34,"retweet_count":62,"like_count":1128,"impression_count":448910,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

Link / Link

This piece from Citrini this week and some of the responses/counterarguments are worth understanding - real estate is a hard asset but its pricing is fundamentally tied to the economy via tenants

@Citrini7 piece that everyone's talking about today. \n\nNot the macro stuff per se, but rather the radical change in who makes money from online commerce, and the end of network effects. ","username":"TheStalwart","name":"Joe Weisenthal","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/1729294932181921792/lI2kq2Ey_normal.jpg","date":"2026-02-23T19:49:09.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HB3ftUJW0AA1CuA.png","link_url":"https://t.co/Sc3FGbqc3w"},{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HB3fuOQXIAIDYfu.png","link_url":"https://t.co/Sc3FGbqc3w"},{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HB3fvGhXgAAzzvL.png","link_url":"https://t.co/Sc3FGbqc3w"},{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HB3fwETXMAAumrW.png","link_url":"https://t.co/Sc3FGbqc3w"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":34,"retweet_count":80,"like_count":747,"impression_count":293940,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":true}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">

Link / Link

A thoughtful list of tools for developers, a few in there that could help LPs with dd as well

Link

More in the post, but I found this to be interesting because it touches on concentration and side letters

Link

Don’t think I’ve shared this one here yet, was pretty cool to see…seems like we have a few states left - join us. Have a wonderful weekend!

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

8 Legal Red Flags for LPs

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:48:01 GMT

Happy Thursday!

I’ve written in depth on the three pillars of LP investments, but LPs can’t forget that a deck will never tell you everything you need to know from a legal perspective. Said another way, an investment might look great on the deck, but once you get to the legal docs your head will start spinning - not due to the length!

Today we’ll get through the top 8 things to look for as an LP.

I teamed up with Michael Huseby (an investment funds attorney and Managing Partner at TIL Partners) on this one, who you can follow on X, LinkedIn, or subscribe to his newsletter.

1. GP Receives Carry Before LP Return of Capital

This is one of the clearest economic red flags. If the distribution waterfall allows the GP to earn carried interest (aka promote) from capital events (most commonly a sale or refinance) before LPs have received a full return of invested capital, the structure is no longer profit-sharing – it’s priority compensation and capital shifting.

Absurd! But both Michael and I have seen it. In fact I’d recommend reading a few of these before you continue:

The waterfall might say cash from any source is distributed 50/50 among the GP and LPs, without the first step in the waterfall being a return of capital to LPs.

What this would allow would be a bizarre situation like this:

1. First, LP contributes $100.

2. Second, fund immediately distributes the $100 which, pursuant to the waterfall, would mean $50 to the LP and $50 to the GP.

Note that in some real estate funds and syndications, there are dual waterfalls where cash flow from operations is split 80/20 without a return of capital step … this would be different from their capital event waterfall, as we described it above. A split on cash flow waterfall is less problematic, so long as proceeds from sales and other dispositions contain a “return of capital” step to the LPs before the GP starts taking carried interest.

LP Digest #82

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 21:27:25 GMT

Last premium posts: Bad LP Diligence Questions and Find GPs before you find deals
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

This is an important thing to think about - the sophistication of buyers tends to drop in this space, and I rarely hear about the cons of that …

Link

A fair discussion on real estate equity vs credit

Link

I have also seen the same large allocators start strategies to invest alongside emerging real estate managers in search for alpha, which I wrote about here

Link

A helpful read

Link

Incredibly proud of what we’ve built to date and so much more to come! If you’re a user please send some feedback, and if you’re not please join us at www.gplpmatch.com

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

Are side letters helpful to an LP?

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:46:51 GMT

Happy Thursday!

Side letters are really common in this business and while they sound impressive, an LP should (rightfully) wonder whether they’re good or bad for their own investment.

After defining what side letters are, today I’ll break this down from two angles:

Is a side letter good for you if you’re the one getting it?
Is a side letter good for you if you are NOT the one getting it?

First - what is a side letter?

In a real estate syndication (can be single asset/portfolio acquisition or a fund), a side letter is a separate agreement between the GP and a specific LP that modifies certain terms of the main operating agreement or subscription docs.

Common side letter provisions would be:

Reduced management fees
Enhanced reporting
Improved waterfall (a better split and/or pref to the LP getting the side letter)
MFN - most favored nation rights
Co-invest rights
Advisory board seats
Capacity guarantees in future funds
Special liquidity/transfer rights
Control rights, although this is far more common on JVs, where the “side letter” is going to a person or institutional that’s bringing a massive chunk (typically 80%+) of the LP capital

While side letters are most common with very large transactions or funds, I’ve seen them come up more and more in sub $25mm syndicated deals - especially with large check writers.

With the definition out of the way, the next question is - are they actually good for you?

If you’re the one getting the side letter

On the surface this seems like a weird question - obviously it’s a good thing, right? You’re getting something everyone else is not. While that’s true, I think there’s more to the story.

The Pros

1. Better Economics

The most obvious benefit is a lower management fee or a better promote split.

Example:

Standard terms: 2% management fee, 20% promote
Your side letter: 1.5% fee, 17.5% promote (meaning to say that you get to keep more of the upside)

On a $1M investment over a 5-year hold, that can mean tens of thousands of dollars in incremental return… so a clear pro on the upside.

2. More Information

LP Digest #81

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 21:23:53 GMT

Last premium posts: Bad LP Diligence Questions and Find GPs before you find deals
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

Interesting chart/post (see link for full post)

Link

This first article went mega viral this week and while there are some slight exaggerations I do think it’s worthwhile to understand where we’re at. The second article is a follow up, which I thought was great also.

Link / Link

Important for LPs to understand the economics of being in the GP business and I think this post is a great read for LPs who want to “feel” being in that seat - not all decisions are that clear, which is why the person you’re investing in is the first pillar of LP Investing

Link

I listened to this podcast episode myself and learned a few things - useful listen for GPs and LP (see the post for the full post)

Link

Pretty fascinating how people prioritize the market and property type against whether the GP has a live deal or not - I think this is great and wrote more in Find GPs before you find deals

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

Bad LP Diligence Questions

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:41:45 GMT

Happy Thursday!

I’ve written many articles on diligence over the years, which I’ll include below with the most popular articles in bold. It occurred to me, however, that I haven’t spent time on what an LP shouldn’t ask. Today I’d like to address that head on.

There are levels to phrasing a question which I discussed here at length. That won’t be the topic for today, but I just want to note that you could be asking the right question, but by phrasing it the wrong way you won’t get the full benefits of the due diligence feedback you’re seeking.

Alright, let’s dive in - what are the 6 things you should not ask a GP?

1) References

This is likely the most common mistake. A GP (whether you like it not) will not put you in touch with someone who’s sitting in a bad deal, and to their credit there’s always two sides to a story. What’s even worse is that ~half the LPs who are currently sitting in challenging investments don’t even realize that, and speaking to them would be extremely misguiding.

All to often, the LP will speak to another LP (who might be clueless about investing themselves) and use that conversation as validation to invest. This is a common trap, and the uncomfortable truth about investing is that you need to build up the confidence in your own investment abilities so that you don’t need to depend on others.

To close - speaking to others is great, but the LP you’re speaking with:

shouldn’t be personally biased (sometimes the referral you’re speaking to has a personal bias for you to invest, whether that be saving the deal, helping the sponsor, or perhaps even monetary compensation,
shouldn’t be “hand picked” by the GP
should know what they’re doing when it comes to investing … otherwise you’re simply doing yourself a disservice.

2) Have you ever had a capital call?

Find GPs before you find deals

Aleksey Chernobelskiy — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:01:25 GMT

Happy Friday!

Over the years, one of the most common questions I’ve gotten from LPs is, “Do you have any advice on finding GPs?”

I’ve sat on this draft for over a year now, but I finally decided to set aside some time to dig into what I think is a fairly complicated (and perhaps controversial) topic.

Today we’ll discuss:

Why this GP search is more important than more LPs realize
The best places to find new GPs, and which places you should try to avoid
Switching the LP mindset to “relationship first, investment later”
“This seems like a big effort, is it really worth it?”

1) Why the GP search is more important than most LPs realize

First I’ll mention a few articles that are (more or less) required reading for you to fully appreciate the next few lines:

Whether you’re ready to admit this or not, you’re an LP for one reasons - you’re in search of returns that are above what you can get elsewhere. Many LPs say they’re in the business because they enjoy meeting people, like helping others, enjoy the due diligence aspect of investing … and while all of that may still be true, your investment isn’t into a non-profit venture and your ultimate goal is returns.

I go into this much more in the articles above (particularly in 10 reasons why deal flow rules the world), but you’d be making a massive mistake by assuming that the best deals will just fall in your lap.

While it’s true that this search takes time (more on that later), it’s quite hard (perhaps impossible) to be a good investor without speaking to new people, seeing new perspectives, and analyzing many investment opportunities. I tried to quantify this effort in Minimum LP Investment Size, where I essentially explain that small check sizes don’t make much sense for the vast majority of LPs due to the effort involved in finding the right deal.

To close, I think most LPs spend a lot of time looking at the deal’s financials, reporting packages (after cutting a check), or perhaps asking whether the GP has made a capital call prior to investing (I’ll try to post soon on why I don’t think this is a great practice) and this essentially misses the biggest driver of long-term results: who you’re investing with.

In private real estate, the GP matters far more than the spreadsheet - this is why I explicitly put the execution pillar as the most important pillar of LP investments. Two sponsors can buy similar properties in the same market and end up with completely different outcomes based on underwriting discipline, asset management, and how they handle things when the plan doesn’t go perfectly.

While it’s true that professional allocators have many existing relationships, they also understand that seeking out alpha in a marketplace that’s private takes an outbound effort. They’re in the business of finding the best deals, and you should take that same mentality - finding anything great takes effort.

2) The best places to find new GPs (and which to avoid)

LP Digest #80

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 23:34:58 GMT

Last premium post: Forget IRR - start with Sources & Uses - why the sources & uses table is far more useful than most LPs think
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

Some good thoughts here which I’ve seen as well (see link for full post)

Link

(not so) gentle reminder that “guaranteed” returns and “haven’t lost investor capital” aren’t good reasons to put your capital to work with someone

“Guaranteed” is discussed in detail within 6 reasons to put down a deck and guaranteed red flag
“Never” is discussed at length within never say never

Link

A worthwhile read for LPs

Link

I wrote on emerging managers here and think the below is a worthwhile read (see link for full post) - we’ve seen incredible interest in emerging managers from all LP types, and have even seen some larger allocators create strategies for this strategy recently

Link

I can’t believe it has already been a year!

If you’re not on www.gplpmatch.com already, you should definitely join.
We have an unreal amount of data on the platform, which I wrote about at length here for those who are curious

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

LP Digest #79

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 23:24:00 GMT

Last premium post: Forget IRR - start with Sources & Uses - why the sources & uses table is far more useful than most LPs think
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

Articles recently got added to Twitter/X and this one (written by an affordable housing GP that I know) was worth a read

Link

Evergreen funds are undoubtably on the rise, but are they practically too good to be true? I thought this was an interesting post.

Link

An interesting post on the relationship between allocators and emerging GPs (mostly written for VC, but the concepts are ~equally true for CRE) - see link for full post. I also wrote on emerging managers here.

Link

A thoughtful note on GP succession - I’ve mentioned this before but I think one of the most overlooked risks within LP investments is key person risk

Link

Just a reminder that not all GP-LP alignment & incentive structures are created equal - it’s particularly important to understand what’s normal and what’s not, and it’s ~impossible to do that without education and effort. A few related articles that I’ve written are:

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

LP Digest #78

Sun, 14 Dec 2025 18:20:16 GMT

Last premium post: Forget IRR - start with Sources & Uses - why the sources & uses table is far more useful than most LPs think
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

Likely the most useful paper I’ve seen on GP Stakes that’s publicly available - a very popular strategy nowadays, enjoy!

Link

An unpopular, but worthwhile position to think through imho - some of the best investors have had massive losses in their track records and the hard part for the LP is distinguishing between skill and luck during good & bad market cycles

Including a second post as well for some contrast taking losses within VC & lessons learned

Link / Link

At some point I showed a real estate family I know a venture investment and their response was “we only understand real estate” and they immediately passed. The below is a similar contrarian take on the popular diversification theorems

Link

Private credit appears to be all the rage, so here’s a worthwhile read for the uninitiated

Link

Moses & team does good work for emerging GPs, thought I’d mention it for anyone looking for an “accelerator” GP program

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

LP Digest #77

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 18:14:26 GMT

Last premium post: Forget IRR - start with Sources & Uses - why the sources & uses table is far more useful than most LPs think
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

What’s the best GP/LP waterfall is an impossible question to answer because every structure comes with edge cases as downsides - the original post and this response is one example that I’d recommend LPs to understand.

Link

This is subtle and somewhat of a joke, but the underlying premise is important - “value-add” isn’t created equal and it’s on the LP to figure out the catalyst to value generation on any property

Link

Pretty interesting from the perspective of homelessness; some big implications to mental health-adjacent real estate investment strategies also

Link

An interesting perspective that has some truth to it - I’ve met my fair share of the folks the original poster is describing. There’s truth to both sides - on the one hand deal analysis & competition has gotten more complex, on the other hand the greatest operators are able to simplify their investment decisions to a few variables

Link

A little shameless self promotion never hurt anyone :) I was asked to share a bit about my journey to date, and boy has it been a journey

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

LP Digest #76

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:07:38 GMT

Last premium post: Forget IRR - start with Sources & Uses - why the sources & uses table is far more useful than most LPs think
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)
Latest GP introduction post - see more on LinkedIn

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

Bobby’s post and the original post share a lot of interesting facts on trends within markets with young children that are growing and shrinking

Link

I’ve seen a lot of funds run sidecars and decided to break this down a bit this week, recommend reading the comments for both GP and LP perspectives

Link

Pretty major changes underway in NYC legislature - this is one expert’s take on the potential impact of giving tenants the right of first refusal

Link

I continue to wonder what the implications will be on urban & rural CRE once driverless cars pick up steam - my personal take is that real implications here are at least 10 years out, but an investor values properties and rents on a go-forward basis (so perhaps you could argue that valuations will be impacted far sooner than what we see on the ground?)

Link

Sharing an interesting podcast from a well known distressed investor instead of a meme this weekend :)

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. You can also search for GPs with very specific criteria. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market

LP Digest #75

Sun, 16 Nov 2025 17:19:24 GMT

Last premium post: Forget IRR - start with Sources & Uses - why the sources & uses table is far more useful than most LPs think
Last free posts: LP Investing Digest & Full Article Index (all 120+ published articles organized by topic)

These free weekly LP Digests are sponsored by GrowIt (article continued below):

Dozens of GPs that I know have saved time and money by using GrowIt for their legal and compliance needs on real estate deals. To learn more, you can book a meeting directly with the CEO.

Why Choose GrowIt?

Quick: you’ll be ready to raise in just 10 days (forget 4-6 week setups).
Affordable: $2,500 upfront, and you only pay the remainder if you close.
Seamless: we’ll take the legal and compliance work off your hands, period - entity formation, legal docs (operating agreement, subscription agreement, risk factors, Form D filing, blue sky filings), and investor onboarding.

Two useful posts on rental rates by market (full posts in link)

As I wrote in my 2025 predictions gain to lease continues to be a hot topic (and one that many LPs miss in underwriting assumptions by the way)

Link / Link

A worthwhile read and a reminder that you (as LP) should never assume anything based on a conversation or a deck - small changes in legal language can be extremely painful (with no return of capital clause being the worst offender) - see link below for more of the post.

Link

I think this is a good reminder that the best GPs will often choose which LPs to leave allocations for, so it’s worthwhile to explain your background a bit prior to going straight into due diligence questions. As Steffen points out, listening in on these tips is crucial.

Link

This is funny but also incredibly true - everyone wants distress until they see what it looks like

Link

In place of our regular meme spot, I wanted to quickly say thank you to all of you who “jump started” my GP-LP Match journey. We’re now a team of 5 and there’s so much to come - if you’re a GP or an LP please register in under a minute or reply to this email, I’d love to help!

Link

When you’re ready, I could help you in 2 ways - my email is aleksey@gplpmatch.com:

Limited Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to get more deal-flow that matches your precise LP parameters. Join here in under a minute.
- Potential/existing LP positions - advisory work on LP investments
- LP Education - self paced recordings to learn more about LP investments
- LP Community - free 2,800+ member LP Investor community on Twitter
- Find GPs in unique asset classes/geographies on my monthly intro post (see LinkedIn’s post as well for more)
General Partners:
- GP-LP Match - a simple (and free) way for you to reach LPs. You can join here in under a minute.
- Deck review - I’ll look over your marketing materials from the perspective of an LP and provide slide by slide commentary to improve your pitch and how your terms compare to market