Erik Nordstrom
Building a Vertically Integrated Multifamily Empire
Erik Nordstrom didn't take the obvious path into real estate. He spent his twenties building an express-gym chain in Florida while his lifelong friend Erik Trotro syndicated multifamily deals through the 2008 crash. After Trotro's $300K six-unit Seattle project returned 26% per year, Nordstrom sold his gym shares and went all in. Eighteen years later, Iron Ridge Capital owns roughly 500 units, manages 2,000 across Texas and Washington, and has never made a capital call or returned a losing deal to investors.
The discipline that defines them showed up most clearly during a three-year buying hiatus from 2022 to 2025. While most operators chased deals at top-of-the-market prices, Nordstrom and Trotro spent the time building leadership infrastructure and cultivating direct relationships with private lenders. When the bridge loans started coming due and 74% of multifamily went underwater, those lender conversations turned into foreclosure-priced deals at 60% of comp value. The window, Erik estimates, runs another 18–24 months before the noise comes back.
But the second half of the conversation isn't about real estate. It's about a 13-point buck shot 44 years into a hunting life, a son who would rather be at the pond than the breakfast table, and the future Erik is engineering — 800 acres in northeast Tennessee, a high-fence ranch with his son as guide, a wedding venue with hunting bachelor parties as a bolt-on, all of it deliberately AI-proof. The through-line is the same as the business: discipline plus patience plus the willingness to wait for the right shot.
We don't buy deals to place money. We buy deals to make money.
Erik and his partner pulled back for three years rather than chase deals at COVID-era prices. Most of their investors are family and friends — a bad deal would make Thanksgiving awkward, so discipline beat ambition every cycle.
Vertical integration beats third-party management when the cycle turns.
Property management companies make their money on top-line revenue. Owners look at NOI. After 2008 burned them on outsourced management, Iron Ridge has owner-operated every deal — and that operational rigor became the moat that kept them solvent through the 2022–2025 buying hiatus.
Build the seats yourself, then hire the one taking the most of your time.
In the early days Erik and his partner sat in every seat: accounting, project management, leasing, marketing, regional manager. As the portfolio grew they hired for the seat consuming the most hours next. Forty employees later, the leadership team is the moat.
When the market is broken, build the relationships that close the next cycle.
Through 2024 Iron Ridge spent zero time chasing seller-priced deals and full effort building direct relationships with private lenders. When bridge loans started maturing and banks had to offload distressed property, Iron Ridge was first on the call list — 60% of comp value on a Dallas building near White Rock Lake.
The opportunity window is 18–24 months. Then the noise comes back.
Most real estate education programs taught people to find and buy deals but not to operate them. The 2022–2025 downturn weeded those operators out. The current window of foreclosure-priced deals will close once the survivors return to the market.
The screw-up bell makes failure communal — and survivable.
Iron Ridge runs an internal "screw-up bell" on team calls: when an employee makes a mistake, they ring it and explain. The point isn't punishment. If the team doesn't know about the screw-up, no one learns from it.
You don't find time for hunting — you make it.
Erik's two-hour drive to camp is non-negotiable, even during the busiest stretches of the business cycle. The weight comes off the shoulders the moment the gate opens. Stress relief is a precondition for clear capital decisions, not a reward for them.
The biggest buck takes 44 years of failed hunts.
Erik shot a 13-point — his largest ever — at age 44. The lesson isn't luck. It's that the wins compound only because you put in the failed seasons. Same logic that justified the 2022–2025 hiatus.
Engineer the next generation's career to be AI-proof.
The plan: 800-acre high-fence hunting ranch in northeast Tennessee, his son as guide, his wife operating a wedding venue with hunting-bachelor- party packages bolted on. Land at roughly $1,250 per acre with a structure already in place. AI can't replace a guide, a venue host, or a filled feeder.
Discipline compounds. 24% per year over 18 years through two downturns.
The headline return isn't from a moonshot deal. It's from never doing a bad deal — including a Bremerton, Washington property that burned 60% to the ground, sat vacant through COVID, and still returned 7% per year on exit because they bought right and carried insurance.
Welcome everybody. Back to the Hunt for Success podcast. Each week I interview business owners and entrepreneurs who also like to hunt and fish. This week we have Erik Nordstrom of Iron Ridge Capital — a Texas-based real estate company. We’ve gotten to know each other quite a bit and we both have a love for hunting. Erik, welcome to the show.
My partner Erik Trotro and I have known each other since we were 14 years old. After high school I went to Florida for college and started opening gyms — small express-gym models, eight to fifteen thousand square feet, low entry point. He went to the University of Washington, walked into a commercial broker office at 20, and said “you have me for a year for free, I want to learn as much as I can.” He became a commercial broker in multifamily and syndicated his first deal in December 2007 — three months before Lehman Brothers crashed.
January 2011 we did a six-unit deal together in downtown Seattle, right across from Seattle University. He, his dad, and I swung the hammer on the entire renovation inside and out. Held it just over two years, did 26% per year. I got hooked. Sold my shares of the gym and went full-time on real estate.
With no track record, raising $250,000 of that first $300,000 was a struggle — two young guys with nothing to show. Now we have a deal under contract, raising just under five million, and the last four or five raises have filled in about 60 seconds. The track record put us in a position to raise.
We’re very disciplined on how we underwrite. We took a hiatus for three years from 2022 to 2025 because the market wasn’t right — too many people were paying too much, we anticipated rates would rise, which they did. It was hard not to buy anything. But we don’t buy deals to place money. We buy deals to make money. Strom and I put our own money in every single deal, and most of our investors are family and friends. It’d make Thanksgiving very awkward if we ever did a bad deal.
We’ve always been owner-operators, vertically integrated since the beginning. We tried hiring property management companies in the early years and they could never operate the way we wanted. As owners you look at things differently — a management company makes its money on top line, so expenses run wild. Owners look at NOI. That’s the money you actually have to pay back investors.
In 2018 we decided Washington wasn’t our future — too many regulation changes for landlords. Spent 2019 researching every major metro in the country, narrowed to Texas and Florida. Bought our first Texas deal in 2020. As we sold our Washington portfolio, the buyers were so impressed with how we managed that they kept asking us to stay on. We started third-party management in 2020, and that portfolio — about a thousand units now — kept us afloat through the buying hiatus.
The leadership team is the most valuable asset in a growing company. The hard part is you can throw money at it upfront and build it quickly, but you eat that cost for a long time. Or you can do it organically, which is a grind. We did it organically. In the very beginning it was just Erik and I — we sat in every seat: accounting, project management, maintenance coordination, leasing, regional, marketing. As we grew, the seat taking up most of our time was the seat we’d hire next. About 40 employees now.
Last year, 74% of multifamily was underwater. Rates had been at all-time lows, lenders were lending at 85% loan-to-value, and the number-one product was a bridge loan — basically a construction loan that lasts about three years. All those bridge loans started coming due in late 2023 and early 2024 just as rates rose. So owners’ three-percent loan went to eight, their 85% LTV went to 55, and most didn’t have the millions to come out of pocket. Banks didn’t want to take the buildings back, so they pretended and extended.
We knew the banks would eventually have to offload, and they’d look for operators with track records. So in 2024 we built lender relationships. The deal we have under contract right now — bought 2021 for just under $15 million — the lender foreclosed and we’re under contract for $10.4 million. Buildings in that submarket near White Rock Lake in Dallas trade around $110,000 to $120,000 a door. We’re buying it at $71,000 a door.
We’ve got an 18 to 24 month window where the opportunities will continue to present themselves. After that, the players who got weeded out will start coming back into the market and competition rises again. We’ve spent the last three years building the infrastructure to take advantage of exactly this moment.
Let’s shift gears and talk about hunting and fishing. How do you find the time, or what do you do to make sure you have time to enjoy your passions?
It’s not if I have time, it’s making time. The stress of being a business owner over the last four years — hunting was my zen. As soon as I opened the gate and drove my truck onto the property, the weight came off my shoulders every single time. It wasn’t just something I wanted, it was something I needed. My camp is two hours door to door from my house, and my son was at the perfect age to get involved when we moved to Texas in 2021.
I started hunting at seven or eight with a pellet gun outside Gainesville, Florida — squirrels and raccoons in the woods across from my grandparents’ lake. First serious hunting in high school. Hog hunting in Florida, then deer and elk after I moved to Washington. My son has been fishing since he was old enough to hold a pole.
At our hunting camp now, we have six tanks on the property. Even off-season, I’d wake up at 6:30 and my son would already be at the pond, two hundred yards from the camp. He’d be out there from six in the morning until I called him in at five at night to come eat.
When my son got his first buck, tears ran down my face. Such an amazing experience. The excitement on his face. I’m not sure there’s a better moment hunting than your kid getting their first deer.
This last season I got a 13-point — the largest buck I ever shot, 44 years in. I’ve got it scheduled to be picked up shoulder-mounted in a few weeks. The joy doesn’t come from the kill — it comes from being out there, the peace and quiet, the possibility. All those other times I was out there not getting anything, just having that time with my son. I wouldn’t change any of it.
People are going to screw up. We have a screw-up bell. On our calls, we encourage employees to ring the bell when they make a mistake. It’s not just a lesson for them — if our team doesn’t know about it, they’re not going to learn from it either. When we first rolled it out people were hesitant, but now they’re like, “hey guess what, I screwed up.” All right, let’s hear about it.
AI has been the talk over the last year. My biggest fear was, what are my kids going to do? My daughter is heading off to college on a lacrosse scholarship, my son’s about to be a freshman in high school. So my wife and I have been planning. The plan: my son loves hunting and fishing — AI is not going to replace a hunting and fishing guide. We’re downsizing the current house and looking at land in Tennessee.
Northeastern Tennessee, around the Johnson City area. I screened states for low income tax and low property tax — Wyoming and Nevada were on the list, but the Smoky Mountain land is dirt cheap. Eight hundred acres for a million bucks, structure already on it. The plan is a high-fence hunting ranch with my son as guide, and my wife is going to run a wedding venue on the same property.
My wife came up with the wedding venue angle. The grooms party can do a hunt for their bachelor party. Tennessee allows exotics — red stags, axis, the kinds of animals East Coast guys can’t easily go after without flying to Texas or overseas. Both businesses are AI-proof, and the property is a place we actually want to spend time.
Discipline has been our key to success. We have a 24% annual return to our investors over the last 18 years, through two downturns. Our worst deal — a property in Bremerton, Washington that burned 60% to the ground in February 2020, sat vacant through COVID, then we leased it back up — still returned 7% per year because we bought right and carried 24 months of loss insurance. Investors who’d written that check off were surprised when they got it. That’s discipline.
A guy told me a long time ago — you make more money off your no’s than your yes’s. The discipline to say no to all the bad deals. Twenty-four percent in your industry through two downturns is incredible. Erik, appreciate you coming on. Definitely can’t wait to get out to your ranch.
Our next podcast will be out at the ranch in May. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Sam.
Erik Nordstrom
Co-Founder, Iron Ridge Capital
Co-founded Iron Ridge Capital in 2011 alongside lifelong friend Erik Trotro, scaling from a single six-unit Seattle renovation to a portfolio that owns 500 units and manages roughly 2,000 across Texas and Washington. Iron Ridge has delivered a 24% annual return to investors over 18 years and two market downturns — no capital calls, no losing deals, including a Bremerton property that burned 60% to the ground, sat vacant through COVID, and still returned 7% per year on exit.
Started hunting at seven or eight with a pellet gun in the woods across from his grandparents' lake house outside Gainesville, Florida. First serious hunting in high school, deer and elk after relocating to Washington, and a permanent camp two hours from his current Texas home. Forty-four years in he shot the largest buck of his life — a 13 point — and now hunts most weekends with his son, who has been fishing since he could hold a pole.
Erik's story is a clinic in capital discipline that compounds over decades. Two downturns, zero capital calls, and a deliberate three-year pause when the market broke — that's not luck, it's a system. The second half lays out exactly how a working entrepreneur engineers a next-act business that is AI-proof and family-bonded, which is a question more guests should be asking.
“We don't buy deals to place money. We buy deals to make money. It'd make Thanksgiving very awkward if we ever did a bad deal.”
Keep hunting.
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