🤖 How generative AI is supercharging renter fraud

👋 Hello, Best Ever readers!

In today’s newsletter, fraud gets easier, landlords seek damages, retail steadies, rent-splitting goes mainstream, and much more.

Today’s edition is presented by M1 Real Capital. Built through $3B+ in transactions and trusted by 1,000+ operators, fund managers, and capital allocators. M1 Real Capital installs the systems used to create predictable private capital. Book a Capital Constraints Call to diagnose exactly where your raise breaks and what needs to be fixed.

⏰ We're going live today at 1pm ET with securities attorney Seth Bradley — and he's bringing the full blueprint for launching a compliant Fund of Funds in under 6 weeks. Grab your spot before we start. Register here.

Let’s CRE!

🗞️ NO-FLUFF NEWS
CRE HEADLINES

🏛️ OZ Limbo: Opportunity zone fundraising ended 2025 at $2.7 billion — its second-lowest total in six years — as investors pause ahead of OZ 2.0, which takes effect in January after being made permanent by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July.

🏠 Voucher Watch: A proposed HUD rule would allow local housing authorities to impose two-year term limits and 40-hour workweek requirements on rental assistance recipients, putting an estimated 3.7 million people — including 1.9 million children — at risk of losing their subsidies.

🏟️ NIL Squeeze: Colleges and universities are turning to stadium-anchored mixed-use development to offset rising player compensation costs, with 22% of athletics revenues now directed toward NIL obligations.

💰 Landlord Damages: More than 1,500 landlords are in settlement talks with the Justice Department over losses tied to the federal eviction moratorium, seeking up to $1.5 billion — a fraction of the sector's reported $57 billion in total losses.

🛍️ Retail Steadies: U.S. retail vacancy is projected to peak in the mid-4.4% range before stabilizing and tightening in 2027, with net absorption expected to average 4M to 5M SF per quarter in the second half of 2026, according to CoStar.

🏆 TOP STORY
HOW GENERATIVE AI IS SUPERCHARGING RENTER FRAUD

Fraudsters have found a new advantage over apartment operators. Fabricating a convincing rental application used to require technical skills most fraudsters didn't have. That bar has effectively disappeared. Generative AI now produces counterfeit pay stubs, bank statements, and IDs good enough to clear standard verification systems, and the tools to create them are accessible to anyone with a direct message and a prompt. 

The result is a fraud environment that is faster to execute, harder to detect, and more expensive to clean up than anything operators faced five years ago. The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center tracked more than 12,000 cases of reported real estate fraud in 2025, with estimated losses of roughly $275 million, nearly on par with credit card and check fraud. Among National Multifamily Housing Council members, 93% reported experiencing rental fraud in the prior year, with each case costing an average of $15,000 to mitigate.

• The ID Problem: MRI Real Estate Software purchased 200 AI-generated fake IDs — some for as little as $5 — and tested them against optical card readers, the industry standard. Only 26% were flagged. Screening technology firms have responded with their own AI-powered detection tools, creating an arms race with no clear endpoint.

• The Paper Trail Shift: Fraudsters have moved beyond falsified documents. Some are now establishing real LLCs and issuing pay stubs through those entities, creating legally coherent documentation that looks indistinguishable from the real thing. What once required dark web access now requires nothing more than a business registration and a generative AI account.

• The Speed Trap: Competitive rental markets and growing portfolios are pushing property managers to approve tenants faster, which widens the exposure window. As portfolios scale, hand-checking every application becomes impractical, and fraud tends to find those edges. The operators most at risk are often the ones moving quickest to fill units.

Tenant advocates have raised legitimate questions about whether the industry's framing of the problem justifies expanded screening technology that adds fees and can disproportionately affect certain renters. Those tensions remain unresolved at the policy level, and without meaningful regulatory intervention, the burden of prevention falls almost entirely on operators and their technology vendors.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Fraud detection has moved from a back-office compliance function to an underwriting variable. At $15,000 average mitigation cost per incident — before vacancy drag or legal fees — the exposure compounds fast across large portfolios. For operators, screening technology is no longer optional infrastructure. It's a line item that pays for itself.

🤝 TOGETHER WITH M1 REAL CAPITAL
MOST RAISES DON’T STALL BECAUSE OF DEMAND

They stall because operational capacity starts failing underneath them. Investor communication slows down. Follow-up becomes reactive. Momentum gets harder to maintain.

Not because the opportunity changed. Because the infrastructure behind the raise never evolved.

THE M1 ADVANTAGE

• $1M–$100M+ Target Raises: Designed for single acquisitions, portfolios, and fund platforms

• 506(c) & Institutional-Grade Positioning: Built to attract sophisticated capital with compliant, professional investor infrastructure

• 9-Figure Capital Raising Track Record: Across multiple funds, structures, and market cycles

WHAT GETS INSTALLED

• Investor-Ready Positioning: Messaging that makes investors understand exactly why you’re a credible allocation decision

• Inbound Investor Engine: A system that consistently brings new, relevant investors into your pipeline

• Capital Conversation Framework: A structured path that moves investors from first touch → committed capital

• Repeatable Raise Infrastructure: So every deal doesn’t start from zero

This is for operators raising $1M–$100M+, fund managers building a scalable platform, and teams done relying on referrals and timing. This is NOT for first-time investors, deal-by-deal operators without a platform, or anyone looking for shortcuts.

We identify where your raise is breaking, what’s causing inconsistency, and what must be fixed before your next deal. If your capital feels unpredictable, you don’t have a demand problem.

You have a system problem. Fix it before your next raise.

💰 CRE BY THE NUMBERS
MULTIFAMILY VACANCY, RENT-SPLITTING, AND MORE

🏠 7.2% 

The national multifamily vacancy rate edged down to 7.2% in April — its first decline in more than four years — as the market begins absorbing a wave of new supply that peaked in 2024 with more than 600,000 units delivered, the highest annual total since the mid-1980s.

💳 $30 

A growing number of fintechs are offering rent-splitting services that let tenants break monthly payments into installments — but the cost adds up fast. Borrowing $600 for 14 days through one provider runs nearly $30 in fees, a rate consumer advocates say approaches payday loan territory.

🤖 47% 

Redfin survey data shows 47% of U.S. residents oppose AI data center construction in their neighborhoods, compared with 37% who oppose new apartment complexes — making data centers more unwelcome than any other building type Redfin tested.

🏢 51% 

AI and automation were cited by 51% of CRE professionals globally as the most significant force reshaping the industry, according to a CoreNet Global and Colliers report, yet just 21% say they have a well-defined framework in place to act on it.

⭐ BEST EVER INNER CIRCLE
RECOGNIZING MEMBERS WHO ELEVATE THE ROOM

Inside the Best Ever Inner Circle — a private community for experienced real estate operators, fund managers, and LPs — members meet regularly to solve real business challenges together, share opportunities, and help each other navigate today’s market.

We’re excited to introduce a tradition to recognize members who consistently elevate the room: Member of the Month.

🎉 Our first Member of the Month is Mark Dalessandro, who has become known inside the group for sharing tactical advice, operational insights, introductions, and practical resources that have directly helped fellow members move faster and make better decisions.

This is the kind of collaboration happening inside the Inner Circle every week.

Want to learn more about the community? Click below.

▶️ BEST EVER WEBINARS
THE FoF BLUEPRINT MOST CAPITAL RAISERS ARE MISSING

The legal structure, investor portal, deal page, and sponsor relationships all exist — the problem is nobody has put them together in one place.

TODAY at 1pm ET, securities attorney Seth Bradley walks you through the exact system for building a compliant, scalable Fund of Funds in under 6 weeks. Free to attend. Register now.

🎙️ THE BEST EVER CRE SHOW
THE INCENTIVE GAP LPs KEEP PAYING FOR

Multifamily oversupply isn't a market cycle problem. In many cases, it's an incentive problem.

This week on Carson's Corner, Salvatore Buscemi, managing partner of Brahmin Partners, joined Carson Jones to discuss why developers keep building into vacancy rates that would give most underwriters pause, and what disciplined operators are doing instead.

• The Incentive Misalignment: Buscemi pointed to markets like Austin and Nashville, where vacancy has climbed to 13–15% with new supply still coming online. The dynamic, he argues, is structural: Developers are optimizing for transaction fees and carried interest, not occupancy. The result is a market where the people making the build decision aren't the ones absorbing the downside.

• The Alternative Thesis: Buscemi has largely avoided multifamily in favor of Class A industrial, where tenant credit quality replaces the need to take on occupancy risk. His firm’s last two deals underwrote to levered IRRs of 27% and 33%, respectively — returns he attributes primarily to low basis and strong tenant covenants rather than rent growth assumptions.

• The Capital Quality Filter: Buscemi’s broader framework for both real estate and venture is the same: no first-time operators, and no sponsors whose incentives diverge from their LPs. In a market where capital has become commoditized, he argues, selectivity on the GP side is the primary risk management tool available to family offices.

For LPs evaluating multifamily sponsors in supply-heavy markets, the question Buscemi raised is worth sitting with: If vacancy is already elevated and new supply keeps coming, who exactly is bearing that risk?

🎙️ Listen to the full episode here.