Brad Sumrok, aka the ‘Apartment King’, is all tan, smiles, and white teeth as he launches into a typical sales pitch.
At one of his glitzy networking events in Dallas, he claims to have ‘created over 600 millionaires’ by coaching everyone from doctors to warehouse workers in how to invest in commercial real estate.
Never, he adds, has he ‘lost anyone’s money’.
Sumrok, a 57-year-old salesman from Texas, has been credited with driving the business known as apartment syndication to new heights, creating a generation of landlords who now own tens of thousands of apartment buildings worth billions of dollars.
He and his ilk have been blamed for driving property prices out of reach of first time buyers. But now his bubble may be about to burst.
Amid soaring interest rates, some of his students have overstretched themselves and cannot afford the massive loans they took out to finance their spending sprees.
Millions of dollars of investors’ money has already been lost after buildings bought by Sumrok disciples fell into foreclosure.
The Wall Street Journal described one particularly egregious blowup as one of the largest commercial real estate disasters since the 2008 financial crash.
Meanwhile, one syndication expert told DailyMail.com that up to $50billion tied up in such deals is at risk of being lost.
Sumrok, a man who likes to dance on stage to Calvin Harris to the acclaim of adoring fans, is now facing the music for having a thirst for cash as big as his grin.
For his part, he has stressed that he fully informed students of the risks of investment.
And while there’s no suggestion of wrongdoing, Sumrok’s ethics have continued to raise eyebrows.
So, DailyMail.com asks, is he the real deal property guru that he purports to be, or, as one disgruntled student put it, no more than a ‘cheesy used-car salesman’?
MORE: