Bruce sits down with Arn Cenedella to trace his path from growing up amid Silicon Valley’s rise to building Spark Investment Group in Greenville, South Carolina along the I-85 corridor between Charlotte and Atlanta. Arn shares the lessons from buying his first East Palo Alto home at an 11.75% mortgage rate, the move to San Carlos, and eventually shifting capital to the Southeast where he could operate hands-on.
We dig into his investing framework: stay hyper-local, underwrite for cash flow and resiliency, keep low leverage and fixed-rate debt, and run properties with tight operations. Arn explains why sales volume froze post-2022 as rates jumped, how he pivoted to build-to-rent bulk buys from small builders in 2023–2024, and why he’s now back to selective ’70s/’80s value-add with tax-advantaged, affordable assets.
On the operations side, Arn credits partner Brian (Buildium, policy-first PM) for consistent collections and minimal evictions, and partner Dan (underwriting, accounting, tax) for disciplined modeling—freeing Arn to hunt deals and serve investors. He also shares his long-view take on cycles (bull runs, plateaus, retrenchment), why he’s bullish on U.S. real estate, and how onshoring/high-tech manufacturing can rebuild middle-income strength. Fun finale: pizza with Albert Einstein—and the surprising connection to Arn’s 1938 Greenville home.
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