I started Starwood Capital with $20 million during the savings-and-loan crisis. Everyone was running away from real estate. I was running toward it with a shopping cart.
The best time to invest is when capital markets are frozen and nobody else can write checks. That is when our balance sheet becomes a weapon. We do not compete with other people's money. We compete with our own.
The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets, even if some of it is your own.
When a company goes bankrupt, there is always a price where it becomes a good investment. Always.
We want to buy a dollar of assets for 50 cents. That's it. Everything else is details.
Distressed investing is not about being ghoulish. It's about pricing risk better than everyone else.
Distressed investing is not about buying garbage. It's about buying assets that the market has mispriced because the situation looks messy. Messy does not mean worthless.