In this episode of the Timeless Investor Show, host Ari van Gemeren breaks down the historical collapse of the Savings and Loan (S&L) industry and why it serves as a critical blueprint for the current real estate landscape.

Discover how the "3-6-3 rule" failed, the massive impact of Paul Volcker’s interest rate hikes, and how the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) created the largest "forced liquidation" in U.S. history. We analyze how legendary investors like Sam Zell and Barry Sternlicht built empires from these distressed assets and explore the startling parallels to the $1.5 trillion in commercial debt maturing between 2025 and 2027. If you want to understand the "extend and pretend" cycle and how to position yourself for the next great wealth transfer, this deep dive is for you.

Harry Helmsley started as a $12/week office boy in 1925. By the 1970s, he owned more real estate than anyone in America—the Empire State Building, 60+ office buildings, 30+ hotels, over $5 billion in assets.

His strategy? Buy quality buildings in quality locations. Never sell. Just compound.

No flipping. No syndicate exits. No IRR optimization. Just 40+ years of patient accumulation.

In this episode, we break down:

→ How Helmsley learned operations before ownership (and why it matters)

→ The "refinance, don't sell" approach that avoided capital gains for decades

→ Why transaction costs destroy more wealth than most investors realize

→ The crown jewel acquisitions: Empire State Building, Helmsley Building, the hotel empire

→ What happened when it almost all fell apart (and the lesson in who you marry)

The greatest real estate fortunes weren't built by flipping. They were built by holding.

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Interested in investing with us? https://investors.appfolioim.com/lombardequities/investor/contact-us (accredited investors only)

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00:00 - Introduction: $5 Billion Empire from Nothing

02:15 - The Office Boy Years (1925-1935)

05:30 - Buying the Brokerage with Sweat Equity

08:45 - The Accumulation Strategy: Buy, Hold, Never Sell

12:20 - Why Refinancing Beats Selling (The Math)

16:00 - The Crown Jewels: Empire State Building & Beyond

19:30 - The Fall: Leona and the Collapse

22:00 - Timeless Lessons for Modern Investors

#realestateinvesting #wealthbuilding #harryhelmsely #empirestatebuilding #buyandhold #passiveincome #realestate #investing #financialhistory

A SPECIAL REPORT:

Last December, I published a 23-page report predicting what would happen in 2025 — treasury yields, inflation, GDP, housing supply. Today, I'm grading myself in public.

Predicted 10Y Treasury: 4.1% → Actual: 4.11%

Predicted Seattle Permits: -36% → Actual: -50%

Predicted Inflation: 2.5% → Actual: 2.7%

Most predictions were directionally right. Some were wrong. And 2025 threw curveballs nobody saw coming — $40B in wildfire losses by Week 2, a 43-day government shutdown, and a GDP path that broke every model.

This video covers:

→ The Six Forces scorecard (with grades)

→ Black swan events that blindsided everyone

→ The behavioral finance of 2025 (anchoring, recency bias, narrative fallacy)

→ What I'm watching for 2026

00:00 - What I Predicted

02:30 - The Six Forces Scorecard

12:00 - What Nobody Saw Coming

18:00 - Behavioral Finance Audit

26:00 - The Denver Deal I Didn't Do

30:00 - 2026 Watchlist

🔔 Subscribe for the 2026 Outlook Report (dropping January)

📩 Join The Timeless Investor Newsletter:

https://lombardequities.substack.com

📈 Accredited Investors — Work With Us:

https://lombardequities.com

#realestateinvesting #2025predictions #marketoutlook #multifamily

Notre-Dame Cathedral took 182 years to build. Your iPhone is designed to die in two.

The men who laid those first stones knew they would never see the finished building. They planted trees they would never sit under. They built something timeless.

We don't do that anymore. What changed?

One concept explains it all: Time Preference — the degree to which you discount the future relative to the present. It's the single most important idea I've encountered in my study of wealth across civilizations, and almost nobody talks about it.

In this episode, I break down:

• What time preference is and why it shapes the fate of nations
• How hard money created the Eiffel Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, and dynastic fortunes
• What happened on August 15, 1971 — and why everything changed
• Rome vs. Byzantium: same empire, different money, 500 years vs. 1,000 years
• How Spain's silver fortune destroyed them from the inside
• Why your buildings, products, relationships, and attention span have all degraded
• Why low time preference is now a superpower in a world optimized for immediacy
• 8 practical ways to build low time preference into your life and investments

The cathedral builders knew something we've forgotten: patience isn't passive. It's the most aggressive long-term strategy there is.

What are you building that will exist in 100 years?

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Subscribe to The Timeless Investor newsletter: https://thetimelessinvestor.substack.com

Learn more about Lombard Equities Group: https://www.lombardequities.com

1837. Banks collapse. Real estate craters 80%. Most investors are wiped out.

One 74-year-old immigrant is buying.

John Jacob Astor arrived in America with $25 and seven flutes. He scraped fur pelts in a Lower Manhattan shop. He tried — and failed — to colonize the entire West Coast, losing ships, men, and millions when his vessel exploded off Vancouver Island.

Then he pivoted to real estate and became the wealthiest American in history.

By his death, Astor owned roughly 1% of America's entire GDP — the equivalent of $276 billion today. Senator Tallmadge remarked: "One in every hundred dollars in this country ends up in J. Astor's hands."

In this episode, we trace the full arc: the cutthroat fur trade, the global China triangle, the catastrophic Tonquin massacre, the audacious Astoria gambit, and the real estate strategy that turned crisis into dynasty.

The lessons? Know when to pivot. Maintain liquidity. Follow infrastructure. And when the panic comes — be the buyer, not the seller.

First owners get destroyed. Second owners build dynasties.

Which one are you going to be?

In 1595, a desperate Sultan auctioned off the right to collect taxes. The buyer—a merchant from Thessaloniki—didn't care if the province starved. His contract was only 3 years.

This system, called Iltizam (tax farming), would hollow out one of history's most powerful empires over 300 years. By 1800, it represented 80% of Ottoman revenue—up from 36% a century earlier.

But the Ottomans weren't unique.

This episode reveals the 5-phase pattern that destroyed Rome, bankrupted Spain, ended British hegemony, and collapsed the Ottoman Empire:→ Building

→ Success

→ The Pivot

→ Decay

→ Collapse

The through-line? Societies that stop building and start extracting have begun to die.

Today, we examine America through this lens: manufacturing down from 28% to 11% of GDP, financial services up from 3% to over 20%, private equity strip-mining companies like Ottoman tax farmers stripped provinces.

Plus: A framework for investors and citizens navigating extraction economies—including why "being a second owner" may be the smartest play in a system built for liquidation.

October 1347.

Twelve ships dock in Sicily. Most of the sailors are already dead.

Within three years, half of Europe would be gone. But from that catastrophe came everything: capitalism, individual rights, the printing press, the age of exploration, the scientific revolution, the enlightenment—the very idea that tomorrow can be better than yesterday.

You and I are living in a world the plague created. We just don't know it.

This is Episode 1 of "How Plagues Transform Humanity"—a new series exploring how pandemics shaped the modern world.

TIMESTAMPS:0:00 - The Ships Arrive2:15 - The World That Was Stuck5:30 - Death Arrives9:45 - Feudalism Collapses12:30 - The Church Cracks14:20 - Innovation at Gunpoint18:00 - Why Europe and Not China?21:30 - The World It Made

COMING NEXT:

• Episode 2: The Antonine Plague - How Disease Broke Rome
• Episode 3: The Spanish Flu - 50 Million Dead and the Roaring Twenties
• Episode 4: COVID and the Brave New World

CONNECT:

📩 Newsletter: https://thetimelessinvestor.substack.com💼 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/arievangemeren

SOURCES:

Paul Schmelzing, "Eight Centuries of Global Real Rates" (Bank of England, 2020)

Robert Allen, "The Great Divergence" David Herlihy, "The Black Death and the Transformation of the West"

#BlackDeath #History #Economics #Capitalism #MedievalHistory

November 8th, 1890. The head of the most powerful merchant bank on earth walks into the Bank of England to confess: in 72 hours, his bank will be bankrupt—and it might take the British Empire down with it.

Barings Brothers financed the Louisiana Purchase. They were called "the sixth great power of Europe." And they had just bet everything on Argentina—the AI boom of its era—and lost.

The Bank of England had one weekend to prevent global financial collapse. Their entire gold reserve barely covered what Barings owed. If markets panicked, Britain would be forced off the gold standard. Sterling would collapse. The world economy would implode.

This is the story of the first modern bailout, the birth of "too big to fail," and the playbook the Fed would use 118 years later in 2008.

But here's the kicker: this same bank—survivor of the 1890 crisis—collapsed again in 1995. One rogue trader. One earthquake. Sold for £1. Same disease, different century.

In this episode:→ How the yield chase destroyed Britain's mightiest bank→ Why currency mismatch is a silent killer→ The Rothschilds' second owner playbook→ What 1890 teaches us about the next crisis

Read more at The Timeless Investor on Substack. Invest alongside us at lombardequities.com.

Think well. Act wisely. Build something timeless.