Property Profits Real Estate Podcast · Dave Dubeau

Reviving a 145-Unit Eyesore with Joshua Harmon Sr.

March 5, 2026·22 min·2 clips

Joshua Harmon bought a 145-unit eyesore vacant for 15 years for $800,000 cash.

The deal starts messy. Joshua Harmon traces the property through a private owner, unpaid taxes, city frustration, and a bank that was not always ready to close. Dave keeps him in the weeds, in a useful way. He pauses the story to pin down who owned the building at each point, because control can make or break a distressed multifamily deal. The city wanted something to happen. Joshua says local officials connected him with the bank after he pushed the point that more housing was needed. Then the bank got cold feet. Even with conversations underway and a closing date on the calendar, the seller side still sounded unsure at times. Cash helped, but it did not make the deal simple. Harmon says they bought the 145 vacant units for $800,000 in 2023. That sounds like a steal until he gets into the condition of the property and the obligations attached to it. Dave catches that pretty quickly. From the outside, the price looks dramatic. Joshua frames it more like a property so rough that free might have felt fair in the moment. The useful part is the sequence: local pressure, bank negotiation, cash certainty, and then the ugly work after close. Loan balances, taxes, city notice costs, and the basic job of making empty units livable all sat between the purchase price and any upside. Dave mostly stays in confirmation mode, which works here. His questions keep the story grounded in ownership, process, price, and what had to happen next. The ad break is skippable. The deal story is on both sides of it, especially where public pressure meets private negotiation. The close stays practical too: Joshua points listeners to LinkedIn, email, and Harman Real Estate Company.

As heard by us

A plainspoken look at multifamily value, from acquisition through turnaround.

Joshua Harmon talks like someone who has actually done the work, not someone reciting theory. He moves from his path in real estate since 2016 to the shop he opened with his wife in 2019, then into buying his own deals, and that background gives the episode its shape.

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Why you'd press play

A vacant 145-unit deal becomes a blunt lesson in intrinsic value, market value, and cash-close reality.

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