Part 2 My Family Mocked My Small Apartment—Then a Reporter Showed Up Asking About My Real Estate Portfolio

Part 2 My Family Mocked My Small Apartment—Then a Reporter Showed Up Asking About My Real Estate Portfolio

Three weeks after Thanksgiving, I received a phone call I hadn’t anticipated.

A business journalist named Priya Sharma was writing for a regional business journal that covered the metro area’s commercial real estate market. She was researching a feature about long-term, buy-and-hold investors in the region—the kind of quiet, patient investors who had built substantial portfolios over decades without ever appearing in the flashier headlines dominated by developers and flippers.

“Your name came up several times during my research,” she told me over the phone.

“A few longtime tenants I interviewed mentioned you specifically as one of the most reliable, fair landlords they’ve ever had. And when I pulled the property records, I found you’d held eleven properties across three states, several for more than thirty years.”

She paused.

“That kind of consistency is genuinely rare, Mr. Holloway. I’d love to interview you for a feature piece. And I’d also love, if you’re comfortable with it, to actually see one of your properties in person.”

I hesitated.

Forty years of deliberate quiet about my finances doesn’t dissolve easily just because a journalist calls with a flattering request.

But something about the timing—three weeks removed from that Thanksgiving comment, still sitting uncomfortably in my chest—made me say yes.

We scheduled the interview for the following Saturday.

I mentioned it almost as an afterthought to Curtis during our regular Sunday call, not fully anticipating what would happen next.

“A reporter wants to interview you about what exactly?” Curtis asked.

Genuine confusion was evident in his voice.

“My real estate,” I said simply. “Apparently, I’ve got something of a reputation among my tenants.”

There was a pause.

“You’re real estate?”

“Dad, how many properties do you actually have?”

“Eleven. Currently. Give or take. I sold two smaller ones last year.”

The silence that followed lasted long enough that I actually checked whether the call had dropped.

“Eleven?”

“That’s right.”

“I thought you had… one.”

“I have the apartment I live in.”

“I mean the property stuff.”

“I suppose I have eleven of those.”

Curtis didn’t say anything for several seconds.

Then he asked quietly, “How much are they worth?”

I smiled.

“I’ve never really thought about it that way.”

That wasn’t entirely true. I knew what they were worth. I simply didn’t organize my life around that number.

The interview was scheduled for Saturday morning.

Priya arrived at my apartment with a photographer and a genuine, well-prepared curiosity that made the entire experience considerably more comfortable than I’d anticipated.

We spent nearly two hours talking through the full arc of my career.

The original triplex.

The slow decades-long accumulation.

The deliberate strategy of holding rather than flipping.

The specific philosophy I’d developed about treating tenants fairly, even when the market might have supported more aggressive rent increases.

At one point, Priya looked around my simple one-bedroom apartment.

“You’ve lived here this whole time?”

“Pretty much.”

She glanced around again.

There was no expensive furniture.

No impressive artwork.

No television taking up half the room.

Just a worn leather chair, a small kitchen table, several bookshelves, and photographs of Dorothy and Curtis as a child.

“You could afford something much larger