Larry Mastropieri started his career as a mechanical engineer shoveling ash at a waste-to-energy power plant, and today he runs a brokerage doing roughly 200 transactions and $150 million in volume a year while owning about 150 apartments and pushing toward 200. In this episode of Property Unpeeled, Tony Stern gets the whole story: how an engineering mindset built for problem solving and systems translated directly into a scalable real estate business, how a hyper-disciplined routine born from a lifelong battle with rare autoimmune disorders keeps him from burning out, and how it all started with a duplex he house hacked with his sister living on the other side. Larry is refreshingly direct about how the money actually gets made, from why “make money first, invest second” is the advice nobody wants to hear, to acting as his own commercial mortgage broker and doing the lender’s underwriting for them to win deals. He also shares an honest account of going through PropertyOnion Academy with his partners, why even a seasoned real estate attorney found value in it, and why so many auction buyers get jammed. Then the conversation turns to the market, where Palm Beach County is outperforming Broward and Miami-Dade, the right single family product in Boca is closing well above appraised value, and the $3 to $7 million luxury tier has gone sluggish with buyers in no hurry. Larry breaks down the condo crisis in detail, from SIRS studies after Surfside to massive assessments, buildings that Fannie and Freddie will not finance, and slowing Canadian demand, explaining why he sees short-term pain but long-term upside for anyone who does not get jammed, and he closes with what agents and investors need for the next 12 to 18 months.