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How I Invest · 3 min · Mar 2, 2026

Scarce locations and local rules limit real estate growth

Grant Cardone · CEO, Cardone Capital

Grant Cardone says quality real estate is hard to scale because prime locations are scarce.

In this episode

Full analysis
  1. 37:27Retail capital can give real estate funds more control4 min
  2. 41:27Cardone combines discounted real estate with Bitcoin4 min
  3. 45:01Illiquidity can help investors hold through volatility5 min
  4. 52:13Scarce locations and local rules limit real estate growth3 min
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“Like, if you can't raise rents, you shouldn't buy the real estate.”
Grant Cardoneat 53:02 · How I Invest
53:02

Takeaways

  1. He says there may not be 47 great U.S. locations to duplicate.
  2. Property-tax decisions factor into which markets he will enter.
  3. He says owners should avoid markets where they cannot raise rents.

About this segment

Grant Cardone says quality real estate is hard to scale because prime locations are scarce. He avoids markets where tax changes or limits on rent increases constrain owners.

Grant Cardone

Grant Cardone is CEO of Cardone Capital.

Built Cardone Capital into a $5B real estate portfolio and raised more than $2B from everyday investors.

From “Why ‘Quality Over Quantity’ Is Keeping You BROKE”, Mar 2, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

From the transcript How I Invest publishes with the episode.

  1. 52:25

    You've built this amazing online presence, organization, sales system. What in your business has compounded the most, and what has grown more linearly? God, man. We have so many difficulties here. I wish you wouldn't even bring that. You've ruined a good interview. You know? I was happy and everything, and now, like, I gotta start dealing with the problems. Mean, I there's so many things that we're having trouble scaling.

  2. 52:43

    Right? We just my real estate's very difficult to scale. Okay? I I I love I love great assets. I love great locations, and there's not a lot of great locations. Like, you know, we we own 47 properties. For me to duplicate the 47 and have great locations, there's probably not even 47 great locations in America. New York City, Chicago, California. I can't even touch those markets right now because because of some of the decisions they're making on property taxes, how they handcuff the property owner from raising rents.

  3. 53:14

    Like, if you can't raise rents, you shouldn't buy the real estate. Can you double click on that? Because the New York City mayor is framing this as a tax on the rich. Why does that affect more than just the rich? Yeah. Look. You you should if you understood I'm not saying you. But if the American people fully understood economics, you would understand that Madame in New York is weaponizing the wealth divide.

  4. 53:44

    K? He's basically weaponizing as a political weapon the concept of the wealth divide. And what he it is in his best interest to expand the wealth divide and further bring attention to why my side's wrong and his side is right. Okay? And how do you do that? Raise property taxes. Who pays property taxes? People that have money. People that have property. The conservative party, you're conservative because you have something to conserve.

  5. 54:13

    I was a democrat the first half of my life. When I started owning property, I became a republican. I became somebody more interested in conserving my assets. I'm like, no. I want lower taxes, dude. I own assets. I want lower taxes. I want lower property taxes. Okay? I wanna own the asset. I would suggest to you the billionaires, we should have a no tax on billionaires in this country. We should reward the billionaire.