Early in his career, Patrick Carino tracked real estate opportunities with aerial maps pinned to the wall and a binder full of spreadsheets. It worked, but it exposed a bigger problem: real estate is inherently visual, yet much of the information developers use to make multimillion-dollar decisions is fragmented across spreadsheets, maps, inboxes, and relationships. That frustration eventually became DealNav. But it also opened up a much bigger conversation about how great developers actually make decisions. Patrick Carino is Vice President of Development at The NRP Group, where he sources and executes market-rate multifamily developments across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. He's also the founder of DealNav, a map-based deal-tracking tool he built after years of managing his own pipeline in Excel and Google My Maps — now used by real estate professionals across the globe who want a simpler map-based alternative to bloated CRMs. Pat also brings a broad perspective across brokerage, entrepreneurial development, and institutional real estate. Before NRP, he worked at RMS and began his career at CBRE, where he was involved in more than $1 billion of investment sales transactions. In this episode, we get into: Why capitalizing good deals may be harder than finding them right now.How decision-making changes when you move from one owner deploying his own capital to an institutional investment committee managing other people’s money.Why some of the best development opportunities still come through relationships, not simply better data.What working on $1B+ of transactions at CBRE taught Pat about validating every assumption.Why NRP built a highly specialized organization and how that structure supports scale.The Westchester deal Pat walked away from after investing meaningful time and money, and the lesson he refuses to learn twice.How NRP is growing its Northeast market-rate pipeline across New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.Why Pat built DealNav and what he learned turning an internal tool into a software business.The through line is bigger than real estate software. Information helps you find the opportunity. Relationships get you access. But judgment determines what you pursue, what you pass on, and whether you can ultimately get the deal built. Resources: NRP Group: NRP Group WebsiteCBRE: CBRE WebsiteDeal Nav: Deal Nav WebsiteBook/Resource Mentioned: $100M Offers, Alex Hormozi's work for growth strategies, particularly in sales and business development.Thanks for being part of the Design Development community. New episodes drop every Wednesday, featuring leaders across real estate, design, and construction. The goal is simple: learn from how great people think, lead, make decisions, navigate setbacks, and create opportunity. There is no single path to success. Careers are not linear. The lessons are in the story. Subscribe so you don’t miss the next conversation. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram & YouTube Find out more at https://h-o.engineering/podcasts/ Let’s go.
