You’re Probably Playing the Wrong Game

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Most syndicators are quietly fighting the same battle. Mike Wagar just decided to stop fighting it the same way.

“I talk to other syndicators all the time,” he said. “They all have the same problems. We think we’re unique—but we’re not.” Mike has spent years comparing notes with peers across the industry. Different markets. Different portfolios. Different personalities. But when the conversation turns to operations, the stories converge quickly: fragmented data, manual reporting, endless quality control, and a persistent doubt about whether the numbers can actually be trusted. What separates firms, in Mike’s view, isn’t the problem set but how seriously they’re willing to confront it.

And increasingly, that confrontation isn’t optional.

The role of the asset manager has changed. Costs are up. Margins are tighter. Analyst talent is more expensive and harder to retain. Portfolios are more complex, spread across more systems and third-party managers than ever before. At the same time, expectations from investors, partners, and internal teams have only gone up.

This is the backdrop against which Magma made a deliberate choice: instead of scaling people to match complexity, they would scale systems. Instead of reacting faster, they would build an operating model that didn’t require constant reaction. That decision is what eventually led them to symmetRE, and it’s what makes the rest of Mike’s perspective click.

Skepticism, Applied

Mike describes himself as a born skeptic and an engineer at heart. In other words: someone who doesn’t accept a number simply because it looks right on a slide.

That skepticism has helped shape how Magma operates as it’s grown. “When there’s an issue with a number,” Mike explained, “I know it’s not the data. It’s either a formula or a mapping issue.” That level of confidence didn’t appear overnight. It was earned by choosing systems that could be interrogated without collapsing under scrutiny. Before that, much of the team’s time was spent reacting. “Probably 90% of the time was quality control,” he said. “Spot checking. Making sure the numbers were right.” That kind of work is invisible to outsiders but consuming for the people doing it. It leaves little room for thinking ahead. “Before, I was reacting to a need in the moment,” Mike said. “Now I spend my time looking ahead and thinking about where we’re going.”

That shift, from reactionary to proactive, wasn’t the result of adding layers of staff. In fact, Magma made a deliberate choice not to scale that way. “We can’t just hire a bunch of people,” Mike said. “We can’t sustain that.” As the portfolio expanded across markets and property managers, the team stayed lean by design. The goal wasn’t speed for speed’s sake. It was durability and an operating model that wouldn’t break as complexity increased.

Where the Cracks Show First

If there was a single workflow that exposed the limits of the old model, it was investor reporting.

What once took weeks (sometimes close to a month) became a stress test for the entire organization. Over time, that changed through use of the symmetRE platform.“Our investors love these reports,” Mike said. “They very rarely ask questions. But when they don’t get them, they ask for them.” That distinction matters. Silence isn’t disengagement, it’s trust.

Technology played a role in that evolution, but not in the way most firms talk about it. Magma wasn’t chasing tools for novelty’s sake. “This industry has been slow to adopt tech,” Mike said. “But it’s happening now because leadership is changing. Analysts cost more. And a lot of tools were built for property managers, not owners.” Rather than forcing mismatched software into place, Magma focused on bringing everything into one system they could actually reason about.

Using Technology as an Advantage

This is where Magma stands apart.

Instead of treating technology as an overlay, the firm uses it as an operating advantage. Accounting teams were skeptical at first. They spot-checked. They questioned. Over time, the consistency held. “They’re getting more comfortable,” Mike said. “Now we’re negotiating against service providers with better information.”

That confidence compounds. It shows up in asset management calls. In investor updates. And even in how Magma presents itself during fundraising. “We advertise ourselves as a user of advanced tech,” Mike said. “It’s part of who we are. There’s value there.” For Mike, the takeaway from years of conversations with peers is surprisingly simple. Most firms aren’t constrained by opportunity. They’re constrained by how they operate. “You’re too busy to look everywhere,” he said. “So what do you actually want to see?”

That deceptively basic question sits at the heart of Magma’s approach: build clarity first. Make reporting infrastructure a priority, not an afterthought. Treat trust as something you design for, not hope for. And when Mike talks to other syndicators still buried in spreadsheets and workarounds, his advice is blunt.

“You’re playing the wrong game,” he said. “Come play my game. It’s more fun on this side.”

Mike Wagar is a Portfolio Manager at Magma Equities and a trained structural engineer, bringing more than a decade of experience across multifamily investing, finance, and development to building scalable ownership platforms.

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