How to Build Accountability into Real Estate Co-Investment: Alexey Tolkachev’s Experience

As investors weigh who to trust with their money, real estate investor, creator of a nine-stage system applied to about 300 properties, and investment content creator with a 2.3+ million audience, explains what to check before committing capital and what to expect afterward. 

Real estate capital is gravitating toward transparency. JLL and LaSalle’s Global Real Estate Transparency Index 2026 shows that the 13 highest-ranked markets attract over 80% of global direct property investment, with transaction volumes up 64% over two years. In a co-investment deal, however, choosing who manages the money can be as consequential as choosing the property.

For real estate investor Alexey Tolkachev, that decision puts the relationship between investors and the project’s organizer in focus. With more than 12 years of experience in income-producing real estate investing, Alexey structures deals starting at about $120,000. His investment channels reach around 2.3 million subscribers. He has been a speaker at the Builders Club, Club 500, Best For Life Design Forum, and has authored or co-authored 11 books with combined sales of more than 103,000 copies between 2012 and 2023, including Elita, which presents Alexey’s system for selecting and evaluating properties. We turned to his career to learn how to structure real estate co-investments and remain accountable to fellow investors, from property selection through project execution.

“In every real estate investment deal offered by our team, I invested my own capital,” Tolkachev explains, outlining one of the core components of his approach to co-investment.

As friends asked to invest alongside him, he began inviting them into his projects. Still, before committing any capital, Tolkachev assesses the property using a system he developed after an unsuccessful early-career investment:

“We had a chance to invest in a land project. The presenter told us the site had potential, that demand was confirmed, and that other partners were already on board. Back then, our team didn’t have a set due diligence process. We invested in the project, but the partner in charge did not meet his commitments. In the end, we lost 13.5 million rubles.”

Tolkachev used the setback to rethink his investment process. After that loss, a counterparty check became a mandatory stage. Detailed in Elita (Imprintlab, 2024), the system has been used to assess about 300 properties and covers nine stages:

• Sourcing investment properties.
• Initial screening.
• Preliminary negotiations.
• Financial analysis.
• Testing the investment thesis.
• Counterparty due diligence.
• Legal due diligence.
• Technical property inspection.
• Final negotiations.

The nine-stage method guides Alexey’s assessment of properties with redevelopment potential. In 2021, he arranged the purchase of an office floor in Moscow’s Maryina Roshcha district for about $725,000, developed the conversion plan, and oversaw its division into separately registered units and offices, before selling them individually.

“For this model, due diligence focuses on three things: whether the space can be subdivided, what the work will cost, and whether there is demand for the resulting units,” he says.

Two years later, an outside owner engaged Tolkachev under an agency agreement to apply the same model to a seventh-floor property in Maryina Roshcha district again, spanning about 15,375 square feet. He organized the project’s execution, bringing his redevelopment experience to another owner’s property.

The Suvorov project in Khabarovsk, Russia’s Far East, takes Alexey’s redevelopment work to an entire building. He is arranging financing and managing the conversion of a former dormitory spanning about 152,900 square feet, purchased in May 2024 for about $1.2 million. Work remains underway.

“For this type of project, the purchase price is only part of the assessment,” Alexey emphasizes. “An investment decision depends on understanding what needs to be done to the building and the resources required.”

Due diligence can also end with a rejected deal. In 2021, Tolkachev’s nine-stage system led him to decline a property purchase worth approximately $2.6 million. The seller demanded a separate agreement that let them take back the property at their sole discretion while keeping part of the payment. The legal review revealed unacceptable terms, and Alexey stopped the transaction before investing, protecting investors’ capital.

Once investors commit capital, the focus shifts from assessing the property to following its redevelopment. The work takes time, and co-investors need regular information about its progress. Tolkachev makes that reporting an integral third component of his investment approach.

For the fifth-floor Maryina Roshcha project, he issued 29 investor reports in 2021-2022. At Suvorov in Khabarovsk, the redevelopment remains underway, with 82 progress reports published.

“Regular reporting allows investors to follow the project as it takes shape, through to completion,” Alexey notes.

Thus, Alexey Tolkachev’s experience brings transparency to the individual-deal level. The combination of personal capital, nine-stage property checks, and regular reporting can give co-investors a clearer basis for choosing whom to work with and tracking how their capital is used.

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