Why Monval

I spent fifteen years in tech, at Google, WeWork, Spotify and a few others. Good companies, smart people, real work. But most of what I built there lived on a screen and was gone in a few years.

So I sold my other investments and went all in on Pittsburgh real estate. People thought that was a strange trade. Maybe it was. But a brick building on a main street in Charleroi has been standing for a hundred years, and with the right work it can stand for a hundred more. I wanted to build things like that.

Monval runs on three lines.

Do the work others overlook.

Most investors look at the Mon Valley’s numbers and stop there. Falling population, old housing, lower incomes. The data is real. But if you walk the streets, the buildings are still there, the bones are good, and the people never left. The opportunity is in the gap between what the spreadsheet says and what the street says. Closing that gap takes work most people won’t do: planning meetings, permits, old boilers, tenants with real lives. That’s the job.

Build what lasts.

We don’t flip. We buy, we rebuild and we keep. That’s why we have our own construction company, Vallon, and our own management company, Coterie. When you plan to own a building for decades, every decision changes. You fix the wall, not just the paint. And cost should never be the reason something gets done the wrong way.

Stay human.

Real estate is people. Tenants who treat their apartment like home. Neighbors who’ve been on the block longer than we have. A borough manager trying to keep a town going. At our place on the South Side we host dinners for whoever wants to come. It’s the best part of the job, and it’s how you actually learn a place.

We’re early. I’d rather say that plainly than dress it up. What I can promise is the way we’ll work: patiently, with our own hands, in places other people skip.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, as a neighbor, a partner, a seller or an investor, write to me. I read everything.