Multifamily Investor Situation Room

Shannon Robnett is a real estate developer, and CEO of Shannon Robnett Industries, and he has completed over $200 million in construction projects ranging from multifamily, office buildings, schools, industrial, mini-storage, and more.  Shannon sees tremendous value in development strategies versus value-add.  In this episode, he shares some snapshots of his 40 years in the real estate business, including how he works with city government and residents to determine the right product to develop, and how development makes even more sense especially when we are expecting little to no rent growth in the immediate future.

Dugan Kelley is co-founder of Kelley Clarke, PC, which is a boutique law firm with a national presence. He chairs the firm’s securities and real estate practice group, where he focuses on assisting clients of multifamily, commercial, and residential acquisitions and sales. He has structured acquisitions in excess of $2 billion. With more than 20 years of experience, Mr. Kelley helps us understand some of the important legal aspects of both the real estate transactional and securities sides.

Disclaimer: This content is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as direct legal advice. Consult with an attorney for your specific situation.

In our industry, we are typically told to stick with larger MSA’s that have a minimum population of one or two hundred thousand, has had consistent growth in population, income, and jobs over the past ten or more years, consistent rent growth and more. The challenge is there are so many investors throwing money into those markets that cap rates have compressed to a point where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make the numbers work. Why not consider a path less traveled by the masses? This is exactly what George O’Brien did when he began investing just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While the surrounding area may not be one of the first places that comes to most people’s mind as an ideal place to build wealth in real estate investing, George has found tremendous success, including developing consistent deal flow, hitting double-digit cash-on-cash returns, and achieving support of community banks willing to bank roll his investments. You may not have massive appreciation at the end of the holding period in these markets, but you can receive solid cash flow.

San Eng is an international investorpreneur that has an institutional investment background in venture capital, private equity, and family offices. In his early days as an entrepreneur, he raised over $100m, and he has deployed more than $500m in capital as an investor. Many of us out there working on syndicating real estate investments typically focus on attracting HNW individuals, which could be either accredited or sophisticated investors. There aren’t many people in our space that raise capital from institutional investors. I have found those individuals that are able to raise institutional money, tend to grow much faster. While our entire conversation is not solely focused on real estate investing, there are some important parallels you can grab onto and apply them to your business. One of those key points that stood out is timing of the exit. When is the right time to exit? Join me as we step into the mindset of an institutional investor.

Cody Laughlin is just like many of us out there that grew up in a household that stressed the importance of education and its relevance to earnings power. In 2008, after seeing first-hand how people he knew had worked for 30-40 years were unable to retire because their retirement funds were wiped away, he knew there was something wrong with the narrative society had framed over the years. After becoming an accidental landlord, and succumbing to the “shiny object syndrome” a few times, he circled back and returned to real estate investing. Now he is transitioning into the multifamily space, where he attempted his first raise for a deal last year. Find out how Cody changed his mindset and how you too can do the same if you are willing to learn and grow.

After acquiring 20 rental properties, Venkat sought to quickly scale up his portfolio with multifamily syndication. Even though he had a lot of success in the single-family space, it was challenging for him to convince brokers in his target market to give him and his partner a chance at some apartment communities that were on the market. They shifted strategy and a few months later, took down their first 100 units, and 120 units immediately following their first deal. In this episode, Venkat shares with us tips on how new syndicators can get started and have brokers take them seriously. He also shares with us his reasoning behind vertically integrating his company and why you should consider it as well.

Joseph Bramante decided that if he were going to invest in real estate, he was going to go big or go home. People he knew were buying up single-family properties at rock-bottom prices and he wanted in on the action. The only thing was he wanted to buy 80 properties at once rather than buying one property at a time. After running into repeated roadblocks with lenders, there was one lender that suggested he simply by a multifamily apartment community instead. He purchased a 26-unit property, sight unseen, that seemed as though it was a home-run, or so he thought. Today, Joseph is the CEO of TriArc Real Estate Partners based in Houston, Texas where he is leading the company’s development and strategy for creating long-term investor value as they seek to acquire over 20,000 units in the next ten years.

Gary Lipsky is a real estate entrepreneur who focuses on multifamily syndication and currently has $17 million in assets under management. He is the managing partner and co-founder of APT Capital Group. Gary is the co-host of the weekly real estate podcast, Asset Management Fridays. Gary is also the co-organizer for the Virtual Asset Management Summit, which is going to be held between September 21st and October 4th, 2020. Head over to AMSummit2020 (dot)com to reserve your spot and have the opportunity to hear from the best in the industry on successfully managing your real estate assets.

Jim Biggs has been an entrepreneur for the larger part of his life after serving in the military. He is a Partner at Jiroma Enterprises, which is an apartment syndication group investing in real estate assets across the country. Jim is a powerhouse of knowledge and experience, having been in the business for more than 22 years, experienced many economic cycles and closed multiple deals. In this episode, Jim shares his key takeaways from a deal he went into contract in on December 25th, 2019. He walks us through five months of him and his team feverishly working to close the deal amidst uncertain and rapidly changing economic conditions. He goes into detail about his mindset on some of the critical variables that changed, including the business plan, property management company, lender and more. You don’t want to miss this one!

Having traded real estate loan portfolios in excess of $4 billion, Darin Batchelder is currently invested in 3,944 units as a limited partner and over 486 units as a key principal.  After learning about the positive impact of investing in multifamily real estate syndications has had on the lives of others, he quickly began to seek out active syndicators and invest with them.  In this episode, Darin shares with us how he went about identifying syndicators he wanted to invest with, his thought process when selecting some of his earlier deals, and his reasoning behind believing that having the right personnel at the property level, and partners are critical if you want to succeed in this business.