Street Smart Success

Despite the common convention, you can buy homes without cash or banks. You can use seller financing, subject-to existing loans, or lease purchases, allowing you to control properties without personal guarantees or large down payments. There are many reasons sellers will sell on these terms, among them because they can command a price they didn’t get on the open market, they don’t want to pay fees, and other reasons. Chris Prefontaine, Chairman and Founder of the Smart Real Estate Coach company, coaches students how to acquire houses with creative financing. Chris is a four-time best-selling author of "Real Estate On Your Terms," a Forbes Business Council Member, and hosts a top 0.5% podcast.

When it comes to Real Estate investing, you can be a borrower, or you can be a lender. When you’re the lender, you get monthly payments without having to manage the properties, and you can generate the same or higher returns. There’s a secondary market for buying loans from original note holders at a discount. Fred Moskowitz, Fund Manager and Investor, quit his job in 2015 to become a full-time note investor and has turned it into a great business. Fred is an Alternative Investment Expert and the Author of The Little Green Book of note investing.

Over the past few decades, there’s been a trend towards renting apartments versus home ownership, especially in the past five years. Home ownership has grown increasingly out of reach, and apartment amenities and living spaces have improved dramatically. Additionally, people are becoming more reluctant to make long-term commitments to any given location and want to avoid the responsibility of owning a home. Mike Kron, COO of Management Support, has been developing and acquiring apartments for several decades. Since 2024, Mike has been raising a fund which is acquiring Single Tenant Net Lease properties with national credit Fortune 350 tenants.  

Because of increased regulations that have resulted in tighter lending standards, banks aren’t making a lot of smaller loans against properties that aren’t stabilized. This has created a sizeable gap in the market for “Micro balance” short-term bridge loans to operators borrowing $200,000 - $1,500,000 with value-add business plans, especially in secondary and tertiary markets. Brock Freeman, Managing Partner and COO of Kirkland Capital Group, provides loans to this segment of the market where there’s far less competition, and therefore better returns for investors.

As word got out about Mobile Home Parks over the past five+ years, many new players emerged in the space. The fundamentals were appealing, but many underestimated the capital expenditures required and the multitude of operational challenges. Mobile Home Parks can be lucrative, but there are a ton of nuances and speed bumps on the way to stabilization. As many of these players have been unable to achieve their business plans, they’re starting to exit their properties. Pasha Esfandiary, Managing Partner and CEO of Evoke Capital, is acquiring parks from these sellers and completing their value-add plans and achieving operational maximization.

Ecommerce has plateaued at 16% of total retail sales. Concurrently, the cost of land, borrowing, and construction has made it prohibitive to build new neighborhood retail centers. As a result, occupancy at existing properties in many markets is in the mid-high 90’s and sometimes even 100%. There’s a huge demand for space from restaurants, yoga and Pilates studios, gyms, massage clinics, plus other medical providers like dentists, chiropractors and joint clinics.  Todd Nepola, President of Current Capital Real Estate Group, has been buying retail centers in South Florida for 25 years and has generated great wealth for investors. 

It’s easy to oversimplify multifamily operations, and to make assumptions about how a property will perform. Countless nuances and details impact property performance, some are controllable, others aren’t. Many operators get this wrong, and it costs them dearly. There are hundreds of details that impact how financially successful a property will be. Stacey Hampton, Founder of Asset NOI Consulting, helps multifamily owners achieve greater financial prosperity through evaluating acquisitions and consulting on operations. Stacey helps her clients enhance NOI through increased revenue, lower expenses, and overall optimization.

In some markets, you can buy suburban office property for as low as $10/ft where it costs $200/ft to build. What’s more, you don’t have to find off-market deals, they’re listed publicly on LoopNet, Crexi, and other prominent sites. As workers have moved to the suburbs and left downtown offices, they’ve chosen to work closer to home. Suburban buildings with one to three person offices in particular are seeing strong tenant demand. As a result, many suburban office buildings are at 90% occupancy.  Ash Patel, a successful discount Value-Add investor, invests in office buildings, flex Industrial, strip retail, and ground up construction. Ash doubles his money on most deals in three to five years. 

In order for a larger multifamily dwelling to perform at its peak, it needs the right leasing personnel and the right maintenance team. The leasing agent creates the first impression of the property and influences the prospective tenant decision to rent at the property. This can make or break the deal out of the gate. On the maintenance side, an ornery repairman can alienate existing tenants and cause them to leave. Andrew Cushman, Founder and Principal of Vantage Point Acquisitions, operates a portfolio of multifamily assets in the Southeast. Andrew has prioritized working hard to optimize daily operations in order to achieve maximum performance of his existing assets.

Most real estate classes require a lot of hands-on daily management that makes or breaks the success of the investments. Nowhere is this more true than multifamily apartment communities. When you’re dealing with tenants 24/7, there’s always things that need prompt attention.  Ryan Weiss, Principal Broker and Managing Partner at Blue Door Living, has gone from managing 40 units to over 700 units in the past five years and has gotten his clients by word-of-mouth. Ryan is based in Manchester, New Hampshire, an under-supplied market an hour north of Boston. New Hampshire is growing as transplants move there from more expensive Northeastern cities.