Street Smart Success

As deals have gotten harder to find over the past several years, you have to find solvable problems in order to make deals that pencil. Finding these deals and having relentless focus on operations is required in today’s marketplace.   This focus on the nuts and bolt of operations mitigates risk. Further risk is mitigated by in-house management to make sure no corners are cut, expenses are managed...

One asset class that still has great deals on sub-institutional properties is Mobile Home Parks. Although larger parks near major metros are being acquired by REITs, Private Equity, and other institutions, parks with fewer than 100 sites are still being acquired by smaller investors with less competition. Smaller parks, mostly in tertiary markets, can offer great buying opportunities with value-ad...

It’s hard to time the bottom of a market but real signs of distress are starting to appear in multifamily. Because of financing issues in addition to operational challenges, the market is starting to see forced sellers with lower prices. It’s once again becoming possible to acquire properties with positive leverage and potential upside over the next couple years as new inventory gets absorbed, occ...

In a world where there’s so much money available to finance private Real Estate, there’s no need to employ your own capital as an investor. With creative deal structuring that solves other’s problems, you won’t need to come out of pocket to do deals, and you won’t need to deal with impersonal banks or other financial institutions. There are thousands of private investors and other sources of capit...

Many investors over the years have built portfolios of single-family rentals that have ultimately enabled them to quit their jobs and build legacy income for their families. Single family homes in the right neighborhoods can always attract good renters and some stay for many years with not a lot of management required. Dustin Heiner, Founder of Master Passive Income, has built a portfolio of singl...

Alternative assets are getting a greater share of investor allocations as they seek higher yields and less volatility. Pension funds, endowments and other large institutions are directing more dollars to these assets in order to increase overall yields in their portfolios and to hit mandated returns. Kim Flynn, President of XA Investments and a Harvard MBA, specializes in Private Credit funds, som...

The hardest part of Real Estate investing is finding the right deals, but there are great deals in any market. Someone always has to sell; you just have to be able to identify the opportunity when you see it. In order to do this, you need to stay in the market at all times. Jeff Greenberg, Principal of Heritage Capital Management, has been investing across several asset classes for over three deca...

Currently, there are great deals being sold by developers on newly constructed properties at below construction cost. As institutions have been on the sidelines, this is a once in a decade to fifteen-year opportunity. In the right submarkets with job and population growth, rents will continue to escalate and Multifamily will continue to see a supply/demand imbalance for the foreseeable future. New...

Nothing pays off like geographic focus and vertical integration, especially with multifamily. Multifamily is a block-to-block business where things can change quickly within a short distance. When managing or owning apartment complexes, a tight geographic focus contributes immensely to profitability, especially with smaller buildings. AJ Shepard, Owner of Uptown Properties in Portland, Oregon, has...

Knowing how to buy right is the key to not losing money. When you paid the right price in the first place, you can better weather mistakes and sustain unaccounted for market conditions. One of the ways to achieve this is to buy off-market, direct-to-seller deals from ma and pa sellers. Whether you’re buying single family homes or commercial properties, direct-to-seller deals are the way to avoid o...

If you’ve been looking to make passive investments in hard assets but are finding it difficult to get the returns you’d expect, there are other great vehicles that can generate 10 % or higher with conservative risk. Business loans made to well-run, established and profitable businesses that are not served by traditional banks or other sources can provide an attractive risk adjusted yield. Jamie Sh...

The best ideas are simple. For example, creating a national coffee chain like Starbucks, or an alternative to taxis, like Uber, or Airbnb, etc. Joseph Woodbury, CEO of Neighbor.com, connects homeowners and businesses that have unused space to people who need to store cars or other storage items. Now people can find homeowners in their town where they can park their car, boat or RV. Neighbor.com ha...

Starting a Multifamily brokerage from scratch can be a steep undertaking. It takes time to build awareness, and to get known in a market in order to hire the right agents and obtain property listings and clients. As the current environment is seeing agents leave the market, however, there’s opportunity to gain traction in starting a brokerage business. By adhering to basic sales and marketing disc...

Despite the desire for short-term gains, the predicable wealth in Real Estate is built over the long term with quality assets and strong operators. In multifamily markets where employment and population trends are favorable, rents will continue to grow and the value of properties will increase substantially, especially in supply-constrained markets. Keith Wasserman, co-founder of Gelt Inc., buys p...

Single family homes in the U.S. are the largest asset class in the world at $37 trillion dollars. This is why the largest financial institutions on Wall Street have been increasing their investments in this lucrative asset class. There are many ways to make money in single families from flipping, to buying and holding, to lending against them. Jim Manning, CEO of Doorway Properties, started out fi...

In an environment where it’s difficult to achieve significant cash flow with direct equity investments in Real Estate, investing in the debt can be an attractive option with much more liquidity.  Investing in debt can have less risk and generate yields as high as 9%-11%, and sometimes even higher, with the assets as collateral. Carrie Cook, President of Ignite Funding, makes investing in Real Esta...

Most of the problems in commercial Real Estate right now are related to debt. In addition to evaluating the General Partner, debt is the most important aspect of a deal. James Eng, “The Professor” of multifamily financing, is the National Director at Old Capital in Dallas. James has helped hundreds of multifamily investors strategize the right debt to obtain and acquire over $1 Billion dollars of...

Making money in Real Estate requires timing and being able to see what others don’t. Just a few years ago, retail was written off for dead because of e-commerce and Amazon. More recently, office has become a hated asset class because of the work-from-home trend and the problems of urban cores and central business districts across the country. Neighborhood retail, however, has the highest occupancy...

Both residential and commercial Real Estate occupancy rates and rents are contracting in many markets in combination with higher expenses. When investing in the right part of the cycle, however, Real Estate can generate attractive cash flow. Aside from Real Estate, there are other great cash-flowing businesses that can scale efficiently and generate consistent, high double-digit returns. Justin Sl...

Real Estate is a block-to-block business where an intimate lack of local knowledge can be costly. It’s critical to know the nuances of a submarket and the different neighborhoods to mitigate risk. Eddie Ring, Founder and CEO of New Standard Equities, only buys in markets he knows like the back of his hand. Eddie specializes in value-add multifamily on the West Coast and has generated 29% IRR’s and...

In the world of multifamily, 80% of total units are in buildings with fewer than 50 units. This represents a big opportunity for buyers, because these buildings are mostly too large for most smaller operators to acquire, and too small for institutional buyers. Ray Heimann, Managing Director of Terra Capital, specializes in acquiring properties in this smaller range. These buildings are mostly olde...

Although the multifamily market has seen huge headwinds, the competition for buying these assets remains fierce. Even in this market, there is still lots of competition, but Lee has managed to find great value-add properties that perform well and generate great returns for his investors. There are still markets experiencing rent growth, and the long-term prognosis for multifamily remains strong as...

You don’t need to be a direct operator of Real Estate to get a great return on your money. You can invest in the secondary mortgage market and get a 12% return with conservative leverage against single family homes. Nic DeAngelo, President of Saint Investment Group, invests in pools of mostly non-performing single-family notes at a discount and a conservative loan-to-value. Nic works with borrower...

Getting high returns is very difficult in Real Estate investing, largely because there are too many people chasing the same deals and sellers want a lot for their properties. If you’re willing to invest in projects that are off most people’s radar, however, there are great deals that can generate double digit cash flow. Mike Holdwick, Co-Founder of Pro Team Commercial, identifies non-residential v...

Single family homes in U.S are the largest asset class in the world at $43 Trillion. Many investors have made a fortune investing in single family homes over the decades, and large institutions have been aggregating single family portfolios over the past dozen years. One sector of the market that has unique appeal is homes in the best school districts in the best zip codes. There are very few home...