WS421: Finding Innovative Levers to Increase Deal Potential with Luke Leins and Matthew Green

Some say that multifamily has become a victim of its own success and it can seem like the better the deal, the harder it is to come by. Those in the multifamily space are arguably deal junkies, who put a great deal of time into finding deals. When working this way, scouring hundreds of deals, it can be easy to only look at big numbers, meaning that many deals will pass you by.

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In this hyper-competitive landscape, this is far from ideal. Our guests today, Luke Leins and Matthew Green offer some of the innovative levers that they use to increase deal potential. They believe in the power of ‘getting granular’ which means steering away from using the general rule of thumb calculations and getting into the nitty-gritty of the numbers of a deal when underwriting. They also share with us some other creative ways of lowering expenses and how they are currently using technology to optimize their operational expenditure. Through bringing the gig economy model into the world of multifamily, their company has piloted a platform that helps them decrease maintenance expenses and this is just the beginning! They also provide insights into the exciting future of technology and multifamily and some of the innovative changes that this will bring. For this and more, tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

  • Learn about the work that Matt and Luke are doing every day.
  • An explanation of what CAP rate compression is.
  • Discover some of the NOI levers that make a great deal for Matt and Luke.
  • Why using rules of thumb when underwriting deals are costing you money.
  • Insights into the app that Matt and Luke have been using to decrease the payroll burden.
  • The systems that are in place to ensure the information Matt and Luke access is accurate.
  • Renovation, additional income streams and streamlining expenses: items with great impact.
  • Learn about some of the underwriting tools that InvestRes uses.
  • How a commodity purchasing team has helped lower operating costs.
  • Breaking up SEO per market: an additional way to cut down on marketing expenses.
  • What Matt and Luke believe the future of technology and multifamily holds.
  • Discover how ResProp is preparing for the predicted downturn.

[bctt tweet=”The multifamily market is more or less a victim of its own success. — Matthew Green” username=”whitney_sewell”]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Luke Leins on LinkedIn

Luke Leins’s email — [email protected]

Matthew Green on LinkedIn

Matt Green’s email — [email protected].

ResProp

InvestRes

redIQ

Rolls-Royce

Rentgrata

UDR

Post Dallas

Peter Rex on LinkedIn

Nate Fisher on LinkedIn

Daniel French on LinkedIn

About Luke Leins and Matthew Green

Luke Leins is the Director of Business Development at InvestRes Real Estate. He was born in California and raised in Colorado. In 2011, he was awarded ‘Outstanding Graduate of 2011,’ a designation from the Colorado State University School of Business. Luke is both an Accredited Investment Fiduciary as well as a Certified Supply Chain Analyst. Before InvestRes, Luke scaled and built out a third-party multifamily platform for a top-four property management firm. He brings his prior entrepreneurial experience to every deal and is skilled at conveying the integration of technology to multifamily owners. In his personal life, Luke is an intrepid traveler having visited over 35 countries on 6 continents. Along with this, he is also involved in several non-profit organizations and philanthropies locally, believing that positive large-scale change happens at the individual level.

Matthew Green oversees InvestRes’s business footprint development, with a focus on Texas and the Southeastern United States. Before this, Matthew worked as the Associate Director of Acquisitions and Development at a Dallas-based multifamily investment firm. He also worked as an Analyst for a REIT with over $12B in assets. In total Matthew has overseen the acquisition of over 5000 apartment units and brings in-depth institutional real estate knowledge and a keen understanding of the deal cycle to InvestRes. Matthew holds a B.A. Colgate University as well as an M.B.A./M.S. Cornell University.

Full Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.1] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication show. I’m your host Whitney Sewell. Today, our guests are Luke Leins and Matthew Green, thanks for being on the show guys.

[0:00:34.5] LL: Thanks a lot Whitney, glad to be here.

[0:00:36.3] MG: Pleasure to be here.

[0:00:37.4] WS: Prior to ResProp, Luke scaled and built out a third-party multi-family platform for a top four property management firm. He’s also an accredited investment fiduciary and a CCI candidate member. Prior to ResProp, Matt worked as an associate director of acquisitions and development at a Dallas based multi-family investment firm and is also as an analyst for a REIT with over 12 billion dollars in assets, he’s overseeing the acquisition of over 5,000 apartment units.

Together they bring prior entrepreneurial experience and institutional real estate experience to every deal and are skilled at conveying the integration of technology to multi-family owners. Luke and Matt, thank you both so much for coming on the show and providing your expertise to the listeners and myself. Give us a little update or tell us who you are and what your focus is right now and let’s jump in to some of these great topics.

[0:01:35.1] MG: Sure. Well, the market right now, the multi-family market is more or less a victim of its own success. Most everyone to a tee, in the multi-family industry, to some degree is a deal junkie. I mean, it’s what makes us get up in the morning, it’s what makes us pour over hours and hours whether it’s over spreadsheets, whether it’s analyzing markets, whether it’s taking the time and getting our car and driving however many miles to the property and really get down in the weed. And they really, yeah, it’s a victim of its own success.

I mean, deals are very difficult to win right now. The better the deal, it seems the harder it is to win, especially in the Sun Belt markets in which you know, Luke and I both reside. We kind of saw the opportunity to as a service provider to provide in an environment where we can no longer take CAP rate compression for granted. Not saying it’s not going to happen, it generally does happen over time but it’s just right now, we think we might be at a point where it’s harder to come by.

Then, you have to ask the question, “What are the other levers you can pull to make a deal great, make a deal successful?” And the answer is, NOI. You do that at the property level. And that is what really, what was the quest when we sought out to answer where I found out and sought out the answer and what we’re doing every day now.

[0:02:51.3] WS: Awesome. I wanted to elaborate, I know some listeners are very experienced in this business and some are just getting started. You know, you mentioned CAP rate compression, we talked about that often on the show but if you could just briefly say okay, what that means?

[0:03:05.8] LL: Sure. Briefly, as everyone knows, you know, the CAP rate is the mother of all metrics that we use for how much money we’re going to make at least on the exit of the deal. You know, it’s the ratio of your property’s NOI to the sales price. You know, in a lot of primary markets, you know, New York and San Francisco, LA, it’s uncommon right now to see sub 4% CAP rates and obviously, it varies, you know? For different property sectors for industrial, for office, for multi-family, You’re going to see different CAP rates.

but in general right now, multi-family, it depends on the market but you know, here in Dallas for example, we’re starting to see a quality asset and a core asset you might see somewhere around 5% or even below. B and C assets which I know is the bread and butter of many of your listeners here and indeed it was ours for most as tech as well, it’s more common to see, well, you want to see it higher, six or 7%, you’re not always seeing that. I think that was one thing that led us. We’re seeing, you know, “This deal’s going to be successful if we assume a 6% or a 5.5% exit CAP rate in five years.”

Well, all of a sudden, we got ourselves not entirely comfortable with those. And so, you can’t always assume it’s going to go down. But basically, yeah, the lower the CAP rate, the more the market is willing to pay for the cash flows coming out of the property. If you’re entering into an era where there might be expansion, like a recession, that really, really increases the risk profile of any deals that you’re doing.

[0:04:38.0] WS: You know, you talked about other levers that you pull to make a deal great and you talked about okay, that’s the NOI and so what are some ways that you all are achieving greater NOI?

[0:04:49.2] LL: What Matt and I do at our company, you know, we’re kind of the acquisitions equivalent of the management company. Kind of our day to day is we work with clients and we really help them analyze deals and evaluate deals. We work with you know, large firms, we handle pension money down to small syndicators that might have 80 different equity sources for five-million-dollar equity check.

We’re working with a lot of different people. And really, what we’re doing is evaluating underwriting, evaluating opportunity and we’re always looking for you know, three or four good levers, three or four positive impacts to NOI. The first and most obvious is probably going to be renovation potential. Can we renovate this property? Are there renovation comps near?

If we invest $7,000 till we get $210 monthly return on that, it should be a great return. Or we’re in a market where you know, there’s an A property down the road that is getting only $120 more? We’re always looking for renovation potential. Other income growth, you know, valet, waste has come on strong. That’s always a fantastic other income item that cost between eight and $12 a month and you’re charging residents between 20 and $30 a month.

Layering in programs like that, one area we’re still seeing a lot of opportunity is utility reimbursements. Certainly not the sexiest income item but there are a lot of situations where you’re seeing a flat utility reimbursement of say, $30 when an 85% rubs program would get you your $85 a month, which doesn’t look like a lot, but when you’re talking about a five CAP, meaning, every hundred thousands of dollars of NOI gets you two million additional dollars of sales price, those little dollars and cents really add up.

And then, the area of where we’re really – I don’t want to say we’re heeding this area but we’re trying to be a great resource – a lot of underwriters, a lot of investment groups, they really start using rules of thumb when they’re underwriting deals which gets to be very dangerous.

You know, if you’re looking at a deal and you say, you know what? Payroll is typically 1,100 bucks and R&M is typically $300 and you’re just using rules of thumb, that’s fine and good when you’re running a deal. But you really need to get granular in the way you’re looking at these expense items.

Payroll, you know, are we in a heavy payroll market? What do we actually need to pay people to get them to come work on our site? That’s very important, you know? You look at maintenance staff. They make between 16 and $20 an hour in most markets so you’re looking at $20 an hour, it’s about $40 a year and you have to factor in that burden, you know, there might be a bonus attached, there’s going to be employee benefits, payroll taxes. Then you’re looking more at 55, $60,000 for that person.

We’re always very cognizant of payroll, we’re always very cognizant. You know, when underwrite deals, we kind of go GL line by GL line and we are very granular. And we’ve been really encouraging people in this hyper competitive market to do the same thing. Because you’re going to find opportunities that you wouldn’t otherwise see. Also going to recognize areas where you’re underwriting might not be completely accurate.

Really, our whole job is to work with vendors, work their clients, use the robust information sources we have and really provide the best information we can.

[0:07:48.0] WS: What are some ways, maybe through technology that you’ve been able to add more value?

[0:07:53.2] LL: Sure. One thing we’ve been looking at and this is something we’re awfully excited about is well like I mentioned earlier, you’re looking at a 200-unit property, you’re probably staffing out four people and the direct payroll might be $200,000. And then you have an additional almost hundred thousand dollars burden which is great but again, we’re looking to make these properties as efficient as we can.

One thing we’re looking at doing or we’re piloting a tech platform called get it done. What we’re essentially doing is we’re creating a gig economy in the maintenance side of the properties. We have, on a 300-unit property, we actually rented out property with one maintenance supervisor and for all of our work orders, we actually contracted those work orders up through this app.

Similar to how you’d see Uber on the contracted out. So, you’d type a unit turn, you type a work order into the app and you actually get real time pitch from vendors so you’re only paying for that labor on demand. We think that tech is really going to go far in multi-family. You know, it’s tough to staff multi-family is cyclical, you have more work orders in the summer and in winter months, you have more move out in the summer months and move-ins in summer months.

So, your payroll is never quite accurate so when you pull out some of your W2 labor and you factor back in 1099 contract labor, you’re only paying for labor as needed. That’s become a really great opportunity to decrease that payroll burden which again, if you can decrease your payroll burden by $100,000 on a property, again, when you go to sell that thing, that’s two million dollars and that’s pretty big.

[0:09:20.7] WS: That’s a big deal, yes, that’s a big deal. Very interesting. Then you hire them as needed instead of having somebody that’s full time or numerous people that’s full time?

[0:09:29.6] MG: I also might add that you know, think about this from a proportionality standpoint. This can benefit those who are getting off the ground and scaling their businesses the most because often, those are not the ones, you don’t even have enough units to have the means to pay for a professional management.

Really, this is really an answer to a lot of those, you know, who are really counting that every day and having built their own network of contractors and now you can do it as easy as having an app right there in your hands.

[0:09:56.5] WS: Nice. I wanted to touch back too on something you were saying, Luke, about you were talking about using rules of thumbs, it’s dangerous and you know, I liked how you all are talking about going more granular but you know, how are you finding the information and how do you know that it’s accurate?

[0:10:11.2] LL: We have a robust portfolio of both owned and managed properties. We have real time access to what we’re spending every day, every month on each one of these properties and typically, we have a couple of competing properties in the sub market that we can use for information. When we’re looking at a deal, we actually have – in the state of Florida, if I’m looking at payroll, I can actually go into a system and see what each one of our employees is making.

When I’m looking at a deal in Tampa or St. Pete, I know that we can probably get a maintenance tech for $17. If we’re in a different market, it might be $19. We’re able to get really granular there. When it comes to R&M, we have a very robust thunder network. I can reach out to vendors and I can say, “Hey, take a look at this property. What’s it going to cost to run landscaping here? What’s the pool contract and the cost? “

Then obviously, we have our robust spend so we can look at our R&M cost and competing properties, we have maintenance techs, we have maintenance supervisors, we can actually go out to properties on our behalf and on behalf of our clients and walk the property to see what R&M might look like. We have a robust human professionals and we’re all aligned to really help us underwrite these deals very accurately.

[0:11:16.4] WS: What about some other underwriting techniques that you all are implementing now. You know, I know everybody’s worried about where the market’s going and we’re going to talk about just the future of multi-family and what you all are looking at but what are some other underwriting techniques that you all have implemented with where we’re at in the market right now?

[0:11:33.1] LL: I always challenge people, I say, “See if you can make this deal work without underwriting any organic rent growth.” That just seems important to me because I do see a lot of guys leaning on rent growth, market rent growth. And I’m seeing guys underwriting maybe 7% for three years. If that’s where you’re leaning on to make your deal work, it concerns us. You know, we’re here to help. Can we find three or four things in this deal where we can make money, where we can increase NOI?

That might be a decreasing on some of the expenses like I said, that might be a reimbursement program. We’re going to walk around the parking lot and see if we can charge extra income or put car ports into sunny neighborhoods. We’ll see if we can get into another $35 for these car ports. Really, the goal is always, “Can we renovate a deal and make money. Can we add additional income items and make money? Can we streamline expenses?”

If you can hit two of those three things or three of those without underwriting any organic rent growth, well then, if the market grows, you just doing even better. That’s what we’ve really been pushing is really try to find those key smaller items that are going to have that impact.

[0:12:33.2] WS: Nice. I know listeners are wondering like, could you tell us what type of underwriting tool you use or maybe it’s one that you built yourself?

[0:12:41.0] LL: Sure, we’ve used a few different tools, we’ve actually moved in to the redIQ system so shout out to our friends over at redIQ. The reason being is we underwrite a lot of deals, you know. Every one of our clients were – the underwriting all of their deals, we have quite the workload. So redIQ is a great tool. We can dump things in the kicks out a model. Now, kicks out a very accurate model where if you have the accurate back-in data, we kick it in to categories and we just kick out the model. It’s worked out.

[0:13:08.9] WS: That’s awesome. We’ve also started using redIQ and just recently. There’s some learning curve there but I think it’s going to be great.

[0:13:15.7] LL: Yeah, it sure is. And then we also have a home built staffing template which a lot of our clients as I say, here’s a model, here’s a staffing model and then take this template because it has the burden built in, it has the bonuses built in and really, you know, it really helps guys to understand if you’re paying someone $20 an hour what that actually looks like as an all-in cost, that’s really important.

[0:13:35.0] WS: Any other ways that you know, you all are operating more efficiently or through management and you know, lowering operating costs that we haven’t talked about.

[0:13:43.0] LL: Yeah, you know, something we’ve done and we’re relatively unique here. We actually brought in a commodity purchasing team. We brought in three commodity purchasers. The gentleman that heads that team came from Rolls-Royce and he was buying jet engine parts for Rolls-Royce and so he was aggressively and proactively negotiating those costs.

We brought this team in and I know others may be doing something similar. And it’s a great practice, instead of taking in vendors as they come and as they find you, they’re actually going out and they’re finding vendors in each category and they’re having them aggressively bid against one another.

We actually I believe the cheapest prices in the country, I don’t want to say the vendor names. But with a few big vendors, the cheapest places in the country, not because we’re the largest, but because we put them head to head against that biggest competitors and said, “May the lowest number win.”

That’s been huge for us. It’s been a great cost saving technique. I’s really pushing every dollar we spend, that’s bang for our buck for that thought. Our marketing team is doing the same thing with all of our marketing capabilities. We actually just rolled out a program where we’re breaking our SEO welcome markets. Instead of paying for per click for a single property, the properties all pull their resources and actually clock in to the list of all properties in that single sub market.

That’s been able to shave quite a bit of marketing expense on a number of these properties while still having same marketing presence.

[0:14:58.8] WS: Tell me that again or elaborate a little bit on what you are talking about. I have never heard that before, breaking up SEO per markets.

[0:15:04.9] LL: So, the way it typically works is let’s say I’ll use St. Pete as an example again. Let’s say we have five properties in St. Pete. Each one of those properties is wanting their own Google SEO PPC campaign and if one of them is paying the full cost of that campaign. Now what we did is we built a landing page for all of our properties in each specific submarket and it is the same cost. So, when I Google St. Pete apartments instead of having apartment one, apartment two, apartment three, apartment four, apartment five, it is all of our properties.

And you click to a landing page and that displays all of the properties in that market. So that is a way – I mean effectively you are paying one fifth of what you otherwise would.

[0:15:39.6] WS: Very creative. I like that a lot and I know the future of multifamily seems to be changing. A lot of people are talking about what’s happening. I wanted to get your take on just what do you see in the market and what you see in the future.

[0:15:54.2] LL: Sure. So multifamily is and I think everyone agree that it is relatively stagnant industry. So we really see a lot of technology not just ours, a lot of technology coming out that can fundamentally transform the industry and the exciting part for investors is eventually it is going to change how you underwrite deals. Now you see on our side, the maintenance side we already talked about if you can underwrite understanding that contract-based, gig-based system.

You are going to say there is some money there. For us also seeing companies, I will use Rentgrata as an example. Rentgrata is a tool, they actually have on their property landing page they have a little icon where you can actually click and talk to an existing resident and the resident tells you about their experience on their property.

Now if you sign a lease that resident is getting that referral fee and that is pretty exciting to us. Now the next step of that is and I will say really quick, you are seeing companies like UDR actually centralizing some of the office roles property, which is far more efficient.

But then on the leasing side, if you can have a resident who is incentivized with the referral fee to bring people into the property and if they have a system built. Now imagine if the residents were able to tour perspective tenants on the property, take them into a mile or show them around and give them a true resident feel for the property to make a referral fee let’s also going to scale back your office cost and that again, that just changes everything.

You are eliminating W2 payroll and you are paying referral fees only when lease are signed, which you are already doing anyway and for both those reasons if there is one piece of advice I’ll leave you guys with this, when you are renovating properties think about using smart lots because our gig economy system, our get it done system is done much easier when someone can just type the code in to go do a work order.

And when it comes to eventually when residents are actually touring prospects, if they have a code they can type in that model that is a lot easier so smart logs is actually going to play a big piece in the future of multifamily because we are trying to create a gig economy. You know you are seeing companies like Post in Dallas, they are already centralizing their leasing office and submarkets. So, they have a single leasing center in uptown Dallas for all their properties that is an efficiency. That means that each one of those properties is running more and inexpensively.

And that is what we are looking to do so we are not the only ones doing it and I think there is going to be a suite of technologies here in the next year, two years that is going to fundamentally transform the way we look at deals. And that is really exciting to us.

[0:18:19.8] WS: What was that platform you mentioned that will allow a potential resident to talk to our current resident or message back and forth and then get a referral fee.

[0:18:27.8] LL: It is called Rentgrata. Shout out to Ben and Sam. They are based in Chicago. Really great company, Rentgrata. They have two ways of doing it but you actually pay per lease. So, you are paying them per lease signed to through their platform. You are paying the resident per lease that they help you sign, which is exactly what we are looking for. You know when you look at Uber, you are paying for a ride and we are doing the exact same thing.

We are paying for a work order. Eventually properties were paying for a lease with no leasing overhead. That is really exciting.

[0:18:56.4] WS: What has been the hardest part of the syndication process for you all?

[0:19:01.3] MG: Well, truth be told maybe it will be helpful to be able to get some history. So, our founder, Peter Rex, he is currently based in Seattle but they were based out on Tampa. He got a pretty hefty seed investment back of the beginning of this decade and it built that up into you know, what became a 17,000-unit portfolio. So, in terms of syndications, we as a company have had always had a core group of investors to go by to go back on.

With that said though, we really have been hitting the pavement and really our day to day really getting down in the trenches and building up client list has actually been on the when we started made the decision to start to invest it on a third-party basis in terms of the management company. So I mean Whitney I assume when you asked that question you are going in the direction of like what is the biggest aspect of our hustle, right?

[0:19:56.5] WS: Yeah. Yeah sure.

[0:19:57.5] MG: Okay. Yeah and what I would say is we had great internal systems, great internal processes, great internal support staff, wonderful property-level teams, which enabled us with InvestRes, you know most of the past decade here in the top quartile, quarter in, quarter out and in the frequent rankings. And then we decided to put the brakes on being an acquisition shop and just see what happens with the economy in the next couple of years.

But you know you have these great property-level teams. You want to keep them in house and be able to offer FPNA, accounting, human resources, all of the great departments we have within ResProp drop start to be able to offer those institutional quality to help smaller syndicators as they are building and scaling their business. And you know we had a good reputation in Texas and Florida but that does not translate to building up a portfolio on a third-party basis.

So, we came in and that is our basic value-add proposition like we have the institutional quality systems and departments and support structure in house for you. But at the same time, you have to be able to strike and identify deals that are going to transact because most as you know, I mean most multifamily owners and operators are not looking as much as a property manager every day.

It is either from the get go, you know when the deal gets off the ground when it is acquired. Or if the deal gets in trouble at some point down the road and at this point in the economy, we are not seeing too many deals going to get in trouble. But the ones that we are seeing from within that perspective are ones that are truly mismanaged and then you do see opportunity but for the most part it has been a lot of networking, a lot of going to conferences. Tens of thousands of phone calls. And so yeah, I mean it really just has been the day to day grind of not knowing where the next deal is going to come from and we are still doing that every day.

[0:21:50.1] WS: Nice and I know we talked about it briefly but maybe you can just give us a couple of pointers on how you are preparing for this potential downturn that everybody is talking about.

[0:21:59.9] LL: Yeah, you know what we are looking for is does the property have and again, going back to challenge as a syndicator is often you are looking at investors and that investor is saying, “Well what happens if the market does turn?” and so you always want to have some level of hedge and place for that so that is why we look for like Matt mentioned, there are still a lot of properties out there are run kind of we say we use the mom and pop term.

We look for those mom and pop capacity terms that means that you are going to be able to I’ll say professionalize every aspect of that business and again, we are talking about those three or four things. If you have three or four things that make the deal work, three or four things that are going to increase your NOI, then the downturn doesn’t hurt so much because you are really relying on one thing. Well we often see guys who are really relying on just that renovation.

They are saying, “I am going to put in $7,000 and as a rule, I am going to get 28 or 30% ROI on this.” Well, that renovation might be on the market where you have a lot of properties renovating, which is going to create almost another lease-off type scenario, lease-off competition scenario where everyone is trying to fill those renovated units. So as great as renovation returns are and that is what most of us are looking to do is fix properties up and refresh them.

You know a big part of it is also make sure you have one or two other things. Also make sure you can increase other income. Also make sure you can make expense a little better, make sure there are three things. And again, if you are not underwriting organic rent growth and you are still able to make your deal work, well then if there isn’t an organic rent growth or even negative you are going to do okay.

[0:23:29.1] WS: So, a few more questions before we run out of time but what is a way that you all have recently improved your business that we could apply to ours?

[0:23:35.9] LL: Yes, so we just recently, again, we have been actively seeking out vendors. We just recently overhauled all of our systems. So we were using one of the larger property management softwares. We squished to a new software, a smaller software called ResMan the reason being they have open API feeds, which is getting a little techy. What that enables us to do is that enables us to choose every vendor. 

So, we’re not locked into a specific CRM, we are not locked into a specific purchasing software. We can use whatever the best and most recent technology is, we can now plug that into our system. So, you know we have really tuned ourselves and switching over all of your software at once is obviously very painful but it worked out great because now as we are very tech forward, we believe in tech companies.

As these technologies come out we built an entire property management system. Around being able to adopt those technologies quickly. So, we are really trying to position ourselves as a pioneer. So, when a new technology comes on, we can just build an API pathway into our systems and integrate it. So that has been really exciting and that was a big investment for us. I mean it just really shows that we are very much believers of the technological future of this industry.

[0:24:45.2] WS: Yeah, so guys tell me the one thing that has contributed to your success.

[0:24:49.6] LL: Sure, yeah. The big thing obviously for Matt and me is helping guys understand what realistic expectations are in properties. And actually one of my favorite things to do and I will probably get in trouble for saying this is I love telling guys when I don’t like a deal. Because there are a lot of deals out there that maybe aren’t the right deal and so the toughest thing for an investor is to know when to say no to a deal and something I love doing is helping guys understand whether or not the deal is good.

So, one of my favorite things about my job is telling guys when deals doesn’t make sense to us as a manager, which likely means that it is probably shouldn’t make sense to them as an investor. Beyond that you know we have a great robust operating team and you know something that has been so important to us is just open lines of communication between our property management teams and our ownership groups. We love meetings, we have weekly by weekly meetings.

And those open lines of communication are so beneficial. So, as an investor, even if you’re a one man shop don’t just let your property be run. Don’t just let us run your property, we are great at it but we want to hear from you. We want to hear your expectations, we want to hear your feedback on decisions, your ideas because when we work together that is when our properties perform best.

[0:25:55.0] MG: Yeah and I would also just add to that and just say like having acquisitions backgrounds and having done this, we understand that what we are reporting to them like they are reporting to their investors too. So, it is always especially from a property management perspective basically like give them everything that they are going to need to have that same kind of upfront communication, no holds barred everything up front with their investors and that is what they really appreciate.

It goes along hand in hand with communication, you know open lines and being upfront 100% communication before the deal, during the deal and answer when in doubt as well.

[0:26:30.6] WS: Awesome and last question before we have to go, how do you all like to give back?

[0:26:34.5] MG: So, this is actually been a center part of the ethos and the practices of our company since the very beginning. I can tell you that. In 2010, we were founded in Tampa, Florida. Peter Rex and Nate Fisher and Peter Rex’s brother and Dan French, they were the four main guys early on. By 2016 in Tampa, they have helped established a Catholic Christian preschool, I believe and they also had a partnership with a local high school increased the rate to actually bring youth into and have high school internships and working at the office for underprivileged youth. That is just one example.

But I will say that as a company, one of the things that attracted me to come here in the first place was the high level sense of obligation to give back whether that is in a business sense and help Whitney, to just like you do essentially because what we are doing is helping to mentor new and give advice to new syndicators into the business that and then also on the non-profit side as well.

[0:27:35.7] WS: Very nice and then what does it look for some – I know the listeners are probably wondering too what does it look like for them to work with somebody like yourself or run a deal by you all?

[0:27:44.9] LL: You know Matt and I more than anything we just love talking real estate so you know there is no one we don’t want to talk to about a deal because our jobs is to talk about deals. So you know as far as reaching out, it doesn’t matter the deal, it doesn’t matter the market to shoot us an email or a phone call and really, we look at the deal, we look at the OM financials and we really just have a conversation, you know shoot the breeze over the deal.

[0:28:06.1] WS: Nice and how can people get in touch with you all?

[0:28:08.7] LL: Email is probably the best. My email is [email protected] and Matt’s email is [email protected].

[0:28:21.0] MG: Yeah, M Green like the color, yeah.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:28:24.4] WS: Don’t go yet, thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show.

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[OUTRO]

[0:29:04.6] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge CAPital. Life Bridge CAPital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge CAPital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCAPital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]

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