Why I’m De-Emphasizing Multifamily, and What I’m Investing In Instead

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Multifamily properties make up the bread and butter of real estate syndications (group real estate investments). 

In particular, most syndications available to non-accredited investors are multifamily. A guiding principle in our Co-Investing Club is inclusivity for non-accredited investors, not just wealthy investors—and I can tell you firsthand how hard it is to find reputable syndicators who allow non-accredited investors in deals outside multifamily. 

Don’t get me wrong; they’re out there. We’ve invested in plenty of non-multifamily deals. And we intend to invest in proportionally fewer multifamily deals moving forward. 

I won’t sugarcoat it: I’ve grown increasingly wary of multifamily. Our investing club meets every month to vet different passive real estate deals, and I’ve started going out of my way to propose more “alternative” types of property or investment partnerships. 

Here’s why.

Regulatory Risk

Tenant-friendly states and cities have continued ratcheting up regulations against owners over the last five years. 

Take New York State, for example, which earlier this year passed a “good cause eviction” regulation. It not only enacted rent stabilization rules, but also requires landlords to renew all leases unless the renter has violated it. So when a property owner signs a lease, they no longer know whether they’re committing to the unit for a single year or 10. 

New York is hardly alone, either. California and several other tenant-friendly states have done likewise over the last decade. 

States enacting laws that fit their politics doesn’t bother me. That’s how our federalist model of government works. I don’t have to invest in those states. 

But federal laws are another matter entirely. 

Federal regulation and growing political appetite

What worries me is that the political appetite for multifamily regulation has increased—not just in tenant-friendly states but nationwide. The Biden-Harris Housing Plan announced in July calls for federal rent stabilization, with a 5% annual rent cap. 

I have no fear that it will actually pass this year. That’s not the point. The point is that the now-Harris campaign thinks that it’s popular enough to use as a political rallying cry. 

Ten years ago, this kind of federal legislation would have been inconceivable. Today, a major political party has confidence that it’s a winning campaign issue—and that confidence is probably backed by polling. 

That scares me. What will the regulatory landscape look like 10 years from now?

You and I can disagree over the specifics as we prognosticate, but we can probably agree on the direction in which multifamily regulation is heading.

The Fall of Big-Brand Syndicators

The last two years have not been kind to multifamily (more on that momentarily). But in that fallout, it’s become harder to trust multifamily sponsors based on their reputation and track record. 

The two worst multifamily deals I’ve invested in were with sponsors boasting huge brand names. They had sterling track records and reputations. Before investing with them, I did what you were supposed to do: I asked around among experienced multifamily investors. Everyone gave them glowing reviews. 

Then interest rates skyrocketed, cap rates expanded, rents flatlined, and labor and insurance costs leaped. 

Warren Buffett famously said, “Only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked.” That’s certainly true—and it turns out many of the biggest names in the industry had been skinny-dipping. 

These “adverse market conditions” have separated the wheat from the chaff in the multifamily space. To undermine everything I just said, it’s actually starting to get easier again to evaluate sponsors based on how they’ve performed over the last two years. 

Even so, the last two years have demonstrated that it’s not always easy or straightforward to vet sponsors. 

Other Challenges in Multifamily

All those adverse market conditions I mentioned? They’re still happening. 

Interest rates remain high, and rent growth has slowed and even turned negative in some markets. Expenses have grown sharply, pinching cash flow on multifamily properties. 

Because multifamily construction takes so long, projects that were green-lit several years ago—under opposite market conditions—are just now coming on the market as vacant units. Many housing markets have been flooded with new inventory and are struggling to absorb it. 

Several markets in Texas and Florida come to mind, as does Phoenix. Again, that’s made it hard for multifamily operators to cash flow. 

Housing activists love to lament that “the rent is too damn high.” That’s not the case in these markets. 

What Are We Looking At Instead?

Don’t get me wrong: We still sometimes look at multifamily syndications in our Co-Investing Club. But when we do, we often like to work with smaller operators who aren’t interested in building a huge brand name or are trying to sell online courses or teach people how to syndicate real estate. They focus exclusively on finding good deals and operating them efficiently. Hard stop. 

Increasingly, however, I’ve been looking to diversify away from multifamily. I don’t love the regulatory risk, and if you worry about some type of crisis hitting the US in the coming years, that regulatory risk takes on more urgency. 

I’ve been looking at the following investments to diversify and reduce or eliminate regulatory risk. 

Mobile home parks with tenant-owned homes

Moving a mobile home costs a lot of money. When people own their own mobile home and merely rent the lot, it’s far cheaper for them to pay the rent than move their home. 

In many states, it’s also easier to evict a nonpaying renter from a mobile home lot than it is from a residential unit. 

We’ve invested in five mobile home parks in our Co-Investing Club, and they’re all performing great. 

Retail and industrial

Commercial tenants—businesses—don’t have the same legal rights as residential tenants. Plus, many commercial tenants have customized the space exactly to their needs. They’ve invested a lot of money into the unit, so nonpayment only happens in the most dire circumstances.

The retail and industrial properties we’ve invested in, while few, have performed well. 

Land

I love land investing. You don’t have to worry about many of the risks of multifamily such as repairs, renovations, regulations, contractors, housing inspectors, or property managers. Or tenants. 

Some land investors simply flip parcels, buying them at a discount and selling them at full market value. Others offer installment contracts, where the buyer pays them off over five years or so. 

Because they don’t take legal ownership until they’ve paid off the lot in full, the land investor doesn’t have to foreclose. They simply retract the defaulting renter’s right to use the land. And then they get to sell it all over again for full price. 

To date, our Co-Investing Club has only lent money to land investors (which has gone well). We’re currently talking to several of the largest land investors in the country about partnerships, however. 

Flip partnerships

This month, we’ll be entering a private partnership with a small house-flipping company. We’ll provide the bulk of the funding; they do all the work of flipping the house; we split the profit. 

“Isn’t flipping risky?”

As a single deal? Yes, some flips lose money. As a business? It’s just a numbers game. This particular company has a 93% win rate on their flips, and they do 60 to 70 a year. 

We’ve worked with this company before, and love what they’re doing. The owner not only offers a “return floor” of 6% in the event this flip doesn’t go to plan—he backs it with a personal and corporate guarantee. 

Spec homes

Over the next couple of months, we’re planning to invest with another company that builds individual spec homes to sell at a steep profit. This company buys a dilapidated home on a large lot, demolishes it, and builds two to three new homes on the lot. The local housing authority loves it, as a way to add housing supply. 

Our partnership with them will look similar to the partnership with the flipping company. The owner will sign a guarantee for a minimum return, even if the partnered project loses money. 

One thing I love about both these partnerships is that they’re short-term investments. We don’t have to commit our money for years on end—we’ll get it back within 12 to 16 months in the case of spec homes and four to six months in the case of flips. 

Secured notes and debt funds

While our passive investing club typically looks for 15% or higher annualized returns on our equity investments, we accept 10% to 12% returns on fixed-interest debt investments—if the risk is low, that is. 

I mentioned that we lent money to a land investor. That’s a short-term investment, a year or less, paying 11% interest. The investor bought a 500-acre ranch and is simply subdividing it into smaller ranches with 10 to 50 acres apiece. 

There’s no construction, no contractors, no tenants, and no inspectors. The sponsor already did a perc test, knows the utility access, and confirmed with the local housing authority that the ranch can be subdivided. They’ve used this business model many times over. 

The only risk is that the economy crashes into such a terrible recession within the next year that the price of ranch land drops. 

Is it risk-free? No. But the risk is pretty low, and the returns are solid. These types of asymmetric returns are exactly what we like to see. 

We also invested in a note with the flipping company I mentioned at 10% annual interest. The kicker: Any of us can terminate our note at any time with six months’ notice. It’s backed by a lien under 50% loan-to-value ratio. 

Final Thoughts

I hated being a landlord in Baltimore, with its extreme regulation and anti-landlord atmosphere. While I’m no longer a landlord, my wariness around rental regulation has lingered. 

I’m also sick of the anti-landlord rhetoric. People love to hate landlords, making them an easy political scapegoat for regulation. 

With so many other ways to invest in real estate—even residential real estate—multifamily just seems to come with higher risk than many of the alternatives. 

How often do you see multifamily sponsors offer a personal guarantee on a return floor? Almost never, but I can find private investment teams willing to make them. 

That’s my mission: to find that sweet spot of investment partners big enough to consistently earn high returns with low risk, but who are small enough to still be interested in partnering with our investment club. 

It’s a fun way to invest, going in on these partnerships with a group of other investors. And because we all go in on them together, we can each invest $5,000 at a time while keeping the collective investment high enough to attract these partners.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.