Over My Head - Apartment Complex

[John Alosio]

Hello BP community I am in a situation that I am looking for some advice on. A little background to start: I bought my first investment property 3 years ago. I currently hold 2 cash flowing duplexes. I am looking to scale the business in some way leveraging OPM. So I began my search for Private Money. In hopes of getting a hard money lender, or some private equity investors to trust me with a few dollars.. I recently approached an experienced RE investor (friend of a friend) asking for some guidance. He has been quite helpful with some minor issues. A few brief conversations, mostly giving some choice words of encouragement. Which surprisingly made a world of difference coming from someone who has been investing for as long as I’ve been alive. I brought up the idea of working together in some fashion. And I got a long period of silence. He replied “Find me an apartment complex” I’ve been set to a task that is largely beyond my realm of understanding. Having dealt with small dice so far; 2-family homes seem vastly different from a 40-plex. I know that MLS is easy for anyone to browse smaller residential. I understand the concept of how to pursue Off-market deals: Driving for dollars, yellow letters etc. But how does that translate into Large scale multis? Is loop.net similar to the MLS where deals are hard to come by? Is there such a thing as driving for dollars in the apartment complex world? Do I start calling a random building’s property management, asking to talk to the owner? I’m asking the wonderful folk on BP because my “mentor” is very tight lipped. He didn’t give me any details on what he’s looking for. It feels like a test. “Show me that you are worth my time/money.” Now I’m frozen. I’ve got this opportunity in front of me and I don’t know what to do with it. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you all in advance!

[Dennis Cosgrave]

I made the transition from triplexes to big multi-unit apartment buildings. It really was not that difficult. You need to build relationships with brokers who deal with those kind of properties. You also need a good real estate attorney that will dot the i's and cross the t's for you. The rest is just the same but on a bigger scale. I have to say that transiting to bigger properties actually made my life easier.  The buildings I owned had live-in managers who dealt with all the day to day stuff. Don't be intimidated by the numbers.