I just built a 36 unit apartment complex.

[George Yu]

Hey guys my name is George Yu and I love passive real estate. The idea of investing into something and then collecting mailbox money whether you feel like working or not is like having your own golden chicken as long as you take care of it. I bought my first single family home in 2011 while I was a freshman in college for $32,000 move in ready from my uncle and it has been consistently rented out since for about $650/month. Fast forward till now, I have a total of 6 single family rental properties....and now a 36 unit apartment complex. Maybe your asking how did he go from single to constructing 36 units. Honestly it wasn't that easy or quick lol.

My last single family purchase was in 2017 so I had been roughly buying one property a year. While the income was great and I was making passively per year what an average American makes actively. I was searching for more. Enter: Grant Cardone. I love Grant and his high energy. He really had me sold on the "single door is death" mindset since late 2017 so around that time I made up my mind that no longer was I going to buy these "measly" single family home that afforded me my relaxed living up until that point. I was going to be a Multi Family Syndicator!! Well that would have been the case but none of the deals I could find excited me. I couldn't find anything over a true 6 cap (once I dug behind the brokers inflated numbers). I get the concept of more doors under one roof and management but I was collecting around 15-18% cash on cash from my single family. I didn’t expect 15% returns but I just thought that 6% was too low.

Now I am a salesman and I like to sell people what they want. My day to day work since 2012 was in product manufacturing and importing. I can speak fluent mandarin and everyone knows China is where everything is made. I started importing and selling anything that made a profit while in school. I didn't do too bad. I guess well enough to quit pharmacy school in mid application my senior year of undergraduate at University of Georgia. I was projected to make about 80k a year when finished with school and I was making over that working on my own. Didn't make sense to go into debt and another 3-4 years of school. Around 2015 I had began experimenting in developing my own product because everyone was selling on amazon by this time and margins were slim as a private label guy. I had to invent my own product to stay ahead. Well what to invent?? No idea. Not until I found myself in a cockpit of a 1969 Piper Cherokee 140 with my flight instructor coming down from a cross wind landing when I saw a windsock and had a bright idea. What if I could create a product that that inflated with just the wind and created a lounging device or even an air mattress? WindPouch was born. We a had a couple viral youtube videos one by Casey Neistat that really opened up a world of craziness for the next 16 months. We went from 0 in sales to a little over 4 million in revenue before being acquired in 2018 but not before getting a call to pitch on ABC's Shark Tank and landing a deal with Mark Cuban himself (the episode never aired unfortunately). That’s a crazy story for another time.

Back to being a salesman. I took a step back during that 2017-2018 time and figured if everyone is fighting over these 6 cap deals and buying them up before I could even get my hands on one then if I could build something better than a 6 cap with these low interest rates then i'm pretty sure I could just sell them back to the investors and do it again. Or rent it out for cashflow...or both. I didn't have a clue about new construction until I met my now partner Jeremiah. By random chance I was talking to a friend about my ambitions to build new product specifically for workforce/affordable tenants. I like staying in the NEED category rather than the WANT when it comes to living arrangements. There’s plenty of money building for WANT these days anyways. You see them coming up in every big city and Atlanta is no different. Literally we have 10+ high rises coming up at the same time while there is vacancy in the completed ones right next door! Bubble? I have no idea and wont to pretend I have an idea about how to time market cycles. What I do have an idea of is that there is a great NEED in affordable housing everywhere we look. My friend met a guy in his hometown that was an entrepreneur like us but decade older and had been building for about 15 years...and he was also building affordable housing. One phone call later I was in my car driving 4 hours away to meet him and see his products. I was hooked. Simple and yet much needed. He was focusing on the forgotten tenants. The ones that no one is building for. Most make minimum wage and are either divorced, widowed, elderly or post graduates just not wanting to move back in with mom and dad while looking for a job. Most product if you could find any in that price range were dilapidated. Often the poor insulation could cause the electricity to cost almost as much as the rent itself. We are building for them. I know what you are thinking. Section 8? Are they good tenants? Do they tear up your place? Here to report that so far so good. We build market rate so no government subsidies and we don't take section 8 vouchers. We just don't think the government's help is needed here at this time. Pure capitalism should drive this.

Jeremiah was just finishing up another one of his developments and he had located a piece of land where another potential development could go and he wanted help taking it on and then taking this long term and eventually nationwide. It was in that moment we agreed to partner up. From the beginning I was there on every phone call, email, variance/zoning/permitting meeting, numerous investor/bank meeting, contractor/subcontractor meeting, code enforcement and closely watching money from our million plus dollar loan account slowly being drawn out every week from contractors and subs. It wasn't a walk in the park by any means and we had our share of surprises. We got hit with substantial impact fees from the city, local cable/internet company screwed us over, few raining weeks slowed us down a little and of course a fair share of contractor issues. But overall it was a surreal experience to see the land transform from trees to completely built out with our first tenants moved in. We have set a goal for 2020 to build another 200 units spread over 4 cities in our home state of Georgia. We have empty lots selected in 3/4 of those cities. We have already had meetings with city officials, investors and land owners.

The point of this long post was to give people an idea of my journey as someone with little to no experience being able to take part in a multifamily development by believing you can, teaming up with right people, having a willingness to learn, and a healthy bit of luck. If I did this on my own it probably wouldn't have happened this quickly for sure. It's also a great feeling help create homes for people in need while making great passive income. We are so excited to be breaking ground on our next development in December. I would like to answer any questions about anything to help people who are interested in learning. There’s a lot that I didn't cover such as financials. I can say that we are above a 10% Cap Rate after refinancing our construction loan into a longer term loan and the demand is good enough that we have a waiting list.

Finally i’m taking all questions so please........ Ask away!

Here are some dropbox photos of our journey from Parcel to Passive income:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/tyk44xnpc0mev8z/AACQSjHK1IskpaDnt4VHLxpMa?dl=0