GOAL: Apartment Building Under Contract in 90 Days

[Trevor West]

Life is too short to be small! We are focusing on building our TEAM, finding our DEAL and raising the MONEY. Our outlook is if we find the right deal, then the money will follow and will be looking to be General Partners with someone with the capital or a team of individuals with the capital. We have done our research and found our target market. But we won't figure out all of the minute details until we take ACTION. The goal is to be under contract for a 10-100 unit apartment building/complex in central North Carolina with a minimum 8% CoC Return (Year 1) and 14% IRR (Year 5) in 90 Days.

For all those who have experience in apartment syndication - please send any lessons learned from starting out. Thank you in advance. 

[Charles Seaman]

@Trevor West These are the best suggestions that I can offer you as you start out.  It sounds like you're already ahead of the game by having selected your target area.  Building strong sponsor relationships will help you grow your business faster than anything else.

1. Pick a target area. You want to focus on one area so that you're familiar with the area and so that you have meaningful relationships with brokers, property managers, and other professionals that will ultimately lead to you getting better deals and better information.

2. Find sponsors. Sponsors are people that have the financial and experience track records to qualify for the loans that you'll need to acquire properties (unless you're not planning to use any debt). If you develop good relationships with them, then they might even let you use their track records to get good deals that you wouldn't get otherwise and to attract investors that would be more skeptical about investing with somebody that has no prior track record.

3. Find investors. Many syndicators make the mistake of spending too much time finding deals and not enough time finding investors. You should be spending as much time finding investors as you are finding deals. It's often said that you'll be able to find the money if you find a good deal. While there is truth to that in certain regards, it's tough to do that in syndication because there are strict rules and regulations that must be followed when raising capital.