Vacant lot for retail strip mall in San Antonio TX

[Dan Arteritano]

Investment Info:

Retail commercial investment investment.

I invested in a syndication that was offered by a very well know real estate investor group, the timing was horrible, and I new better, but the people running the project seemed very confident that it would be successful. It wasn't, they didn't pay the taxes, part of the money was designated for taxes, so there were cash calls. The property ended up being sold and I received 25% of my investment back.
From that I learned that I will be in control of any future investments I'm involved in. In the syndication I only had voting rights, I had no say in how the money was distributed. I don't know if the tax money went.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

It was a syndication offered by real estate professionals, it was attractive to me because they were doing all the work, I just provided capital.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

From a real estate investor group I was a member of.

How did you finance this deal?

cash

How did you add value to the deal?

The people that put the syndication together did all the work.

What was the outcome?

The syndicators decided not to build the strip mall and decided to sell the lot, which took a couple years.
I understand that the market changed and building a strip mall became a bad idea, there would have been another syndication to raise money for construction, the members did not have any say in moving forward or not. I would not have wanted to move forward.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

I will be in control, to some degree of any investment. I had no say where how additional fees were paid. Taxes were not paid so there were cash calls so the property would no be lost to the county.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

I did work with real estate professionals, I know some people that have worked with these very well know professionals for years and some very well know people endorse them. I'm not going to say who they are.
I recommend that if someone else is in control of paying for things like taxes, PM, renovations, what ever, make sure that they are being paid.