All Forum Posts by: James Dickens

@Keith Meyer you may want to check out Udemy and look for corses from a guy by the name of Justin Kivel. Look for discounts as I picked up two of his courses for like $12 per and it was well worth the price. 

I had pulled a few different models from people like Michel Blank and reverse engineered them into my own version but I still didn't feel it covered what I was looking for however Justin's courses filled in a lot of gaps (and taught me some cool excel tricks along the way). 

I took The Real Estate Modeling Pro Forma Modeling Master Class and The Real Estate Equity Waterfall Modeling Master Class. I think he also just added one that takes the Waterfall to another level so you may want to check that out. 

I don't know Justin and I don't work with him or for Udemy. I just found good value in the knowledge and experience. 

@Taylor Burns You can look around at posts about Syndication and you will start to see patterns on the advice being given. Here is what I have seen but your mileage may vary. 

It's the same amount of work for the Syndications to do 100 units than it is to do 30 units. Sure there will be more money involved but for Multi-Family however, it's more about having a solid deal/plan than it is about the money especially if you already have a head start with connections. 

The real problem seems to come in when you have to deal with managing the asset after purchase. From my research until you reach about the 60-70 unit mark that you will be underutilizing management and maintenance which either means you will pay more for it or you won't have a good service because they have to work multiple locations to make up the difference. 

Most Value Add syndications seem to be looking at locations that were built in the 80s, Pitched and not Flat Roof, no Boiler Systems, etc in areas that are growing in both population and jobs. Most will also start with 1 or 2 areas they focus on and after a while, they sometimes expand that range out. So good to know what areas of the country you are willing to work in and around. 

If you have some of your own money to start you may want to look at being an LP in syndication just to get a feel for it however I am trying to get in with no money as a GP on just my good looks :D and I will post more on that when I finally make that work. 

Being focused on a class and type and being as specific as you can in what you are looking to do helps as well. At some point, you will want/need a mentor to help speed up the process and if you know in detail what it is you are looking to do it will make it easier to find a syndication and or mentor that fits your focus and outlook. 

All the best with your investing and I hope you find what you are looking for!

@Gaspare U. as @Taylor L. said the Joe Fairless/Theo Hicks book Best Every Apartment Syndication Book is great. Lots of useful information and takes you through the process step by step. 

I would also recommend Ken Mcelroy's books The ABCs of Real Estate Investing and The Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing. 

I know what you are going through though. A lot of fluff out there to get through to find the true nuggets of info. 

Good Luck

@Alexander Hogarth I don't have a lot to add to this conversation but I do have a connection with Stavanger (Actually have a friend there selling their house right now)! Good to see you on BP and I hope your investing journey works out. Looks like you are getting some great advice. 

In looking for data (Which I do more than I should maybe) I ran across this site that is so cool but yet I haven't seen any posts about it. It's not the end all be all for data visualization but it does have a lot of cool data and if you are building out a pitch for a location this may help you save lots of time and effort. To be honest I wanted to keep it to myself but it's just too good!

https://datausa.io

I have no ties with this website and I am not receiving compensation for pointing it out to people. This was truly just a geek nirvana moment for me that I wanted to share. Doing a custom data visualization can be a bit tricky but if you work at it you can get details down to MSA level which is nice. The Vis Builder is where you want to go if you need to customize it for your offering. 

Below is a quick example I did by using the Renters by Income Percentage data set and selecting the Houston MSA looking at the Gross Rent Percent of income less than 20% in 4 different Household Income Ranges. It's a bit messy but in the upper right, you can see my mouse over showing detail on the top line of the chart. 

If you use it and get good results I would be interested to see how you are using and what data is valuable to you.  

@Jesus Lopez I am actually looking to help a group that is already established as I am just starting out. I have since found someone to work with and I hope it becomes a fruitful relationship. 

I also hope that my post above shows people who are newer like you and I the type of Detail that experienced Real Estate investors are looking for from us who are newer to Real Estate. I see a lot of posts asking for Mentors or Help with situations but in a lot of cases, not a lot of detail is given about the poster or the deal or what it is exactly they are wanting to accomplish in life.  

The more detail you can give about your situation and where you are at and what you have done the more success you will have in finding someone to associate with. You see and hear all the time this is a relationship business and to establish that starting point people have to know who you are and what you are about. 

It's not easy to lay it out there and the post above took me several days to write. Someone saw potential in the skills I have and reached out and that is all I really was wanting. It's up to me to prove I can provide that value and now that I have been given a chance. But the value I have to provide is not only skill-based, but it's also relationship-based and in the end, if I can't build relationships in this business the rest of the skill won't matter much. 

I hope that helps!

@Barry Ruby Wow I'm going to have to read that a few times to get the whole jist of what you posted but outstanding post not only for Jay but others who want to learn or are considering a deal like this. Thanks for the time and effort it took to put this together for someone else who is trying to educate themselves in development syndication. 

It looks like you have done a wonderful job with your excel tool but I'm sure that came from many years of experience. 

@Jay Mitiguy Good luck with this regardless if you take it on or walk away and move to another deal. Sounds like you are well on your way to taking the next step. 

Congrats @Brian Orr on the 10 unit. Always happy to network with people who are pulling in the same direction! That's really way more than I could do on my own right now. 

In my post, I really wanted to be as specific as I could and I am looking to the larger Multi-Family but if someone else needs help or is just starting out and I could be of help I would be willing to talk about how we could help each other. 

I do have family in NC so it's on my future area's list for sure. 

Thanks for the post. 

I am looking to network and or join in as a General Partner with a group that is currently doing Multi-Family Syndication in the 100+ unit space, value add in any of the following areas.

• Eastern Texas (Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Corpus Christi)
• Louisiana
• Southern Arkansas (Memphis, Little Rock)
• Mississippi
• South Western Alabama (Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile)
• Florida Panhandle (Pensacola, Panama City)
• Any cities in this area with population of 40k or more
• This area is within about 350 miles of my home in South Central Louisiana (7-8 hour drive time at max distance)

I cannot currently bring any of my own personal money into a deal but I do bring a good credit rating with me. I have no fear when it comes to talking to others about Syndication and finding investors. I do have skills and experience that a Syndication may find useful. I would like to leverage these skills to help a team to push a Syndication through to completion and learn along the way.

List of skills and experiences:

• Created a deal analyzer/pro forma tool from scratch by reverse engineering several deal analyzer tools to customize it to my liking.
• Created Sample Deal Plan examples from this build.
• Not being satisfied that tool was the best, I completed Justin Kivel's (Break into CRE) Real Estate Pro Forma Modeling Master Class as well as the Real Estate Equity Waterfall Modeling Master Class. These teach you to build excel models from scratch for your investment deals.
• Good understanding of many of the metrics used in deal analysis.
• Better than average at using Excel and very familiar with many of the Microsoft products (SharePoint, Teams, Active Directory, Office).
• For the past 13 years I have been leading a team of up to 15 people in my current W2 position.Created processes and procedures to aviation standard for fleet asset tracking and used by my team.Created process and training documentation for my department.
• Involved with Software development as it pertains to a customized application built specifically for aviation asset tracking, auditing and management. Mostly centered around ESRI and ArcGIS Online. (I feel this so far is very underused in RE and could be a very useful data visualization tool).
• Able to speak publicly with many instances on short notice dealing with customer audits, FAA audits and investigations, and facility tours.
• Professional photographer with many assignments dealing with architecture and I had a one-year assignment with the Houston Apartment Guide doing on-site photography of Apartment Properties in the Houston Metro area (2000-2001).
• Worked 3 years for various Carpet Cleaning services in both the Corpus Christi and Dallas Metro areas. Over that time, we served numerous Apartment Properties.
• Looking forward to a point that I can replace my W2 job and become a true Investor.
• For more information: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdickens1

I have been a Pro member on BP for the last 2 years trying to learn as much as I can and find what aspect of Real Estate I wanted to focus on. I have read several books on Multi-Family and Real Estate in General.

Due to my location and my current W2 its hard (not impossible) to get to meetups and do much face to face networking especially with Syndicators who are working in the Multi-Family space. So that is why I wanted to reach out here to see if I can make better connections and hopefully join in with a team that is actively working on one or more deals that I can be a part of.

My ultimate goal is to teach my daughter how to become an investor, so she doesn’t struggle through life like her parents have.

If you think I can be of service to your team, please send me a private message and I will respond as soon as possible. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

@William Lawrence That's Awesome! I love to see old buildings come back to life with a new purpose. Sounds like to make this work you had to have the special knowledge about the situation and sometimes just knowing what to do or how to solve a problem is the value add component that others can't/don't have. Keep up the great work.