All Forum Posts by: Spencer Gray

That is a great report from Marcus and Millichap @Jorge Abreu .

Another point to add is that while we're building a decade high 363k units this year, there is an anticipated 460k units of absorption being forecasted - leaving us ~100,000 units short of even meeting demand. 

It's a great time to be an owner of MF real estate! 

@Justin GoodinThanks man! Real estate is still an incredibly inefficient market and data can be a great tool to find and exploit those opportunities  

You've teed me up to pitch our newsletter and multifamily intelligence aggregator but I'm pretty sure it's against the forum rules, but we put a lot of resources to aggregating every research report and article that is released on the multifamily industry for free and put it out to the public. We've essentially built a system of RSS feeds and a small human team that aggregates and curates. 

All the major brokerage shops, Real Page, Yardi, Co-Star, NAR, NMHC, Apartment List, Zillow, Harvard, Bigger Pockets etc all put out great reports. GlobeSt, Bisnow, Wealth Management, Bloomberg, all put out consistent articles on the multifamily industry.

Friends, family, anyone in your network first.

We're in the middle of a raise right now and Linkedin has been a great tool to network and find prospective partners. 

Just be aware of all the SEC guidelines in terms of who can invest and who cannot. 

I would look at several CRM systems to see what will best suit your needs / style. 

We use Hubspot and it is very helpful in organizing prospective investors, raising capital, marketing, tracking data , etc.

Many capital raisers / syndicators use Active campaign. 

I've invested an LP in quite a few CRE syndications, I also syndicate multifamily primarily in the Midwest. I don't do any paid coaching/mentoring, although I have several (non paid ) mentors and informally mentored several investors and syndicators.

I've been fortunate to have partnered with some great operators in a variety of asset classes including industrial, medical office and commercial office. 

One thing to keep in mind is that in real estate, like in life, things will rarely go according to plan. Deals will go wrong, and it's not always the operators fault.

It's much less important how good the pitch deck looks and how solid the pitch is and more about the operator's ability to tackle adversity and solve problems. I've been in deals with capital calls, distributions suspended for over a year, but in almost evert case the operator was able to navigate the problem and beat pro-forma total return / IRR / equity multiple.

We've gone full cycle this year on 3 deals (2 as LP one GP) and will sell another 3 (as an LP), all have vastly exceeded projected returns for IRR and EM. The market and compressing cap rates making much of this possible.

There are certainly horror stories out there like @Account Closed mentioned. My experience has been the opposite, however. 

I'll also say that investing as an LP has improved my syndication business in many ways. It's another way to leverage my time, it's also been a great way to see how other's work and find ways to improve. 

I would rent and split up proceeds into 4-6 multifamily, MH park, self storage, industrial, or medical office syndications with 2-3 operators in 2-3 markets. Specifics depend on your goals and preference between cash flow and upside. 

This. The market is still hot in most markets. It's lava hot, where it was surface of the sun hot. 

@Joe S. sorry that partnership didn't work out. I would rather have 50% of 9,000 than 100% of a handful of properties. 

I could not have done what I have if it wasn't for being around the right people, because was when I was starting I was not at all qualified or an expert. My partners were in their respective areas.

I've also had partnership not work out. My first several did not, I ended up doing all of the work. 

It's like any relationship, whether that be a significant other or a friend, you'll have some disappointing ones, but finding the great ones is worth it in the end. 

Anything is possible but it is extremely difficult to acquire large multifamily assets without partnerships. It is virtually impossible without previous experience.

Syndications, JV's, they are all partnerships. I had a similar mindset than you @Joe S. when I was first looking to get into multifamily with my wife. It wasn't until I opened my mind up to the concept that we began to make major moves and start to scale. If we kept doing it all on our own, we wouldn't be where we are today (9,000 units in our portfolio).

If you want to do it on your own you'll need ALL of the following assuming a 100 unit MF project at $100k/unit.

• ~$3M in cash
• Net worth of $5M-$10M
• $500k+ in liquid assets (cash, stocks) in addition to capital being put into the deal
• Experience in managing large apartments (quite the chicken and egg, am I right?) 
• Previous large apartment loan history (another chicken and egg)
• Asset manager (could be you or your wife)
• Accountant (can be third party)
• Attorney 
• Insurance agent
• Property management team including regional manager, property accountant, maintenance or project manager. 
   

If you have all of those things then you can do it by yourself. But as you can see, even if you have the capital, you'll still need partners unless you've already sponsored some large apartment deals. 

Many investors, even well capitalized, may have most of the above list, but still lack experience or the net worth and have to bring in a partner. Don't see it as giving something up, see it as expanding your bandwidth and working smarter. 

Thanks @Roger Comstock !