A real estate investor responds to critics of his multifamily business by explaining his model: buy distressed buildings, rehab them, charge below-market rents, and reinvest profits back into properties. He's leveraged at $47 million in debt, soon to exceed $50 million, and says scale lets him provide affordable housing while earning substantial profit.
Chapters
So I'll get a lot of hate online from people saying, Michael, why are you buying this beat-up building? Or you're ripping all the money out of the economy, the problem's you. No, when we do a good job providing housing, we make it affordable, we have people rent here, we keep occupancy high, we do make a boatload of money. With that boatload of money, we come back in, reinvest in the community, and make the housing even nicer. We charge under-market rent for all of our stuff, which means we have affordable housing for people. We keep costs down, we keep quality up. Because of the scale of our business, I'm able to provide better and better housing at lower and lower pricing. Net result: people get live less expensively. And yes, I make a lot of money, as well we should, because we do a lot of work and we take on a lot of debt. This is $47 million of debt. When I close, this will be over $50 million of total debt in my portfolio. I take that risk to make the millions that we do make to solve an actual problem— affordable housing, great housing for great people.