Ruben Greth- The Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing- Exploring Growth Mindset and Build-To-Rent

Welcome to the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing, hosted by Wayne Courageous iii, a place where active and passive investors come to hear the good, bad and ugly of real estate investing. Our guests consist of experienced operators and investors who want others to succeed by sharing their stories. If you're looking to syndicate deals or grow your wealth passively in real estate, you've come to the right show. It's now time to sit back, take mental notes and enjoy next episode of the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing.

Welcome to the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing. I'm your host, Wayne Courageous. For our next episode, we're excited to have Reuben GRE back with us. Reuben has been a popular podcast host about raising money for multifamily syndication, where he learns from the best multifamily syndicators in the country. 2019, Reuben partnered with a local syndicator on the acquisition of 190 units and has since become a fund manager who is building $48 million worth of subdivisions in Louisiana and Alabama and partnering with multiple select syndicators bringing equity advisory and investor management. Welcome to our show, Ruben.

Thanks, brother. Really excited to be back. Have you had more than one person come back and be a multiple guest?

No, no. But you're welcome every time because one, I already told you before this show, like, you're just easy to talk to time time goes. And you've got a lot of knowledge and we're partners on one of these $48 million worth of subdivisions. Yeah. Last, you know, hey, people listening out there, relationships, partnerships matter. And when we connected through a mutual. Mutual friend through real estate to, you know, so we got connected on a podcast last year. But you know, we as, you know, as, you know, but audience doesn't know. Like, we connected afterwards when we were able to partner on a. A deal and outside Lafayette. So that's an exciting project that's going on right now. But so anyway, welcome to our show, Reuben. Welcome back. What's been going on over this last year? I think last we recorded in October 21. So what have you been up to?

So at the beginning of the year, I did a post of the top 10 shows of all time and Richard Wilson was ranked like number five. And he didn't. That didn't sit well with him. So he's like, hey, man, you know, like, how do I get to number one? Like, I'd like to buy your show, you know, at least a percentage of it. You know, what do you think it's worth? I'm like, well, Adam Adams, he Just sold his show for, for I think like 50 grand. He's like, well, how about I, I pay $10,000 for 10 of your show? And I'm like, no, dude, you're going to buy 50% of my show and you're going to do all these other things for me. And I like, you know, forced his hand to do all these other things for me, and now he's going to help me write a book. So we're in the process of co authoring a book. That's a new development. I have a friend with the coaching program and his team that helped him create his coaching program reached out to me and they're like, hey, we think that you should be a capital raiser coach. So they're helping me create a program. I'm in the middle of three capital raises, so things have been going crazy. Those numbers are a little outdated. We have 100 unit, 150 unit, and a 220. All 506C deals that we have in the pipeline right now. It's been a crazy ride this year and sometimes it's a little overwhelming, man. You know, there's a lot of other things, you know, being a business owner and running legacy acquisitions, the team meetings, the COGP calls, and then being a podcast host, that's just like, like, do you ever get to, to take a break? And you know, for me, you were talking about consistency early earlier. I've released at least one or two episodes every week for about 40 months straight. And like, sometimes it makes me want to throw up. I just like, God, like, I need to get away. Yeah. But overall, the journey is like, fantastic.

I mean, your, your podcast, I mean, is serious, right? I mean, not that this podcast is not. But I mean, we're doing one or. And you know, it's, it's really help those out there that are wanting to learn more about passive and equally investing, you know, they. But you're out there hustling two times a week. Have you thought about, you know, bringing on a co host and having, you know, sort of that shared split work?

Not right now. Not right now. Not until. I believe. I don't know where this quote came from, but they said in order to master something, you have to study it for 10,000 hours. I believe I'm at about 5,000 hours of capital raising training. So once I get to 10,000 hours, I think I could potentially get somebody to take over the show because the whole idea, you know, I was talking to my, my capital raising coaches and they've been training a bunch of us on how to, to raise capital. And they're like, hey, we're going to launch this thing called the real estate accelerator 2.0. I'm like, what is it they're going to do in 2.0 that you haven't already taught people? And they're like, we're going to teach them. You know, they've already created businesses, created funnels, automations, created avatars. They've started, you know, generating wealth for families, for themselves. And you know, they have successful businesses now. 2.0 is we're going to teach them how to extract themselves from the capital raising business so that somebody else is running that for them in the middle of capital raises while they're kicking it in France, you know, on vacation. And I'm like, oh my dude, like, my mind exploded. So I'm just like, I'm just about to start my own capital raising program. And like, to get to the level where they're at is. It's scary, right? You're just like, how, how am I going to provide the same value that they are? But, you know, you start, you start where you start. And it's a very bad idea to compare yourself to others. You can only compare yourself, I think, you know, in a good way to who you were yesterday or who you were 12 months ago instead of comparing yourself to other people. Like, for example, I came up right around the same time that Zach Captain stalled did, you know, and he was doing his first deal at the same time that I was doing my first deal. And now he's got like 200 employees and he's got a billion and a half dollars worth of real estate. And you know, I feel like a peewee compared to him. But there's somebody in the audience or somewhere in my audience that's just like, man, like you're, you have $48 million plus of deals under, under construction right now. Like, you know, they're comparing themselves to me, you know, so it's just like the story that Tim Brott said on my show. He, he did a mastermind on a yacht and went like into the Caribbean or something and he's feeling all like, amazing. And then he came back to the harbor and there was a yacht that was like 12 times bigger than his yacht, you know, 30 employees, and he's just like, oh, damn, I thought I had arrived and I just got put back into my place and got humbled, right? So you got to remain all times.

And you know, we're recording this in December and times to, you know, look at goals for the next year for 20, 23 and all. And you're right. I mean, you've got to. You've got to stay in your zone, whether. Whatever industry, whatever you're in, you've gotta look at what you know. I'm always about goals. Right. And I've got a spreadsheet. I think I might have mentioned this on my podcast previously, but I have a spreadsheet, and it breaks down categories like family finances, vacation, charity. And so I try to make goals and I color coordinate. It's pretty, Pretty sick.

There's very few people that do start something similar. But in my phone, I have. I have what I call an intention statement that goes through, like, it's, like, it takes me 17 minutes. 17 minutes to read it. So it's long. It's. It's going to cover the same stuff that you're talking about.

Yeah.

Highly recommend that if you guys take anything from this podcast, write your goals down and review them as often as possible. Every day, preferably. But, you know, life gets in the way. But if you can do that, that. That would be the biggest takeaway that I could present here today.

Yeah. All right, we're done with our show. Mic drop. Hey. Also, vision boards.

Yes.

Man, that's powerful. I, you know, two years ago, created a vision board, and it's pretty. I mean, through my mentorship, shout out to James Kanami.

Oh, I like him.

Yeah, he's.

I've never met him, but I hear.

But no, his. Know, his mentorship program, that's like his first episode, first, like, series, you know, class is mindset and vision board. And so that's what I did, you know, created this vision board of, you know, where we wanted to be at. And, you know, we're. We're. We're not. Those were really lofty goals, but the vision, it. It's pretty cool to see. Okay, well, that's where we were, and this is where we're at. The other thing I'll say, Reuben, is be careful, social media. And be okay to unfollow some people. You don't have to unfriend them, but unfollow. Because sometimes that can make you feel, you know, at least for me, I can speak for myself. It's like, okay, yeah, they're really knocking out of the park. Or the perception is they're really knocking out of the park. And then you start questioning what you're doing. So that's another thing, too. So vision board. And be careful with social media. It's not Just the kids that sometimes can get impacted mentally by that. Good stuff.

So.

All right, so very beginning. One of the things that you mentioned, and this is why I love talking to you, is I just had this plan. Now we're going off it, like, let's talk about books. Okay, so what, what's the process of writing a book? That's something that I've thought about doing actually on the asset management piece. But like, had they. I mean, are you working on.

I've been procrastinating about it for about a year and a half and I've learned a couple of different strategies to do it. I think the most popular one is to, is to just record yourself about specific topics and then turn it over to someone at Upworks that can rewrite it into coherent, you know, content that can be released as a chapter. And my co author, Richard Wilson, owner of the Family Office Club, he's written like 13 books. This will be his 14th. We kind of got together just a couple of days ago and I suggested to him, I'm like, why don't you make a list of 20 chapters that you could potentially write about and then I'll write a list of 20 chapters that I could potentially write about. And you know, his whole idea is like, he likes to create pamphlets, not like 400 page books. So like maybe 10 chapters, five pages on average each for each of us. And then we just, we either write it down because I'm pretty positive I can write five pages on any given topic. You know, of the things that I decided that, you know, avatar creation or fund creation or you know, raising from limited partners versus JVs versus funds versus co. GPS. I could talk about that for five minutes or five pages easily on each one. So we're, we're in the process right now where we're dissecting each other's suggestions and seeing which ones overlap. And then, you know, that's, I'm hoping. I'm kind of pushing this button and pressing. I'm like, I'd like to. I've been procrastinating about this for a long time. I want to have this thing written by January 21st, which is my birthday. And he's like, yeah, we can do that, man. One time somebody challenged me to write a, wrote a book and he got on a red eye flight, I think from New York. And when he landed in Oregon, like six hours later, the book was done. So I was like, geez, like, so I guess you can do it that fast if you want to. I mean, some people talk about it took me seven years to write a book. And other people are just like, hey, you know, you can do it faster or, or you can just record yourself or there's a variety of things you can do. But those are some of the kind of like my general base thoughts on that.

Yeah, I love that. And you're actually, I mean, what's cool is you, you know, I saw on, on Facebook a couple weeks ago, someone out went out there and asked like, who. Who are people that can author books or, you know, ghost. Right. And there's a lot of people out there that go straight. But what you're doing and what I'd like to do is you're, whether you're writing it or you're talking through it, it's your information, it's your value, it's your experience. It's that 5,000 hours that you've put into this already, just, you know, throwing that out that you've, you've worked all these hours to be a master at the trade of capital raising. And, you know, you're, you're putting it out there in another form of education, whether it's podcasts or talking, etc, you know, people want to read that stuff too, so. And then you can get into an audiobook.

I don't want to turn the tables on you, but what would, what would you be interested in writing a book about?

Oh, so one is straight up passive investing. I've got a monthly, a meetup that we do and I'll bring in and we've got over a thousand members that are part of our meetup and we get a good 30 to 50 people per per meetup virtually. But I'm very passionate about education. It's part of the reason why we do this podcast, you know, is to educate and more so on the passive side, passive investors. So really trying to be as transparent and, you know, good, bad and ugly of passive investing. But the other thing is asset management. So how do you know the hard for me, the hard part, because I'm very much of an introvert. Like even this podcast, there's so hard for me to sometimes do these because I'm just very introverted. And people who know me know that, you know, I'd rather watch the grass grow than be around people. Like, that's why we live out in the country. But when I'm in my best and my most comfortable Reuben is day one of closing. Because then it's like all about. I've done that for the last 15 years. It's asset management. It's day to day operations. It's teamwork, it's leadership. That's, that's, that's what I'm enjoying the most. So a lot of information and there's some really great books out there already. But you know, I think, you know, even though there's other books and other authors, there's still value and information that each one of us and those that are listening, that have those type of tidbits and, and experience to put out there. So that's a goal of mine and, but I need someone to write it. I mean I'll, I'll put out the info. I love the idea of doing like a recording. I thought about typing it as much as I can, but one the time to goes into a book and, and then just straight up.

It's easy to procrastinate when you do it that style. I think I've tried some of that. I've written like one chapter so I, I think I'm gonna speak it into existence rather than write it into existence.

Yeah, I, I turned off my phone for this podcast, but I've written out chapters from my asset management one. At least I have the title name.

And you probably have like 5, 000 hours of property management. Asset management.

Oh, easily. That's why I do every day of my life for 15 years and even on the weekends. I mean I'm, that's just the thing I love most about our industry is it's not work. If you view this as work, commercial real estate, it's going to kick your ass. Like it's just painful, like up, down, like, but if it's a, like I don't say like a hobby, but it's something like you just enjoy doing. Like I'm sure there's people that just enjoy arguing in court as lawyers or, or medical, you know, saving, you know, the feeling of being able to diagnose and save people. I don't know.

So for me it's an interesting topic to contemplate here.

Yeah.

Because. Okay, so I had a, I was talking to my personal development coach Kate and Patel for a little while and he was interviewing me, trying to determine how he could help me. And you know, I was kind of rambling on about my story and kind of telling, you know, I'm afraid of success. And you know, like, you know, here's some of the things that I'm accomplishing. He's like, wait, wait, wait, go back. Did you just say you're afraid of success? And I'm like, yeah, he's like, okay, so you gotta explain that to me. And I'm just like, well, you know, like, I don't want to be trapped into a box where I feel, you know, like I have responsibility and I can't get away. And you have to out hustle and outwork people. And like, that just makes me sick to my stomach. Like, I don't want to have to outwork the Logan Freeman's of the world. And you know these people that just work, work, work, and you know, they're doing so much more than I ever want to do. And he's like, dude, you got this all wrong, brother. Slow down. What if I told you that there was a way for you to work less than you're currently working and make five to ten times more than you're currently making and help a bunch of people along the way? And dude, I literally started crying because he redefined my definition of what success meant and made it feasible for me to get step, step into this. Right? So. And I talked to. Here's what I wanted to bring up too, is because I. I talked to my wife and she's like, she understands passive income and she tries to do network marketing, but she always fails. And it's because she doesn't love it. Like, I would literally do the Capital Raiser show. Actually, I do the Capital Raiser show for free. In fact, I pay out of my own pocket to make it happen. I love it that much. Where I don't care if I make a dime because I'm so excited about the information and the potential for me to turn this information into, you know, the ability to help people and the ability to help myself and the ability to help my future family. And so I've been telling her, I'm just like, you have to find something that you absolutely love or else you're never going to have success in it. And, you know, maybe what you're talking about is when you absolutely love something, it's not work. But at the same time, I find myself doing all this crazy stuff, like running myself silly, even though I know I shouldn't be working as hard as I'm working. I find myself working myself to the point of exhaustion on a regular basis. And like, I just. Sometimes I need to figure out a way to just take a break. Like, maybe I should shut down the Capital Resource show for two weeks or at least figure out a way to automate it while I'm on vacation somewhere else. It wouldn't be that complicated. I've actually done it before. But you know, this, this is what we're talking about when, when we talk about working smart or creating systems versus hustling and burning yourself out. So I'm still trying to learn these concepts and I'm not a master of it. That's why I say I'm not done doing the capital raiser show because I'm not the master of extracting myself from the business quite yet.

Yeah.

But you know, loving what you do is a big part of having success in life, I think.

Yeah. And I think with the amount of things that happen just on, just to find a deal, close the deal, execute the deal, and then, you know, at some point down the road you're trying to sell the deal and then you've got other investors, other deals that you're working on. It's a lot. I mean we CR partners, we've grown our staff and we did so in a way where, you know, you know, part time employees. It started with somebody who left the W2 world and I was like, hey, can I just have 10 hours of your time now? This is somebody I've worked with, I trust. And she's just blown it out of the park with our investor relations and just, you know, helping, helping that brand and investor relations piece. And then she happens to be a twin. So like a few months ago her, we brought her sister on board and then they like are like together like this one perfect brand investor person because they do a lot of the back of the house, you know, marketing efforts through our YouTube and SEO and all that good stuff. And then we've got a guy, Carlos, who is out, out of El Salvador and he's helping us find deals and you know, making calls and you know, this podcast that we're on right now, like he will be editing this podcast and put it on and, and we've just, we've really, you know, you talk about time. There's only so much time where anybody has. Right. And so shutting it down and saying, all right, the next two weeks or I'm. Or I'm gonna do a time slot, Reuben, where we're gonna knock out three podcast shows and that gives you or gives us the ability to take off the next couple weeks, you know, so it's got to be done. So sometimes it gets to a point where you, we all have to add to our team, which adds more hours to your business, even though there's some expense there for sure. But it sets it up for future growth. So. So we'll see what 2023 brings. It's super exciting. What what, 20, 23 goals? What do you. What do you got going on for next year?

Survive, other than the book?

We got the book.

We got the book, the capital raising program. We got three deals. So, like, for me, like, I've never developed anything. We got, you know, a $16 million 100 unit, $32 million, 158, another 220 that we're about to take on. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is so much like, you know, you realize how much capital we're going to have to raise for this? And my partner Andy is just like, yeah, let's take on some more projects. And I'm just like, trying to hold on for my dear life. And he's like, no, we're. We're in scale mode, brother. You know, so I love it. It's. I just try. I'm just trying to hang on, on this roller coaster, you know, while I'm doing all these other crazy things and see if I can muster up the ability to continue to capital raise and, and manage the business and manage people, manage COGPs and take care of the house and all the other good stuff in life and hopefully take some vacations. And, you know, one thing I got going for me is I have a Friday season pass to go snowboarding, so at least I can get away that day. And then.

Nice.

You know, so we'll see how that goes.

Yeah. Andy McMullan's who we're talking about here. We're doing name drop and I'm on a call with them every Tuesday. You know, we're talking about the Crest and Doosan, Louisiana and that. I'll tell you, the legacy team, you know, and I'm, you know, we're CIF partners. We do, you know, similar work, but Andy, Reuben and the team, they're the real deal. They're. I mean, every, Every week we're talking strategy and what we're doing, and that's what investors. That's what you want. You want. You know, the investors need to hear like, hey, these people that you're trusting their capital with, they're. They're executing the business plan. And so. And then, you know, we're. We're capital. Or we're partnering Ruben with Hammerhead Capital. Yeah, Boots on the ground. You know, so it's partners and relationships, people you trust. But, you know, circling to this build to rent because, I mean, you do have a lot of projects that you are pushing out. And it's a, it is a lot, especially in today's market of you know, everything else with the financial markets are tightening up and people are definitely being more mindful of how they're investing. So how, you know, let's talk about build to rent capital investing. What's the, what's your pitch on that? When you're talking to investors and you know, getting them comfortable. Yeah, with, with the build to rent.

Let me give a 20 second blurb on the different multi family sub niches. Right, so you got A class, multi family, B class, C class, and then complete gut remodels where it's taken down to the studs. That's a D class or a complete remodel. And then, you know, you have a lot of people that are used to making a ton of money in B class and they're having a harder time getting deals to pencil because of the economic financing climate changes that are going on. So you see them moving away, they're getting into sub niches where there's less competition. Assisted living, RV parks, self storage, mobile homes. And then you got these other group of people that are moving into development. They're getting into vertical, multifamily, like garden, you know, four story, garden style or podium style kind of buildings. And then you got this other class of investors that are building to rent, which is another sub niche of multifamily. Even though they are detached houses, they're essentially an apartment unit with a backyard and a fence and a driveway. But essentially they're the same size. They're like 1200 square feet. They got two bedrooms, everything's brand new. And the renters tend to like to stay in these places for 40 months. And one of the biggest killers of cash flow is turnover. So the idea is we buy. Well, I should say we buy the land, we entitle it, we put in infrastructure, we develop the thing out, we stabilize it along the way. And once the entire thing is built and it's completely rented, we a lot of times want to sell the entire subdivision to one individual institutional buyer. And there's an incredible, incredible demand from institutional buyers for this particular subdivision product because they've always wanted to own houses. But the problem with them owning houses is like the only way that they've been able to do it is by buying scatter sites or bulk reo packages. Back during the real estate crash of 2008, they used to buy packages of houses at like 20 cents on the $billion packages. They've always loved houses. But it's very challenging to property manage when somebody's got to bounce around all over the city or all over the county or in multiple states to take care of these properties. What they love about Built to rent is it's one leasing agent, it's one property manager. Everything's brand new. There's no maintenance. It cla cash flows like crazy. The residents stay there like crazy. They get their own backyard and the doggy door. So it's just a while. You see other people moving away from other kinds of deals. You see them moving into this space, and it's a growing trend. And obviously everybody knows there's like a 4 million house shortage across the entire country. So like, there's a demand from renters or people that need a place to live. And if, you know, here's the other thing is houses are going down in price. So if somebody's thinking about buying a house and they're going, geez, the prices are going down, maybe I'll just wait six months and potentially I could buy a house cheaper in six months or $50,000 less than I could now. But I don't want to live in an apartment where there's somebody across from me, below me, above me, and on the left and right of me. And I, you know, I'm on the second story with a little balcony and, you know, I have to take all my furniture up and downstairs and like, they don't want that experience anymore. They want to live in a house. So where are they going to live if they're not buying their own house because they can't afford it or because they want to wait because the house prices are going down, they're going to go into a build to rent house where they got all of the, you know, the beautiful trees and the walking parks and the dog park and all that, you know, amenities and clubs and workout gyms and whatever else you may be offering. I do want to differentiate though, because I think a lot of people think that since I just mentioned the prices of houses are going down, the subdivision and house builders right now, you may have heard that they're kind of suffering, and that's absolutely true. But what they're doing is selling to individual retail buyers on the market one house at a time. That's not what we're doing. We don't have the intention to do that. We don't like the idea of 280, you know, like going through a realtor and that kind of a closing. That's just like brain damage. So what we want to do is just build the thing out, stabilize it, get it rented and sell the thing and then move on to the next project. And we want to do that over and over and create a velocity of money that we can get to the point where we can build some of these and keep, you know, keep one out of five. And then that's going to be our legacy, that we get to hold these things that are brand new for as long as we can possibly hold them. So that's kind of the idea behind build to rent. And that's why we love it.

Yeah, no, it's great. And even though prices of houses may be going down, interest rates are going up, makes, and it, it still makes it pretty unaffordable to buy a house for many people. So.

Right.

The idea of having a house that you can rent that's brand new. That's brand new. And you know, you're in this community that has a lot of those amenities is huge. And it's definitely.

And close to good schools.

Yeah. And it started in, start in Arizona.

Where you are like, okay, it did start here. Let's actually hold on. This is a really important point because the market is incredibly important. When you're doing build to rent, we get a lot of people that are asking, hey, would you help us do a build to rent Kansas City or in Portland or in Phoenix or wherever. And we don't want to. One of the reasons is because the bureaucracy, especially in a big metro plex like Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta, they have so much stuff on their plate that they can't get you through the finish line. And as a syndicator of a subdivision, you want to get your money back to the investors as fast as possible. So we select secondary markets in the Southeast. In Louisiana, Alabama, we're moving into Texas, Florida, North Carolina. But for now in Louisiana and Alabama, we're going to pro growth cities, cities that want to provide their, their citizens with affordable housing. And so they'll help you get across the finish line extremely quickly. Which benefits us as syndicators because that means that we can get our investor capital back to the LPs very quickly. And on top of that, we mitigate some of the risk of development because we don't even start syndicating any deals until we've identified the property, put engineering in place, put in the infrastructure, and once it's shovel ready with utilities, electric, roads, all of the, you know, the, the slabs of concrete are in place and the plumbing is in place at that point is when we syndicate. So from there to the point that we finish the houses, it's like 24 to 36 months maximum.

Yeah.

So, you know, by that these houses.

Go up, you know, six to eight. You know, you start six, six to eight at a time and so over, you know, a year, maybe more than that, depending on maybe warm.

Yeah.

So if weather, weather allow it's sometimes, you know, it rain. Some of these markets, like you don't realize, like, you know, unless you're developing something or you got cows to feed, you're like, man, it's either raining a lot or not enough. So. But yeah, because you know, the Louisiana project this summer, it was non stop raining, but then all of a sudden it's cleared up. So it's all good.

Okay, we're still on time.

We're still on time. But man, it, it was raining rainy. But no, that was a really good synopsis of the builder ran. I think that's huge. I think a lot of people one don't know about that asset class. It's definitely a newer, newer asset class that really, I think even accelerated during COVID You know, a lot of these people, I mean, if I had a choice between an apartment or a house, you know, when I was in, in the renter stage, you know, all day every day would be a house, you know, so.

Yeah, and, and if you're an LP, I think a lot of LPs, they want to imagine themselves living in the place that they're investing in. And if they're buying C class kind of dungy stuff with like old 70s carpets and stuff in it, it's hard for them to imagine living in it. But if you see pictures of the stuff that Derek Alexandrinko is building with like crown molding and concrete stained floors, luxury faucets, and they're just incredibly beautiful with industrial fans and it's just one of the most beautiful things. And not to mention it's brand new. So if we start implementing some technology and some USB ports right into the outlets and you know, some like maybe some cameras or some automatic, you know, enter the house with your smartphone and turn the air conditioner off with your smartphone, stuff like that, then it's going to be an explosion. Right. I think people will be dying for that product. So we'll see if we get into that. I think we are going to in 2023.

Yeah. So when you are, I mean, primarily focused on the Southeast, as you said, and a lot of your projects are in Louisiana and in Alabama. So when we're looking for multifamily, as most, you know, investors are, it's location, location, location, job growth, demographic, you know, demographic when it comes to income, etc. So are you all going through the same checkbox with your markets or what?

It's, it's all of that stuff. Plus we want pro growth cities and then we want, you know, we're also considering and contemplating what is the land like? Is it flat or is it, you know, mountainous, or do we have to grade it? Is there a bunch of trees that we have to remove? Is there a lot of extra stuff that we have to do? Or is it just like this flat grassland that you barely have to do anything to it? So those are also things that we contemplate. But yeah, like you mentioned, you know, is the, is the city growing? Is there a migration of people? We're interested in that. Is it the fastest growing county like Baldwin county in Alabama where we're investing in some cases maybe, is it an opportunity zone? That's something that would be of interest to us as well. Right. So we're thinking about all these things.

So investors, when you're talking to them raising capital for these projects, they're obviously interested in the returns and when they're going to get some type of cash flow. What type of investor are you really targeting?

Fantastic.

And what, what returns are reasonable, not, you know, over the top to expect in these type of developments.

So let's go back to the sub niches. A class, you're going to be cash flowing from day one and you're not going to make too much at the end. B class is going to be a hybrid and C class or D class, you're not going to make as much cash flow and then you're going to get a big chunk at the end. When you're investing into a development project, let's just say, let's compare multifamily vertical versus multifamily horizontal. Right. So a vertical would be a four story garden, which you have to build the entire thing and then give concessions away to get people in. With the BTR, what we're doing is we're building 10 houses, we're renting them out, building another 10 houses, renting them out. So when we have a hundred houses built, they're essentially all rented out. We don't have to give away concessions, we're charging full blown market rents. And what can you expect to return to get as a return? We're essentially doubling people's money in the time that it takes from us to syndicate at Infrastructure Complete, to have it completely stabilized and rented out, which we believe that we can do internally in 24 months. But that's a very Aggressive time scale. So we underwrite it for five years and we tell people, hey, we can double your money in about five years and if we do it quicker, that's gravy. So. And we believe that we can. And you know, because it's 506C, we can give you these kind of projected returns and we believe that we'll hit them every time out of the park. Because this is exactly. It's not like we're inventing this model. We're copying the Dr. Hortons and the other companies that, you know, all of them have. We're following them into the same markets where they're doing the exact same thing that we want to do. So we're not doing anything too crazy. We're just, we're just duplicating what the successful people do.

Yeah, it's a good point because a lot of the developments they are doing right down the road is the Dr. Hortons and these other large home builders. The other thing I liked about the Build to Rent when we were going through the capital raise for the Crest that I would just tell investors is they, we don't have to wait for a certificate of occupancy for all 98 units to be complete to then rent. Right? So you have this vertical multi family project apartment building. All those units have to be complete. It has to pass all these inspections before you can even open it to the public. Whereas like these build to rent homes, each home is its own certificate of occupancy. You know, once the inspections have passed, you can rent and then you.

I didn't even think about that. That's, that's a good.

Yeah, it's huge because I mean there's some cash flow coming in, you know, that's helping, you know, the operations of the project until it gets full steam ahead. So yeah, I just think that is. And you know, when times get tough, you stop. I mean you could, you could potentially just stop the project and still have 30, 40 homes, whatever you built up to that point, you know, still rented and going. And then you're, you're sort of waiting until the tide turns to.

Here's another thing that I kind of, I want to bring up real quick because I think for people that are coming up in the multi family syndication space, my, my greatest invitation to you is to partner instead of with somebody that's the same level as, as you partner with somebody that's, you got an incredible track record, you know, a thousand or two thousand houses, something like, or I mean units. So like a thousand Units of multifamily, you want to partner with somebody, add value to them and you can actually do the same thing in funds. Right. So instead of launching your own fund and doing something with it, like partner with an existing fund manager. And I would be happy to invite all of you guys that are like tired of dealing with, you know, having to find deals in the multi family space that are tough to pencil with the economic climate, like come work with us. We're accepting people as co gps. There's nothing illegal about that. You know, we would do an interview process with you, see if we're a great fit, see what your skills are, see what you can do to maintain legal status, you know, because to stay legally compliant within SEC guidelines, you have to be a participant, not a passive investor, but actually a JV and have ongoing duties. And it doesn't have to be you are 100% asset manager. Like we can take this matrix and be like, oh, you know, Wayne's going to do 80% of the management and then you can help him with some of the back office stuff, you know, that he needs help with. And oh, are you good at marketing? We need help with that. Oh, and you have board of advisory skills. Oh, and you can get a discount on materials and whatever your skill set is. If you do like 10 or 20 or 30 or 40%, we have you fill out this matrix and then we hand this over to our lawyer and then he says basically this dude's going to be legally compliant as long as he does the things that he says he's going to do over the duration of the entire project. And that's how we can help you come in as a co GP that not only brings equity and your other skill sets, but that participates or we can also contemplate doing like a fund structure or a fund to fund. So if you guys are interested in built to Rent, you know, I talk to either Wayne or myself. I mean we're both here to answer questions. We both are passionate about this. Obviously I could talk about this and capital raising for like the next 24 hours, non stop until my voice dies. But you know, this is just, it's a really fun business, very lucrative not only for the LPs, but for the capital raisers, for the GPs, for the general contractors, for everybody involved.

Yeah, I mean really, the builder rent didn't even get on my radar until you and I connected last year. And since then and really during once we met, like I went out to Louisiana, walked the property, really tried to understand the market and and what, what the vision is and, and what the whole builder rent movement and development process is. So it's, it's, it's going to continue growing. And you're absolutely right. Know, partnering with a group like Legacy, you know, is a smart thing to do. And you, you said 1,000 plus units. But you know, you know, a group like yours on that builder rent front is, is huge. The other thing too I took away from that, Reuben, was everybody can bring something to the table. So many people are like, well, I, I haven't done a deal. I don't, you know, I don't know what I can bring. Time, energy.

Oh, that's passion. Now you got me fired up.

Yeah, let's go for it.

You get a lot of people and they're, they, at the end of the networking call, they're like, what can I do for you? Or is there any way that I can be of service to you? Or, you know, and they may say this to another syndicator as well. And what that does is it requires a syndicator to try and dissect all of your skills and they don't have the bandwidth to know exactly what you're good at and what you're not good at. So instead of asking that question, how can I be of service to you? Or what can I do for you? Ask them this, hey, what's preventing you from scaling to 10 times and 10x what you are currently doing? And then shut up and listen to them. And they'll be like, oh man, if we had more capital, if we had more resources here, if, you know, if we had an interior designer that, you know, took stuff off the plate so that we can, instead of doing just three projects a year, we could do six. And then find a way to fit in, you know, to get in where you fit in. That is how you become a code gp, guys. It's not by asking, oh gee, how could I be of service to you? I mean, that's so cheesy and lame. Guys, like, pick up your game. Really? If you guys were serious about getting into this business, find a way to add value and be serious about it.

Absolutely.

Sorry.

No, it's huge. I mean, I'll get off my inbox.

That's.

And I, you know, we got a lot of passive investors that listen to it goes across any industry. And every, at the end of the day, people who are willing and able and wanting to move up, they're finding, they're finding ways to add value. Right. And taking the initiative to figure that out. And deliver on it. And so well, as we come up to sort of closing here, we've talked about, we've talked a lot in this, you know, certain amount of time. Any more on the build to rent, capital raising, anything you want to top of mind that you want to close up with. And then I always ask the question, yeah, you answered it last year is what's your proudest moment? And maybe we'll just do it for those past 2022. What's your proudest moment of 2022?

Proudest moment of 2022. So we hit, I'd probably say like it's a podcast related goal. We broke a million downloads. We're currently sitting at 1.3 million. Oh wow. Unbelievable. Like I could never have imagined that when I started three years ago. So that was pretty huge. Partnership with Richard Wilson was huge. Yeah. I would say that those are two my two biggest deals, right. Like when you're associated with like a somebody that's got a billionaire club and family office club and he will, he specifically targets you and then allows you to twist his arm to become a greater business part than he originally intended to. Like those. I would say that those are my proudest moments for sure.

Love it, man. What is there any, anything else you want to talk about with build a rent or capital raising to close this up?

Just like just mindset, you know, like go out and do it guys. Don't be afraid. Don't let your limiting beliefs prevent you from doing what you if. I mean especially if there's a calling from inside your gut that's telling you I need to step up my game and self actualize. Then get off of that analysis paralysis thing that you've been doing and take some action. And that's how you break through your limiting beliefs. I'll end it off with that.

Love it. All right, so how can people find you?

They can go to the capitalraisershow.com, legacyacquisitions.com to find out either about how capital raising or our build to run projects or if you just want to hang out like find me on LinkedIn. I do a lot of, you know, business personal development kind of post on there. I'm really into peak performance and that kind of thing. So follow my content or engage with me via LinkedIn messenger. Reuben grass.

Well, thanks for being on our show and obviously we'll, we'll keep staying in touch. Have a good one, man.

Peace.

That's all for this episode. We hope you subscribe, share and leave a review of the show. For more information about passively investing in multi family apartments, check out Wayne's free ebook by going to creipartners.com eBook. Also, follow us on Facebook by searching CREI partners. This was the untold stories of Real Estate Investing.