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On the other side, my graduates from my school being forced back drop b drop, Mike drop back drop drop.
I got my hands on a book called The People's Principles, which was written by Don Peebles. Don Peebles, billionaire black developer from DC. That's where he started, then moved on to Miami and went to Vegas and uh now it's based in New York and I read this book really was inspired by the really technical things that he said within it. It's like, this is how I became what I became. And I was like, oh, this is great. Okay, well I'm follow a similar path, but just do it
my way. So on twenty seventeen, I twenty sixteen, I got my first low income housing tax credit. So affordable housing developments in the past were financed through Section eight. So if you think about a Section eight property Brinnie Green's in Chicago. You know some of these really large berry farms in DC, really large complexes three four hundred units and really just clusters of poverty. That's how they were financing them. But now they use a tool called Section forty two i RS Code.
Which is a tax credit.
So we are given a tax credit that we sell to an investor and use that to finance the project.
Can you can you explain that a little bit, because yeah, we section eight. I think most people know what Section eight is, right, where it's like it's government and they subsidized housing, right, and but Section A you don't have to live in the projects like you can have a house.
So there's two different types. There's Section eight project based vouchures. So projects got the Section eight assistance, but then they were also like people based box where you can take that you.
Go into like a house, and they pay the landlord. So what's the new way?
Section forty two is the primary tool for affordable housing. There's still some Section eight, there's still some vouchures, but Section forty two just really high level. If you think about a building, and you think about developing a building, it may cost forty million dollars to develop.
A building, right.
Typically, in order to fund that building, you need rents that'll pay you enough to then get a bank to give you a loan, so you need a construction loan, and then you need perman and financing.
So in order to.
Get the construction loan, one of the threshold items is, hey, how much is the loan to value of this projected property?
So if your.
Value based on rents being at fifteen hundred dollars a month, it equates to forty million dollars.
You can then build.
Who's doing the assessment of how much each one is worth?
Each unit? The market kind of determines that.
So drilling deeper into that, let's say fifteen hundred perer equates to forty million dollars. Let's say now you're in an area that rents can only be seven hundred and fifty dollars per People still need to lo but we still need additional housing in order to build that. The government created a tax credit that subsidized developers for the difference.
So if the seven fifty gives me twenty million, I effectively are gonna get I'm gonna get twenty million in a tax credit to then make it balance and make it work.
They so they'll pay you the developer, they pay the project, the project. They pay them, not you personally, but they fund the project and.
They allocate a tax credit to the developer to sell on behalf of the project.
So they paid that the person paid seven hundred and one thousand dollar if it was seventeen hundred and one thousand dollars, is being paid.
Through through the tax credit upfront.
And in exchange for the tax credit, you have to restrict the rents for a certain amount of time fifteen years, thirty years, et cetera. And the rent to like market based. Yeah, so it's based on the area median income. So that's really like how they determine it, and they have different thresholds. So a thirty percent unit is like very low in a fifty percent unit and a sixty percent unit is what.
We will call workforce or affordable housing.
And then you have eighty percent units as well that can be financed through this tax credit. And that's based on So take DC one hundred thousand dollars area media income in DC, UH fifty percent unit is fifty thousand dollars. If a person makes fifty thousand dollars in DC, they can qualify for affordable housing. Under this threshold. You take thirty percent of that income divided by twelve months. That's how you come out to the rent amount that you
can pay. Okay, So okay, yeah, so it's a little deep. Sorry, No, that's that's right, up eyo, that's what we do. That's the whole it's right, a lot of numbers right in line with our content. So you meet, you meet down people's right, Yeah, and how does that go?
Yeah?
So twenty seventeen, I jumped out. He was speaking at a conference in DC, and I was like, I have to meet this guy.
So I still by the door, very to niceous.
Sid I'm an ambitious guy by nature, a type personality. If I want time, I'm gonna go get it. And I wanted to meet him, so I went introduced myself. I just received that tax credit. That's why I wanted to get a story. Just receive the tax credit. I was about to develop my first project. Hey, don what's up. I'm branded. I got my first project in. I got a couple more in my pipeline. Would love to connect.
And he was impressed by what I was doing because my age I think I was twenty six twenty seven at the time, and his first project I was twenty seven. He was awarded his first project at twenty seven as well, so I was on that path. It's like, okay, yeah, this is the only black billionaire doing what I'm doing.
I need to meet him.
So we met, had a phone call about a month later, and the biggest takeaway I took from that phone call was he said, work on larger deals. So at that time I did was twelve and a half million. I had another deal that was about fourteen million, and I had another deal that was like seven million. The fourteen million dollar deal was a market rate unit. There wasn't
an affordable Housit development. I actually never went through. I'll talk on that too, but I need to raise about one and a half from equity investors in order to finance the project. And you just, you know, go out to folks, get one hundred thousand here, two fifty there, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And he pretty much just put it in perspective for me. He said, I just raised five hundred million dollars in New York and
this is the easiest money I ever raised. Because institutional capital, the demand on that is so it's so much, it's so much less than the demand on every day individuals and investments. Because you can invest in stocks, you can invest in bonds, you can invest in a different real estate project, you can invest in your kids college fund. Individuals have so many options. But institutional capital needs places to put this money. So he told me to work
on larger deals. And I said, about three months later, I moved to DC.
That reminds me of three stories. So I'll take it one by one. Well, first off, you know how one of the people that really got done people's into the game, Barry and Barry for sure, you know that legend DC legend rest in peace. So that's one story. The second story is that that also that what you said reminds me.
I watched the interview with Magic Johnson and Maverick Carter to shout out to both of them, and Magic told Maverick he said, the same amount of time that it takes to do a deal for one million, it takes to do one hundred million, So do one hundred million because it's the same energy, same energy. It's not like it's not you have to do additional energy. It's the same energy output. It's just you're focusing your energy on
the small guy level. You can focus your energy on big or you can focus your in this on small. The third one was Byron Allen. He was on a breakfast club and he just said what you said as far as like what especially in institutions, a lot of times they have a problem where they have to they have to spend money. They have to they have to spend money.
They raised it, they haven't exactly.
They're looking for. They have whole teams devoted to look for opportunities, which means they have whole teams devote to look to say where can I give money away to different deals and how can I position this because I have five hundred million dollars, so it was just.
Five hundred So it's real. Raise your hand please, So you have to understand the key to that. You have to understand that language. It's a language of finance. That's the way I look at it. It's no different from English verse Spanish. We all know English, some people know Spanish, some people know finance.
It's just a language.
And if you understand the language, and if you understand what they are saying and what they are looking for, you can make it work.
So how did you?
I'm interested to notice because you started in the game very young, twenty early twenties and twenty three, you know, humble beginnings, like your family was in real estate. So how do you get your first deal? How do you learn the language? How do you get your first deal in real estate as a developer? Like how does that? He walked me through that process, like your very first deal, Like, how does that happen?
So my first deal was actually a four unit investment. It was a real estate investment type. Okay, it was a hud home on the north west side of Milwaukee by Hoole. Yeah, I just sold it about a year and a half ago. So I bought that when I was twenty three. So let me rewind FJA three and a half percent down. It was only eighty five thousand dollars and I sold it for like one sixty n So that was like, well played, it's different. You know, it makes sense. So that was my entry entry point.
But rewinding. So once I finished the Acre program, I'm like, Okay, this real estate thing is cool. I think I want to figure out how to be a developer. I spent a lot of time trying to put the pieces of the puzzles together. So I started going to events. I went to a ton of conferences, a ton of seminars, gallas, all types of things. I was just searching for people and information and knowledge. And I equated it to like
putting together a puzzle. Right, It's like, if this is the real estate puzzle, how do I find the pieces and then how do I put them together?
I met a guy by the name of Keith Broaden.
No.
First, I went to a uh An Awards bank will called the Mandy Awards' Community Development Awards in the city of Milwaukee. I'm actually up for I'm a finalist of a Real Estate Awards. Okay too, So congratulations, thank you.
I'm sure you win.
Yeah, I appreciated this episode were put over the finish line.
So yeah.
I went to this awards banquet and I met a gentleman by the name of Wayman Winston Waymon Winston was the executive director of WEEDA. WEEDA is the housing authority that administers the long time housing tax credits. So I was like, yeah, I want to be a developer, et cetera, et ceter He was like, well, if you want to be a developer, come to this conference.
This is the developers conference. It's going to be all developers.
There's going to be lenders, there's gonna be architects, syndicators, anyone that plays in this arena in the state of Wisconsin will be here at the conference. Conference was like a couple of hundred dollars I didn't have. It ended up getting sponsored somehow. I think I like figured out a way to finesse my way up here. So you know, I threw on a suit. I had a little nappy frow at the time. I mean, I just was meeting everyone I could meet, and I ran into this gentleman who I just.
Saw a few weeks ago, Keith brought next.
He was working at Great Lakes Capital, which is now costing their their syndication firm. They raised funds and then they minister. They pretty much purchased the tax credits on behalf of investors, and he gave me my first pro former. So a performer is essentially an Excel document that pretty much is the business plan for real estate development.
And what that does.
It allows you to understand how much this will cost to build and how it will perform over the next fifteen to thirty years. So he gave me this performer, and I had no clue what it was. I wasn't really a finance I was an economics major, but I wasn't a math or finance guy really. So I was just diving in and I tried to figure it out. So I would like google every term.
You know. Google university is a thing, YouTube university is a thing.
You know.
I was googling every single term trying to understan.
You know what else today eyl university.
We'll talk about that later on. That's the thing you need it. It's a real ting, okay, but even better you know, by us.
So yeah, I was just googling all of the terms within this document, and I just started to work in it.
So I was working at the bank at the time.
I was working at P and C Bank as a personal banker and making twenty three thousand dollars a year, and I was like, man, I can't this is my life, Like, I'm not about to just be wearing these nice suits, getting up at six in the morning and getting home at six pm doing this for the rest of my life.
I can't do it.
So I would then get off work and then go back to work from seven to midnight, seven to one, seven to two. Every single day. I was in that pro form of working for years, educating, educating myself in that no articles, pub no press, no publication, no payments, every single day I was working. So what then happened was I realized that I was only making about fifteen hundred after taxes per month. And then I came across this four unit that was eighty five thousand dollars in Milwaukee.
In Milwaukee, so I put three and a half percent down. I was written out there. I think the rents were about six hundred apiece, maybe six twenty five, you know, do the math on that twenty four my mortgage was about one thousand, so I was clearing fourteen just off of this when I was only clearing fifteen at the bank. I quit my job the moment I bought the four unit. I couldn't quit before because I needed to show the income to bout a four unit. But once once I
was closed, I quit. I was out of there. That then gave me the freedom to dig deeper into this real estate thing.
Now you spend in the entire time, all my time, energy and effort was going towards real estate development. Specifically.
I knew investing was cool, but I wanted to figure out how to be a developer.
Because the fees associated with it are great.
You know, just to break it down, for real developer doesn't get a forty million dollar payment or anything like that. But you on the market right side, you made he three to six percent of the total costs. So if you're working on a one hundred million dollar, dude, do the math. On the affordable side, you get about ten to fifteen percent percent really on the total project costs.
So you so so so if you do a forty million dollar deal, you get ten percent. That's four million dollars correct.
Yeah, yes, ten to ten to fifteen percent.
He took the ladder.
Somewhere don't load for me, don't load somewhere around lower respected respect.
So so so to that point it was like, okay, let me figure out how to do this development thing. I worked in his model. Boom boom boom bo. I saw the number. So I'm like, oh, they're making some real life money in this thing. So figured it out. So I start working. I met with him again, showed him and it was terrible. He helped me met a consultant that does development consultant and she was actually a
CPA as well, CHARLENEA Brown basedide Atlanta. She helped me hone my skills when it came to my performer, my model. So what we did was just I would I would try to work in it. I would send it to her, she would edit it, send it back, and eventually I got good. It's like okay, yeah, I know how to do a project. So then I started looking for a project. So are you doing this on a platform? What's the
exale microsoftic sale? I was on my computer. You could huntre it out a computer from best Buy, downloaded sale and you working.
That's it. That's it. You don't need any anything else.
So I'm just teaching myself all the language, teaching myself how to do things.
So I started swinging at projects and I was missing. But it was one.
It was a city on RFP request for a proposal, very similar to the one that I just wanted Madison.
That one.
I ended up pitching it to a developer and I'm like, yo, let's co develop this project. Here's my model for it. Would you guys be willing to split the developer fee and the ownership? The model is what's what's the model is another name for the proformer?
My bad?
What's the performer?
The performer is the business plan for real estate development in the Excel.
In my mind, I'm thinking developer, performer, and model are They're the same thing.
So I'm using them interchangeably.
So it's like, it's like the blueprint.
It's the blueprint, the financial blueprint, financial blueprint for real estate development.
How does developer do the physical blueprint as well? Or that's going to be somebody down the.
Line with we outsource some Some development shops can have an architectural person on and but I outsource it.
So all right, So you you study, you learn, you learn how to make a financial blueprint for a project like this is my vision is financially how it makes sense? For sure, you don't have any experience. So you go to another established developer.
They've done it all.
They've done it already. You say, I already have the blueprint. Let's work together, and this week is split.
Yeah.
So so now I'm creating value. That's the key to get any partnership. You have to create value for the other person. It's not about what you want, is what they want and how can you give it for them?
That's fact, right.
So it's like, okay, I mean, I'm gonna give youall a real number. So I think that project was let's say ten million dollars. It was a ten million dollars deal. The fee on nine was twelve percent, so we was at one point two and I'm like, all right, well, can we go fifty to fifty on it? All right, let's have let's take a risk, let's apply for it. See if we get it. If so, let's figger it out. If not, cool, keep it pushing. So I pitched it and at that point I knew it's like, wait, a minute.
I just created six hundred thousand dollars just from my mind with a developer that does this for real, so I.
Cannot do it.
I was probably like twenty four, twenty five maybe, so that was the first time I actually knew. Shortly thereafter I actually took a job. It was very intentional.
So at twenty four you got the six hundred.
Nah, that never went through.
It never word, that never worked out, but they agreed to it. But they agreed to it, and that's all I needed to know that I can do possible. It was possible at that point. I'm a developer. Now, you ain't nobody taking this from me. So I ended up getting a job surely there. I didn't get that money was running low. Yeah, I had the you know, four unit things like that.
That was fine.
But I got a job working at a CDFI, A real job, A real job, yeah, real job. What's a cd A cd OFFI is a community development financial institution.
Oh yeah, we we just learned about that.
Yeah, sorry about I'm slow.
I'm a slow learner.
Yeah, I think I heard there was a young lady.
There was a young lady here who was talking just about the CDFIs, right, so bright.
Woman, Yeah, shout out to the bright woman.
Uh so yeah, I worked. I ended up getting a job. It was actually half time for two CDFIs. I was the only person in the country to do this. But I worked for Ford Community Investments. They were a mission based community lender that provided loans to small businesses and then a community reinvestment fund. They were a national nonprofit that did this same thing in a different way. So one was a state based focused on Wisconsin, other one was national, also targeting Milwaukee. So I worked at home.
I worked remotely, so I was really more of a contractor for real. I worked remotely from home for both of these companies, really going out doing technical assistance with businesses and understanding what the gaps were that why aren't we giving this money out like I had access to. One of them was from fifty thousand to five million dollars in lending. That was my lending capacity personally, I can give that out to businesses.
So I was like, oh, this is great.
It was very much so aligned with my vision and my mission, and I was able to sit in on the credit committees of these different companies. So when it came to like applying for loans and applying for some of these things. I knew exactly what they were looking for because I was sitting in there, so I worked there for two years.
What type of clientele or clients.
To what you're seeing primarily business for Community Reinvestment CRF. It was business clients. So I was looking at bars, I was looking at pubs, I was looking at cleaning companies, I was looking at It was a full gamut. And the Ford Community Investments it was more so real estate bass for real so.
Use on the inside of the of the institution, and you knew what they were looking for to lend money. You used that when you left.
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To get them to lend you money because you already know what they're looking for.
It didn't really work out that way. It didn't idea that was the idea.
But now I know how all of the groups worked the same, So yeah, I used that same tactic to get all of the rest of it.
What were they looking for, like what made you attractive? Not you. I'm just saying, like, we'll make somebody attractive to somebody.
Honestly, it's a huge gap. So I thought that I would be given out a ton of money. But and I had access to the capitol, but I couldn't give it out. What they were looking for. It was a disconnect. It's like our people are here and their money is here. And I felt like it was my duty to kind of like bridge that gap. But that gap so they were looking for honestly, pretty traditional things, you know. It's like reserves, some serve some you know may or may not do a startup, so you might have to have
some income. Collateral is the biggest thing in our community. That was that's the biggest gap. We don't have collateral. If you think about history, a lot of businesses were funded because people owned real estate. Right you were able to get business loans because you can put your house up. Millennials, we I'm a millennium houses you know, So that that that is a challenge. That is a shift in the
marketplace that I don't think has been identified yet. So we all of our people are like, yo, we don't have any money. We don't have any money. We don't have any money. There's such an access to capital gap, which there is. But on the other side, they're streaming, Oh, we have so much money and we can't deploy it. That's what happens every single time you talk to anyone in that industry, and that's what they're going to tell you.
All right, all right that so now we're going to go into the next seven. We're going to talk about like your journey into developing, like how you find a deal, like all of the one O one on on the on the whole, yeah, the whole on the whole deal. That next, all right, so now we now we're going to ask a few questions that I think people will be interested in as far as you know. One thing with Eyls, we like we talk about different topics that nobody really knows, is like you don't really have an
education on this stuff. So as a real estate developer, right, so you you do the financial blueprint, but now you actually have to develop it. But development costs a lot of money to scale these projects, right, So how like, how does that part of it work as far as the construction aspect of it and actually developed it because.
In my mind I'm thinking of development. Yeah, you're making the financial blueprint, but I'm like, you're not even seeing a physical output before you start or do you know, like what you.
Want this space to look like going in?
Yeah? You create?
You created, So the developer isn't want to creates division in his mind, Very similar to a director of a movie, righty, Like they don't they don't. They're not the actor, they're not the and they're not the scriptwriter oftentimes, but they bring it all to fruition and this is the way that it needs to go.
So a developer, let's rewind a little bit.
Real estate development is a business process that takes land and you put real estate on it.
So very simple. There go a little deeper.
So I'm a commercial real estate developer, so I'm pretty much doing that at just a larger scale. And there's different sections of it, right, So I guess let's say break it.
Down into three phases.
There's a pre development phase where you do the design and you get the financials in order and you talk through some of those things. The second phase is the
construction phase. To your point, that's when you go and you're actually building the project and you're managing the budget to make sure that this is on time and on budget, because if the cost of your development is more than what you anticipated, then when the recession hit, that's kind of what happened, Like you saw buildings that were halfway developed and people stepped away because there was not an enough money to continue to the project, complete the project.
And then the last phase is operation. It's a pre development, construction, and operation. A developer pretty much runs that entire phase from beginning to end. So let's break them down. Pre development phase you have I typically start off with zoning and entitlement. It's like, okay, I have a piece of land here. How large is it? Let's say it's an acre of land. Okay, based on this acre, what is its zone for? What can I do here? My base is typically multifamily, so it's like, okay, how many units
can I put on here? Let's say you know an acre is forty three thousand square feet depending on where you are. They based zoning off of Florida area ratio. Set this thing called FAR. So let's say it's two times FAR, so you can put if it's an FR of two, you can put a eight six thousand square foot building on this parcel. And then you reverse engineer how many units you can fit there, So eighty two
thousand score fee. Depending on the unit side, If they're wanting two bedrooms, you may be able to get ninety units. If they're you know, three and four bedrooms, you may be able to get sixty units. And then based on the program, you create a vision around what is attainable for the site. So I start with the zoning and it's like, okay, yeah, what can I do? And then based on the zoning, I create a financial model and
dig a little deeper in. And that's when I reach out to consultants to do some of the other work. It's like, hey, architects, I want to put seventy units right here?
Can I do that? What does that look like? You know?
Can I do underground parking here? Can I have surface parking? How many stars can I fit? And that kind of changes the iteration of that financial model that I was working on.
Okay, let me change itself a little.
How long does that First, that preprocess take.
For you no time for real at this point, a couple of hours, a couple hours, wow.
So's and then the third second, third one is the actual development, right construction.
Second one is constructed, so we're not even in construction yet. So that's that's early, early, initial, just pre pre and then what you do is like okay, I think I'm onto something, and then you go get the site under control, so you reach out to the land owner.
Is it available, is it private? Is it public?
Is it If it's public land, sometime they have RFPs And that's what I was awarded with the forty one million. I was awarded that land to now.
Develop it by the state or the city.
That was city owned, but sometimes it's state owned, sometimes it's city, sometime it's county.
It varies.
So that was public, that's a public private partnership in that way, but sometimes it's private. So when it's private land, that's when you it's a little more difficult.
Ah, yeah, it's a little more difficult.
Because people value their land the way that they value their land. It's no different from a property. If you own a home, you may feel like your home is worth five hundred thousand dollars. The appraisal may say your home is worth two hundred or one hundred. So when you go to that individual and say, hey, this is my plan for this site, y'all have to have some level of common ground to make sure that this works, because if they want five times your number, it's not
feasible you move on. That vision can't come to fruition because this is not a roadblock. And then once once you then okay, yeah, I think this will work around this price.
I'll give you X for it. You want X for it? Okay.
What's the timing in DC? I mean typically you gotta have a thirty day close, sixty day close, like a quick no contingencies, no nothing. In Wisconsin, I could you know, sometimes do a year and a half without having to close on the financing. And by close, I mean actually pay for the land. You pay for the land typically when your financial at construction start. So when you close on all your finances, I got every all my ducks
in a row. It all comes to the table at the same time and it goes out to the various parties, one of those parties being the land owner. They could walk away. I now purchase it. I now can start construction, which is now phase two.
So when you're in that phase and you try to get the land, what's the bidding process?
Right?
So you wore a rewarded, a warded all warded the land.
What kind of explained what that means. But what's the process of bidding for it?
Yeap too. So on the private side, no process. It's just one to one Can I buy this from you or no?
And I've been told no because of my age and my color before, to be honest.
But on the public side.
They typically put out a list of priorities that they want. The most recent one, my eighty nine unit was a public public partnership and they just want to redevelopment of a blighted site. It was half a mile away from where I was raised and I wanted to develop it. So I put eighty nine units with Befoda Bahausan in my hood. That's what I did, and they agree with my plan. It wasn't very competitive and that was that, But there are other ones like the one in Madison
and a just one. It was very very competitive. They had multiple rounds of RFPs. What's the RFP again, request for a proposal. So that's when the city says, hey, these these are our priorities for this site.
We own in site. We don't want to own the site.
Cities often don't want to own sites because they want to benefit from the tax revenue from it.
It's not in their best interest to pay the upkeep.
It's a lot of risk associated with owning land, so cities often try to partner and sell and you know, do things like that. So that this priority specifically, they wanted a grocery store. The site right next door is a Pick and Save Roundings was just acquired by Kroger and they're shutting that Picking Save down, So now this area is about to be a food desert. So the city was like, okay, in order for us to preserve some level of grocery in this area, we need to
put out an RFP. So that was their number one priority, a grocery store. Second was affordable housing and some level of housing and density. So I put together the best plan to bring that grocery store in the quickest amount of time.
So, all right, they need a grocery store. They're identified, they need a grocery store, won't they just reach out the grocery stores directly, Why didn't they developer?
They did.
Grocery stores often don't develop their own land either, they least you know, so a developer developer, developer manages that process.
Businesses don't typically manage that process. You know.
If you think about Apple, Apple isn't going to like build their own headquarters. They're going to hire some consultants or a developer to build it for them. So that's an RFP can be in that way too. So that said, it's of interest for them to align themselves with a developer who has the capacity to do this because it's not something that just easily can be done, got it.
They can't just do it.
So phase two, the construction phase can talk about that.
Yeah, construction, So each each phase is a little less risky. So pre development FA is a ton of risk. I rewind a little bit, then I go into it. It's a ton of risk because you're paying a ton of consultants to do work. You're doing environmental assessments a phase one in a phase two ten that could be ten thousand dollars between the two.
Environmental assess that when they checking the dirt to see.
Check yeah, and all that well, yeah, so environmental, that's one where they're seeing if it's contaminated, has it been a you know, was this a gas station historically? Is this up to code because you don't want those sols to rise and people get sick and die and all that stuff. So you pay for environmental consultants. You pay for civil consultants which put together the design of the
building and make sure this is secure. Okay, architects design it, but the civil engineers are saying this will be sturdy for X amount of time, we won't have settlement, et cetera. And then you hire geotechnical consultants to test the soil and to see is a soil okay, you know stuff like that, so the soil is more so like for settlement, civil is self structure, jevity and things like that. So all of those people you've got to hire prior to
getting to construction. Who's that the developer is so yeah, the great quest walk is uh yeah, but you can you can get once you have a plan together, you can get loans. In theory they can get loans. We can't get loans really, they can get loans. So I partner with the people that can get the loans and try to I'll go into that in a second. But you pay for all of these consultants, even architects. All the architectural designs are pretty renderings and all that slice. Yeah,
you know that's a couple hundred thousand easy. So before you get to construction.
Are any of these RFPs or like, dude, does it ever come into play with the was it MWB minority women business? Is it? Because are they like? Do they have to have a certain amount of developments that are developed by minority developers?
Is that case? Minority developers is not a thing.
It's not a thing.
It's not a minority contractors is a thing. Okay, I know the developers is not a thing. So I have to in my development counterparts. Yeah, that has I'm an anomaly for real. So I have to hire minority women veterans and my colleagues have to do the same. My counterparts do same. We have to hire them the construction workers. Make sure that all of the people that are part of his team may be twenty twenty of the total the money that.
Is allocated to the budget has to go towards these groups.
But there's no structure for me as a developer and being black to benefit from that, why not, that's where the most money is.
Has it ever been proposed or no, I've never heard of it.
I'm sure it has.
Historic Black developers aren't a thing, A lot of them. No, it's not a thing because historically banks. We all know about red lining. We all know about that. There's a book called The Color of Law. Talk about this before, but for people that don't know, color a law documented the government's effect on communities and the intentionality of segregation.
So what they did was if a white developer even was developing something that allowed a black person to live in it, HUD would not ensure it, so the bank would not give along. So that was for a white developer. So imagine a black developer trying to develop something for black people. It wasn't possible. So the marrion Berries of the world, and just like H. J. Russell in Atlanta, the mayor of Atlanta, the mayor of d C, reached out and used their political connections to bring these two
people up. H J. Russell in Atlanta down peoples in d C in order to create an economic engine in our community that allowed for growth in a way that does not exist. So again that's just not a thing at all, and hopefully it can become a thing. But there's not enough black developers. I mean, I'm at conferences all the time. I go to real estate meet ups and everything like that. But oftentimes most most folks are investors because it's all we know. Most of the developers
I know aren't. They don't look like me. Sout out to keV Kevin Noule. It's a big bro mind. He's killing it in Milwaukee right now, absolutely killing it. He's a black developer that is doing his thing. A couple of folks out here in DC as well. Dr McKinney I really respect. Don Peebles's son is actually doing development out of DC as well. So there's some black developers like bubbling up.
But yeah, it's just not How important is political political collections connections.
Depends on where you are. I was saying Wisconsin not as much. Wisconsin is a very objective state. If you are doing if you are checking these boxes, you can move forward in a place like other places. It's not that objective. It's a little more subjective. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I.
Think we were talking about the construction part.
Real quick. So you start off trying to predevelopment risk. You pay for all of these consultants a couple hundred thousand, and then at the closing table. So the benefit of getting to the closing table is that all that risk is wiped away, so it's all a part of the development budget, although you're paying for it before it happens. You get refunded once all your money comes in, So the three hundred thousand that you had out, the million dollars that you had out, all comes back right there.
So that's a great day. And then what happens in the construction phase. You have to mitigate that risk because you know people may not come to work, or the cost of something may be more expensive, or the design wasn't you have to change the design up and.
Things like that.
So you have to look out for all of those things before you get under construction because when that construction budget gets blown up, it's a real thing. And the first thing that goes at that point is is your developer fee.
We have to pay for that.
So we got to mitigate that risk because you can get a project done and not make nothing to that point. My first project, sixty unit, a fortable housing development twelve point six million dollars. I made thirty thousand dollars on Wow, three and a half years worth of work. I made thirty thousand dollars.
That was it.
What kind of insurance do you have to have to be protected.
During construction just as a development?
I'm like anything you said like you're on the hook, right, So I guess you don't want to have to always come out of your pocket if something happens to risky tech. So there's no insurance.
No, it's not a thing now, it's just a risky tech. So that deal twelve and a half million. My original development partner. So this is my first project, this one I got in twenty sixteen. My original development partners were fully integrated firms. So they did They did development, construction, and property management.
They did it all.
So I'm like, okay, bet let me partner with these guys, let me learn from their different entities. Is all one stop, and then we're gonna do it. Uh, moving forward. Once we got the award, their board wasn't as comfortable with their original terms we agree to. So now you know, based on so you have to make guarantees. You make financial guarantees. For construction. I guarantee that this will be built, even on my own die.
And you have.
To spread the risk across a development profile and share that with partners. If they're making all the guarantees, they're taking all the money. So that's why we get boxed out too. Black folks typically don't have the capital to say yeah, so.
We can't make guarantee.
Yeah, yeah, I like you said that because I have a friend who appliented well, who's a developer in New York.
He's black.
He always tells me about these personal guarantees that he has to put up of like all this money and properties, like whenever time they're doing a deal, and it's like him and his partner they got through these personal lines of guarantees and all that stuff.
Personal guarantee, personal guarantee.
And if you don't have the bare minimum for the projects that I'm working on, you need a million dollars of liquidity like cash and five million dollars in networks to start the conversation. That's going to eliminate a lot of us. That's why you don't see black developers. That's the primary reason why you don't see black developers, because you can't get a game, and then when you start to you get righted.
It's like, okay, well you got.
An idea, you got a concept I want, you can get teen and then we just get used as brokers to find sites and so they can make more money. But I wasn't on that. I'm not on that. So I get the majority of my fees at this point, at least fifty one percent. I'm gonna get standing on it.
I'm moving on that.
That's not so you say upon partnerships, So you partner with a lot of people, Yeah, I have to. So for a young cat or you're not even young cat, anybody just in general, because like you said, it's a lot of barriers to get in. Is that the best way to go about it is to kind of find somebody already that's successful and kind of work with them.
Yeah. I mean I get reached out to you all the time.
I definitely I want to support everybody, but realistically I just can't. It's capacity thing. So that said, I think the best way is to create value. You have to create value. If you're not creating value, then you're just there. If if you want to work with me, just like if I want to work with them. Is it worth my time to work with you?
Not?
If you bring anything to bring, I could do it on my own. I tell people that all the time, you gotta it gotta be mutual, and it can't because that's more of a charity thing, right, It's like you through so much chat as the time and a place for that, you know, mentorship, charity. It's not a business partnership. Business partnership has it doesn't have to be equal, but you have to bring something.
You got to bring some value.
Yeah, So if you can create value in real estate the way that I did it, I created the financial model, I created the vision, and I got the land in the contract. That's what that was my control. So if I pitched it to anybody, they can't just go get this land.
I already got it. So now it's like I have leverage.
So if you, as a developer want to or aspiring developer want to take that strap, I'll get some land on the contract. Put a financial plan that makes sense. I talked about language earlier. Showed me the language. This is the language that we speak right here. When you start speaking that language, we can partner with no problem.
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