Study Hall: How To Buy Back The Block with Chris Senegal

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Bag drop, Mike drop back, drop drop. I hope everybody got a chance to check out to kill a mic episode. That's all right now on all platforms. The young legend himself, Chris, what's going on? Brother?

Are y'all?

Oh we're great, bron how you I'm great?

Man, I'm great, blessed man. Can't complain, yo, man.

We gotta make it back to age down, that's a fact.

Yeah, we can't wait.

It was.

It was, it was too short.

That was our first time. It was definitely a memorable one.

The right and then COVID hit right before y'all were coming back right, Yeah, we was.

We was talking to you, and I was talking to you trying to work out like venues and eights and all that. Then was like they had the rodeo going on and it was a bunch of stuff. We had to push it back because we had Philly and we actually could we couldn't get either one off. We had to cancel Philly like two days before, and Houston was supposed to be after Philly. So God will and whenever this thing clears up finally, man, we're coming back. Were coming back to Houston, full, full steam ahead.

Gotta make it happen, man, gotta make it happen.

We had a good time out there.

Chris shout out to Htown, Man, shout out to Htown for sure. Man. So yeah, man, we're gonna just you know, let people settle in here. But once again, thank you for joining us. I feel like, you know, we just shot your episode. It's crazy how time flies.

That was man, Yeah really but man, just watching the trajectory of ey L Man, it's been it's been phenomenal to watch.

Man.

I'm like the biggest fan.

Yeah, man, we shot that, we shot your episode.

We went to we did our Houston open house in a sense really meet and greet.

I was like, yo, man, we got a special one with you. I love that.

Yeah that was that was dope, man. That was dope. So yeah, if anybody's not familiar Chris Sinega a legend in his own right episode thirty six at Lisia, you should definitely check that out if you get a chance. So at the time, this is actually dope because at the time he was like in the process of like he brought a whole block in Houston. So I won't go over the whole story because it's in the episode.

So it's fitting because you know, shout out, shout out to Houston. But like when I think of Houston, I think a scarface and his knee had to saw my block. Yeah, I'm looking like, yo, Chris really did.

It, And this who happens?

When we went there, we stayed in the fifth ward, third ward door door World, third Ward, and I was like, yo, I remember one day we lost I thought we lost Shotty. I was like, yo, bro, yo, everybody seem Shotty and yeah, we couldn't find him. We like, yo, damn, I think somebody followed us to the crib bro they got him. He's like walking like aimlessly down the block, like this is a nice neighborhood. He's like, you know, I just saw Chris Senegal. He's scouting.

They thought I got kidnapped. Was running out the house, like where is he? Where's he at? Like I'm like, I just took the shoulder the neighborhood. Man. They literally thought I got kidnapped in Houston, right. But but yeah, so Chris, So what we're going to do is I'm gonna let you go through your presentation all that, but before we even start anything that I missed out as far as the backstory or where you're at now, as far as the development things of that nature.

Man, you hit all important points. I mean, you know, we've got two different projects. One is, you know, the new construction bringing in the.

Higher incomes back to the community, and the other one is that eighteen house portfolio bought is specifically to protect the existing residents. You know, we can try to get the city to control the rents or whatever talk about you know, stopping gentrification, but we can't stop it. The only way you really control the rents is to own the real estate that the rents come from.

And so that's been my focus. Man. Just trying to so that we can do both sides. So yes, I'll get into a little presentation. We'll talk about that.

In a second, all right, so let's get into it. So before we start, we're going welcome everybody. So what we do we do this. We do this once a month at the end of the month, so we have eyl University, and part of eyl University is that we do weekly classes. Like we do a class every single week every Wednesday at eight o'clock Eastern Standard time, and then at the last Wednesday of each month, we open it up for the public so they can like you know, have like an open house. It's kind of like an

November we got some heat coming. Yeah, we got some heat.

And then in addition to that, we got the book and movie club headed up by you.

Yeah yeah.

Right now we're doing a money Master of the Game and that's been going crazy every week. I mean, I think we hit a record last week. We had like almost four hundred people in our book club. It was absolutely amazing. It's more than a book club. It becomes like this therapeutic session on finance and real estate, and

Partners for each other.

So it's like, yo, that could be my business part or it could just be somebody that's pushing me to find my goals or reach my goals.

And what we've noticed is like, this is dope.

It's like sometimes you tell the person close to you your goals and they don't believe in you. But when you tell a stranger of your goals, all they know is your goals. They don't know anything about you but the goal, and they try to help you reach And I think that's one of the beautiful things that we find inside of our accountability triad.

So it's dope.

Yeah, So we got that. Then we got the private Facebook group, which is an investment group, and that's a community within itself, over four thousand members in there. And then we have bi weekly real estate calls Jail Mortgage God every other Sunday, MG he gets on it. It's just like a two hour, three hours, sometimes even four hours, just real estate call and they just talk about a variety of different real estate calls. And then once a

Yeah.

Yeah, so every month now that we get new earners coming in and we're treating it like the school, right eyl University, we have orientation. So some people get they come into and they're just like overwhelmed by the information because, like I said, we're not just capping when we're telling you, like,

Yeah, that's a fact. So yeah, so I say, I have to say, this is like open house. Once a month we do this open house situation, and it's a lot. It's a lot. So the reason why, like the price keeps going on and it's still undervalue. It's three hundred and sixty dollars for the entire year, but we're adding to it, so it's an ongoing thing. So as we add to it, we have different overhead, we have staff, now,

Right, let's go. Let's go. Let me see. I'm share my screen.

Does he have to do something to share it or no?

He's now okay, Yeah, I got it.

Yeah. Chris is a tech guy, so I know he.

Knows engineer in his own right.

Chris is okay, let's see.

Yeah, we see you over here.

Okay, let me make sure it's not let me see slash over from the beginning.

There we go, all right, So how to buy the block?

I appreciate the opportunity guys, for y'all to have me

I was like, well, you.

Know, we're always talking about these things that happened in our neighborhoods, and I know other people that look like me that are investors, but nobody is really talking about how to tackle this challenge, this gentrification issue.

How do we start controlling these neighborhoods again.

So that's been my mission since about twenty twelve, in twenty thirteen, when I bought that first block that you talked about. So let's just start with the definition of gentrification, the process by which a part of a city changes from being a poorer area to a richer one and people from a higher social class are beginning to move in. Usually if no one advocates for the poorer residents, they become displaced.

So let's get this out the way.

I saw the posts that y'all made earlier, and I saw the comments under the post, and it's like, man, we all know the problems. We all know about slavery, we all know about red lining, we all know about all the other injustices that we have. At some point we got to start focusing on the solutions to these problems. And it's okay to regurgitate them, and it's okay to be debater, it's okay to be a historian, but what

And so that's exactly where I am.

So my mission changing their gentrification through redevelopment that balances the opportunity to attract higher income people originally from similar communities out of the suburbs while ensuring existing residents are not displaced in the process. So let's talk about revitalization and plus gentrification always a debate. Okay, so everything has a life cycle, including a neighborhood. It has a life cycle, guys. So everything has to start over at some point or either it's just gonna die.

You know. We can't just let everything.

Stay where it is, So we either revitalize and have community controlled narrative or we stand back and let somebody else do it from the sideline, right. And then that's control specifically by outside groups that want profit, and that's

So we are we are trying to acquire and.

Control the redevelopment of real estate in our historic neighborhoods. So let's talk again about the problems we all know about and the history that we don't think to mention. Sometimes all these neighborhoods are disadvantaged for the most part, but they once thrived with people from all economic classes.

And what do I mean by that, well, before.

Desegregation, all of those vacant rundown commercial buildings you see in these poor neighborhoods used to be vibrant businesses. The doctors, the lawyers, the carpenters, the movie theaters, the restaurants. Everything that we did not have the rights to patronize in another community was in these communities, and we patronized all of those things.

So let's not think.

About it as always been a horrible place to be. At one point in time, it thrived. Here's another thing to look at. Businesses like grocery stores are scarce in our communities, but when these neighborhoods thrived during that same timeframe, the businesses were actually owned by the people in the community, and they were sustainable. So if it happened before, it can happen again. So my goal has been, how do we go in these neighborhoods. How do we buy the

That would work.

I bought the property in twenty thirteen, but I really didn't know what I was going to do with it, and you know, eventually I came in and I put these key pieces together so we can go in the communities that we can invest in the vacant property, in the abandoned property, and the neglected property, the drug houses, the houses that that attract criminal activity. Right, not going on knocking on doors asking the seniors to sell their house, not taking advantage of people that are, you know, in

Try to keep rental rates affordable.

If you're going to go in the community and buy rental properties, okay that what that means is sometimes you're taught go in and renovate it and make it as nice as possible, which means your investment has to be larger on the front end.

In exchange, you have to demand more for the rent.

Right, But if you can buy a rental property that's in decent condition and the tenant is happy with the way it is, you don't have to invest so much on the front end. You can still structure a deal where you get a good return if you're a good negotiator, where you buy it at.

The right price so then the person can stay right there. Where they are.

The third component is one of the hardest components. How do we prevent home ownership loss due to higher taxes. That's going to be more of a political play where we have to get with politicians that do this and other It's already implemented in some cities where if you've owned your home for longer than a certain amount of time, you're exempt from property tax increases. And you know, so that needs to be something that we need to focus on in these communities to make this by the block

Bullet number two is very important.

It's harder for you to spark this revitalization and get a return on investment if you are the only catalyst you have to go in the communities where there's already something kind of going on and we still have an opportunity to step in front of it.

And instead of.

Trying to stop, know, the redevelopment and calling it gentrification, let's participate in it. Let's control the narrative. Let's control parts of everything that's going on in the community. Okay, So things you want to look for when you see announcements of projects in the newspaper, on the news, city council meetings, from other people that are in real estate that you know, people that are networking with developers or builders,

Uh when when when when a.

City activity picks up in a neighborhood On the private real estate side, Okay, when a particular neighborhood where you didn't see a new construction before, now you start seeing for sale signs and you see active construction work going on, that's probably a good community, especially if it's.

One of our communities.

That's a good time for you to start saying, Okay, this might be a neighborhood that I might want to look at, trying to buy a block with okay, and then the city initiatives to spark redevelopment. That's on the

Okay?

So number one, when it comes to buying blocks, if you're gonna do something bigger than individual houses, you don't want to get a big plan together.

You don't want to spin your wheels on things if you do not have site control.

Site control is the single most important part of that process, because what happens is you put this tremendous plan together and either the seller decide they don't want to sell, or you don't have all of the properties together that you need for the project, or they get wind of something else and they increase their price on you, and so all of these factors will end up with you doing all this work, all this planning, and then you have no property to actually use it for. So all

You have to allow me to buy your property at this price.

Okay.

In exchange for that, I'm gonna give you this money. Could be one thousand dollars, could be five hundred dollars.

Whatever.

Hey, if you never hear from them again, this is your thousand dollars, you know. But if I come back to you and I'm ready to buy, then we have to follow through on this contract. And so that allows you to control each individual partial until you get them all together for the project that you're trying to do. Okay, next most important step is planning and design, because you have to really understand what's going to take to pull

Buying this block and doing whatever you plan to do with it really makes sense. Okay.

Now, so after you get site control and you've got a good plan together, then you have to figure out how you're actually going to take down the project and how you're going to start the project. So my number one go to is what's been working for me in

You can negotiate with them.

And so for one of my properties, I'm gonna show you in a case study. One of them, I negotiate ten percent down to buy a whole block. The second one I had to come to the table with fifty percent of the agreed upon purchase price. But then you make payments to them instead of making payments to a bank, and they're not gonna check your credit score, they're not gonna do a background check, they're not going to ask

Right.

So that's a trick, Well, that's not really a trick.

That's a technique that we need to implement more often when we're trying to get in our communities and do.

These things so something else.

If they don't agree to that, or if they do agree to that, but you don't have enough money for the down payment, start off with a small group of investors.

Maybe I would always suggest you have somebody.

On your team that's experienced with investing, and you know, have them come on a team and help you through the process.

I highly, I highly.

Suggest you don't do it if you're all newbies and you have nobody on the team, because what may seem like a good deal may not be a good deal.

And then third is crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is what I did for one of my projects, but I didn't do a crowdfund until I had been in real estate investing for almost thirteen years.

Okay, so a lot of people ask about it.

But when you take other people's money, you know, and you and you were trying to complete a project, all those bullet points before that got to be spot on because people are not giving you donations, they are giving you money, and they are expecting their money back and they're respecting a profit on top of that. So you know, you got to be really careful when you get in that round. And most importantly of all these things is

And this is what I mean by that.

The investors need to be participating this. Okay, we need to be actively looking to buy in our communities.

Okay, if you're a.

Landlord, maybe you don't want to actually live in the community, but you have rental properties. You should be trying to control rental properties in these same neighborhoods. And you can maybe maybe one investor has bought the block and renovated the block, and now they're selling the homes to other people. Well, you as an investor should come in and buy some of the properties from that developer so that the ownership transfers from us to us.

Right.

And then you, as someone who looks like the community, should be looking out for people in the community and have a vested interest in not being a slumlord and taking care of the community. Of course, realtors play an integral part of it. Why because when you have buyers, when you have investors, when you have renters, you should be telling them about all of the investors, landlords, developers, builders, you know in the community, and trying to steer them

And lastly, and most importantly, the regular buyers.

Like for my development that I'm show you in the second all my buyers look like us, young working professionals. It's not as bad. It's not the hood that sometimes people say it is. You have to be very aware

Perfect yet, it's coming.

And usually what happens is we go to the community one day and it's the hood, and we go back a year later and it's a million dollar homes and we're like, what happened and we're mad and it's gentrification.

It's like, no, what really happened was.

From the time you left, other people saw value in that community and they started buying.

And not everybody's buying rental properties. People are really moving in that community.

They're walking their dogs, they're riding their bikes, and their values are steadily going up, steadily going up. And then by the time we get wind of what's going on in the community, the prices is so high we can't afford it, right, So that's usually what happens.

So ty Shot, I know I'm talking a lot man.

That.

Got it.

I'm actually taking notes.

Yeah, I hope everybody on YouTube please hit the like button, and I hope people greatly appreciate this because it's like nobody's doing this, like nobody, And that's the reason why we created Eyo University. Like I said, it's a it's a business school, but do you know you don't learn this stuff in business schools. And this is just the beginning. Like he still got more to talk about. But it's like people talk about by the buy back the block, what does that mean? What does that mean?

Right now we're even calling.

So this was like, all right, this is this is a step by step blueprint from somebody that has is actually doing it and has actually done it. So now I keep going bro.

Chris real real quick.

So some of those signs, are there any other type of retail or commercial real estate that we should be looking for for a sign?

And I know somebody in the chat sai Yo when you see a Starbucks or.

Usually so that's not that we have a misconception about, right.

So usually like we get mad when grocery stores and those types of businesses leave the community, But those businesses have whole departments that before they buy, before they figure out where their location, their site selection team pulls the demographics and they say, what's the average income in this community?

Do these people.

Earn enough and do they have enough disposable income to support our business? Right, So you're not going to see commercial signs going in until almost too because all the incomes in that area are already going to be so high and they're going to be buying houses at such high prices, and you know, the prices continue to go up that it becomes priced out for us. So what the way development usually works is the rooftops come first, the houses come first, the new residents with the higher

I told you earlier.

But yeah, it's almost almost like you see a Starbucks. It's almost too late.

Yeah, they made me thinking, like whole foods don't end up in every neighborhood, you know what I mean?

Right, they don't, and people don't speaking of the whole foods, people don't realize like a grocery store has the lowest profit margins of almost any business, is usually three to five percent, So they're not going to go in the neighborhood. Even if the city gives them all the money to build the facility, they still have they have to float

It's not really very profitable.

So if you're in a community where people are buying everything off the shelf, in the cans and in the boxes, and you got this huge overhead.

From all these employees and you.

Got this huge overhead from this huge lease you got, and you got this high utility bill. You know, it's highly unlikely that you're going to be profitable if you try to go into one of those neighborhoods for the sake of you know, social service, right, I mean, they have to run a business at the end of the day.

Yeah, and YouTube, if you could like this, two things I need from YouTube everybody, Like, we got nine hundred and ninety seven people. There's no reason why we shouldn't have nine hundred and ninety seven likes. If you didn't like it, just politely comment why you why you thought the information wasn't valuable enough to like, it doesn't even

Yeah, yeah, I mean it's something where the you know, the criminal criminal activity is going down significantly and there's more police patrols coming and all that kind of stuff. You know, you have to be there, So that's the only way you're really participating. And I understand the people that have like young kids or feel uncomfortable in those situations. Yeah,

In that neighborhood.

But in the same time, you think about this if you buy Okay, I'll give you an example. There was a lady that went to the Third Ward, like the hood part of the Third Ward worse than where y'all stayed, but the first house had been renovated Middle ai'ed. White lady was like one of the last people walking out of an open house. And my boy was there, and he said that ninety percent of people that walked through this open house and the hood part of the Third

Notught like that.

That's a lot of information. That's that's a that's a gym right there, man, that's a gym right there.

We got to get to Houston, man.

I can't wait to come back to here.

Yo, mister Dunlop, we're paging you, all right, Yeah.

I'm gonna run through the case studies real quick. So let's talk about fifth Ward. People talking about not the hoods. So let's go through it. So settling the middle eighteen hundreds, believe it or not, Middle eighteen hundreds to nineteen hundred, it was actually half it was mixed, uh white and black. It was annexed to the city eighteen sixty six. By nineteen hundred, it's a predominantly black neighborhood with thriving businesses. And don't believe it, let me show you. This is

On Lions Avenue. You see all types of businesses all up.

And down the street. And you see who's walking up and down the street. This was a segregated neighborhood at that point in time. Okay, this is the other way down the same street. I mean I see tailors, I see movie theaters, I see pawn shops. You know, I see restaurants. Everything's in the community, right. But then in the nineteen sixties, when desegregation happened, two major freeways came

I mean, you know, these neighborhoods were thriving.

So that's the part that I want people to remember when we think about these neighborhoods.

They used to be graded if.

We had a black wall street in every city, because we had to create our own. We couldn't we couldn't patronize other other neighborhoods. So this is the freeway that kind of came through. This is the same street in the same vicinity, like one block off, but you see now the only thing that's left. Thankfully, the churches are still there, but the neighborhood is a lot less activity going on, a lot A lot of the buildings are going now.

So this is the property that I bought, which is infant Ward.

That's the same freeway that you see in the back on the left side Highway fifty nine. So in twenty fourteen, I did what I was telling everybody to early.

I was watching the city trend.

I was watching redevelopment and it was going counterclockwise around downtown, and this was the last neighborhood that had not been touched by.

Redevelopment or gentrification.

So I was able to negotiate with this owner to buy this entire block for half a million dollars and negotiate ten percent down.

Okay, so I actually sold a couple of rental properties.

I had an investor put in a little bit, and I took control of this property. Everybody thought I was crazy. This was still the bloody nickel at that point in time.

But I knew.

I knew just by watching the redevelopment trending, eventually it was going to come because this was like literally the last quadrant around downtown that had not been redeveloped. Okay, so I actually paid over market value. Here's why there were no sales. There was no comps, So if you looked at the tax records, that's the all thing can go off of. It had the whole property worth about three hundred and fifty thousand.

But what I.

Knew taking a calculated risk by watching the redevelopment. It's like, well, if I'm not paying cash for it, and I'm only giving him fifty thousand right now, and I'm financing it for twenty thirty years, it's highly likely that by the time I get even close to paying this off, the value will have caught.

Up and exceeded it.

So what that does is it almost put you in a position where you're like kind of partnering with the owners. You know, you're telling them you're going to give him a little bit more over time than what the property is currently worth. But you have everything calculated and you know that the time you make whatever move you're gonna make, the value will have caught up and you will have equity on the back end. So okay, So I talked about this already. So twenty fourteen is when I bought it.

The water and what we considered the hood.

But of course they always find value when you know, when we don't find value, and they put this big plan together, do this massive project, and so that was the first catalyst in the community. So this again, this is the project site that they got. You see where downtown is and the stars where both of my projects are. So one of my projects is right here, the new construction townhome project where the grocery store is is right there.

RADI is what other project is?

Okay, this is what's going to be built on that site. This is not speculation. This is what's going to be there.

Okay. They've already they've already cleared.

All of the old buildings, They've already done all the underground, different structure, they've run all the utilities. They did slow down a little bit because of COVID and some of the lumber prices and stuff going up, but the CEO said they're still moving forward with the project. So after that happened in twenty sixteen, here's another creative technique you can use. I talked the owner into converting from a owner finance note, which is like a mortgage note, to

Three or four years instead of waiting thirty years. Okay, so he agreed. So what did that do?

That took the mortgage off of the property. So now I am the primary the primary partner, he's a limited partner, and I have this property. I can now go to the bank and say it's free and clear.

I don't have any debt on it. Right.

So then I used the property as collateral as I started shopping to get.

The loans to do the redevelopment.

But the downside, of course, what I talked about earlier, I had to go through twenty three different lenders before I got approved. No matter how great my plan was, there was no established marketability in this neighborhood because there was no new construction. Even though the redevelopment was that close, it was really hard for me to find a lender that would that would partner with me on the project.

So you know, I had a private investor.

Come in and put in an IRA money two hundred fift thousand. She she's a young black chick that worked for oil and gas company, worked for Shell for a while. She had a nice I R that she was that she wasn't using or sitting in the stock market, and you know, I showed her the vision, she believed in it, and she's like, okay, cool. I didn't take her money

Chris, not to cut you off, but yeah, we did a we did a class on self directed iras too University, and I'm not sure if that's the path fe you went, but a lot of people don't even realize that you could actually use your retirement accounts like an IRA to invest in real estate without paying taxes. So I just wanted to throw that in.

This and that's exactly right.

When you have a self directed IRA, you can invest in any asset that you choose, and it's literally self directed. You just have a company that's basically a custodian for you to help you check boxes. But yeah, you can. You can invest it however you want. So that's something that you can leverage in real estate. So, like I said,

So this old.

Grocery store didn't have much plumbing, you know, it wasn't drawing much electricity. And when I got ready to do my new project, I realized that the city was going to require me to update a lot of this infrastructure.

So that's something that you got to think about if you're planning on doing.

Projects on this scale, something that you usually don't think about when you're just flipping the house or building one or two houses on a lot, because usually that what you're building will not impact the infrastructure greatly. But when you're trying to do a bigger project, you do have to consider those things. So this talks about more twenty seventeen now redevelopment. Remember that first neighborhood. I I told

That's how it happens, once they start renaming neighborhoods. Once I've seen Sobro, Yeah, so Bro, you know what Sobro is. No, it was that South Bronx.

South Bronx.

Yeah, that was one of the most dangerous neighborhood support one of the more poorest neighborhoods in America, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America. It's still not the greatest. But when they started naming it so Bro and they put like a wholes and all of that, and it's like, all right.

Ye, don't say that because the official name for that for that south in the fifth one. Now they call it North Eto, which is east of downtown.

Yeah. That's another that's another thing too. Once you start to see names, because it's like even know how I think it was nor North Manhattan No.

No, no, no, that was Houston.

No no, no, they had it. They try to rename Harlem something like North Manhattan.

No.

Yeah. And so once they start to get funny with those names like so Bro no ho, that's like the hipsters they trying to they try to rebrand it.

They there trying to rebrand the community those are you talking about has a stigma that the old name has a stigma, so they want to try to, like you said, rebranded.

Yeah, So that that's part of the announcement.

So when you were talking about announcements, when you start seeing things like that I saw somewhere and you can correct me if if I'm wrong, but they named the Fifth World.

They have a Cultural Arts district.

Yes, yes, now now thankfully with this with this time, it was us doing that. So the Fifth World Redevelopment Corporation did that Culture Arts District, and it's it's gonna be You're right, it's going to be the first African American culture Arts district in Houston.

Perfect.

Perfect, yeah, man. So that's what I'm saying.

This neighborhood, they've been staying ahead of you know, not not playing victim.

And being behind. They've been in front of the ball. So it's been really good.

So this goes back to this is the CEO recently in August, you know, amidst covid just saying that the project is still going forward. Right, So this is that same block. This is the same block that I showed you earlier. That's what it looks like now.

And that that that's your block.

That's your block, man. You pulled up on that.

Yeah, yeah, man, put put that. Put the clap in the movie. I just want to know you gotta celebrate that, man, because yeah, I wish we could do it side by side, But that blo I think he brought earlier.

Yeah, let me go back to it.

Yeah, can you go back to that? Yeah, so that block, you brought that block? And then how many years later.

So twenty fourteen, and then twenty nineteen, twenty eighteen when when I first started building them, So twenty nineteen they were the first three were done. I think that's when I was on y'all show last year, and you know, people told me that they were like, man, nobody's gonna buy that. You know, nobody's gonna want to live in the neighborhood. You know you're not gonna be able to get the prices that you're thinking you're gonna get for them. And I mean, I proved everybody wrong. I got I

That you know it's worth it.

It's worth it's worth taking a shot, it's worth of rebuilding and bringing people back to the community.

Man.

One of one of the most powerful experiences I had was when I was under construction.

It's two two black kids walked down the street.

Two boys, they were like maybe thirteen fourteen some like that, and they're like, man, you're building rent houses and I'm like no. He's like he's like, you work for the person that's building these. I'm like, no, I'm building them. He was like okay, He's like who's going to buy these? I was like, well, who you think is gonna bomb?

He's like, well, they look like it looked like white people gonna buymb and I.

Was like, man, you know, you know, well you'll be surprised, you man, know, there's people that look like you that can also afford these types of things.

And I was like, I had two of them under contract. I was like, so, actually the first two buyers.

Are people that come from a neighborhood just like you and went to college and you know, they have good jobs now and now they're coming back and buying this.

And they were like, man, we didn't know that was possible.

But you know that sounds sounds kind of cliche, but there's there's kids in that community that now have a positive representation.

They can see people that look.

Like them, that's our age pulling out their driveways and porsches and audi's and BMW's.

It looked like them.

That's the representation they didn't have before. The only representation they had of successful people was illegal entrepreneurs.

You know. But that's all a part of buying the block.

Man.

It's not just about you buying and you being an investor and just holding it onto it. It's about creating opportunities like this as being in the development and building and enticing other people to come back to the community.

So that's amazing. Yeah, So fast forward. This is fifth ward.

Now you see all these prices over here right for four hundred thousand dollars.

Hour.

When I bought that first block, you couldn't you couldn't sell a lot for twenty thousand dollars.

It would just sit.

But now you have all this activity, the yellow ones appending the green, the new listings, and there's a bunch of souls that are in the community.

But four hundred thousand dollars, you know.

And so this is one of one of the articles that they put me in the paper for just talking about my projects. This is not talking about the second project. So let's go back to the Highway story. So this block right here is the second product. This is the eighteen houses I was talking about with the two commercial buildings. This is that same freeway once again, an infamous freeway.

Now what are we going to.

Do about it?

Right, it's our responsibility to fix the problem.

So the owners of this, the landlords, they had had this for about twenty years and they were ready to retire.

So not all landlords passed property down.

That's another myth. Real estate is not generational wealth unless you have taught your kids how to do systems and they see that it's worthwhile for them to take over that same investment, that same vehicle. In this case, the kids did not want to take over it, so the parents were told that they should sell it.

Okay.

So, and what would have happened if I didn't buy it? Because all that redevelopment, by the way, all those new townhomes, if you see my cursor up in the left corner, that's right there, that's all new construction right there. So had I not bought it, an investment outside the community would have bought it and they were done a couple

Now I can show the other side of buying the block.

We can buy the block and make sure we preserve the lifestyles and the sense of normalcy that the residents have that have been here long term. So the way you can do a project like this, since it is so close to redevelopment, it's so close to the catalyst that I talked about earlier, is that you can get

But every other neighborhood that's been gentrified lots that.

Will worth two fifty I mean, we're worth twenty five thousand, and now we're two and fifty thousand. So for this one, this is the one I actually got to do the crowdfund on. So what I did with the crowdfund, I'll go back to this FLA. The crowdfund is once I negotiated with the sellers to the purchase price. They wanted one point five million for the whole block. I negotiated them down to one point two five So I negotiate

There's not a lot of sales in the community.

So you know, what I would like to do is get you to you know, come down a little bit off of that price and work with me over a few years. Let me establish the accounting records, let me establish all these things, and then I can go back

Want to get creative.

And they bought in, you know, so they owner finances, they wouldn't take ten percent, they wouldn't take twenty percent down so they wanted something significant, so fifty percent. So what I did with that was, first I secured a private investor that I knew that could back me on bringing the majority of that down payment to closing if

Have all your your i's dotted.

And your tea's crossed because you're going to take outside people's money. And so with this, some of these residents in these houses have been living there for twenty years.

Literally.

There's there's mother daughters that live in separate houses on the property. There's niece and uncle that lived next door to each other. And you know, these are long term stable tenants, all all African American, some.

Of them, most of them.

Actually all of them hardworking. I don't have there's no there's really no Section eight tenants here. These are people that are just hardworking but on fixed incomes. Right, So for that, that made a good base case for me. It's like, Okay, there's long term stable revenue coming from the residential side of this property. These two commercial buildings over here were vacant, so that gives me upside, right,

So that's what I did.

So that's how I decided to package it up, and I decided to do the crowdfund. And you know, I didn't know how successful the crowdfund was going to be, but it ended up being extremely successful. The most you can raise with this type of crowdfund and it's SEC regulated, is a million and seventy thousand, and it took me

Know, we were going to be good landlords.

I went and I did some slight renovations to the property just to make them feel better.

So this is what it looks like now.

I came in, I did landscaping, I put screens on everybody's windows to help with their utility bills, and repainted everything.

Just made it look nice and neat, and you can see the bottom picture.

Actually repaved it everything to give it a fresh new look. This is the status of one of the commercial buildings. So this is going to be short term peer space. So this is what looked like before. It looked like it was almost tear down worthy, you know, but we took it back to the bones, and now this is what it looks like. This is what it looked like on the inside before, and so this is what it looks like now. This is what a couple weeks ago the renovations, and this is closer. This is what it

And then this is the other building. This is the building down.

Here in the corner where we've got to gut it back to the studs and we're getting ready to bring it back. It's probably going to be an event space for now, and then we're probably gonna turn Ino a coffee shop in a year or two. We had coffee

So yeah, man, And.

This is this is what you're talking about Troy, the Culture Arts district. So the whole street, this whole street with fifth word Community Development Corporation got disapproved to be a culture arts district.

So yeah.

So and this project, this crowdfunded project, is right here in the heart of it, right off of the freeway.

So that's another upside for.

Having ownership in this community because there's gonna be a lot of uh public money coming into the community now because it's a culture arts district. So yeah, man, So that's it. That's that's what I got for you.

That's incredible appreciation. I asked. I asked Chris to put together a presentation. I didn't know he was going to do a whole that was. That was extremely impressive.

Man.

I really, I really, really, really really appreciate that. That was. That was extremely extremely impressive.

Well appreciated man, much appreciated man.

And trust me, I can go hours on each one of those slides, so I try to keep it short.

Now, you know what the thing about it is, and we're gonna go into the best part of the whole situation when people get to ask questions and answer the questions. But it's like, you know, we're in a political season right now, and obviously everybody should go out there and vote for, you know, whatever you think is the right situation to do. But nobody's coming to save you either way. You can't rely on you can't rely on government programs, You can't rely on any type of you know, opportunity

We ain't throwing the word legend around lightly. Man, We're talking to a real legend. And I'm glad you said the opportunities on christ I heard you say something that I've never heard before, and we kind of explained what opportunities zones well and shout out to our brother MG to Mortgas.

God, we did a whole segment.

On that, but you said they kind of really don't benefit us, obviously because you have to have capital gains.

But you said something very interesting. You said, earners, what's up?

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The process of moving your business into an opportunity zone could benefit us.

Can you talk about that just a little bit?

Yeah, so, So the way it works is, well, I think you have to acquire a business outside of an opportunity zone, or you have to have investors.

Okay, let me let me back up.

So, yeah, so if you personally acquire a business that's outside of an opportunity zone and then you move it into an opportunity zone, you get the same tax benefits as the people that are investing in real estate in those zones. You can also have investors invest in a business for you to buy and then you relocate into an opportunity zone and those investors get.

Those same tax benefits.

And like you said, opportunity zones aren't really made for us because you have to have capital gains. So the way that you that you do benefit from it is you get investors to invest either in your real estate or your businesses.

Get those those folks that do have capital gains to invest in your businesses. And then while you you.

May get a small portion of the actual returns from an investment, you know you you have the ability to leverage all of their capital for whatever project you're trying to get done.

There, you have it, So we're gonna jump into it. Can you can you hang out with us a little bit longer? Yeah?

Definitely.

Some question all right, So we're gonna were gonna answer questions. So before we do that anybody that came on late. So what we're doing right now, if if you're wondering why we're doing like this special YouTube live Eyo University is a platform that we built and we do weekly webinars. We do this like we do classes like this every single week and every Wednesday at eight o'clock Eastern Standard and the last Wednesday of the month we open it

Pick one.

You're not gonna learn any of this stuff in any Ivy League school. That's just a fact. It's not my opinion, it's a fact, and that has been told to us from hedge fund managers to VC capital firm owners, very high level intelligent people. They're like yo, with the information that you give. They're not teaching this in Stanford, like not at this level where people can understand it. For damn.

Somebody just said that this class itself is worth a price for the.

Whole for the whole time. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's like the fact. What can you what can you do with that? That's like I said, that's a few bottles of sarack, like one bottle of sarrock in the club.

In the club a fact.

That's a fact.

Ain't no theories, ain't no gimmicks. Man, We're giving it to you real live from real life people.

And there's no code because before a lot of people was asking about the code it was issued. So for twenty four hours we took the code off. But it's a special link. You can only use the link in the YouTube description or the link that's pinned in YouTube. So if you're watching it, that's the only way you can get that. It's not on the website. You got to go through that link. I'll put it in the chat again. But yeah, let's go to my stated part.

That's a fact. That's a fact.

I'm going to my boys straight out of Houston. Darius, I'm mute yourself. You've been unmuted.

Bro, Hey, what's going on? What's going on in the building?

Anything?

Good?

Man?

It's good with you, bro man.

I cannot I'm playing.

I cannot complain loving the fact that we that we went the gentrification and buying back the block route with this one. I was definitely happy to uh to hear and see see that post right there, man, Chris, how you doing?

I can't complain playing at all.

I guess my question is is my custom is not necessarily general. But as far as gentrification is concerned, you spoke a little bit about identifying neighborhoods or zip codes or just specific areas that may be ready to go through gentrification. I'm in Houston. I'm downtown right now, so like the Heights, I'm familiar with the Heights. I live near Humble, I'm familiar with Fifth Ward, Third Ward, all of that. And I'm driving through this stuff all day every day, and I'm seeing exactly what it.

Is you've done.

Yeah, I'm seeing.

If you come from Humble, you see both of my projects from the freeway that part.

So I'm.

Right over here on Elgin fifty nine and Elgin, or we're coming from downtown over the third Ward, like those properties that are right there alongside the freeway when they was raggedy, I saw him when they knocked them down.

I saw them when they pinned them up.

So I'm looking at it and I'm like, Okay, So how do I go about identifying areas that are on the cusp or already in the process of the gentrification? And then as far as getting in on that. I like the way that you built that You built that out. So my question is is like, you're still doing your thing in Houston. So is there an area that I can kind of just be like, Okay, this is what Chris was talking about right here, man.

There's tons of it. I mean, you name some of them.

That Elgin area that's third ward.

Closer to the TSU.

You get this opportunities you go south towards Sunnyside out of the Medical Center they call it in Sunnyside used to be the hood they call it in Medical Center South. Now the fifth ward still has a ton of opportunity. Man, it's just getting started. Like I said, that big project won't even be complete till twenty twenty three. So you got three or four neighborhoods right there, all along fifty nine that will be primed for you to try to get it.

Can you talk about You spoke about it briefly, but you spoke on the podcast. Also city development and urban planning websites.

Yeah, So every city, every city has a planning and development department. Some of them call it urban planning. I think some of some of them call it planning and development. But in that sector of the website, there's always their plans.

The big project I showed y'all.

And so once you see those types of things, and then it's time for you to try to, you know, just get in the money flow of what's going on in that area.

So, yeah, Darius, appreciate you, Bro, Houston's own. You didn't know it, but I put Beyonce up there for.

You, so shout out. We got shot out a few a few a few of our loyal supporters in Houston, Texas from the hip hop side, Toby Way, we had him here. We had him on this on the show and he's tearing. He's the hottest dude out right now.

I seen him last night at Hip Hop Awards. He did his thing.

A little Kiki legend. Legend came to our event, came to our event.

Let the airport.

Jazz Prince reached out to me on Instagram, shout to shout out to the whole Prince family. We got crazy story about the Prince family. Paul Wall ran into him at the airport.

Yo.

We were coming to Houston, man we come. Don't forget slim Dog. Slim Dog ran in him. Also a shout to Slim through.

We had a crazy weekend.

Shout out to Manhattan.

YO.

That was a crazy week crazy shot. So yeah, I just wanted to shy everybody in Houston.

Shout to Mike brownout Mike Brown, like, yeah, shout out to Jazz.

Yeah yeah from Late Chateau.

That's the fact. Jazmine, what up?

What up?

Uh, let's go to I'm gonna mixture bass me Hope, I got that right. I'm mute yourself. You've been unmuted. What's going on?

We know there's no frigerator. Oh, every time I say fridge they on. What's going on?

What's going on?

Oh yeah, I just want to ask real when you did that crowd funded, right, was that with the promise of keeping the properties and renting them out or are you giving out dividends?

How is that?

How are they getting a return on their money? That's what platform crowd That's a great question. Yeah.

So the platform I use is called bottle block dot com based on Denver, Colorado.

But yeah, so they are getting dividend.

So they what I'm doing is I'm taking forty percent of the net profit from the rents and I'm dividing that up and I'm sending that out to everybody. And so just like getting the dividend, it'll be between like two to three percent, like one and a half to three percent of the investment amount. But you know, you're on Nike stock, you get a one percent dividend, and so you know with this you also get the share value appreciation because you're not just donating money, you're not

So that's how it got a structured So appreciate that.

Sharretta, we coming to you. I hope I said your name right, so I read I hope.

Ready, Yeah, you said it right.

Here we go, and it was ready right when I pressed on you, thank you.

I was ready to pounce.

I was ready to pounce.

Do it Okay, So I just want to say I've been with you all you maybe about forty five days, and Yo, this is so worthy investment.

I appreciate, appreciate that.

Chris is finally nice to see your face because I tell you, I'm kicking myself that I did not join when you guys had this out on by the block back.

Oh that'll be more coming.

But I love the thought process. So one of the questions I really had was for someone like myself, I actually came across the property about three years ago in one of these up and coming neighborhoods. I'm getting ready to actually build my first home, and one of my things is, you know, I'm kind of torn in the fact that you know it is you know, developers are

Here or there.

Yeah, definitely start wherever you can. Yeah, the developers are going to come. Like I said, you can't really stop them. So you know, some of the other concept we'll talk about, maybe like getting a small group of people together to co invest with you. You can maybe two or three people that may have some money sitting in the old savings account of old four one K we.

Talked about earlier. You can use that as your.

Down payment and maybe have another partner has good credit. You know, if you're going to try to do something, I wouldn't say try to start with ground up development or new new construction. I would suggest you try to buy some you know, something that's in decent condition already. Even the new building the right area. If the construction and the redevelopment is happening quickly, you can still you can still get equity in your home pretty quickly. It

But if you've got a house that's.

Let's say it's twenty years old and they put a twenty year well they put a let's say they put a thirty year roof on it, you got a plan as as as the owner of their property that to replace a roof in five or six years or ten years max.

Right, those type of things people don't think about. Whereas if you buy a.

Brand new property in the community like this, but the property the values are going up. You know, everything's new, so you have a longer runway before you have to start investing in repairs.

So just things to think about. And if you haven't well.

If you haven't used like your first time home buyer credit or anything like that. You can get into something with three percent down, and even if you don't want to stay in it forever, just stay in it for a little while and turn it into an investment property.

Got right.

I appreciate thanks about a game, then appreciate you appreciate it.

First time home boys, you say, yep, And people.

They watching our journey, like you know, we did trucking because we did the trucks with shout out to Alexy. So we just brought our first truck and we're gonna be like showing people the journey into that. So watch what we're doing in Cleveland, Ohio. We got a shout to be on Win shout out to big business. Shot talk about in Cleveland.

But but we might come in Houston.

I'm thinking about Houston, bro. I'm like, yo, bro, we got a lot of love out there. I remember we was just in a random strip moll eating. They was just like, yeoh, we love you out here.

You know, we got to talk about the prices out there.

I was about to say, man, I can't. We can't compete with those prices up there.

Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio. It's different right now.

We gotta open invitation in Nashville as well. We might there's there's there's a couple of cities we might have to look at.

Nashville, Tennessee. Shout out to Nashville.

Let's see.

Uh, I haven't seen this thing before, Garth, were coming to you, Garth, i'mut yourself.

You've been unmuted.

Guys, g Chris.

Can you tell your value up just a little bit?

Hold on, They was about to hit you with the gadlines.

Bro, No, it was coming.

I was rushing.

Fabulous presentation, Troy Rashard, you know, fabulous job. Keep up the good work, Chris, you know the stuff that you're doing there. I'm here thinking, I'm like, dude, we need to replicate this across the country, you know what I mean, just clone you or you create disciples and just spread them across the US and we just do our thing. And you know, that's that's.

What I'm seeing right now.

I know Julian down in New Orleans, he's doing this thing down here as well. I'm saying, we have all these resources, man, we need to pull this together. Troy and Rashad, you guys, the the the link between you know,

Man.

Yeah, I mean, like I said, all I wanted to say, she appreciated. I appreciate that. Shots that Julian Gordon, He's doing something similar in New Orleans, I believe. And of course we got Brandon Rule, who's one of the top real estate developers in the United States of America right now. We got a lot of we got a lot of relationships with a lot of good people.

MG.

The mortgage guy who's the number one real estate financing expert online. So maybe we can, maybe we can form a conglomorate Superpower super Pack, ey l super Pack.

We're coming to take over the neighbor.

But yeah, Magarth Man, I appreciate the comment.

Man, But that's exactly why I'm doing this while I'm being so transparent with everything, because it's way too much for.

Me to try to tackle on my own. And I'm not I'm not the boastful, bragfull, arrogant guy. I just want everybody on the same way.

Man.

It was frustrating not seeing enough of us doing this. And it's funny. I would be in conversations with all of these intellectuals, these Ivy League graduates.

From our community, and they would tell me why it wouldn't work, and eventually I'm just like, I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna show them that it can't work, you know.

And I think that's what it takes for a lot of us just to get to get in there and start doing it.

They keep driving on the highway, They're gonna see what you're doing. Is there, right, Wanda, we are coming to you. I mute yourself. You've been unmuted.

What's up?

Hi, y'all?

First of all, I love you. I love to show on the platform. I've told everybody in my organization. I'm twelve hundred people about this, well, the black people.

We love everybody.

I have this like pipe dream of building a thriving Black community. And I call it a pipe dream because I like the strategy that you're talking about in terms of going into an area that's on the verge of me or gentrification. But I have a question about an area like Gary Indiana where and I'm from New York. I don't know anything about Gary. It came to me in a dream. So Gary, there was white flight and

And buying the block there and.

Maybe networking with other real estate investors who are black, and trying to lure people from Chicago who are thirty minutes away. A lot of them left Gary to go to Chicago. What do you think about that as a strategy? Is it really a pipe dream? Should I move forward or should I look for a place that is already gentrifying or revitalizing right now?

That's definitely a risk tiler, it's questioned, okay, because you don't know how long it's going to take for that to take off. If you can invest in it and hold it long enough where it's not. If you got money that's not going to hurt you to invest in the property and just let it sit there and wait

I think that happens a lot of times.

People buy property in the wrong neighborhoods and the values don't appreciate.

Sometimes the values are stagnant or even go down, and you.

End up losing money if you look at inflation and everything else and your cost of like taxes and insurance and all that kind of stuff.

So you got to be really really strategic with that.

I personally wouldn't suggest it, but if you have the capital, do it, then you know it's just it won't hurt ry.

Thank you so.

Much, appreciate you. I think that's the question a lot of people have, like coming from New York or whatever, it's like where it's just the real estate is crazy and they want to go to these different towns, but it's like you don't know anybody. And the reason why I said Cleveland, Ohio is that we really built a strong relationship with Beyond when shout out to him, just a real solid dude, and you know, that's somebody that

And you know what, that is a great point because like those like we're beyond them are there is a strong rental market there and there's not enough housing. So if that's the business case that you're looking at, then you still it still makes sense because you can buy the chop the property really really inexpensively and still have positive cash flow and make great returns.

Really, I'll tell you another great place to find people that are from other places inside the investment group. I'm telling you, like every time that somebody posts like yo, hey I live in Houston, is there anybody that is developing Houston.

It's a great resource. Yo, Is there anybody in Cleveland? Every day?

I see it like somebody from another part of the country is like, Yo, anybody here in this area. It's a great way to network and a great way to resource and come together. Right if I'm not from Gary, I'm guaranteeing out of the five thousand almost six thousand people, somebody knows the area.

And Matt Matt was doing He's going to bring it back, but he was doing the city right each city, so he did. Like the real estate updates for the Bay Area, the real estate updates for Houston, and real estate updates for Philly. Those are good resources too because it's like now that's specific for that area. So even if you don't live in Philly, but you're interested in Philadelphia real estate, you can network. It's all about network. And that was

Bianca, were coming to you, I'm mute yourself. You've been unmuted. What's up?

Hi?

How you doing?

Of how fasty I was forming? Everything's great.

I just didn't expect that to happen. So my question is probably very similar to one of the first questions, but I never get to get on, so I'm just going to say it. So, just about the opportunity zoned. So, I'm from Augusta, Georgia, and I moved to Minneapolis five years ago, and I noticed North Minneapolis is like one of the most undeveloped, neglected places in Minneapolis. But I just read something today about the city planning to put

Well, so, an opportunity zone is actually a government designation for specific namesihborhoods that have like specific low income demographic or like then they have like usually issues like food desert words, no grocery stores and those types of things.

And so those zones were created.

To uh to kind of pinpoint areas where the government wanted these high networks people or people that have capital gains to invest and park their money for up to ten years in exchange for getting a tax abatement basically a tax deferment, and like whatever whatever they buy over the ten years, they they actually can like sell it at the end and not pay any taxes on that at all.

So I'm not sure if that you'd have to.

You can really just google opportunities on map and it'll tell you if that area is an opportunity zone or not, and then it sounds like something that that may be a catalyst for other development to come around it. So I would definitely I would stay tuned to see what's

Okay, thank you, Yeah, you know, I just thought about something we're gonna do, Janet, Hopefully you can help us out with this. We have almost four thousand members in our private our private investment group on Facebook, so we should we could. We can set up geographical groups like we can have a New York group, we can have an LA group, we can have affiliate like that means, so that way people can they can identify themselves by

I guarantee by seven o'clock, I'm gonna have fourteen text visits shot, he said.

He said, I appreciate that.

Ah Man, Let's go to a new name. Oh, Whitney, I haven't seen this thing before. Whitney, what's going on?

Mute yourself. You've been unmuted.

Hey, guys, thanks for this, uh this awesome information. I appreciate. I appreciate everything that e Yl is bringing to the table. And I'm a newbie. I've only been a member of about about a month or so, but I'm really happy to be welcome to appreciate that.

Bro. I got a message for Chris.

I serve on the political side and the community side for a lot of housing agencies or community redevelopment boards and economic development boards. And I do that, as I said, and actually put my question in the thing, just so I can be at the table and hear about deals that are coming down and actually bring it back to

What What are.

Some strategies that you've used or that you've seen used that actually help to engage local communities, particularly our community black people and bring them along through this process.

Man.

You know it's tough. I mean, I thankfully the projects that I have. They kind of see something different. They see that I'm not displacing people, but for the for the a lot of times people are just adverse to change, right, So I think the best thing that you could do probably would be to bring in a group of investors, if you know, a group of investors or developers that may be of the right mindset, and have them come and talk to the community.

And you know, if you if.

You know where the projects are going and you know what's coming, put put that group in in front of the projects and let them, you know, interface with the community and kind of bring some of the amenities and services of the community may be looking for, or explain to them why it's not the right time for certain things.

People that look like you in the community, that earn more money, so.

That it can be attractive for Starbucks or it can be attractive for the grocery store to come back. So a lot of it's just open communication, but there is no cookie cutter answer.

Man.

You're never going to get everybody on board, unfortunately, but I mean, you know, you can kind of turn the tide a little bit by doing some of those things.

True, true, I appreciate that. Guys, thank you very much.

We appreciate you. Oh, here we go, my guys. Here Arthur all rise King, Arthur, you've been unmuted peace Peace was good fellas. What's going on?

Bro? Slow motion? How you're doing?

Yeah, we're good man doubt a.

Chris Man definitely a big fan.

I'm actually an investor in the in the Lions Avenue project.

I love it. Yeah.

When I actually right right before right as COVID hit I got, I got into the project and I joined E y L. That was kind of how I split the bread up for so definitely looking forth, definitely a big fan. Been following the Mad project as well. Congrats

Yeah.

So yeah, one let me point out the reason why I pointed that out earlier is for the opposite reason, right, because well, we automatically assume everybody in these neighborhoods is all strictly on government assistance, but there are some people

Tool, so so so in a way, for those who are looking how to replicate what you're doing on a smaller scale, one of the things they can do is look to take advantage of those government programs and using their.

Own home buying i e.

Matt's home bias home buyers, or you know, using those types of things in their own personal lives to to kind of replicate on a micro scale what you're doing at the macro level.

Definitely, definitely, And that's actually a way for people that have existing rental portfolios if they want to get out of them. A lot of people are converting over to owner finance, so so basically the same tenant stays in the property, but now they're they are buying the property, so now they're responsible for the insurance and the taxes and all those things.

So if you have a Section eight tenant in it's a house that.

You don't want to get, you know, you may not want to keep in your portfolio, you could actually sell it to them. Yeah, and create a homeowner out of one of your tenants, especially if they've been loyal, long term tenants.

You know.

It's it's it's a million ways to uh to make that program benefit us more.

I appreciate it.

Brother, Thank you often. One last I just want to ask you a question because you're one of our most prestigious students at euy L University and you always tap into every single thing we got going. Uh, how how has your experience been with EYO University.

It's been It's been fabulous, man, it's been fabulous. I listen.

I went to a prestigious all boys prep school in high school, Avon Old Farms. I could have went to all most of them in the ivy leagues, I end up going to George Washington University.

You know, that's very prestigious school, absolutely, you know what I mean.

However, in terms of the actual practical knowledge that I learned outside of me just working and doing the things that I did in my career, I would say this has definitely been one of the most comprehensive education platforms that I've ever been a part of.

You know what I mean. You guys brought me to Chris.

You guys brought me to Matt, you brought me to Beyond, you know what I mean. And so in terms of actually executing and getting things done, there's there's there's nothing better, you know what I mean. I was an econ major, I was a finance major, all of that stuff, and it doesn't come close to the practical knowledge, all of that stuff.

That they're gonna teach you in the schools.

You can go google that, but there's no get it done, this, this, this, this, uh, you know, get the seller financing and transfer that into into a private investment for the I R Ray and then transfer getting it done. They're not gonna teach you that at Harvard and nowhere else. At Harvard, they're gonna teach you the exact opposite of what Chris is teaching. They're gonna teach you how to ultimately rape your community. Chris is gonna teach you how to get it done

Me rock appreciating author, appreciate that most prestigious author.

Man's extremely extremely intelligent. God Man Market used to be a market maker on Wall Street.

That's our guy. This is another one of our of our dudes. Man Park, what's going on? I'mut yourself, what's going on Sunday?

Bro Man?

I was struggling with us. Now, No, I'm making sure I'm back. I was like, I ain't never missed another episode ever. God Yeah, No, thanks for all the information, Chris. I just had just one, you know, short question. Throughout the whole process that you've done, what would you think is like the hardest step.

That you have to take? Like before you got to where you're at right now, man.

I would say, every every step has its own challenges. I would say the most the most difficult things I had going was when I was trying to figure things out on my own and not find somebody that was an expert at what I was trying to get done and putting them in place to do something to help me out.

So, I mean, that's really been the biggest thing, man.

I would say with the new construction project, like the roadblock with the infrastructure was pretty tough, and having to negotiate with the city to figure out, you know, a solution for that. And let me think on the on the crowdfund side, I think that the hardest part is getting the deal done on the front and just negotiating with the sellers and making them understand, you know, why I needed them to come down on price and why I needed them to sell their finance to me.

But yeah, I mean every everything, every deal you do, you're gonna have a different challenge, So just be prepared for that.

Appreciate you.

Pop shout out to Chicago man, Chris, can we get like ten more minutes of your time? Yeah? Yeah, let's go somebody on YouTube shot yes to real estate. They sent a couple of days. You read that message? No, I know Andre, Yes, okay, okay, y yay, said is Andre, yes to real estate. We're breaking ground on our four townhousing fifth Ward two months were three blocks from you.

So yeah, yeah, you're taking over the whole. That's taking over the whole neighborhood.

I love it and I love it definitely, definitely.

Well, listen, what's going on? You've been unmuted.

Hi, how are you guys?

Everything's good.

Thank you so much for having this open forum has been very informative. I got on a little late, but I will rewatch. I did want to ask Christopher a question uestion about buying back Harlm and what do you suggest. I'm born and raised here. I've been approached with a lot of negativity and in terms of trying to open up a business. However, a lot of businesses have closed due to COVID, and I just kind of wanted to know a way on how to approach that.

Wow, that's a very There's a lot of variables in that equation, right, because number one, the type of business you're going to want to start, and then when you see a bunch of business is closing, don't think it's for no reason. You know, they're closing because they tried to stay open and they couldn't. Now, I mean, of course that is going to open a new way of opportunity on the backside. But I'm not really familiar with the Harlem market or like the price points there, so

You know, your next move.

So yeah, don't don't go into it blindly. Don't don't go into it trying to figure out your own for sure.

I'm gonna be honest, And it's like, you know, we live in New York. We've been in New York our entire lives. Our whole family has been in New York, their entire lives. Pretty much. You know. I was always really pro New York. I still am, you know, but the more I travel, I've been traveling a lot lately, and.

Don't do it.

Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, an it, don't.

Do it now. The one thing that Donald Trump said is like, I don't know if the city's ever really gonna fully recover. And it's so much regulation, it's so much red tape, it's so much hassle. The prices are through the roof in every neighborhood. It's just really, you know, for me, I'm like, you go to places like Atlanta, you just travel around and it's I don't know, man, New York City is it's vastly becoming overrated. It hurts my heart to say that. It really hurts my heart

I appreciate that you said that.

It's it's it's it's challenging times for our city, man, but hopefully we're covering. Hopefully. Maybe not. I I'm just optimistic. I'm wonnat be optimistic about it.

Uh, head to Atlanta.

Jerome, Jerome. I mute yourself you've been unmuted. What's going on?

Yo?

What up? What up? What up?

Man? What's going on?

I guess my question is branched off of some of the things that have been answered already. But Chris, you're talking about earlier in your slides. Well, first of all, you know, buying back the block you alays when you come from you know, lower income black neighborhoods, that's always a dream you and your homeboys like, Yo, you know what I mean, I'm a buy back to block on by this. Well, I guess in my case, I got, I got some of my homeboys. We all kind of got a financial background of some sorts.

But we new to this.

And I know you said that don't all come in as rookies as novice. So I guess my question is where would you start to find someone who understands these contracts where you like, yo, you know what I mean, I'm a put down this amount, but you can become a partner or you know, like I'm a seller financeer.

How do I find outside of just networking?

Because I know Troy and Rashada was like they found somebody in Cleveland that they can trust. So one is trust and two, do you go look? I mean, do you look for a professional? I guess this is a

So where are you located? So I'm located in Virginia right now.

I live in northern Virginia, but I'm from southern Virginia, Hampton, Uh, like in the Hampton University area, if you know, if you're familiar with that, Norfolk State, Uh.

Some HBCUs in the area.

But it's a lot of areas black areas Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth that are on the verge of I would say gentrification, but they not quite there yet. And we're trying to get active in the market. But you know, we don't have that that that that that game, that real game, not just open up a book game. But like you said, you you know all the ins and outs, and we're just trying to look for something like that.

Man.

So I would say, once again, just trying to find local mentors and not necessar not not necessarily somebody to invest with you. But maybe you have to just pay somebody for the knowledge for the time, you know, just to get into it.

But you know, I got a platform called learnfromcris dot com.

You can go in there and they'll give you a lot of the basic information and then that'll put you in a position if you want to go talk to somebody locally, because sometimes active investors don't want to deal with people that they can tell are completely green, you know, So if you can go in there and get yourself acclimated some things.

Go to YouTube.

There's a lot of stuff on there, and I'm not trying to be cliche, but I'm saying, like trying to get yourself as educated as possible so that when you get in front of these people, you can have an intelligent conversation with them about what you're.

Trying to do. And man, Virginia has a lot a lot of investors.

I mean, you could between Instagram, I know, I know several between Instagram and Facebook that might be able to help you.

You can also look up local meetups.

You know, just type in whatever the nearest big city to you and investment meetups, and that'll bring you to some groups that may have somebody's willing to work with you.

But man, networking between social.

Media platforms like Earn your Leisure and and uh yeah, just the Facebook groups. Man, I'm pretty sure you can find somebody if you all are looking.

And like I said, we're gon, we're gonna going through that on our Facebook.

I think, Yeah, Chris, I'm gonna take a quote and Jerome you can. You can use this quote and apply it.

Man.

I took this right from your page. I was like, this is dope. You said there's three things you need to be successful. The knowledge, the opportunity, the money. One you can control, the two you gotta find.

That's it.

So take that with you, Jerome, Knowledge, opportunity, money one you control.

To you gotta go find my man, appreciate you.

Sure when you see me running through Atlanta in l A, Los Angeles, ALV, Houston, Texas and these things l A too, it's a great cloud over New York right now.

I've seen b Rude put your Headlanta Headquarters all the way e y Land Headquarters.

It's already up and running.

But we already said that we're re ramping it. We yeah, we got b rue. We got to meet up somewhere. Man, I know you in DC, but when we're Atlanta, you gotta come come check us out.

Shout out to d C, Shout out to PG County. Shot. Earth is big though. That's why I know it was shot in New York. It's New York forever. But I just say that halfway, joking, only halfway. But the Earth is big though. We can't just be stuck in our neighborhood.

But our wise man told me this. Man, he said this to us the other day. He said, go where you're celebrated. That's a fact too, Go where you're celebrated.

Man.

I was like, ooh, well.

We're always gonna be celebrated in New York, Brooklyn shot celebrate.

I was like, that's powerful. Natalie, what's up yourself?

You've been unmuted? Has been on point today on Natalie. Right when I say that, you know how his work ain't no frish breaks. So Natalie, we gotta move on. We gotta move on. Let's go to Samantha. Samantha, we I'm mute and you i'mute yourself.

Hello.

There we go. Let's keep this thing rolling. Samantha, thank you.

I got thank you.

So good evening, everyone, good evening. Shout out to the earners and my cousins that are listening. I sent this to them. We have started our own investment group. Our overall goal, or one of our overall goals, would be to do this in Jamaica because our family is from there. Our parents are from Saint Anne. And but you know, we have to start small.

Yeah, yeah, Yeah, I'm with that. Shout out to Jamaica.

So my question is how did you structure the business? Did you do it on your own and then do like a joint venture with other people, or did you all create your own business?

How did that work? Yeah, that's a great question. So each project I do has its own individual entity, so its own individual.

LLC, and that LLC owns the project, and so there's several ways you can structure from there.

It depends on who is playing what role.

So if you're bringing on other investors, some of them may want to be a member of your LLC, some of them want to joint venture where your.

Two LLCs work together some of you.

Some of them may want if they just want to be passive investors, you may have to structure something where they are in a limited partnership with you, where you are the general partner that makes decisions and they are like a passive limited partner that may get the first returns out of the deal. So it varies greatly. It really depends on the scope of the project you're trying to do. It's nothing wrong with all y'all just putting together and doing one LLC. If that's what you want

No, that was that was That was a great question, Samantha.

Appreciate you.

Let's go to one more. Let's go to one more.

And I see that Shannon is telling you the contact. So here's Shannon up. She's in the chat here. Shannon, shout out to Shannon.

Let's get one more.

Let's see.

Let's see this is a we haven't seen this name before. We haven't seen this name for Ashley. We're coming to you, Ashley.

What's going on? I mute yourself. You've been unmuted?

What okay?

Sorry, I'm so excited I supposed to hear that part.

Sorry.

I appreciate y'all for allowing me to speak and ask questions. Chris, I want to thank you for what you're doing for the city of Houston. I'm originally from Houston. My dad was born and raised in fifth Ward. It helped me great a really special place in my heart. My major was urban planning. I went to Brown University. I'm a

When you see stuff like.

Infrastructure coming to a place, like you said, sidewalks even down to bus buses or light rails coming into a community that were never there before, that's another marker. And I just started seeing this, like, man, when are we gonna all get on the same page and to see you do it.

I moved away from Houston.

Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity to invest. I mean I will now and I have the tools and I've been learning these last few years. But I left Houston because a lot of people weren't willing to give me the opportunity to work in urban planning and really real

They're there for the capitalist opportunities.

And my one reason why I raised my hand, had no idea they were gonna call me, but I wanted to thank you personally, even if it's via zoom. I appreciate what you're doing and sparking even the thought because unfortunately, the reason why I moved from Houston too is a lot of people were so driven on being corporate, corporate, corporate only and we see something like co It happening where the rug is pulled out from everybody and you know, either you had that mindset of pivoting or now you're

People like, hey, you need to get with I mean, I.

Appreciate y'all putting it on YouTube, but getting in the community is totally different. Like you mentioned, when you talk to a stranger and they're believing in you and giving you resources. You have to be able to tap into that, so paying what was due, I mean luckily I did it early.

So you know, you always reward the people that adopt early.

And I appreciate you, guys, but you know it's still valuable at the price that it is now. Chris, I will ask as I'll get to my question, I'm sorry for I'm trying to I'm.

Trying to get like, go.

Thank y'all.

But being in another city, do you think it's feasible? Because I have some of the knowledge I have, I see it and this is happening in every city in the country, you guys, So.

Wherever you are, you you can tap in.

But do you feel it's possible to be an investor from long distance or do you.

Feel like you need to be in that specific city.

I mean, la Is prices are going down because so many people moved, so the demand is not there. But you know, say for instance like an Arizona or Nevada. I don't live there, but I can tell that those cities, the cities there are gonna gonna be moving into a redevelopment phase soon.

So what is your advice on that.

You can definitely invest anywhere in the country. I mean, it's all about having a team in place, right. It's no different than investing in a stock. But you don't know where the headquarters is, you don't know where the CEO is, you don't know where the factory is.

You just have to have the right systems and the right team around you.

So whatever city you're go into, you're gonna need a good realtor, a good property manager, a good contractor, and somebody that can manage them, you know, or you have to have good open communication with them, or you know, local investors that.

You partner with.

That's probably the easiest way to get into a new market instead of trying to do it on your own. So yeah, it's definitely possible. I know, I know some friends that only invest out of town. They don't even invest in the city they live in. So it's definitely practical.

Appreciate you, appreciate your ass.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Chris. They said that you look tired, man. Hustlers don't sleep, man.

I'm telling they they say, Troy, you suspended all guidelines.

Man, I gotta get used to Wednesday.

Now, Chris Man, I really, really really really appreciate it. We're going to go into some more stuff with Chris, but before before we wrap, I want to give Chris the last word. But before we finish, once again, if anybody has just joined at this point in time, this was just a you know, an open house of what we do once a month for Eyo University and the interstident joining Eyo University. We have a Facebook group, we have a book club, movie club, We do bi weekly

New orientation for new earners, we got accountability try it.

What date is the orientation.

There's going to be November fourteenth, if I'm not mistaken, I could be No fourteen.

November fourteenth at one o'clock. We have November twenty first we have orientation. We treating it's like a it's a real university, so like you know when you go to school and you have freshman orientation. So you know, we have a lot of different spots. We got we got our Facebook group, we got the website, so it might be kind of hard for people to navigate. So we got orientation on the twenty first, and yeah, man, this is this is definitely gonna be the biggest, the biggest

We can talk about it.

You want to tell you know, yeah, e y L E y L Podcast Network. You obviously know that, you know, the people know we have a strong track record with our show, our podcast and market mondays. We said earlier, like in March, like we want to we want to work with other creatives and other entrepreneurs and different people to kind of, you know, help them out as far as their journey in podcasting and market. Mondays was our

Man, it's long overdue for me, man, I just didn't have the capacity to do it on my own. So it's an honor to partner with the number one.

And and and this just just this just goes to show, like, you know, we're working together. You know, young black entrepreneurs. Chris is in real estate, we're in the media space, and he recognized that we can we can bring some value to him, he can bring some value to us. So instead of us working apart, were much strong if we come together. And if you know, all of these big corporations can have podcast networks. I can't. Why can't you all have a podcast network? And all of the

Is breaking news alert. Look, look we got so we got a couple more breaking news alerts that we're going. We ain't ready to announce him. Yeah, but trust me.

The label growing, Oh no, it's gonna be like Rockefeller.

It's gonna be like Rockfeller in the early two growing.

Yeah, expeditionous.

But how can they? How can they your crowdfund? Know, you said your crowdfund is full, but talk about that as far as like, are you going to open up a new crowdfund? What's your plans as far as your development, like, let the people know how they can follow you, all the information that you you know, you have to give to the people. Yeah.

Man, So right now I'm actively looked at a few different projects that I may use for the next crowdfund. I have not figured it out yet, but as soon as I do, everybody they will know, and Eyl probably the first ones to know about it. Yeah, so just stay tuned for that. I can technically going to do one a year if you hit the max. So uh, actually the end of November, I'll be able to start putting another one together. Yeah, so if you want to follow me, just Underscore Investor on Instagram.

I have a YouTube channel. Uh. Like I said, if you want to learn more about real.

Estate investing specifically, you can go to learn from Chris dot Com. I have actually have a free guide on five strategies where you can invest passively. So for the busy people that don't have time and don't want to be active wholesalers or flippers, I got five strategies that I can that I'm showing you how you can truly invest passively and still make money.

Yeah.

So, and that that also leads into a membership group where I'm probably one of the only instructors online that has courses that's actually talking about gentrification, talking about crowdfunding and all those things inside the platform as well. So, yeah, man, learn from Chris dot Com investor on Instagram.

That's pretty much it.

There you have it. But investor is Underscore I n V S t R.

Yeah.

Yeah, the only vowel is that I are.

You Just go to the your leisure page and click click my Yeah.

We put his Instagram in the description of this video as well. The fact you definitely should follow Chris on Instagram a lot, a lot of gyms. Yeah, legend.

That's why I said.

We don't throw around the word legend a lot. But this guy definitely is one man. So shout out to Houston, the third World, third Ward, fifth Ward. Shout to Beyonce Ivey Park Joint drove tomorrow too, so be on the Friday, look on the lookout.

Shout shout of Dallas, Texas too. I was out there for the first time, my first time in Dallas, and that's a dope city too. Now we just got to go to Austin. You gotta go to Austin, Texas. But shout out to the whole state of Texas. Don't mess with Texas, man. Everything is is what is it? Everything big into there you go. Yeah, you know they're having a tough time right now with the sports teams. But so good, all right, so good man. But nah, Chris Brother,

What's to you next week? Go call somebody, man, go call somebody. Reach out.

One test can change a lifetime or change somebody's life. One call can change somebody's life. Make sure y'all do that. Go through your contact list now, just reach out. Let somebody know you thinking about them. All right, peace, We love y'all.

We out.

Chris, love bro.

My Brad.

I do it for my school being force bag, drop Bag Drop Mike, drop Bag drop Drop.

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