Speaker 0 00:00:02 Welcome to the untold stories of real estate investing hosted by Wayne courageous, a third, a place where active and passive investors come to hear the good, bad and ugly of real estate investing. Our guests consist of experienced operators and investors who want others to succeed by sharing their stories. If you're looking to send the key deals or grow your wealth passively in real estate, you've come to the right show. It's now time, sit back, take minutes on notes and enjoy our next episode of the untold stories of real estate investing.
Speaker 1 00:00:39 Welcome to the untold stories of real estate investing. This is your host Wayne courageous. Today. We're going to hear from Jeff Greenberg CEO and managing member of synergetic investment group, LLC also known as SIG since 2007. Jeff has been investing in multifamily and student housing assets in various markets throughout the United States. Jeff has been in multifamily projects, valued at over $30 million consisting of over 800 units say currently controls over 300 student housing beds and properties in Georgia, Arizona, and Ohio state currently focuses on value. Add student housing market rate multifamily and senior living multifamily properties without further ado. Welcome to our show, Jeff. Well, thank you very much. Glad to be here. Yeah. So very impressive background. I'm sure their items I missed. Is there anything you want to add to introduce yourself? Well, I don't know you did a pretty good job. The only thing is I kind of jumped from never doing anything in real estate into multifamily, even though we did try our hand a little bit in a single family, I never owned a single family home other than my own personal residences and jumped straight into commercial real estate into multifamily properties.
Speaker 1 00:01:50 So how did you make that jump or what triggered you to do it? And then more so in student housing? Well, the, we were looking in 2005, 2006 at single families, and that wasn't a great time to be looking at single families. We were looking at Oreos, you know, bank owned properties and the banks didn't know what the heck to do with all the properties that they had. So it just wasn't working out. It took too long for them to decide to accept our offer or not accept our offer and prices were dropping like crazy. So it just wasn't working in the single family room. And so I jumped into a multifamily, just happened to hear a guru talking about how you can get into multifamily with limited funds and jumped into it from there. Um, now it wasn't for another, let's see, what about 2000, 2015 that I actually got into student housing, my first student housing properties coming up on five years and how I got into it was total accident.
Speaker 1 00:03:03 I didn't have any plans on getting student housing. I didn't know anything about student housing, but I had an intern that was looking for properties for me that we could close on. And he brought me this one property in Oxford, Ohio at Miami university. And when he kept saying Miami university, I kept thinking, Oh four. And he said, no, no, Miami of Ohio had no idea. And so I had to do my research and learn about the student housing about the property itself about all those different nuances. And that was my first venture into student housing and, uh, decided that I liked it. That it's special. It was a special niche and I did enjoy the niche. So we were looking for more than just student housing afterwards, but it just so happens that we did bump into some more student housing properties that, that we decided to go ahead with.
Speaker 2 00:04:08 When you're now looking at value, add opportunities, are you looking at more stabilized or I should say when you're looking more for student housing projects, are you looking more for value add or stabilize projects? And then what, what markets are you interested most in right now?
Speaker 1 00:04:23 Well, right now the big question is, is are we looking for stabilized or, you know, more of the value add? And that's a big question right now with, with COVID out there. You know, a lot of people are kind of laying low. I'm gathering up their funds and deciding which direction to go in the area of student housing. I, I'm still very bullish on it and I still feel there is going to be plenty of room to move on value out the properties. We're looking at our market rate multifamily, you know, there's that big question of, are we going to be looking stabilized? Are we going to be looking more value, add, or excuse me, more stabilized property or volume of properties, because with this, COVID, it's a whole different, it's a whole different ball game right now. So we're, we're looking very cautiously now, as far as, uh, what areas we're looking in.
Speaker 1 00:05:26 Um, a lot of what I've doing has changed. Uh, I've been syndicating deals for the last 15 years and most of the time, I mean, all of those deals, I was the lead deal sponsor, but I was also the, um, main if not exclusive, uh, fundraiser. And so I am not looking as much, uh, for right now for deals to acquire. I'm more at, uh, deals to become partners in. And I'm doing more in the way of fundraising. Uh, we're looking at creating a fund that we would invest in as a JV partner into other deals. So what areas I'm looking at, um, I'm pretty much open to different areas around the, around the country, but I mainly I'm looking for some high quality deals sponsors to, uh, join up with and evaluate the area and the property once I choose a few deal sponsors to work with. So I'm pretty much open to, uh, different markets around the community, around the country.
Speaker 2 00:06:43 Yeah. And so right now you have the 300 student housing beds. Where are those located now? And how has things changed since covert hit since you brought that up and more specifically, how has your operations and your efforts to lease up a student housing project?
Speaker 1 00:07:01 Okay. So I have, uh, properties in Ohio and Georgia and, um, Arizona, uh, each within either a half a mile within a block or the one in Arizona is actually two miles from a university major university. And things have been a little strange if I can just back up. One of the things I really like about student housing is it's very recession resilient. It may not be pandemic resilient. And that's something that all of us in this industry are kind of seeing that, wow, there is something out there that could, uh, harm us. So for most of the properties that we have, the summer schools are going to be online, which means typically we get a limited number of Lisa's for the summer anyway, so that might be limited. But most of the schools now that we're involved with are going to have onsite classes for next semester.
Speaker 1 00:08:08 They're going to do some modification as far as the schedule. And so basically we're, we're back to normal. As far as the lease up a little bit different. Some of the tours are going to be virtual. Some of the events that we used to go on campus and have lease-up events, you know, sitting on the malls with people, walking by our table and, and doing lease ups, uh, that's changed to a lot more virtual. So we are seeing changes on that as far as the amount of lease up, they and the leasing activity, once the schools have announced how they're going to be behaving in, in the next Lisa activity has picked back up and is going as normal. The one thing that we are doing and on some of our properties, making sure that common areas are cleaned more often, uh, that we sanitize as much as possible. The properties that do have management offices, we limit access and protect our staff. And do you know, typically the same thing that you would in a typical multifamily property is, is try to do more cleaning activities and try to do more things online and virtual.
Speaker 2 00:09:32 Yeah. And with, with the lease up, coming up, how has your collections been since pre COVID? And then during the time where things were shutting down on the multifamily side, we're saying 90% or more receiving the collections, which has been good, has student housing had similar success and collection?
Speaker 1 00:09:52 Yeah. Most of our, most of our properties are on semester payments. And so most of that we've received at the beginning of the semester. Those people that we do have on monthly payments are still making their payments. So we're probably 95% on our collections on all of those. But as I mentioned, we expect summer to be, even though they're going to have, well, they're going to have online classes during the summer. So that may reduce our summer, uh, income, uh, that typically has been a pretty small amount anyway. So that, that, that will cut into it a little bit. So one of the,
Speaker 2 00:10:33 Some of the similarities and differences between traditional multifamily versus student housing, you know, I think with traditional and student housing, obviously, you know, the bed comfortable, safe, you know, location obviously to the university, but are there any major operational differences or the way you would underwrite student housing versus multi-fit?
Speaker 1 00:10:52 Well, let's talk first about the, the market, typically on a regular multifamily, you're looking at the market what's going on with jobs, uh, diversity in the market, the age, median age, you know, influx in, uh, population. Our focus on student housing is much more into the university population of the university, uh, their growth, what their plans are, you know, so it's, it's a big focus on, on the university as opposed to the city. You're also looking at the distance from the university, the closer, the better, typically within a mile, as you start getting outside of, of a mile range, and you're going to start going down Hill also each year, there's advantages to be within the, or close by the, um, uh, the bar district where everything is in walking distance, where people can go and party and go to the bars and be able to walk back home and not have to worry about getting on a vehicle.
Speaker 1 00:12:00 So location is, is very, very much a key as far as underwriting. The biggest issue on the underwriting is turnover. You may have turnover every year. And, uh, in my Ohio property, I think first year was probably 80% turnover, which is one of your biggest expenses. And so obviously that is something you need to look at and make sure you have higher maintenance, um, a budget for the turnover. A lot of people think that you have the higher maintenance expenses because of damage to the property. And we have not found that to be true. Uh, it, you know, most of the time, any of the extra damage that we see, uh, has to do with turnover, I mean, are the extra expenses, turnover, and not so much damage, uh, damages typically covered in the deposits, the security deposit. So we pull that out of there.
Speaker 1 00:13:08 So it's not that, that much, I mean, some examples of some of the damage that we see, you know, I've seen iron marks in a carpeting wine stains on a carpeting. We get maybe plumbing calls coming in because there's a shot glass, or there's a beer cap down the garbage disposal. Somebody leans a little bit too hard on a, on a cabinet. Those things, we get people forgetting their keys and deciding to kick the door in, instead of, you know, getting someone in to help them get in. We do get punched walls when there's some domestic thing going on, somebody gets mad and busted doors, inappropriate items going down the toilet. I don't know if that's that much different than a lot of our multifamily properties, but typically all that stuff is compensated. As far as with, with the deposits, we calculate all that. And at the end, we just take that off the deposit, but turnover, obviously that that can be an issue
Speaker 3 00:14:14 Now in my Georgia property where they don't have a lot of money
Speaker 1 00:14:17 Options, as far as going other places that one, the turnover's much less, or because there's just not a lot of options. I Ohio property, there's plenty of options. There's a lot different properties. They could get closer to the school or closer to the bar district. And so we'll see more turnover. So it, it just depends on, on the property, but that's your main difference. The only other one, the other big one is marketing, and that's going to depend on each property as well. Uh, my Arizona property, we spend a lot of money on marketing. We spend a lot of stuff with Facebook and Twitter and all of these things where my Ohio property, that's all absorbed by my property management company. They do the advertising and that's all on their bill. We do pay a higher property management fee than we normally would on a multifamily property.
Speaker 1 00:15:17 That's a little bit higher, but it all works out with the reduced marketing expenses that we don't have to pay. So it does depend from property to property, but those are important. The other thing is that we see a lot of is the units themselves. You do see a lot of people that like a one to one parody on bedroom to bathroom. We do not share bedrooms. We share units. So everybody rents their own has their own bedroom, and they would prefer not to share a bathroom. So the better you can get as far as the parody of the two, the more advantageous that is. So that's one of the big things, as far as what we look for close, close to the campus and as many bathrooms as possible.
Speaker 2 00:16:08 Yeah. Like how you brought it from a macro standpoint on talking about location. And even, I mean, if I was underwriting a property with student housing, the location would be very important, but I would also think about the surrounding, you know, the city and all, but, and then just walking distance to those restaurants and bars. And of course campus is important. So w if I'm underwriting, uh, a student housing opportunity, you're looking at comp set for rental rates, I would assume maybe on a price per square foot basis. Would that be similar in student housing, uh, when you're pricing your, your units,
Speaker 1 00:16:41 We usually don't do it on a square footage by bedroom. Usually, you know, I mean, like I said, we only have one person per bedroom, but we don't really look at what the square footage of the bedroom is. There also, you're looking at amenities. Um, most of our properties don't have much in the way of amenities. If you get to some of the other purpose built properties where they've got the pool and they, and the media room and the game room and the exercise room and all that, for the most part, we haven't gotten into that area yet. So we don't compete with them. So typically our prices are gonna be lower than theirs. Also the farther away from campus that you get, you know, the lower your, your prices are going to be. So most of our properties were not the high end property, but that's fine.
Speaker 1 00:17:34 We're, we're gonna get those people that can't afford the, uh, high end, uh, an example, our Arizona property, there's some new units that have opened up near the university of Arizona, and they're going for maybe $1,200 a bed per month, and they're right near the campus. And they have all kinds of amenities, ours, which were just about two miles away. We're very happy with $500 a bill. We knew that we're not going to be the high end provider, but we're pro we're there for those people that can't afford that. And we've got nice properties. It's just, we don't have all those amount of days and we're not close to campus. So what are some of the
Speaker 2 00:18:19 Value add strategies that you would go after? Is there reimbursement on utility utility billings? You talked about the amenity basis. Have there been amenities that you've brought into your properties that have helped
Speaker 1 00:18:30 Increase rents to go your value? So what have been your strategies? Well, the main, the main thing that we've we've brought in, uh, is, is wifi throughout, especially on my Georgia property, where we, that, that particular property we renovated the entire insides of the, of the units, that one also we do, um, those are all furnished. So we bought, brought in all of the furniture. We fixed up the units. We put wifi throughout. We've made some, uh, a little, uh, little alcoves into little, uh, meeting areas. We put digital cameras up there to increase the security with put security doors, um, with a key fob entrance, upgraded the laundry room and gave people a safe place to live. Um, when we got the, that particular property, it wasn't a safe place to live. People were, there was drugs going on. There was a lot of non-students living there.
Speaker 1 00:19:35 So our value add was to provide the students with a safe place where they were comfortable. And that was, you know, pretty much our big, big value out there, and then teamed up with the athletic department to try to encourage them, to bring their athletes over to the camp, uh, to our property, which was a big advantage for them, because it was close enough to the campus that the athletes didn't have to have an excuse that their car wasn't running or something that they were within walking distance of the property. And so we got a lot of support from the athletic department, so making it safe and clean and showing them that we were on the same page as they were, as far as providing for that clientele,
Speaker 2 00:20:25 The universities give any type of incentives or any help or local tax. I mean, is there anything that's given to the student housing to provide that safe
Speaker 1 00:20:35 Environment for students? Not really, they're willing to advertise for us. You know what I mean? Typically what their magazines, if we support them, if we paid for it, but for the most part, not the Georgia one, we, we did get a lot of support from them. In fact, they sent their security guys over to our property because we were asking them to let people know that we were there and that they, that they approved of what we were doing at first. They said they wouldn't do it because they weren't able to fill up their dorms. And they said, well, until our dorms are filled, you know, we're not going to send anybody over to you. And then all of a sudden we found out that they weren't able to get their dorms ready on time. And all of a sudden they said, okay, well, let's take a look at it.
Speaker 1 00:21:24 And they looked at our property and he said, okay. The only thing they asked us to do, uh, was to put those security doors on where as a key fob entry. And they were happy with that. And the campus police actually patrol our parking lot. They come by as part of our patrol because we are that close to campus. And so we've gotten that joint cooperation with them. And then we do advertise with their, their athletic department, which gives us a little bit of an acceptance with the, the student population on that campus as well. So that joint cooperation, and then they, the mayor of the city came out to our open house and that helped things out. We've had a lot of the, the VIP from the school come to our different open houses and advance on our property. So that helped in that way. But as far as any kind of tax rebate or anything that we have, we haven't received anything like that.
Speaker 2 00:22:28 So is there a certain distance from the university or certain a number of percentage of the, of your residents, Beaton's students to be counted as a student housing?
Speaker 1 00:22:38 I mean, typically we like properties that are a hundred percent student housing. And as far as the distance from the property, that wouldn't really matter. I mean, except obviously you're going to be able to get more for your property if you are closer to the school. Or as I said, you know, just some of the other things like the bars and the city activities and stuff, but there's no official title that it's student housing. We do try to keep it exclusive mainly because it doesn't always mix students and families sharing the same building. I know some properties that have tried that, and you've got maybe students that are staying up late at night, making lots of noise, and then families with kids getting up in the morning and dogs barking. And the kids outside playing doesn't always work too well. So we try the best we can. The only one that we have mixed right now is our Arizona property, which is basically 20, 20 standalone townhouses. And so some of the townhouses we do have families in, but for the most part, we try to keep it as students. And we actually have, one of them is an Airbnb at this point, but that's not really optimal. We'd rather have it one way or the other.
Speaker 2 00:23:54 Have you found that in a financing student, housing is different or more challenging than say multifamily when it comes to longterm agency debt or other sources?
Speaker 1 00:24:04 Well, there's, there's different requirements and some properties are easier to finance through through agency or, or through other means. There are some lenders that are more hesitant to get into student housing. We had one lender was saying all of a, they wouldn't do anything unless plus it was a major percentage of, of grad students. They didn't want to deal with undergrads. We had others that didn't want to do student housing. They wouldn't do student housing, but there's plenty of lenders out there that will do student housing. Some have a, a limit as far as the size of the school. So I've, um, I don't remember what it was, but I don't remember if it was Fannie or Freddie that needed a school population of maybe 18,000. I was working on a school that had 15,000, so they wouldn't do it. So in the need to find, uh, who will do, you know, the student housing, but it does, it does eliminate some people, some of the lenders, but there's plenty that older student housing.
Speaker 2 00:25:11 So it doesn't have to be student housing just real estate in general. But what would you say is the good, bad and ugly of real estate investing for anybody that's looking at getting in there, whether that's an active side or passively investing with you?
Speaker 1 00:25:23 Well, I think that real estate is a great way to diversify whatever you are investing in. It doesn't follow a lot of the other investment opportunities. It's an alternative investment opportunity. I think it's a great way to come in as either a passive investor, or if it's something that you want to come in and learn as an active investor, it's an investment that as an active investor, you put the effort out there and you continually reach out and work at it and you will become successful as a passive investor. You know, I think it's a lot more predictable. I think it's a lot safer than I think the stock market that doesn't mean that you shouldn't diversify and put some money in the stock market. Maybe put some money in precious metals, but there's some great opportunities to expand your wealth through real estate. And that's through, you know, all different types of real estate multifamily, senior living, you know, self storage.
Speaker 1 00:26:32 I'm a little bit hesitant on some of the other commercial aspects as far as, you know, retail and those, they seem to be going up and down as far as with the recession. But I know plenty of people that have made a lot of money in those, I, I just am more hesitant on some of those other aspects. I know a lot of people getting into medical offices or, or triple net properties, uh, if you want to protect yourself and just get a steady income. So there's many, many different aspects of commercial real estate. I just happen to like multifamily and student housing is just one aspect of the multifamily portion of commercial real estate.
Speaker 2 00:27:16 And then what do you think from the bad and the ugly aspects? There's definitely a lot of good, but is there anything that you would say is, you know, isn't talked about very often.
Speaker 1 00:27:26 I think we're talking about it a lot right now with COVID. This is something that hit a lot of people that they were not expecting, especially in the, in the student housing, you know, who expected schools to close down, um, and send everybody home that certainly wasn't expected. But, um, I think the main thing is, is with any kind of real estate is to have sufficient funds to cover you in the event that something like this, uh, hopefully will never happen again in our lifetime, but they could happen in more of a local type of thing. Whereas we've got a lot of acts of mother nature that surprise us. So I think these sufficiently funded, uh, as a passive investor, invest with someone that's been through it before someone that's conservative enough that they've are prepared for the worst and conservative in their underwriting and estimations on what kind of returns are going to be given to investors.
Speaker 1 00:28:40 That's the big thing with real estate. I think it's a lot more predictable. I think you can bet a lot more on the jockey knowing that someone's been through a lot of experiences and that they're prepared for these different experiences, but unless you spend a lot of time analyzing, uh, different, uh, stocks and different companies, I mean, there's certainly people that are doing that, that are spending a lot of time with the analysis, but most people in the stock market just kind of trust either mutual fund managers or, or, um, some financial planner to pick your stocks. Uh, I think that real estate is a much more predictable way to build your wealth. If, if wealth building is what you're looking for or getting into deals that are cashflow, I think the cashflow on real estate is phenomenal. And it's main thing is getting involved with an experience, uh, deal provider or fund manager.
Speaker 2 00:29:45 Yeah, I fell, I was talking to someone earlier today and it was just, it was a little bit about that predictability where it's sort of predictable. The stock market will go up, but then it's going to go down and it's sort of like, what's your, what's your stomach? Are you okay with every three, four years it dropping down with the expectation? Well, it's going to go back up in another two years. It is more predictable, obviously the pandemic it's hard to predict, but I'm really curious on, you know, now that we've had this pandemic, hopefully in our lifetime, it won't happen again, but that's always going to be in the back of our minds from now on. So is there anything we will do or you will do differently on an underwriting or you think the lender reserves are going to be higher over the next couple years, or do you think once we get through this, you know, wherever that may be, it goes back to the way it was.
Speaker 1 00:30:32 I would say you don't lend lender reserves or not any a conservative deal sponsor should have significant reserves. Anyway, if they don't have those reserves in the particular deal, then they need to have those reserves personally, or for their business. Uh, one of the things that a lot of times people would ask, you know, how much money are you putting in personal life? And typically what I've done is my answer is I have reserves that I keep for all of my deals. And if I have to jump in to help one of my deals off, you know, with some of my funds, I would prefer to do that and to be, have those funds kept on the sideline to protect all of the deals, uh, that the, you know, whenever one needed help, if I put a lot of money into each deal, which I may put some money into each deal, but if I put a lot of money into each one of my deals, I may not have that those funds available to help out a deal that was getting into trouble.
Speaker 1 00:31:46 And, you know, that's the biggest thing is wherever you put it, if it's in each deal, or if it's in reserve with your company, there needs to be money in reserves because with real estate, uh, additional funds are going to solve most problems. You know, as long as you didn't get into a property, that's just a total, you know, mess in a, in a horrible neighborhood, uh, with, with no potential market going down the tubes. Most of the time you can solve most of those things with a little bit of money. The main thing is getting into the deal into a good deal, making sure that you're in the right market, you're in the right property. And you're in there. Most importantly, as you're in there with a deal sponsor that has everybody's interest at heart and is going to do the best for the investors and essentially everybody involved.
Speaker 2 00:32:43 Yeah. It's great advice. And it's a good segue to, you know, what do you think are some of the most overlooked aspects of real estate investing that can cause mistakes?
Speaker 1 00:32:51 Well, first of all, the most overlooked is, is the deal sponsor. And that's why I said before that the fund that I'm going to be developing, I'm going to be mainly looking at deal sponsors. And a lot of the deals sponsors and great deals sponsors, you know, I've rubbed shoulders with a, at, at a mastermind where I've met James and, and, and a lot of other great people because a good quality deal sponsor is going to do good quality conservative underwriting. Now that doesn't mean that that's not something you want to look at anyway, but the most important aspect I feel is knowing who you're dealing with and who that deal sponsor is that is number one, the most important thing. And I could trust their numbers a lot more than I could trust somebody else's numbers as, as ideal sponsor myself. I know there's so much you could do with the numbers that the unsophisticated investor, passive investors, going to look at that and say, wow, that looks great.
Speaker 1 00:33:55 Those numbers look great, but if they're based on unrealistic assumptions, it doesn't matter. You can manipulate numbers all over the place. And I've seen numbers that are totally ridiculous. That show a great return. Well, that's never going to happen. And if anything comes up to upset the boat, all of a sudden, you know, they're going to be in trouble. And that's why the experience and integrity of the deal sponsor is really so much more important than any, any, uh, underwriting criteria that you can come up with. It's the integrity and the experience of the person running the show.
Speaker 2 00:34:39 Yeah, that's, it's really important. You mentioned James and, you know, for those people that are getting into the industry or becoming a syndicator, it's important to right. To partner with experienced deal sponsors to help get that conference
Speaker 1 00:34:55 From people like yourselves and others who
Speaker 2 00:34:57 Want to see an experience, a sponsor who has that integrity, who's been through it before. So other things that passive investors need to know, you mentioned, there's a lot of ways that a sponsor or syndicator can change the deal to make it go their favor. How would you say passive investors should
Speaker 1 00:35:18 Learn about those different levers and,
Speaker 2 00:35:21 And what places can they go to, to just to continue learning?
Speaker 1 00:35:24 Well, first of all, we've mentioned James, James <inaudible>, and he has written a great book focused towards passive investors, which has got some good information. And the other book that I would say, which is a must read is Brian Burke, his book on a hands off investor, and you can get that one on Amazon or, or, uh, bigger pockets. Those two books give you a great idea as far as what you need to look at as a passive investor. Now, the biggest problem is you've got a high net worth individuals. We may have a lot of those out there listening to this conversation that are busy, that busy with their lives, busy with their businesses, that they may be running, bringing in that income. And they don't, they don't have the time to do all of those things that is required, or you should be doing in order to protect yourself.
Speaker 1 00:36:25 So that's why there are people out there that provide that kind of service. That's one of, you know, not to toot toot our horn, but that's something that we do is we're going to be checking out the, uh, the syndicator. We're going to be, uh, looking at the underwriting. We're going to be looking at the market. We're going to be going through all of those details to make sure that we're interested in bringing our investors into it. And there's people like that that we'll do do it for you, or you get to know, you get to know the syndicator and that's real important, but most, most don't most don't. I could say that in the hundreds of investors that have invested in my deals, there have been very few that have really asked me the questions that they should have asked, gone through the PPM and read the details and read the details of the operating agreements and ask the proper questions.
Speaker 1 00:37:25 Most of them have done it out of trust with me. And, and I appreciate that. And, and most syndicators will say the same that they appreciate that they trust them, but, you know, that's their responsibility to find out all the details, you know, beforehand, because once, once the boat has sailed, once you've invested your money, you know, you're, you're there to ask questions, but for the most part, you know, you're, you're not at the helm anymore and you're kind of stuck with the ride. So in the beginning, that's, that's when the passive investors should be asking all the questions, they have that right. And that obligation to ask all the questions to inquire about what's going on and why is this number here? And why is that number? And if it's somebody that doesn't have the interest, doesn't have the knowledge, doesn't have the ability to do all that. Then they need to find somebody that can help them with that. And not just go ahead and jump on in and invest their money without doing that due diligence, their responsibility is to do that due diligence upfront, or get somebody that will do it for them to protect them. And, and that's, that's the best way to protect yourself.
Speaker 2 00:38:41 Yeah. And you mentioned a couple of books. Uh, one was, uh, James Kennesaw. Mommy's passive investing in commercial real estate, insider secrets to achieving financial independence is great book. What was the other one? I I'd like to read that one as well.
Speaker 1 00:38:53 It's by Brian Burke and it's the hands off investor hands-off investor. Perfect. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:39:00 Well, a very valuable information through this podcast on obviously student housing, but then a lot on the passive investor side. And I do agree it's nice to have investors trust and they'll look at your success or your business track record, but they should be asking questions and, you know, whether it's their meetups or reading blogs or attending webinars, you know, the more information education they have and the more comfortable they're, they're making the right decision. So well, you know, as we typically close, you know, what are some of your proudest moments, uh, investing in real estate?
Speaker 1 00:39:34 Well, I have to say that the proudest moment I had was with a property in Georgia. We bought it at 30% occupied, well, 30% economic occupancy. There was probably about 48% physical occupancy. And we kicked out all the riffraff on the ones that were just not even school students. They were just hanging around and smoking note. And once we renovated that property, we did a video. This was, we were making a video to present to the athletic department because they were going to put our video on their jumbotron during their athletic events, uh, as a, uh, advertisement for us as part of our sponsorship. And I went down there to do the videotaping. My property management company did a video and it was horrendous, but I have a little bit of a video background. So I went down there. I didn't let anybody know who I was as far as the owner.
Speaker 1 00:40:39 And I was interviewing these students and talking to them and asking them how they felt about what the new ownership had done to the property. And my last question was always, if you could talk directly to the owners of the property, you know, what, what would you say to them? And there was a couple of them, you know, that, that said, you know, thank you. Uh, thank you for, for creating a safe environment for us. And some of these kids were, they were living there prior to our ownership. There were certain thank you for making the environment safe, but this one girl went and said, thank you for creating an environment that I can bring my mom and show her where I'm living, because she was too embarrassed to show her where she was living before that. And so you should thank, and she had me in tears and I actually asked her if I could give her a hug and we hugged.
Speaker 1 00:41:39 And it was, it was a beautiful moment. And I think about that, that here I could go in and run a business. I could make money doing the business, but I could also change people's lives. And that was probably one of the most moving moments that I've had with Rachel stern. It's a great story and love the idea of a videotaping to, to hear what your residents think of, what the changes that you're doing. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So what are ways that people can reach out to you? You had mentioned that you're interested in jiving with other syndicators. How can people get to know you or reach out to you and anything else you want the listeners to know about you? Well, you could get ahold of me by email, which was
[email protected]. That's S Y N E R G G I C I g.com. Also my website, uh, synergetic, um, either center Jetter, I g.com or synergetic investment group.com. Either one of those will will get you to my website and you could reach out, set up an appointment. We can talk or just send me an email. And it sounds great. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for your insights and your time to be on the show and you stay well and wish you the success in the future. And thank you very much. Thank you all
Speaker 0 00:43:09 That's all for this episode. We hope you subscribe, share, and leave a review of the show for more information about passively investing in multifamily apartments, check out Wayne's free ebook by going through <inaudible> dot com slash ebook. Also follow us on Facebook by searching C R E I partners. This was the untold stories of real estate investing.
