242 How To Scale Responsibly | Real Estate Investor Show - Hard Money for Real Estate Investors

Bill Fairman

00:00:00

Oh, see that. Hey, welcome back. We are going to talk about scaling responsibly. One of the things that we run into is, should you scale in a coming downturn? Absolutely. You have to scale responsibly. We're gonna talk about that right after this.

 

Bill Fairman

00:00:37

Welcome. We're back here with our take two or question 2.0 with Hunter Big to elevate capital. We're gonna talk about scaling responsible respons. Sorry guys, I'm actually out of town right now, so I'm a little sluggish. Let's get started off with a little bit of housekeeping. Thank you so much for joining us on the Real Estate Investor channel, Hard Money for Real Estate Investors. We are Carolina Capital private lenders in the southeast for real estate professionals. If you have a a project you want us to take a look at, go to carolina hard money.com and click on the Apply Now tab. If you are a accredited investor and you're looking for passive returns, click on the accredited investor tab. Don't forget to like, share, subscribe, Hit the bell and don't forget about Wednesdays with Wendy. Wait. Oh wow. That was quick. That was a nice one. Yeah. Yeah. Wendy, excuse me, gives 30 minutes of her time per person on Wednesday afternoons to talk about real estate. There's the link. It will be in the chat side to the right side of the page or underneath, depending on the pro, excuse me, platform you're viewing us from.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:02:03

You good there? Yeah, you got all about It's

 

Bill Fairman

00:02:06

Alright. It's a lot of loans.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:02:07

It's alright. But yeah, no, Wednesdays Wendy's a great thing. If you want to join on the calendar link, you can do that. You will get something from it. I guarantee you. She has a lot of experience and she will tell you she's made a lot of mistakes. So learn from her mistakes.

 

Bill Fairman

00:02:24

And before we get started, I wanted to mention the Quest Expo was awesome. If you, you guys didn't get a chance to go, I think you can still purchase the videos from all the speakers that were there. It was excellent event. I think there were over almost 900 people, I

 

Jonathan Davis

00:02:44

Think 857?

 

Bill Fairman

00:02:45

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well that's close enough to nine. Yeah. Thanks for being so exact.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:02:49

It's my job. It's his job. Yeah.

 

Bill Fairman

00:02:52

But there was great information. Excuse me, If you have a self-directed ira or if you don't know what a self-directed IRA is, then there's plenty of implication for that. If you want to go to quest trust.com, all the information is free, so check it out.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:03:11

Excellent. So we wanna talk about scaling or responsibly. Yes. And what the heck does that even mean?

 

Bill Fairman

00:03:19

Well, it means getting either bigger or we're Okay. I promise I wouldn't say this, but it's about cleaning your fish.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:03:28

No bad joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no. So we have Hunter on here with Elevate Capital and since February of 2018, him and his partners have been investing into multifamily in primarily North Carolina.

 

Hunter Bick

00:03:44

Oh, actually all North Carolina. All

 

Jonathan Davis

00:03:46

North Carolina. Okay.

 

Hunter Bick

00:03:46

We looked elsewhere, but

 

Jonathan Davis

00:03:47

Yeah, you like North Carolina. So they have went from zero doors to several hundred in that time, you know, timeframe.

 

Hunter Bick

00:03:57

500 ish.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:03:58

500 ish. It was more, But you just sold 120, didn't you? We did, yeah. Yeah. So they were over 600. So they have scaled in that time period from Jan, from February of 2018 to now on several hundred doors. And to kind of wanna just pick your brain on, what was your thought process like? You know, when you were looking at this, what, like, did, did it feel too much, too little or kind of how, how did you look at adding to your portfolio?

 

Hunter Bick

00:04:30

Yeah, that's a good question. You know, we kind of, we, we, we've always kind of taken the approach where if this deal makes a lot of sense and we think the upside is large, it's our job to figure out how to get it done. Sometimes that meant buying four things at once. Like there was a day we actually closed 200 doors in one day. Wow. There are other times where maybe we go several months without putting anything under contract. But the va, we knew the value was the value and we were always really confident when we thought we had a really great deal under contract, we had to figure it out. Our approach has typically been, you know, we found so many great deals off market that our approach has typically been how do we keep as much equity as possible? And that often meant hard money, hard money, maybe a debt stack, maybe some investor capital, whatever it was that we needed, we were going to do it.

 

Hunter Bick

00:05:27

But the first choice was always keep all the equity with a, with high leverage because we knew we were gonna add the value so quickly that we could refinance into permanent debt in six to 18 months, depending on the deal. And, and so the higher leverage was not for us was, was not risky or not scary because we knew it was gonna be very short term and we knew the value was gonna be there. Yeah. And so that's how we've done a lot of our deals. You know, you get to a certain size and, you know, you see more opportunities. And so we are, we are looking, we are kind of getting to the point where we're gonna be taking more passive investor capital to do some of those, some more deals. You know, we do think we're gonna see some really good opportunities here in the next 12, 18 months. I agree. We're getting positioned for that and create a little more, you know, a predictable type of, you know, capital process. Yeah. You know, and with higher interest rates, it's a little trickier these days to count on low interest on a per, on a per loan 12 months from now, which

 

Jonathan Davis

00:06:31

Is more reason why Yeah. You win when you purchase it. Right?

 

Hunter Bick

00:06:34

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, and so obviously the, the lower the basis, the, the more money you're gonna make and it really is that simple.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:06:44

Yeah. I wanted to go back, you mentioned debt stack. So for everyone that doesn't know what debt stack is, you have your primary, like first lean position loan, which would be, you know, just your, your, what you would normally get. And then on top of that, you can get mezzanine debt, which can be secured by a second lean or it could be unsecured. And then on top of that you can give up. You, you have equity and then there's multiple levels of equity that you can give up and that just gets, you know, higher and higher. So that's, that's what a debt debt stack is.

 

Bill Fairman

00:07:17

I I call that a wallet full of credit cards. That's my

 

Jonathan Davis

00:07:21

Well, and that's how a lot of people

 

Hunter Bick

00:07:22

Use a lot of those on the way too.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:07:23

Yeah. That's how a lot of people do this. I mean, like, when you're buying five, 10, 20 million properties, like no one's really using their own money to do that typically. Now they might use some of their money, but typically people don't have $5 million to just say, Hey, let me put it here. And because that, you know, even if they have $5 million, you wouldn't do that. So you want to stack your debt with, you know, mezzanine or, you know, whatever the case may be. A as Hunter said, like their, their whole goal has been to try to avoid giving up equity and you know, why? Well, that's allowed them to capitalize on the back end, on the exit at a higher return, which then, like he said in the previous show, he took the earnings from Applewood and 10 31 them into another project. So it allowed them to buy more assets. It allowed them to scale.

 

Bill Fairman

00:08:22

And, and as markets change, we, we are in a higher rate environment as well as an environment where credit's gonna be a little tighter for the institutional type blenders. So you have to take on a few more equity partners in order to get these same deals done, because the fact that they're going to be a little tighter on the credit means that they're gonna lend less money on it. Yep. If you do go the mezzanine route with a larger gap or a larger percentage of that, those rates are typically a lot higher. Correct. You're almost better off having an equity partner to fill in that gap than the, than the mezzanine financing am I

 

Hunter Bick

00:09:04

Agree. Well, it, well, well, depends on a couple. I, I would agree or disagree depending. Right. Every deal is different. Absolutely.

 

Bill Fairman

00:09:12

Every situation

 

Hunter Bick

00:09:13

Is different. Absolutely. How long, how long do you need the Mezz debt? Right? Yeah. And or you know, if it's a longer term for construction project on a bigger asset and you're gonna, and you wanna, and your options are take some equity partners versus loaded up with 10% debt, but it's an 18 month project that 10% debt's gonna be expensive for 18 months. Right? Yeah.

 

Jonathan Davis

00:09:32

And so how long can you negative carry?

 

Hunter Bick

00:09:33

Exactly. And so you gotta, you gotta factor the negative carry in and all of that. And so equity partnerships become, they become less risk if something goes wrong, you can bring others in to profit along with you, you know, it's important to align incentives at all points, by the way. Yep. That's a huge thing for us. But yeah, so the, and the other thing too, in to your point Bill, and today, today's debt markets, even a year ago, nine months ago, you could get bridge debt for, in the fives five and a quarter, five and a half for 80% of the purchase and a hundred percent of the construction today, that quote is 75% of the purchase, 75% of the construction, and it starts with a nine, right? Like it might be nine and a half. So different types of debt are appropriate depending on the market. Hard money at what, 11, 12? Where are you guys right now? Yeah, something like that. Between

 

Jonathan Davis

01:10:23

10 and 12.

 

Hunter Bick

01:10:24

Yeah. Okay. Hard money is now all of a sudden really, really cheap because there's no alter. Well if you're gonna go 75% on bridge at nine and a half, why would you not go a hundred at 11? Like that's a no-brainer. Right. And so, not to mention you don't have the breach debt org structure and all the crap that comes with it. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's a tool that has become more attractive right now For sure.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:10:50

Well, yeah. When, when you break it down, I mean, someone's gonna do 75 and 75, so 75 of the purchase, 75 with a re that means you have to bring 25% of the costs of the total cost. So typically you're not gonna have that. You're gonna have to either get mezzanine debt or equity, and typically you're gonna give up equity and what is that equity gonna cost you? So when you're factoring this, you're factoring, okay, I'm paying nine for 75% of the cost and then this equity's gonna cost me X amount. And if you can get 95 or 90% loan to cost on, on hard money or private lending at 12 or 10 or whatever the case may be, when you run those side by side, a lot of times the private lending is the cheaper option in the long run. But again, it comes down to the carry. Can you, you know, is there a negative carry? Is there a lease that period? Do you have to get out all the units, you know, flushed out and then rent them all? Can you rent em them as you go? So each one is different, but I will say it debt is always cheaper than equity.

 

Bill Fairman

01:11:58

Well, yes, I, I totally agree with that. That's what we talk, we talk to people about that all the time. Why do you get a, a money partner who's gonna take half of your equity when you can get a hard money loan and spend, you know, five, 10 grand worst case scenario on your financing on a, on a home Yeah. Scaling. You have to have good systems and processes in place. Do you wanna absolutely. Talk about any, how you guys are doing it?

 

Hunter Bick

01:12:28

Sure. You know, so I mean, for us, everything starts with, you know, a goodbye. Right. And so, you know, we probably model a hundred deals for every one or two that we buy. I mean, we're super, and, and everything's off market too, so it's not like we're, you know, modeling deals that are on LoopNet or Right. Publicly listed. Like we don't bother

 

Jonathan Davis

01:12:47

Except that first one.

 

Hunter Bick

01:12:49

Well, yes, except that first one. But, you know, so, you know, so, so has to start there and like, you ha you just have to be, you have to stick your guns and you have to be super selective because it's very easy to like go through your spreadsheet model and say, Okay, well I think I can whittle the, I think I can get this rental done for 10% less and oh yeah, I think I can get 10% better on my takeout loan or a little bit better leverage. And before you know it, you've just, you know, inch your way, you talked yourself into doing a deal that maybe you shouldn't be doing. Right.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:13:19

You've modeled a unicorn situation that probably won't

 

Hunter Bick

01:13:22

Happen. Exactly. Yeah. So we try to, we always, I always try to say, I mean, everything be is a probability again, you know, so what's a range of probabilities for each piece of the process? What's the average, what's the worst case? What's the best case? And if you know, kind of that between average and worst case, if something like that still works, then it, it's, it's gonna be a great deal. If things can go wrong and you still make money, it's gonna be a really good deal.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:13:47

Do you, when, when you're modeling this, do you stress test them at higher cap rates on the exit? Do you, you know, like let's say like, you know, Charlotte's trading on a B level asset, I don't know, a six cap, do you stress test them at a, at a different cap rate? Or kind of what do you do to to stress test those, those models?

 

Hunter Bick

01:14:07

Yeah. So the way we kind of look at it, we're less worried about the cap rate because the, the, the, the end result, because we're not doing, we're not doing a new construction, right? We're, we're doing B and C value add and so on, on the takeout. If it's, if, if it's a sell, the NOI is really what's gonna matter, right? That's gonna drive it. And you know sure. If, if, if we have to have a five cap on the finished NOI in order to make any money, like no. Right? Like, I mean, come on. But, so if we're gonna make money at selling it at a seven, it's probably a great deal, right? Yeah. For us, we always wanna see what can we refinance at that? Can we do a cash out or would a refi require cash in? That's what we never want to do. Always. You always wanna cash out or cash neutral worst, you know, worst case for us. And, but the cap rate's not the constraining factor there. The, the cash flow is especially in a low cap rate market like Charlotte, right? So, you know, so yeah, we definitely look at different exit scenarios, like what happens if there's some, if the expenses are actually higher than we're projecting, what does that do to each scenario? But we always wanna have multiple exits. We don't wanna be locked into a one path.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:15:20

Yeah. And we, you know, for the people out there, if you're working with syndicators or other people who are doing this, you know, that's what you want to be savvy about is understanding the net operating income, understanding that there's a difference between the acquisition capital capitalization rate and the operating capitalization rate and the exit capitalization rate.

 

Hunter Bick

01:15:40

Yeah. Lemme talk about that real quick. Yeah, go for it. So the acquisition cap rate is I think, a huge misnomer, right? That matters a lot if you're buying a stabilized asset. Like if you're buying an A and you're buying this thing for the cash flow and you're buying it for, you know, market appreciation, call it the going in cap rate does matter. Anything else, like value add, the cap rate means nothing because the whole point is you're buying something that's already distressed. Yeah. So we've bought zero caps, like a, an empty property is a zero cap, right? Yeah. We've bought one caps because the financials were so bad, right? Yeah. That, that means nothing because all we care about is what's the cap rate after we renovate, stabilize, you know, improve the operations, What's that cap rate? Exactly. Because that's what, that's what matters. Yeah. All, all in on, all in on cost. So those

 

Bill Fairman

01:16:29

Of you in the single family fix and flip business, it's basically what's the place gonna be worth after the repairs your thing? Same, You're not buying a, a property because it's, it's valued at what, what it's the sales price is. That's not why you're doing

 

Jonathan Davis

01:16:44

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, just to, to beat the dead horse here, I mean, we've, we've, you know, Hunter and I've had, I don't know how many hours of conversations about cap rates, but

 

Bill Fairman

01:16:54

I got feeling there were adult beverages involved

 

Jonathan Davis

01:16:57

Maybe on some of them. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it's like people don't understand like what's the most important, is the most important or two things, and Yeah. Excluding if you're buying like an A level asset, which, you know, like that's not what we're talking about here. It is your operational cap, right? What, what is your yield, what is your cash flow? And then what can you, what multiple can you sell that asset for? Those are the only things that matter. Not, it's like, well, I can't buy it, it's a four cap. It's like, that doesn't matter. I mean, if, if you're gonna be putting in $600,000 and raising the rents 200 per unit four cap doesn't matter.

 

Hunter Bick

01:17:38

Exactly. No, exactly. And that's the key thing a lot of people get tripped up on.

 

Bill Fairman

01:17:41

Now, as Jonathan was saying, if you're involved in a syndication, you're a passive investor in this syndication, what is it you would like more the sale of the property and get a big chunk of change at the end, or a refinance at the end of the out, and you get a big chunk of change. What's more beneficial

 

Jonathan Davis

01:17:59

Depends on where you are

 

Bill Fairman

01:18:00

To the investor.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:18:01

Well, it depends on what you are. So if you,

 

Hunter Bick

01:18:03

How good was the buy? Yeah.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:18:04

How good was the buy? Like, am I willing to pay the, the capital gains on the, on the sale if the buy was good, or would I rather take the no capital gains on a refinance cash out? So it depends

 

Bill Fairman

01:18:18

That, that was my point. If you get the same amount of money on either end, and if it's a refinance, it's tax free.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:18:24

Yeah. So yeah, that is true. So if you were an equity member on this property, that's, that, that refinances that is a cash or a tax free transaction that you get. But again, as Hunter, you know, pointed out as someone who does this, what am I selling it for? What did I buy it for? Right. You know, I, I might not mind to pay the taxes if it's

 

Bill Fairman

01:18:44

At, at the same time, if you're getting a capital gain during the process, you're probably also have some passive losses that you can also add Dang. To them.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:18:53

Exactly.

 

Hunter Bick

01:18:53

And the cash out refi for us, I mean that's, that's how we, that's along with, you know, high leverage on great deals. The cash out refi is how we got here. I mean, the cash out refi is the best thing ever. It's non-taxable. You get all this cash back as long as the property can support the new debt. And if it can't, then you haven't done your job. Right. But it's tax free dollars to go do, do go do more deals. And that's, it's, I don't know how many great cashout we're gonna see for the next 18 months, but thankfully we got most them done. But Yeah, prior to now,

 

Jonathan Davis

01:19:27

Not on the ones that bought Yeah. You know, Yeah. Two years and less ago. I mean, that's, that's gonna be tough.

 

Bill Fairman

01:19:32

I don't think the cash out's gonna be the issue. Is it, will it support the loan? New loan?

 

Hunter Bick

01:19:37

Yeah. Well it's, yeah. I mean, the ca you can, the cash out still exists. It's just not gonna be as good.

 

Jonathan Davis

01:19:41

Yeah. The, the debt service coverage ratio is gonna be a big issue for, you know, and that's just how much does gross does the property make? And then how much does it spend on interest principle taxes, insurance, and any HOA fees.

 

Bill Fairman

01:19:55

But it's not the end of the world either cycles or just that they're cycles. Would

 

Jonathan Davis

02:20:00

You say that cycles are cyclical? Yeah. Yes. Okay.

 

Bill Fairman

02:20:04

The lower rates will come back around at some point.

 

Jonathan Davis

02:20:07

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, like I said, you know, talking with different people, I mean there, there's some people who think that, you know, it's all over. It's, yeah, it's all over. And for the next 20 years it's just gonna be, you know, a blood bath. And then there's some people who think, Oh, you know, January of next year fresh start, we're gonna be great. And you know, I think neither one of those are right. I think we're between those two where exactly. You know, that's the question. But, but yeah. I mean, when we talk about scaling, like right now, in the next 18 months, are you excited about scaling or are you nervous? What's your thought process for the next 18 months? We're

 

Hunter Bick

02:20:47

Always excited. Yeah. You know, I think for, for different reasons, depending on, you know, what the market gives you. I mean, you have to be able to adapt to what the market gives you. Right. No one's smarter than the market, and I don't try to pretend that I am, but I do try to be prepared for different eventualities. And so, you know, right now it's harder, debt is more expensive, it's harder to get that huge cash out after the value add period. Yep. Okay. No problem. So the, the move there is probably more equity, a little less debt on, on, on the buy simply because you don't know when you're gonna be able to get to, you know, 4% per debt again. Yep. That could, that could be a while. So bringing in equity investors to participate is, is, is, is, is, it's a good way to handle that.

 

Hunter Bick

02:21:35

Staying, staying sticking to our guns on good buys is more important than ever. Yep. And maximizing the value of the properties. You do have, I mean, we're still an 11% rentre renting Charlotte's environment and Charlotte, even Fayetteville, seeing huge fayville, seeing huge ones. So as owners of multifamily real estate, you know, that for properties are already in low interest debt that is going to benefit us if more cash flow from those, it allows you more, you know, buffer, you can deploy that toward new deals. You just have to, you can't assume that what you did before is gonna work forever in any business. Yep. Especially this one. But you

 

Jonathan Davis

02:22:12

Just, you just adapt the dumbest sentence in the English language is that's how we always have done it. Isn't,

 

Hunter Bick

02:22:18

I think that's Oh, it's terrible. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, you have to, you just have to be realistic about, well,

 

Jonathan Davis

02:22:23

We talk about pivot, and you have to be able to be nimble and pivot. I mean, so to back up on the equity piece that Hunter was talking about, why is that so beneficial and how can that help you scale? Well, equity, true equity, if, if you're giving up equity as like a, an lp, which is a limited partnership, so you have a general, general partner, and then you have a limited partner. When people invest into multi-family as an equity member, they've become a limited partner. And the general partner is the operator would be, you know, Hunter in this case. How does that help you scale? Well, the debt is a fixed monthly or quarterly or however it's, you know, amortized, it's a fixed payment and that payment is the payment, and it is every month or every quarter with the equity, you can set a lower preferred rate of return with your equity members.

 

Jonathan Davis

02:23:13

Like maybe they're okay getting 4% cash flow over the life of the, the project because they're going to get depreciation and maybe that depreciation equates to an 8% return on top of the four, and that gets 'em to 12. And then there's a, you know, a backend equity piece that they get and it jumps into 20, like a 20% irr. So, you know, like there's, that's the way to do it. It, it helps you on the cash flow, it helps you manage that asset while you're working on it and while you have it in your portfolio. And it gives them a benefit, you know, they get some money, they also get a tax benefit, and then they get a back end benefit.

 

Hunter Bick

02:23:52

And it also allows you too, to, you know, one thing we always do, incentives are super important. You know, you want s to be a hundred percent aligned. What we typically do is, you know, we waterfall the equity, in other words, so like outta the gate, our investor would have, like, we did one where our investor had 99% of the equity until we performed. We have no problem with that because we knew we were gonna perform and then they're protected in case something goes wrong. And I think that makes a lot of sense, and we're more than happy to do that. Of course, once a threshold is met, well then the equity changes. But everyone's made their money at that point.

 

Jonathan Davis

02:24:23

And so, and anyone out there syndicating deals right now where you're an lp, is your GP willing to give you 99% of the, the equity until they perform? If they don't, maybe you should visit elevate capital group.com. Appreciate,

 

Bill Fairman

02:24:40

And keep in mind too, multifamily is vet as recession resistant as you can find. It's residential in any economy. Again, you need two things, food and shelter and

 

Hunter Bick

02:24:51

The foreclosure rate for B and c multifamily in peak financial prices, 2009 was less than 1%. I mean, yeah, that's, yeah, that's about as good as it

 

Bill Fairman

02:24:59

Peak need a place to live.

 

Hunter Bick

02:25:00

Nothing is bull, nothing is perfect. But yeah, multifamily, real estate's pretty

 

Jonathan Davis

02:25:04

Resilient. 1%. And you'll, you'll play those all the time,

 

Hunter Bick

02:25:06

All

 

Bill Fairman

02:25:07

Day long, just like the base.

 

Hunter Bick

02:25:08

Exactly.

 

Jonathan Davis

02:25:09

Yeah.

 

Bill Fairman

02:25:10

All right folks, thank you for joining us on the Real Estate Investor Show. We are Carolina Capital Management lenders in the Southeast for professional real estate people's. If you have a pr, if you have a project you'd like us to take a look at, go to carolina hard mini.com, click on the plan out tab. If you are a passive investor looking for passive returns, go to the Accredited Investor tab. This is a great show. Thanks again, Hunter, for being our guest today. And we guys, we, we will see you next week. Thanks.