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Apr 7, 2022

Ryan Webster and Warren Dresner are Co-founders of Equity Yield Group. Equity Yield Group is a real estate investment firm specializing in institutional grade, A/B class multifamily assets in great markets, sourced, qualified, and managed by an experienced team.

In this episode we talked about:

  • Ryan`s and Warren`s  Bio & Background
  • Real Estate Investment
  • Real Estate Classes
  • Definition of Equity Yield Group
  • The Process of Evolution as an Investor
  • Deal Specifics: from Negotiating to Financing
  • Raising Capital
  • Communicating with Investors Strategy
  • Philosophy on Pre-Deal and Ongoing Communication
  • Reporting Aspects
  • Key Metrics of Pre-Deal Stage
  • Deal Structuring
  • Disposition in Real Estate
  • Underwriting
  • Asset and Local Management
  • Geography of Deals
  • How to Build a Team
  • Investment Philosophy
  • Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned

Useful links:
http://www.justicemap.org
https://equityyieldgroup.com

Transcriptions:

Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to working capital the real estate podcast. My name's Jesse for galley and with me today are Ryan Webster and Warren Dresner. They are co-founders of equity yield group equity yield group is a real estate investment firm specializing in institutional grade a and B class multi-family assets in great markets, sourced, qualified and managed by their experience team, guys.

 

How's it going?

 

Warren (45s): Great. How are you Jesse?

 

Jesse (47s): I'm doing fantastic. We've got a bright and sunny day in Toronto. So the snow's gone and hopefully this continues for listeners you're joining us. I think we talked just before the show Miami and it was Iowa Right on. So for listeners that don't have a bit of a background of what you guys do. Maybe we could kind of take it back to the beginning. You know, we want to talk about how you founded this company and get into some of the great deals that you've you've done so far.

 

But before we do that, maybe you could just provide a little bit of a background about individually, how you got started in real estate, if the path was traditional or if it was not. And then eventually how you guys kind of teamed up to create a degree at this company.

 

Ryan (1m 33s): Yeah, no, absolutely say I've been in real estate a long time, a real estate professional and an entrepreneur prior to founding equity yield group. I own an operator construction and development company for transitioning into a multi-family acquisitions and working with equity yield group and more in near.

 

Warren (1m 54s): So I think my perf is probably traditional but different to Ryan's. So I'm from Australia originally been investing in real estate since 2010, largely single family homes. When I moved to the U S 2019, I discovered multi-family and started investing in multi-family as a passive investor, invested in a number of syndications, got to know the industry that way, and then decided I wanted to get more active in this space. And that's when I met Ryan and we'd formed equity yield group, and we started acquiring large multi-family units and, and operating them ourselves.

 

Jesse (2m 34s): So when, when did you start requiring units? What year was that?

 

Warren (2m 39s): Equity? Your group? 20. 20.

 

Jesse (2m 41s): Okay. So fairly recently.

 

Warren (2m 44s): Yeah.

 

Jesse (2m 44s): So in terms of the, the kind of foray into real estate, did you have a investing career? I know, you know, Ryan, you just mentioned a little bit of the background there, but was it, you know, where are you familiar with investments years before? Or was this something that, you know, you teaming together was really the, this started of kind of an investment career, like the deals you're talking about syndications and multi-family deals.

 

Ryan (3m 9s): Yeah, I won't speak for Warren, but as far as a real estate investment, you know, something that I was familiar with and it was, it was working in just in a different capacity and different business model and the, you know, build and sell as opposed to buy and hold.

 

Warren (3m 24s): I didn't mention it before, but my background's in finance and insurance. So I was comfortable with complex financial structures and investments, not only on my own account and single family homes, but just through a corporate career. Ryan with that construction background as well, was quite familiar with debt structures and complicated capital stacks that go with construction. So together we, I feel like we had a lot of combined knowledge that really helped. So it made it a lot easier to start looking at our own properties.

 

Jesse (3m 56s): So when you did start looking at your own properties, what was the impetus for multifamily, you know, the array of different residential and commercial real estate classes? What was it about multi-family

 

Ryan (4m 8s): For me, it was really kind of stability and, you know, a real low risk profile and great risks, gesture returns having been on the other side of that risk profile on the development side, where you have, you know, high levels of, of execution risk, as well as market volatility, risk, and, and hoping that you're gonna hit the timing, your project and the interest isn't going to eat through your profits. You know, the advantage that came with buying stabilized cash flowing assets, and it really provides peace of mind for me and for our investors being able to deliver solid risk adjusted returns

 

Jesse (4m 47s): In terms of the actual structure that you use. I know from the outset, the sorry, definition of equity yield group, or kind of what you guys do specializing in an institutional grade, how do you define institutional grade, you know, as opposed to family offices or high net worth individuals, what does that definition for, for your team?

 

Ryan (5m 8s): Yeah, so we buy, you know, late model product. We really prefer, you know, nineties to mid two thousands, but nothing older than the 1985. And, you know, we look for greater than a hundred units, really nothing less than $20 million, but preferably in this, you know, 50 to a hundred million dollar transaction range, but more than that is really the location in the market. We're shopping and in very strong markets with, with great fundamentals that are going to support a strong business plan

 

Jesse (5m 41s): And Warren, anything, you know, from your, from your vantage point to add on to that.

 

Warren (5m 47s): No. So, so Ryan summarize it pretty well. I mean, we use this word institutional quality. We really mean better quality assets. We can get into it in a moment, I guess, but whenever we're buying one of these properties, we need to finance it somehow through debt and equity syndicators, we traditionally raise equity from high net worth individuals. Something we also focused our efforts on is raising the money from institutions and institutions are great because they can write a really big check.

 

And it seems like an easiest solution, but they're tricky because they've got their own appetite and these institutions they're very sophisticated companies. They like to look in the stronger markets, the larger markets, and they prefer the newer assets as well. So we described to what our criteria is that we like to buy later model product in these strong markets in the Southeast, but actually that's exactly what the appetite is of these institutions as well. So I guess that word can apply to both our strategy, but also some of the sources of equity that we're using to buy these products

 

Jesse (6m 52s): And Warren, what was it, your finance background that assisted or helped in terms of the actual financing side?

 

Warren (7m 1s): I think it's both of us actually. I think Ryan was very familiar with, with complicated debt structures and how we use brokers as well. A mortgage broker who's really useful. I can access both debt and equity. So I think, I think honestly it's both of our backgrounds that made it familiar to us

 

Jesse (7m 18s): Now for the average listener. I mean, we have everything that spans from people that have a few units to thousands of units. The team here is obviously I think from the communication we've had, it's been currently invested in over 2000 units for those on the, you know, the smaller size, you know, how does that happen? You know, you kind of alluded it to alluded to it here where you're talking about people writing large checks, but you know, for the average investor, that's trying to take a syndication business and grow it. You don't just start at 2000. So what was that evolution like when you know, what, what would be your suggestion or advice to, to grow to that size if that's the goal of the, of the investor?

 

Ryan (7m 57s): Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's a business and you gotta start there. You've got to start with, with a plan and a fundamental understanding of, you know, how the business runs when you're dealing with a larger scale properties and then how you want your business internally to run. And, you know, Warren and I set out with a, with a focus of not only providing quality investments and investing in quality properties and projects, but about providing a quality customer experience.

 

So we're real big on consistent and transparent communication with our investors being accessible to our investors. So not only do they know what to expect with the level of investments that we provide them, but with working with us

 

Jesse (8m 44s): In terms of the deal you recently did. So I believe it's a $26 million acquisition. And that was like, we've been talking about you utilizing institutional capital. Can you tell us a little about that deal? Just, you know, the deal specifics, how it came together, you know, whether that, you know, from the actual negotiations to the financing, what did that look

 

Warren (9m 4s): Like? Should I jump in?

 

Ryan (9m 5s): Yeah, you can go ahead and talk about that.

 

Warren (9m 7s): Oh, that one is in Sarasota, Florida, which is a market just south of Tampa. The market fundamentals were amazing. So we actually had purchased that one. We closed early 20, 21 on that one. It all starts with the market. We loved the market. There was so much growth in Florida, so much growth around Tampa, so much growth in Sarasota specifically. So the market was outstanding. That particular asset is 148 units. It was built in 2016.

 

So it's actually a really new product. What was unique about it was, although it was only five years old, the interiors looked a lot older. I guess the developers didn't spend a lot of money on it. There was a real opportunity to clean up the kitchens and, and do a light to moderate rehab and value add project. So we loved it because it was newer, which meant that was a cleaner asset, but there was a real value add upside for us, for the investors. And so that one was $26 million.

 

We ended up, I think about six or $7 million came from an institution. And then we raised around four and a half million ourselves from high net worth individuals.

 

Jesse (10m 18s): So are you raising the capital on a fun level where it is committed capital or you raising it during, you know, the, the very stressful, potentially stressful conditional periods of the deal? How D how do you structure that, that chicken and egg? We talk about quite a bit on the show

 

Warren (10m 35s): Up until now. We've been doing it asset by asset. So in that stressful four week period, we've talked about creating a fund and that's something that's potentially on the agenda for this year.

 

Jesse (10m 45s): And what's your strategy when it comes to communicating with investors, let's maybe break that up between pre deal when you're actually in the fundraising mode. And then when you were actually with investors in a deal, and, you know, you're going through your process, whether that is value add, or in this case, sounds like it was pretty much a cut and dry. He didn't, it wasn't like you were doing a massive build-out. So those two types of communication, pre deal and ongoing what's, what's your philosophy on that?

 

Warren (11m 15s): You go ahead, Ryan.

 

Ryan (11m 17s): Yeah. Again, it's really centered around, you know, transparency. And from an operation standpoint, we, we tend to be very in tune with, with the details of, of not only the business plan, but the day-to-day operations executions. I plan. So when we're raising capital, you know, it's about putting together a presentation that, that gives investors, all the details about what we like about the project itself, the, the market, you know, why we think it's going to do well and how we're going to take it from a, to B without taking up hours and hours of their time.

 

And then post-closing, it's really about consistency. We send out monthly updates on the 15th of every month to our investors, that kind of track our KPIs from our initial business plan against the performance of the asset, as well as sending out the entire financial reporting package. If investors want to dig in, you know, very granularly, it it's all there and available to them.

 

Jesse (12m 16s): So when it comes down to the reporting, I mean, some investors there they're large enough where the accounting standards start to matter quite a bit, audited financial statements. You mentioned institutional investors, are you at that level of granularity or is this, you know, unaudited P and L's and balance sheet of what's going on with the project?

 

Ryan (12m 36s): Now, our financials are pretty detailed and very clean, and actually got, got a great compliment from our CPA and tax accountant this year. She said, it was know, these are the cleanest financials that ever reviewed this beer. And, you know, I love working with you guys because of that. And it helps not only with the institutional equity, but with the lenders as well. And even operationally, if you don't have clean books and you, you can't, you know, take a look at a profit and loss statement and understand what goes into it, it makes it very difficult to run the business.

 

Jesse (13m 7s): So I'm going to ask a seemingly granular question, but I, I, I'm just curious because we're all in the same business, and I'm curious how you deal with this, but before I do, I just have a question on the key key fundamentals are key metrics that you look at pre deal, whether that's internal rate of return equity, multiple, what do you find is the one that you have the most success communicating to investors, or you find that they request or moves? You know, they're asking, I want to see this specific metric.

 

Is there one that is head and shoulders above another? Or is it more, you have a bunch of different tools at your disposal?

 

Ryan (13m 46s): I mean, as far as return metrics, it's a return profile on different investors are looking for different things. So, you know, we, we provide cash on cash return equity, multiple IRR and average annualized return. So depending on which particular metric, the individual investor is attuned to, you know, we have it available for all of them. But as a general statement, you know, we are looking for some sort of current cashflow in all of our, our projects. So we can have that, that drip along the way of cashflow out, along with the appreciation.

 

Jesse (14m 21s): And when you are structuring these, these deals, it's a little different than the last guest we have we had on because there were more in the value add world. So you actually have these things spinning off capital in the first, you know, the first couple of years, it sounds like in that, in that strategy, are you still using a traditional preferred return and split of, of anything above that? Do you guys use a different, a different strategy or structure? What do you find that you've had success with?

 

Ryan (14m 49s): Yeah, we typically provide an 8% preferred return to really provide that, that alignment of interests with, with our LP investors. And then, then we typically go to a 70, 30 split, and then depending on the project, we may have a series of waterfalls after that at IRR hurdles.

 

Jesse (15m 8s): Okay. And for the granular question, I'm curious, because one of our investors that actually asked about this the, the other day, and it's the, the communication that comes with fees, but not just fees, but actually the return metrics in your first year. And you guys are aware that, you know, there's a bit of a J curve when it comes to the return metrics, because the investors put down a hundred thousand, two 50, a million, whatever their LP investment is. But that first year comes with quite a bit of fees associated with it. So the return in year two and three will look different than your one.

 

Is that a conversation that, that you have, or a communication that you have investors ask about after that first year, I have found that, you know, they're somewhat underwhelmed in the first year of operation until you, you communicate that piece of the, of the puzzle for them. And I find now it's in my, you know, upfront communication right away to talk about how these fees are gonna impact your one, you know, and any thoughts on that?

 

Ryan (16m 6s): Yeah. We've never had that question. And I think partly because, you know, a lot of our investors are sophisticated and understand how these larger projects run. And the second piece is, you know, in our investor deck and presentation, we break down the, the sources and uses and, and display all the fees in there. And then we break out, you know, cash on cash return on an annual projected basis. So there's really nothing, you know, in that year, one year two, that's missing projections. You know, we lay out the projections for the project on an annual basis

 

Jesse (16m 38s): When it comes to disposition. One unique difference between our Canadian listeners and us listeners is that the 10 31 exchange does not exist for the Canucks. And for, you know, south the border, you, you guys utilize that is your strategy on disposition to find different assets, or is it an actual full-out sale pay back investors? What do you find is the, for your investors? What are, what are you doing in that, on that front?

 

Ryan (17m 7s): And it really depends on the projects, but you know, right now with, you know, the bonus depreciation, you know, a lot of our investors are replacing capital and that bonus depreciation offsets, you know, the capital gains there. So the 10 31 isn't always necessary or a required vehicle to offset that gain. But the other tough part about the 10 31 is you are on the clock. You have to find an asset, you have to find something to place that capital in and depending on the market and the timing, you know, there may be a limited number of qualified assets available.

 

Jesse (17m 47s): And do you have a limited amount of time that, or a time period where these assets are, are held? You know, are you telling investors that, you know, we like to have a capital event in three years, five, seven, whatever that may be.

 

Ryan (18m 1s): Yeah. We underwrite to a five-year hold due to the strength of the markets we invest in. It's not on a realistic to, to make an exit. And in the two to three year span, we like to keep our projections conservative and just run everything out to, to a five-year. However, you know, we may refi and hang on exit in seven, we may sell in two. It really depend on asset performance in market conditions.

 

Jesse (18m 26s): Yeah, that makes sense. In terms of the, the actual underwriting from a stress test perspective, obviously, or seemingly obvious that the, the interest rate environment is going to be changing in the upcoming months, it has changed over the last few months. Has anything changed in the way that you underwrite in terms of certain sensitivities that you have when you're looking at properties, whether that's geographic or just loan to value that the interest rates are potentially affecting, how are you, how are you analyzing with in our current environment?

 

Ryan (19m 0s): Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great relevant topic. Warren, you want to dig into that one?

 

Warren (19m 5s): So there are probably two aspects that we're paying much closer attention to at the moment. The first is if we're using floating rate debt where underwriting the forward interest rate curve. So if we can get focused on rate today on that debt, we're actually looking at what the forward projections are from the fed. And then we're assuming that next year, the interest rate might be 5% the year after it might be 5.5%. So it definitely allowing to that increased cost of debt service.

 

That's the first aspect. The second is at refi were very sensitive to the fact that proceeds available at refi have been driven by loan to value up until this point, interest rates have been so low that most lenders are constrained by LTB rather than debt service coverage ratio. DSCR we think that's going to change going forward. So on all of the deals that we're underwriting, when we look at proceeds available at refi were paying close attention to the projected DSCR in year two or year three.

 

And we're using that metric to determine how many, how much proceeds are going to be available. And what we're finding is that, whereas in the past, we may have assumed that we were going to get a 75% agency loan and refi. Now it's looking like we might only be able to qualify for a 60% LTV or a 55% LTV loan, and that completely changes the return profile of the deal. So it's a, it's a real, a key factor that we're paying much closer attention to just in the last three months.

 

Jesse (20m 40s): And are, are you agnostic to the type of debt, whether it's agency debt or, or not, or do you, do you have a,

 

Warren (20m 49s): We, we want non-recourse debt within that at steel specific we'll look at fixed rate, floating rate, bridge debt agency debt. Whatever's going to make the most sense for the deal.

 

Jesse (21m 2s): Fair enough. So a good segue to the actual underwriting, or, sorry, the actual asset management of the, of the properties that you have in terms of the operational side of things, is this something that you have in hosts, the actual property management, and then I guess at the higher level would be asset management from your company. What does that relationship look like for your deals?

 

Ryan (21m 23s): Yeah, so we use a third party property manager that handles the day-to-day operations, and then we handle the asset management piece in house and really focused on, on managing the, the manager and execution of the business plan and tracking that, you know, daily and weekly, as far as are we on track for this particular metric? Have there been any shifts in the market that are going to impact our future projections

 

Jesse (21m 49s): When it comes to the local management? What's the process for when you have say out-of-state properties that you're buying, where you're not as familiar with the companies that are working there, is this something where you roll up your sleeves and figure out who the, the best company is to manage these? Or is this done quarterbacked all from one location?

 

Ryan (22m 9s): So, yeah, we work with one property management company. We have a great relationship with them. They performed phenomenally, and there's, there's an alignment of culture between our group and theirs, which we like it to the point where, you know, we won't really invest in, in markets that they don't manage it.

 

Jesse (22m 26s): Now, when it comes to those markets, I know we mentioned, or we talked before Florida, Carolinas, Texas, are these the key markets that you're looking at right now? Are there any others? And what's that process that you go through to figure out which areas that you want to be investing in?

 

Ryan (22m 43s): Yeah, no, absolutely. Those are our key focus areas at the moment. But you have to remember that you we're, we're investing a real estate, but we're buying a business that comes with that real estate and you need the fundamentals of the market to be able to support the growth of that business. You know, a lot of the markets across the Southeast and Texas, the key thing is population growth and net migration that that's driving demand pressure in these markets. And then the next thing is, you know, supply, we look for areas that are supply constrained that don't have a lot of units coming online or projected units coming online.

 

And then the next component is, is really affordability, income, income, growth, and employment.

 

Jesse (23m 28s): That all makes sense when it comes to the, the team itself. You know, you're building this business, you're finding property management, asset management, obviously there's other stakeholders and members of your team. You kind of alluded before in terms of brokers, you, how important is building the team properly from the outset. And is there any, you know, are there any tips or any advice you'd give investors that are in the process of either building out a team or adjusting a current team that they have, that they want to improve on?

 

Ryan (23m 57s): Yeah. And the, and this comes back to building and running a business. You know, if you don't have that relevant business or management experience, I wouldn't let that deter you, but, but understand it's going to be a learning curve and there's going to be some on the job learning that comes with that. And I think the classic advice is, you know, be, you know, slow to hire, hire the right people and quick to fire. If there's a problem in, someone's not performing and you, you've tried to manage their performance, aren't able to, you know, don't hang onto them any longer than need to.

 

They're going to become a detriment to the growth of your business. And as far as hiring goes, you really spend some time defining what are the roles and responsibilities you're trying to hire to do you have the systems and procedures in place where you can bring this person in and they can execute on those rules and responsibilities. And then once you have that back into, okay, who's the ideal person for this role and for the company and who can I work with on a daily basis.

 

Jesse (24m 60s): Yeah. Right. I couldn't agree with you more on that. I think the there's this conventional wisdom, or there's this idea that real estate investing, isn't a business. And, you know, for those that are familiar with the book, the E-Myth, it's been recommended on the show a few times of actually building your business. For some reason, investors seem to think we're all supposed to be, you know, just kind of shooting from the hip when the reality is it's no different than any other business. You're S you create a team, you create systems and then you really get efficiency out of it. So couldn't agree with you more on that.

 

I'd be remiss if we didn't touch on the current environment that we are in, or the one that we just laugh. It's been an unprecedented last 24 months, you know, myself working in more broadly commercial real estate. So office retail, industrial, as well as multi raise everything's been affected in some, in some respect, what is your view I'd like to hear from both of you of how we are coming out of this, what we, you know, what you are seeing as the likely outcome in terms of the real estate market over the next few months, and maybe you could talk a little bit about the, the last 24 months and how that's changed your investment philosophy if it has at all.

 

Ryan (26m 11s): Yeah, absolutely. You know, the, the philosophy hasn't really changed that we're, we're very big fundamental investors that we invest in the strength of the market, and then find the best opportunity in that market. We can, and then build the strongest team we can to, to execute on the business plan. But the things are, are going to change here with the debt market. There's no question about that, but I think the outlook for, for multi-family specifically is still pretty positive, especially in these, you know, the Southeast and in Texas, where you have this, this continued demand pressure from inbound migration.

 

And the other component is, you know, on the demand side, interest rates also affect the home buyers and the retail consumer. So I think there's a lot of individuals that maybe we'll be looking for, you know, purchasing their first home. That'll be priced out of the market as interest rates come up. And that will continue to drive the demand pressure on, on the multifamily side with that, you know, the supply side is going to be constrained by interest rates as well. It's going to be expensive to build a new product.

 

Lumber prices have been up and down pretty dramatically over the last six months, but have definitely been higher than historicals, which increase, you know, the cost to build combined with supply chain issues, not only on the material side, but, but the labor side, skilled labor is a problem here in the United States and will continue to be a problem in the United States, which makes replacement product more expensive. And, and I don't see a solution to the housing supply problem. And I, I see, you know, as long as you're investing in, in these markets where the demand pressure's there and you're not hitting an affordability component, that's the next piece that you have to look at?

 

It's yeah. Rents are moving. Yeah. Demand pressures. High supply is constrained. Rents are moving dramatically. And in some cases, you know, like Tampa saw 32% rent growth last year, which is just ridiculous, but you can't see that back to back year, over year before people can't afford to live anymore. So with that, you have to look at the diversity employment market, wage growth and the cost of living,

 

Jesse (28m 23s): Or in thoughts,

 

Warren (28m 25s): I guess just another part of your question about the last 24 months. I think something we really learned, which has reaffirmed our strategy is that with COVID the industry as a whole performed really well, but a lot of that was because of all the money that flowed into the states to provide rental assistance. So one thing we've noticed is that demographics matter. And if you are in a smaller market, if you're in an older property, you're probably more likely to have a tenant base that's reliant on rental assistance.

 

Who's chosen over the last 24 months or had to over the last 24 months, not pay rent. We haven't seen that at our properties. And I think that's kind of reaffirmed our strategy that if we stick to these strong growing markets, if we stick to these newer assets, we can avoid that demographic and our bad debt tends to be lower. So that was something that we, we never really set out thinking bad debt first, but it's something we really noticed that it's been an issue.

 

Industry-wide I think that the industry has been fine, but we're starting to say people who are not paying rent, who are, who have been reliant on this rental assistance. And now that it's dried up not able to pay rent. So it's something we've learned over the last 24 months, but like I said, it's actually reaffirmed our strategy, which we're quite happy with.

 

Jesse (29m 51s): Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think it's a, it's a common, a common view right now for, for investors. And, and like you said, that as a whole, we, the market did perform pretty robustly, but definitely a dislocation in certain areas, whether that's office retail specific type of office or retail, but looks like, you know, there it is positive the way we're going. You know, especially Canada, we took a little longer, hopefully fingers crossed. Everything is moving in the same direction. There's big contrast when you're flying to Orlando from Toronto and just the, the environment.

 

So hopefully that, that all moves in the right direction. So we're coming up to the end here. We asked four questions to all the guests and I'll start with those. And at the end, we can talk a little bit about how people can reach out to you and you know, where they can go to connect and whether that's investing in a deal, or basically just trying to reach out or seeing, seeing where you are in social. But before we get that, we have four questions. We ask everybody. So if you're ready, I'll kick them off. So what is something that, you know, now in your real estate career that you wish you had had known when you started out

 

Warren (31m 2s): Passive? I guess for me, it's real estate is a get rich, slow scheme. So it's time in the market that matters. So I would, what I wish I had known is that I should have started 10 years before I did.

 

Jesse (31m 16s): That's great time, time in the, or so we're not timing the market time in the market.

 

Ryan (31m 21s): Absolutely. You know, looking back even the last 12 months. And I think a lot of people do suffer from the analysis paralysis and especially people looking to jump into real estate and get your first deal done. You know, I look back 12 months ago, there were deals that, that we passed on that, that, you know, didn't make sense or were a little tighter than we liked. You know, demographic, strongly area was strongly like the property, but it was, it was the basis and the pricing, we couldn't make sense of.

 

There's a lot of those deals looking back now that I wish we just would've bought, we'd probably be selling them right now.

 

Jesse (31m 58s): Fair enough. All right. Number two. Any advice for individuals or younger professionals trying to get into the commercial real estate space? You know, maybe from the framework of mentorship, would, what advice would you have for, for those individuals?

 

Warren (32m 14s): I would say surround yourself with people who are doing it, who are one or two steps ahead of you? I think we kind of alluded to this in the conversation earlier about going big. It's actually not that much more difficult to go big than to go small. It's all about the size of your thinking. So I think surround yourself with people who are doing bigger deals and you'll realize that you can as well.

 

Ryan (32m 37s): Yeah, absolutely. And to add to that, it is a unique industry in the sense that I don't know any other industry where you have a willingness of people further down the path to reach back and help the people walking the same path.

 

Jesse (32m 53s): Yeah. That's a great point. I think we're a pretty spoiled in our industry and it's not a, I don't think we've ever talked about that on the show about, or if we have, it's been a while about how many people there are in our industry that are more than willing to help a younger person out. If anything, they just, they see a little bit of them in the younger individuals and, and they want to help. So, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Number three, for us, is there any tool resource that can be software, a book that you're utilizing now where you you'd recommend to listeners it could be real estate or business in general,

 

Warren (33m 27s): Something, something I like it it's a website that we're using. It's called justice maps.org. I don't know if you've seen that Jesse, but it's, we use it basically to look at incomes. It breaks down incomes by, I dunno if it's zip code or even more refined than that, but we don't just rely on what CoStar reports in a radius. We actually map out the specific location of the property and look at incomes all around it. So justice maps.org.

 

Jesse (33m 54s): Okay. We'll put that in the show notes. It's it's funny. You mentioned that one specifically. I think it was literally yesterday. I ordered a book off of Amazon that had that in there, and I never saw that before justice, but I've heard of like, familiar are a similar type of websites, but it's funny. They specifically mentioned that and it was like a multi-family acquisition book. So we'll definitely put a link for that. Anything, anything for you, Ryan?

 

Ryan (34m 17s): Yeah, I think I'm kind of relevant to the time sphere and we touched on, on the debt market, but we're looking at the chat and financials website, you know, every day pulling the, the forward interest rate curve forward treasuries. And so for, and, and we use that to underwrite, you know, month over month, our forward debt service, as well as the price interest rate caps.

 

Jesse (34m 39s): Yeah, that makes sense. All right. The last one listeners know I stole this boat two years ago from a masters of business and Bloomberg first car make and model.

 

Warren (34m 48s): So I don't, I don't know if the names of the cars are different in Australia, but it was a proton. I think it might've been,

 

Jesse (34m 55s): I think that that is, I think that is it Nissan or it's not. I know exactly what you're talking about. That is hilarious. That is the first proton we've had on the show. I can tell you that much. How about you, Ryan?

 

Ryan (35m 7s): Yeah, that's a little more domestic. Had a Chevy Beretta. It was a manual transmission. Five speed.

 

Jesse (35m 18s): Love it. All right, guys. Well, I appreciate that in terms of where people can reach out to you or for those looking for opportunities, or just generally want to connect on social media, where can we send them to?

 

Warren (35m 29s): The easiest for us is probably to go to our website equity yield group.com. You can connect with us there. You sign up for our newsletter, keep in touch that way, but that's probably easiest equity yield group.com.

 

Jesse (35m 43s): Anything else to add Ryan?

 

Ryan (35m 45s): No, that's really the place to find us. I'm excited to sign up for newsletter. You can schedule a call with us. If you have questions about investing in real estate, if you're interested in investing alongside us and one of our future projects, you can register via an investor intake form there.

 

Jesse (36m 1s): My guest today has been Ryan and Warren from equity yield group, guys. Thanks for being part of working capital. Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you liked the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one.

 

Take care.