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How to Scale Commercial Real Estate


Mar 1, 2022

Should you be concerned about having “too many cooks in the kitchen?”

In real estate, that means having to work with too many people, which may affect the quality of deals you’re investing in. Keith Meyer is co-principal at Symphony Capital Group with three equally capable investors, and he does not see this as a problem.

Rather, he sees this as an opportunity to bring in people from diverse backgrounds, which has helped their company invest in over $100 million assets under management. 

Finding the right partners is a good way to start your real estate business, but it is easier said than done. Keith is here to tell us the right way to form partnerships to close more deals. 

 

[00:01 - 03:13] Opening Segment

  • Keith Meyer tells us how he applies his engineering background to real estate
  • Here’s the backstory of how he and his co-principals found one another

[03:14 - 13:55] How to Find Deals Worth Investing In

  • How to define roles with your co-principals according to Keith
  • Keith reveals some of their secrets in closing deals
    • You should set this system up from the start
  • He also shares the criteria they are using to choose the markets and assets to invest in

[13:56 - 16:42] Deals You Can Pursue This 2022

  • Is it worth investing in mobile home parks?
    • Listen to Keith’s suggestion
  • Keith talks about his team’s plans for 2022
    • Here’s where you can jump in with them

[16:43 - 19:33] Closing Segment

  • A tool or resource you can’t live without
    • Monday.com
  • A real estate mistake you want our listeners to avoid
    • Being afraid to work with people
    • People in real estate are generally more than willing to help out
  • Your way to make the world a better place
    • Being involved in affordable housing
  • Reach out to Keith
    • See links below 
  • Final words

 

Tweetable Quotes

“When you can get your hands on a 40+ unit [mobile home] park, do it, lock it up, and you will be able to find partners that will help you take it down because they are worth their weight in gold these days.” - Keith Meyer

“...a big part of our mission statement is being able to raise equity because what we're doing is…we're bringing our investor network into quality deals.” - Keith Meyer

“Don't be afraid to ask for referrals or to get involved people…because [real estate] is such an abundance industry.” - Keith Meyer



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Email keith@symphonycapitalgroup.com to connect with Keith or follow him on LinkedIn and Facebook. Do you want to invest in real estate without any hassle? Check out Symphony Capital Group now!



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I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.  

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Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com

 

 

Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:

 

Keith Meyer  00:00

You really need to put a lot of attention and consider it a core business process to have traceability and tracking of how your relationships are evolving. So that's where something like a CRM, a customer relationship management software system is really critical. That was actually the first system that we set up before anything else at our company was right, we want to build these relationships for you. We're all young guys in our 30s, you know, you see decades of doing this. So we're going to do it the right way and really put in the foundation for that. So I'd say that's one of the biggest things that's you should set up right from the start. 

 

Intro  00:34

Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we will teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.

 

Sam Wilson  00:44

Keith Meyer is a multifamily apartment sponsor and syndicator acquiring properties across the Sun Belt. And fun fact, he's also a mobile home park owner. Keith, welcome to the show.

 

Keith Meyer  00:54

I'm doing great, Sam, how are you doing?

 

Sam Wilson  00:55

Hey, man, I'm doing great. Thank you. Appreciate you coming on. Same three questions I ask every guest to come on the show in 90 seconds or less. Can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?

 

Keith Meyer  01:04

Yeah, I started in the Midwest. That's where I'm from originally been out in the southwest. Last couple of years, by way in New Mexico live in San Diego, California currently. So I'm part of the multifamily syndication team. Now we focus primarily on the sunbelt states. So we closed deals in Kansas City, a couple of deals in Texas couple of deals in New Mexico and Arizona over the last few years. And I started much smaller than that. So happy to dive into that a little bit deeper with you today.

 

Sam Wilson  01:28

Man, that's fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. Tell me about the team you're on now. And then maybe we'll hear kind of the backstory.

 

Keith Meyer  01:35

Sounds good. Yeah. So right now I'm a Principal with Symphony Capital Group. We were founded about two years ago, here in San Diego, one of four principals, you all come from a different background. So I think we've formed a really strong, cohesive team. In that regard. I'm primarily on the front end, deal sourcing and vetting an acquisition side. So you just can imagine this hyper-competitive environment, you need really need to build in systems and competitive advantages to be able to not only source deals, but underwrite them and make competitive offers in a timely fashion. So I think my engineering and systems background has really lend itself to being able to hone that in and make that one of our core competencies.

 

Sam Wilson  02:11

Absolutely, yeah, it takes an engineer to really make something a machine like that run really well. How did you guys pick the four of you? I mean, was it just I mean, it's kind of hard, you know, finding partners is, is a challenge, let alone finding four ones that want to join up and form a company? 

 

Keith Meyer  02:27

It is. It's funny, I get asked that question a lot. It was very organic. So we met each other just through commercial real estate networking meetings around San Diego and kept bumping into each other on regular basis saw that we all had, obviously a similar work ethic that we're showing up at seven o'clock on a Tuesday night to attend these meetings. And we got to talk and deeper and deeper and saw that we were kind of in similar facets of our real estate journey, although came coming from different angles. So saw a lot of compatibility in that regard. And, you know, took it pretty slow at first in terms of looking how we could work together. And that ultimately culminated in forming a company. And now here we are in 2022, with over $100 million assets under management, and we're really a driving force in this industry. So, very proud of where we came from and where we are today.

 

Sam Wilson  03:14

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's really, really intriguing. So there's four of you eventually, how did you guys define roles? I mean, did you guys take personality tests and sit down and say, Okay, this is what I'm good at.

 

Keith Meyer  03:23

I mean, what that would have been smart. Yeah, I know, that's becoming kind of a popular approach. And that's not a bad one at all, you know, we kind of built the whole apple off and just saw what each other was good at. And then what we enjoyed doing so you know, fortunately, again, we came from pretty different backgrounds. So I'd say we were 70% of the way there just kind of common sense wise, when we were able to hone in the last 30%, just through working together and building out systems and things like that. So it's funny, we just had our annual retreat back in December, and each year, we kind of revolve and redefined our company roles a little bit, and this year had the least amount of changes because we had really had it pretty locked in and updated throughout the year. So it was nice to see that we kind of stuck to our guns, what we had planned from the previous year, and had that laid out pretty well. 

 

Sam Wilson  04:08

Yeah, absolutely. Are all four of you full time?

 

Keith Meyer  04:12

Almost. We are getting there that as a 2022 goal. And I'm very confident that we'll get there probably around halfway through the year. 

 

Sam Wilson  04:19

Right. That's absolutely awesome. I mean, you know, that's a lot of assets to take down in a very short period of time, what are some of the things you feel like you've done right that others should emulate?

 

Keith Meyer  04:28

And I was thinking about that before the interview. And I would say one of the biggest things that does not get enough attention is, is staying organized and follow up. And I mean, with individual people, we've built up a big enough network and brand that we get introduced to all sorts of cool, interesting people that are very capable of helping us get to where we want to be, but you can't just you know, shoot off the occasional email and then leave it at that and assume that they're gonna follow up and you're gonna remember what you talked about three weeks from now, and all that stuff, you really need to put a lot of attention and consider it a core business process to have traceability and tracking of how your relationships are evolving. So that's where something like a CRM, a customer relationship management software system is really critical. That was actually the first system that we set up before anything else at our company was right, we want to build these relationships for you. We're all young guys in our 30s. You know, you see decades of doing this. So we want to do it the right way and really put in the foundation for that. So I'd say that's one of the biggest things that's you should set up right from the start. 

 

Sam Wilson  05:28

That's really intriguing. I'm not, no one's calling the show and said that outright yet. And I think that's absolutely brilliant. Because there's so many different ways. I mean, so many different relationships we have, right? You've got peer-to-peer, where it's like, Oh, hey, you know what, you might build a present opportunities to me, then you've got you to your investor base. And that's a whole different set of relationships. I mean, there's just there's a lot of relationships to keep track of, and to remember, hey, I want to connect with Person X. And then yeah, that's intriguing. I don't know there's a million of them. So you're not being called upon to sell one in particular? 

 

Keith Meyer  05:59

No, yeah. I'm happy to talk about it. Yeah. So we use HubSpot. That's a system that I like a lot, their free version is great. So it's really easy to get up and started with, integrates with Gmail. So you can tracking you know, remember, set reminders to check on emails and set tasks and things like that kind of operates as a project management platform as well. And it's funny, what you just said is exactly right, Sam, then the other consideration is that there's so many communication channels these days, right? You know, email is just one of 10 ways that people communicate pretty common these days. So being able to track all that and then you know, have kind of understand what each channel’s purpose in uses for as well as something to really focus on. And as you build more personal relationships with people like brokers or co-sponsors, or property owners, you'll go from, you know, kind of the more templated formal email approach to text messages to maybe they'll jump on a Slack channel with you or WhatsApp chat or something like that. So that certainly evolves, which is great, but it's really critical to stay organized with that stuff. Are they just gonna let a lot of things fall through the cracks by accident? 

 

Sam Wilson  07:04

It's so true. It's so true. And I'm guilty. You're convicting me right now, as you say it, because you're guilty of like, oh, man I should have followed up with and then it's six months later, it's like, yeah, the ship has sailed. Yep. And that costs money, money, because it took time and money to build that relationship. And then you lost the opportunity, you know, presented by that, what could have been presented by that relationship? It's like, oh, yeah, that's absolutely intriguing. So you guys set up a CRM out of the gates that, hey, we're going to do this, this is how we're going to track you know, our relationships. And then what was the next step you guys took.

 

Keith Meyer  07:37

So then we continue to build on our business systems essentially, kind of starting with underwriting. So Jeremy, one of my fellow principals comes from a very in-depth commercial underwriting background. So we kind of took the best parts of other models and other examples that we had come across before and created a pretty customized underwriting system, which we are probably unread 50 of that if I had to guess at this point, it's unbelievable how much that tool in particular morphs and evolves over time. Yeah, especially on the front end, the deal screening end that is so critical these days, we're in a fortunate position in Symphony Capital Group, where we have very strong deal flow these days. And I know that's not always a case for certain operators. So we want to be able to take advantage of that and not waste that opportunity. So with that, we need to be able to pretty quickly screen a deal to see if it meets our criteria. And if it's worth spending, you know, an hour to three hours underwriting or investigating more deeply.

 

Sam Wilson  08:34

What are some of the things you look at when you say that there are high-level things that are particular to you guys, you say, “Hey, this is something this is go no, go or investigate further?” What are some of those initial screening things you guys take a look at? 

 

Keith Meyer  08:47

Great question. So it's two faceted, I would say one is the property. And then the second is the actual sponsor, or the deal structure itself. So properties, a little bit more straightforward. I think for the average investor, that's gonna be looking at things like market demographics. So we do have co-star access. And that's great for getting sub-market, zip code level, street-level type demographics. So and, you know, it's a 50-page report in some cases. So you still have to be very adept at pulling out the relevant content in a relatively short timeframe, and then plugging it into our model. So we look at things like median household income and rent as a percentage of that income. So you want to see that residents especially if you're in kind of the mid-tier B class properties aren't cost-constrained. So you don't want more than let's say, a third of their income being spent on housing in that case. And then we would also look at things like job growth and population growth, there probably are two other biggest sub-market criteria that we look at just to make sure that now we're underwriting to five-year holds in most cases. So we want to make sure that they're still a good growth trajectory as far as jobs income and rent growth over that time frame.

 

Sam Wilson  09:51

What about a property say I shipped you a deal and say, “Hey, key, you know, here's something I think you'd be great for you guys in the right market.” Like what do you guys look at? So you said hey, you know, learning that skill of saying now not for us, there's some things you guys have to check off in order to spend that three hours initially underwriting it. 

 

Keith Meyer  10:08

Alright. Yep, so I mentioned some market itself, we'll look at value-add opportunities as well. So the rents pretty well understood, and especially if you're looking at making a competitive bid, and you're going to be up against a couple of other groups, in almost every case, these days, if not dozens of groups that are, you know, almost as adept as you are, in many cases, you need to look for that competitive advantage, as far as how do you generate additional income to that property? So a lot of times, we'll look at how the utilities are being maintained, are they even being billed back at a flat rate in the first place, that's kind of an easy place to start, but they're actually much more advanced ways of recuperating a lot of those utility costs and reducing the expense in the first place. And there's some companies out there that specialize in that coming from the mobile home park space, were big on installing water sub-meters to monitor water usage, and then, you know, get a real-time accurate read via a cellular network in that case. So a lot of emphases, I would say, in that regard on utilities, and then also looking at the vintage and the infrastructure of the utility systems themselves. If you're dealing with a lot of older cast iron, or concrete sewers are older plumbing, water pipes, that's not modern PVC. Now you're gonna have to underwrite to a fairly substantial CAPEX reserve because you know, that's going to come one of these days. So that's something that can differentiate a property pretty quickly as well. And then there's some more creative income generators. Additionally, that'll become pretty popular in our arena on the permanent side, things like internet tech packages, working with telecom providers to institute those are kind of win-win situations because you can bring high-speed internet capabilities, a lot of times, they'll kind of upgrade the infrastructure on the building for you. And then you are offering that at a better price point to your end residents. But then it's also a value-added to the building operator themselves. So that's something that we look at. Additionally, things like introducing more amenities, you know, dog parks, covered parking, things like that, and then billing back for that accordingly, I'm going to in a five cap for cap rate environments, and every dollar of income that you can generate results in 20 plus dollars of value to the property, little things like that can really add up quite a bit over time.

 

Sam Wilson  12:16

Absolutely. Let's hear the backstory, you know, that you talked about. We haven't quite got to that, you know, what were you doing in real estate before you guys form Symphony Capital Group? Was that in mobile home parks, or tell us what that was? 

 

Keith Meyer  12:29

Yeah. So I started from a couple of different angles, sewing on my backgrounds in kind of more traditional engineering and got my engineering degree in the Midwest and started out in the corporate world working a couple of different jobs and operations capacity, nothing directly into real estate to start, I actually bought my first primary residence at a pretty young age in my early 20s. And Mexico lived in that for about five years. And then when I was making a career transition still in the corporate world, and this is about 10 years ago, about San Diego decided to hang on to that property and try out this whole landlord thing. So that was my first direct personal introduction into being a rental property operator, my family did have exposure to that previously. So my grandfather was a residential developer. And he kind of got my father involved in some property investing aspects, although my father was primarily in the corporate world at the time, and then he actually made a late-life career transition into commercial brokerage. So we had owned a couple of things here and there, back in the 90s, we bought a mobile home park in the Midwest, and it was almost on a whim to an extent, I shouldn't say that. But really, this is, you know, back pre-Internet era, embedded a lot of different investment opportunities, knew the benefits of real estate more from a network level than a direct level at that point. And all things came across settled on mobile, home parks is the best investment at the time. And it's funny how right we were, and I wish we would have been more emphatic about it back then. Because that was back in the days of 15, 20 caps, and now they're almost as low as apartment buildings are right now. It's unbelievable what's happened in that industries. So that is to say all those different exposure points kind of put the, planted the seed in the back of my mind, I'd say, you know when I became a direct landlord on that single family saw how you know, how things work, how the tax implications are, how nice it was that a couple $1,000 a cash flow each month and you know, that kind of started the Genesis I would say, and that's my start. And then there's been a bunch of steps between there and over the last 10 years to gotten to where I am today.

 

Sam Wilson  14:33

That's really intriguing. Are you guys also looking for mobile home parks now, or is it strictly multifamily?

 

Keith Meyer  14:40

We are. It's pretty, it's still fairly rare. I'd say to syndicate those just because the deal flow isn't there. There's only X amount of parks you know, it's a fraction of what's available on the apartment side. Right. But I would say there's still a good five-year window probably of getting very solid deals, and I think the asset class is gonna remain very strong for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is home affordability. So when you can get your hands on a 40+ unit park, do it, lock it up, and you will be able to find partners that will help you take it down because they are worth their weight in gold these days.

 

Sam Wilson  15:12

That's really, really interesting. Yeah, just like you said, the affordability of homes. It's the last affordable housing solution. 

 

Keith Meyer  15:20

We couldn't agree more.

 

Sam Wilson  15:21

Yeah, yeah. It's pretty incredible. It is also, I mean, you can tell that there's interest in the space just when you go to the manufactured housing manufacturers. I mean, it's almost impossible to get a new supply even right now. 

 

Keith Meyer  15:33

Yeah, they're on about a 12-month backlog. Which is yeah, same issue we're seeing on, you know, site-built housing as well. There's just not enough supply of it right now. So demand is through the roof.

 

Sam Wilson  15:44

Right. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see certainly where that goes. 2022. What do you guys want to do in 2022?

 

Keith Meyer  15:51

A lot of things. So like I mentioned earlier, we did our annual retreat back in December. And it was nice to be able take some time to work on the business and not just in the business, scrambling and, and hustling every day. So we actually set aside some time to map this out appropriately. And, you know, we have our goals as far as acquisitions and equity raise and things like that. And that's really a big part of our mission statement is being able to raise equity because what we're doing is we're bringing investors, we're bringing our investor network into quality deals. So we want to make that number as big as possible. And we're proud of where we were last year. But we want to 10, 10x that this year if we can and fortunately, with a deal flow that we have, if we're able to execute appropriately, I feel very confident and doing that this year. So I would think we're going to have maybe an acquisition every month, something like that would be a realistic goal for us and we're on pace for that at this point.

 

Sam Wilson  16:43

Man, that's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Keith, let's jump here into the final four questions. And you may have already answered this, what is one tool or resource you find you can't live without?

 

Keith Meyer  16:53

So I mentioned the CRM, I also like a project management system. So we use monday.com to kind of manage our deal pipeline, essentially. So you have the people pipeline management through the CRM, and then you have the deal acquisition and execution, pipeline management, and other traditional project management type software. So that's a really good one.

 

Sam Wilson  17:11

Right. Oh, that's great. What is one mistake you can help our listeners avoid and how would you avoid it?

 

Keith Meyer  17:16

Don't be afraid to ask for referrals or to get involved people. That's part of the reason why I'm really, really drawn to the real estate industry in particular, is how willing people are to help to give out information and valuable information for free. And you know, they're very willing to do that to share, because it is such an abundance industry. So if you have a question, there's tons of online platforms or meetings, or pick up the phone and call somebody, reach out on LinkedIn, and chances are, you're going to get a solid response.

 

Sam Wilson  17:43

Fabulous. Question number three, when it comes to investing in the world, what's one thing you're doing right now to make the world a better place? 

 

Keith Meyer  17:49

Well, yeah, we are proud of our involvement in affordable housing. And again, that's something that I caught on to pretty early I would say is the growing need for that. And now the world and our country, maybe in particular, is not doing a great job of providing that. So you know, we target properties to where we can still remain affordable by those metrics. And we're getting deeper into the actual subsidized housing space as well because I see a long runway for that I think we're gonna be left with no choice, but try to improve the access to that type of house. And so that's something that I'm pretty passionate about personally, that's

 

Sam Wilson  18:21

Awesome. Keith, if our listenres want to get in touch with you or learn more about you what is the best way to do that?

 

Keith Meyer  18:26

So our website is SymphonyCapitalGroup.com. My email is Keith@Symphonycapitalgroup.com. We're all over all the social media channels, can't miss us, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and my partner, Ellis Hammond runs an amazing YouTube channel with a ton of good real estate educational content on there, so check out Ellis Hammond’s YouTube channel and then sign up for our email list because we send out a lot of good content. We just did an educational webinar today on how kind of what we talked about how to screen and better deal and what criteria specifically in 2022 You want to look at if you're wanting to get into a syndication as a limited partner with investment capital. 

 

Sam Wilson  19:05

That's awesome.  Keith, thank you for your time today. I certainly appreciate it

 

Keith Meyer  19:07

You as well, Sam, great talking to you. Take care. 

 

Sam Wilson  19:08

Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen, if you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners, as well as rank higher on those directories. So I appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.