Welcome to the Accelerated Investor podcast with Josh Cantwell. If you’re looking to retire early with forever passive income, you’re in the right place. This podcast is the go-to destination for real estate investors, both active and passive. And multifamily apartment investors, both new, intermediate and advanced. Now sit back, listen, learn and accelerate your business, your life and your investing with the Accelerated Investor podcast.

Josh: Hey, this is Josh, and I’m really excited that you’re joining me for this next episode in this episode of Accelerated Investor. I am interviewing Adam Stern. Now, the reason why you want to listen to this episode is Adam has actually transacted more single-family rental portfolios than any other single professional broker in SFR history. Did you hear that? In history. He’s built a firm presence in the institutional single family rental space, and over the past decade he’s made a career out of listing and selling existing rental portfolios to some of the largest institutional investors in real estate investing, including newly emerging private equity groups. Adam has over a decade of real estate investing experience and recently launched his newest company, which is called Strata SFR. 

Josh: And Strata SFR is focused on the build to rent community. He also was the president and founder of an online single family rental marketplace called OneAmerica, which he sold back in two thousand and nineteen. So in this interview with Adam Stern, you’re going to hear, number one, how Adam became the top broker in the history of the single family rental space. Number two, he’s going to tell you why he believes in build to rent and why building properties and building communities, building developments to actually not sell them, but to rent them is the strategy of the future. And you’re also going to hear some of Adam’s top strategies for how he is able to create relationships with some of the top institutions that are buying residential real estate to rent and how he’s turned residential real estate into a commercial transaction. So I think you’re going to love this interview on the AI podcast with Adam Stern. 

Josh: So, Adam, listen, I’m so excited to have you on today on Accelerated Investor, thanks for being here. Good to be here, Josh. 

Adam: Thanks for having me. 

Josh: Hey, you bet. So, Adam, listen, when I got some information about you and your company about Strata SFR and I started reading your bio, having been one of the most successful brokers in history that sold more rental portfolios than anybody, I’m like, got to have this guy on the show. So let’s talk about what are you what are you doing now? What are you doing right in the middle of covid? It’s kind of winding down, going away soon. But what do you do right now that you’re excited about? What are you working on today? Brokering deals, selling single family building portfolio that’s working well for you? 

Adam:So what’s not to be excited about the single family rental space for anyone that’s following what’s happening in single family rental? Everyone was really worried that COBRA would give it a big hit that wouldn’t really thrive the way it has over the last year in covid. But the storyline is people moving out of population centers. People need more room. People are natural. The millennial class is getting to the age where they start thinking about buying homes and they’re kind of out of apartments and not yet ready to buy a single-family home. And single-family rentals has really been a beneficiary of that. And we kind of got through a weird period at Q1, Q2 last year where everyone’s a little wary about what was going to happen, whether new editorializing to come in the market where the price goes down, prices are going to go up. What ended up happening was people ramped up buying in the single-family rental space because institutional investors that had raised money to plow into the space, more of that money ended up coming in. Rental rates didn’t go down, didn’t stay the same, but they ended up picking up in most major markets around the country because people had a dire need to find more space. 

Adam: And single-family rental space has been a beneficiary of that. So I’m more or less a broker in the in this space. And I focus on helping institutional capital find its way into the space, through the purchase of portfolios and also the purchase of different projects. So I was on kind of eggshells for a couple of quarters last year when I when we realized the world was going to implode and hey, new construction started going like gangbusters. All this money flowed into the space to buy new construction, different projects and stuff. Our portfolios kind of like the anxiety lifted and everyone felt a lot better about it. And for the last 12 months, things have just been going at a million miles an hour in most markets around the country that have solid fundamentals, solid job growth, solid population shifts. And it’s really great. The covid didn’t hurt the SFR industry. It actually supercharged it for at least the last twelve months. 

Josh: Absolutely. And the people who own a single family, for the most part, you know, the retail mom pop that live there with their wife and husband kids, they’re not really selling. Right? They’re not there’s not a lot of those people moving. So there’s so little inventory on the MLS. So prices keep going up. So much so that I’m actually selling because we don’t see many apartments now. We’re selling all of our SFR getting on the market, all the one to four units. And every time we put something on the market, it’s selling in like seventy-two hours or less for full price. Yeah, it’s absolutely I know because there’s no inventory to pick from. 

Adam: It’s crazy. And I know a big part of your audience are people that, that have a focus toward building wealth or real estate. And you think about what’s happening in the single-family rental space right now from a mom and pop investor standpoint. Had you tried the trend and how do you make money from what’s happening right now? What I do is all well and good. I sell large swaths of properties to big institutions, but someone that owns one or two or just a handful of single-family rentals might be thinking, yeah, that’s great for them. But how does this affect me? 

Adam: And I think depending on your view of the market, you could do a few things if you’re an individual investor. I mean, right now there’s very, very little inventory in most major markets around the country. And if that’s the case, your opportunity to exit your property, whether you own one, two, five, is probably better now than ever if people are buying at lower cap rates, higher prices now than ever because there’s so much capital in the space. So you think it’s a good time to exit? It is. The question is, where do you put your money? And I guess the big question is, if you sell your rental, are you going to put money in the stock market? Yeah, maybe it’s overheated right now. If you’re really good at finding good deals, maybe you sell your property and then you look for the next good deal, even though it’s harder to find. 

Adam: A lot of my clients are thinking that Covid will eventually washed out to have a number of foreclosures happen as a result. And you look at the mortgage delinquency numbers and they be able to be steady bank lending tree came out with a report that said 30- or 60-day delinquencies had picked up a little bit. So I don’t know if anyone is thinking there’s going to be another meltdown or the very least a big swath of foreclosures that hit the market. But whatever your strategy is, it’s easier time right now to exit in SFR portfolio or a handful of SFR, there’s plenty money to get it. The real question is, where do you put that money to plowed back into real estate, or do you kind of find another asset class to put it in and you’re in multifamily? So you would know the opportunity to switch from single family and multifamily or multifamily to another asset class like office or flex or industrial or something like that. I’m not an expert in those asset classes, so I don’t have really good answer for you. 

Josh: Yeah, but no doubt, I mean, if you’re a single family looking to kind of level up, there’s options to become a private, limited partner in a syndication where you make one hundred thousand dollars on an SFR sale. Now you take that hundred thousand a principle and invest it in a syndication where you’re truly a limited partner and have no responsibility for day-to-day operation at all. You’re just either waiting for that sale or event and probably getting a preferred return along the way. And that hopefully, if it’s a refi, you keep your equity in that deal, get your principal back and invest again somewhere else. So that’s what I would do. That’s what I am doing. And then obviously diversification, you know, even though office is hurting, some retail is hurting because of covid and because people leaving office is working from home. One of the things that we’re looking at is actually the cannabis space, because cannabis is now legal, either medicinal or recreational. And thirty-nine different states and some of those strip centers that are hurting. There’s a lot of cannabis companies that are looking to put dispensaries in those places. 

Josh:So I’m not looking to get cannabis business. I’m in the real estate business of owning that piece of real estate, having the cannabis companies actually pay for the improvements on that strip center and then doing a triple net lease. Right. So there’s always, I guess, my point, there is not people doing what I do. You know, everyone can follow if they want to follow and do what we do. Great. They want to do what you do. Great. I guess my point is there’s always opportunity, right? The market shifts. You’ve got to find what’s the next kind of thing that’s coming. So, Adam, I’m sorry to hear from you. You’ve sold more single-family portfolios and properties than almost anybody in the industry. So it’s not like you’re just selling a couple hundred units here, five, you know, five units. They’re talking about hundreds of thousands of units, the big institutions. So how did you get into the space and when did you do your first large institutional portfolio transaction? 

Adam: Yes. So my history in this space has been kind of I’ve been pushed into different sectors of the space. And it all kind of started in 2010. During the housing meltdown. I started a company with a partner called OwnAmerica. We ended up doing acquisitions through an agent network that we created all over the country, helping institutions buy SFR, through the MLS, through our agent network. We turned that into a platform that helped mid-cap and small cap portfolio owners, people that own SFR in five, ten, twenty-one hundred group sets to those very same institutions. So I became a really specialized broker that only knew this asset class, only knew like if you asked me to sell one house, I’d have no idea how to do it. But if you give me one hundred houses, I’m your guy. Right? So we built this platform out. We sold it back in twenty nineteen. All my clients that were mainly reached in institutions and multifamily funds and private equity firms and family offices, they were all asking for the same thing. It had come to pass where it made more sense to build a new construction property and put a tenant in there than it did to buy an existing home in most markets. 

Adam:So there was a trend called build for rent. Everyone was really hot on it. I said, all right, you know, as a broker, how the hell do I add value? And I can keep out there finding SFR portfolios and I still do that. But I learned what everyone was looking for in the bill for rent space, and I really focused my attention on finding and putting together different deals. So it wasn’t twenty. I basically I parted ways, the company that bought my company and was great. It was a great split. Started Strata SFR to focus on SFR portfolios and built for rent and more or less. What I do is I find where there is a common need on the capital side. So out of three dozen investors, three quarters of them want to own in the smile states, the southeast, from Raleigh to Jacksonville to Tampa. They want to buy in solid demographic areas with good schools close to transit, close to amenities. And everyone has a nuanced view of the everyone has a nuanced view of what they’re looking for. But there’s a common thread that goes through all of them. So I’m like, all right, let me find the common thread and let me focus my attention on finding assets that fit the majority of those people. 

Adam: And that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been funding bill, front project, town townhomes and single family detached communities. And the idea behind bill rent, which for people that don’t know, is if you live in an apartment complex, it’s usually highly amortized and yet they’re very close to other people. You don’t have a backyard, you don’t have a garage. And if you’re not quite ready to move into a single-family house because you have the down payment or. Your lifestyle is just it doesn’t it doesn’t correlate. Now, there’s an option to rent either a brand-new construction unit in a entirely condensed community of all rentals, which feels like an apartment complex. But you have a garage and you have a backyard. You’re living in a house or an apartment complex. And that’s trend right now in SFR. So it’s a big focus of mine, as you know, as well as the good old standby, which is people like you and me and others that have amassed portfolios of 10, 20, 40 hundred. I’m working on a 250-property portfolio right now, and not a lot of brokers know how to deal with this asset class on the front side and on the on the portfolio side. So I was lucky enough to kind of find my niche and just hammer it, you know? 

Josh: So that’ll take us through a recent build to run community or development or deal that you’ve done. It could be five houses, could be five point at one point five hundred. I don’t care but to walk us through it, I’ve never done a built for rent. So I’m curious to see who are the players, how do you find the land, how do you fund the construction as you see the whole thing? And then how can our audience play in that space, being an active investor or a passive investor or some sort of JV partner? 

Adam: Yeah, yeah, sure. So, Bill, from a number of ways people can make money and bill for either by being a principal or a broker or is there is a continuum of a lot of things that go on in a different transaction. And I’ll give an example of a deal that I did. I had a builder that knew how to source land, bring it through the zoning process and bring it to the entitlement process. And he had two subdivisions. They’re both townhomes. They were in sub markets of Atlanta. One was a sixty-five-unit townhome complex. The other one was a seventy-five-unit townhome complex. He was going to go and he had bought the land through what’s called entitlement, which is a zoning and all the permits you’ve got to get. And then he was a GC, so he did the horizontal construction of the pads and lots and he’s also a builder and he was wondering whether or not it be smarter to sell all of the units to one investor as a rentals rather than spend the next year and a half of his life selling them to retail investors or I’m sorry, to retail homeowners. Right. I came and I said, hey, you know, here’s the cap rate. Here’s what I think they’ll rent for.  Here’s the cap rate that I think they’ll throw off. And here’s the price point.\ I think you can get an investor interested in. 

Adam: He looked at his numbers and said, hey, you know, this means I’m getting out of the project within nine months as opposed to a year and a half or two years. That means I’m saving at disposition costs, I’m saving on planning costs, I’m saving on headache costs. And I can then redeploy that capital into other projects that I have coming down the road, either for sale or for investment purposes. So in that respect, I made my money by showing the builder how he can fit this project that was for sale originally into the build for rent model and create a faster exit and create a more profitable exit from at the end of the process. But by taking the very same interest you would sell to homeowners and sell them to an investor. And I’m the guy that found the investor. 

Josh:So he did the development, the entitlements, the G.C. work, the building work and sold the whole portfolio to a new investor that came in and bought it. 

Adam: That’s right, yeah. He sold both subdivisions of about one hundred and twenty units to one investor, at CO. So he’s building the units and he delivered them in like tranches of 10 or 15 a month. And that’s it. And that’s happening in sequence. Right. So let’s think about yeah, it’s a crazy thing. And builders had done it sporadically before, but never really a large scale like this. So you think about what I just said. There’s money to be made from the land acquisition through the entitlement phase. So if you’re a person that knows how to fly and land and develop land, you can buy land, develop land and then sell the entire land. There’s probably to be made there. If you’re a person who knows how to take and title land and put lots in the ground, so actually do the site work and get the bulldozers, pull down the trees, do that. There is money to be made between the entitlement and lots. 

Adam: If you’re a builder that doesn’t have to do any kind of land work, you can always buy finished lots and then build homes and sell those for a profit. And then there’s people that had expertise all along the spectrum that can add value by finding land, finding services for these for these different players. Being a broker, being consultants is really the thing about a new space like bill parent. There’s not a lot of long-termexpertise. So guys like me and others that understand the asset class of SFR intrinsically can add a lot of value to new capital, are coming in by sourcing opportunities and really doing the analysis and figuring out what the structure needs to be for capital flow into the space. 

Josh: Yeah, Adam, I’m curious. Is fantastic. I love it. So as a former residential investor, I still have some residential investments, but primarily value add apartments we’re still trying to be in, whether it’s resi or whether it’s commercial apartments, similar to try to be in for about 70 cents on the dollar, you know, purchase and value add improvement’s, capital improvements, capex about 70 percent of the building’s future value so that we can either sell it or refinance it and return to investors equity principal. So does the does the to community are you operating on the same economics? Are you looking to be all in? So whoever is then selling the final portfolio, let’s say it’s one hundred built to total finished, there’s a CO, it’s delivered to an investor who buys the portfolio all hundred units and turns around, rents them all out. Is that guy trying to be all in at 70 cents on the dollar?

Josh: Help me understand the economics. And are there certain areas where this is working better? You know, are there areas where, again, housing stock is limited? We know there’s an undersupply of houses in general? Because the reason why I really like this model and what you’re talking about is the opportunity that you could sell each individual house as a retail property to somebody that moves into it and buys it. So you have these multiple exit strategies. So I’d be interested in the economics of the all in number and the areas where this is working well to kind of fill the need for both rental housing and potentially retail. 

Adam: All right. You threw like five questions that so many questions to throw. 

Josh: Just answer one you want to answer and go from there. 

Adam:So thinking about it from the perspective of the end buyer, the firm that’s actually going to own the units and operate them over the long term, very hard for individuals or even high net worth individuals to play in that space. That’s mostly institutional capital right now. And the way that’s working is that the cap rates that a institutional investment firm needs to achieve depending on where they get their capital from. If you’re talking about pure, like if you know the term gross yield and cap rate, gross yield is essentially gross. Annual income divided by the purchase price cap rate is net of expenses. People are looking for finished products in the cap rate range of five and a half to six percent right now. And with the leverage that they’re able to leverage, the institutional investors are able to get. That means they can get an all-in return of like low twelve to high teens. Right. Buying that kind of cap rate when you look at a levered basis. 

Adam:So I don’t see that as a huge opportunity for the lay person, the non-institutional investor, to come in and really compete with the institutional caps because their cost of capital is so low, their finances are so good. I think the opportunity for individual investors or small investors to make money or in creating a product for those guys to be to take out. And I’ve got a lot of clients that are doing that. So right now I’m working with a smallish investor. He’s a wealthy guy, but he’s no by no means one hundred million dollars fund. He’s just the guy that found a thirty-lot subdivision here in Charlotte. He spent two years going through entitlement, going through lot development, land development, and now he’s building the homes and he’s going to make a million-dollar profit on these on these thirty homes by selling those 30 homes, not to residential homeowners, but to an investor and investors more than happy to buy from him in a very reasonable cap rate. 

Adam: Because their numbers mean they’re making money on a management fee, they’re making money on a promotion, they’re making money on their side, you know, buying at these low cap rates, my guys making money because he has a Know-How and the experience to find good deals and bring a lot of value through a development like that. So so that that that’s kind of how the dichotomy between, like the end investor that owns the assets and the people that add value and sell assets, those kinds of investors, that makes sense. 

Josh:So if somebody was going to develop a site of 20 or 50 built to run with the intention of selling them to an institution because you’re in the space, are we looking for locating the institution and what the institute is like? You begin with the end in mind, meaning do you try to locate the institution first that has an appetite to buy those that community, find out what their buy criteria is, find out where they want to be, price per unit, cap rate, gross yield, et cetera. And then back in and go find them the site and build the houses in order to sell them, or is it more spec where you’re doing the building, a building out the units, trying to then find the institution after you’ve broke ground or after you’re starting the build? You’ve probably seen all the above. Right. So help me understand what’s the best way to do it?

Adam:So you basically outline the very reason why I started Strat SFR, right? Because what we do is we start with the end of mind. We surveyed dozens and dozens of investors and we figure out what everyone’s looking for and everyone’s nuances and how they buy and what they buy and where they buy it and the structure which they buy. That’s consulting and business and advice that we offer. If you’re a person that’s just out there looking for land and you don’t have all day and the resources to spend on the phone with you two or three institutions every day, figuring out where they’re buying now, how they’re buying. If you’re an individual and you want to start with the mind, you might talk to one or two, find that say we want to buy here, here and here. 

Adam: And you would go find those assets and try to kind of those projects into that that narrow scope. Part of the great thing about what I love about what I do is I can let builders and developers work on finding the best deals that they think are good deals because they know the markets better than anyone else, no matter what institutional investor says that’s new to a market or owns just several hundred several thousand in an area, someone that has 20 years of experience or like years of experience, buying and developing land and developing lots and developing and building homes, that person knows the nuances of a market than anyone else. What I love is telling an investor, telling a builder or a developer, you tell me where these guys should be buying because they ask me all the time, you know, where is the next coffee shop opening up or where’s new library opening up and where are the events and where are the cars and coffee events going on? Where is the buzz around town? 

Adam: And as long as they adhere to a few simple kind of principles where you can’t be too real, people don’t want to be out in the sticks that need to be close to transportation, close to amenities like shopping and retail and restaurants. And it’s got to have decent schools. There’s like there’s like 20 checkmarks and institution checks off when looking at a project. And if you keep that in mind, when you’re out there looking for good opportunities, you know, coming from like strata or someone like me to say, hey. You tell me out of all the investors that you work with, where does my where’s my product fit in best? And a guy like me says, great, tell me all about the project. I’d love it. It’s going to fit these three funds. And I put it in one of those three funds and have them fight it out for it, you know, and that’s my model. 

Josh:So knowing a guy like you who’s got the access to the institution, which is ultimately the end buyer, that buys the whole complex, the whole portfolio is a key part because you might have a great development that you do a great build to run development or even a development of single family rentals that you buy and rehab. They’re all kind of in the same area looking to sell the whole thing at one time. But if you don’t have access into that end, buyer can be tough to liquidate. So I think that that’s the area that you fell in. 

Adam: And I’m not saying find me particularly. I’d be pretty self-serving, but they got to have an entree onto the exit. You always got to start with the end in mind. And, you know, builders generally, they’re doing their business during the day. They don’t have time and they don’t have the resources or they don’t want to understand what everyone wants. At the end of the day, you know, if you’re a builder or a developer and you just know a project is good because it has the right dirt in the right spot and the right schools and the right demographics, believe me, likely it’s going to end up being a good bill front project if the rent support a certain cap rate, which you got to know how to do. But, you know, guys like me can figure out for you.

Josh: And what’s the minimum size project that an institution typically would want to buy? How many doors would price are you looking at? 

Adam:So if you ask me 12 months ago, I would have said between one hundred and twenty five and one hundred seventy five, a sweet spot. And that’s true for most institutions. But there’s so many different kinds of players coming into the space of all different levels that right now I’ve done deals as small as 30 all the way up to my largest deal being about two hundred twenty units. So it really depends on when you start with the end in mind what your buyer’s appetite is. And I am fortunate enough to work with a fairly large swath of buyers that range from high-net-worth individuals with family offices that like 30 or 40- or 50-unit subdivisions. But the real the real answer to that question has to do with the operation and the management, because as long as you can buy enough units to operate efficiently in a market that’s going to dictate how many units you ultimately want to buy. And if you’re a large institution, that means owning five to six hundred or even more in a market. If you’re a small investor, that is going to do the management itself or maybe hire a third party. But once you do on a smaller scale, maybe you’re OK with 40 or 50, you know, you’re never going to get to five hundred six hundred and get the operating scale that most large institutions do. But depending on what your ultimate goals are, maybe you don’t need that. So, yeah. 

Josh:So this is probably the last question that I want to ask you about some advice. Like what kind of after all the success you’ve had, what kind of advice would you give? But one question I have is, what’s the rule of thumb? There’s probably a rule of thumb that you operate. There’s you know, there’s obvious everybody as you spreadsheets. Right? I’ve got them in my apartment business. Everyone’s got them. They’re kind of underwear to deal off of. But there’s always rules of thumb that says, OK, if an institution is going to want to be all in for X and they’re going to get it, want to get gross rents of Y and generally, let’s say it’s 10 percent meaning if your price is one hundred fifty thousand, they want fifteen hundred bucks a month. Is there a rule of thumb in your industry for that? 

Adam: There is, yeah. So I’m not good at doing off the cuff. So basically for every hundred thousand dollars, I mean it’s a little hard for me to answer that question depending on the market, but we’re always trying to get to a cap rate or a gross yield of between eight and 10 percent of eight and 10 percent. So gross yield again, is gross income divided by purchase price. So in a market like Charlotte or a core market, Charlotte, Orlando, Jacksonville, Raleigh, top tier markets where inventory is at its all-time low, people are accepting gross yields for finished product as low as eight percent gross yields, which means putting a cap rates in the high or mid force. So if you do the math and depending on where you’re looking to sell the deal out, you know if it’s that completion of the units you want to target closer to an eight and a half or an eight and a half percent gross yield, if you’re selling lots and expecting someone to build a home and a lot, you’re going to tick higher. A nine point five, nine point seventy-five if you’re looking to sell in title land, if you figure out what the ultimate gross yield is going to be when a unit is on there, you want to be closer to ten, ten and a half. So I don’t know what those exact rents versus prices are. But the good rule of thumb is if you figure out what the ultimate rents are going to be per year and divide it by the price you think itself or you want to be in that eight to 10 percent gross yield range. 

Josh: Perfect. Got it. So, Adam, now that you’ve been in this industry for a while and you’ve sold more single-family rentals than anybody, what kind of advice would you give your younger former self or some of our audience about some things you’ve learned along the way? Could be business advice specific to the efforts of our industry or just entrepreneurship advice. What do you think are some of the keys to your success and some things you’d like to pass back to our audience? 

Adam:So a friend of mine, when I first started being a sales guy when I was twenty one years old, said something to me like it always stuck with me and the older I get it, it resonates even more. Don’t get too high with the highs or lower the lows. If you’re in real estate or any business that you depend on a commission or a sale or a profit to happen, you are inevitably going to have moments of absolute euphoria and you’re going to have moments of dire straits. And the more I recognize when I’m in those moments of euphoria to ultimate despair, I realized that I could stay here mentally. And if I keep my family life, my spiritual life and my work life all in balance, my financial life. I realize that when things are going really good, I got to remind myself, because you’re going to get bad eventually when things are bad. I got to realize that things get really good eventually. So trying to keep that even keel. That’s the advice to get to my younger statement. 

Josh: OK, so Adam, your website is StrataSFR.com. You guys look them up on the Internet, whether you’re want to play anywhere along that spectrum, even being an active investor, passive investor, developer, or learn more about how you can play Atom’s, the guy that we would recommend to Jill to lean on for advice. And if you have a portfolio that you’re looking to exit at, maybe even be able to find you a buyer. So, Adam, listen, thank you so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor. 

Adam: It was all fun. Thanks so much. I had a lot of fun. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

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