This was the most difficult project in our career, and I’m proud of this story of perseverance and ultimately preservation of capital. In a time where there is much negativity towards Syndications and multifamily, this story hopefully gives hope to the operators out there doing the right thing, giving every bit of smarts and execution to protect capital. This story is a save. I don’t know many other operators that would have been able to pull off what we did and the challenges we faced, how we survived and thrived. Our strength as GP guarantors at Sharpline, our track-record, our relationships with Freddie and Fannie were the key. It’s a testament to Sharpline and the commitment of our team as well as the patience and belief from our investors. I want this post to be a reality check and not considered bragadocious but give homage to the people in Sharpline and the many partners (lenders, vendors, consultants, investors) that helped get this insurmountable project to where it is today. Here we go. 3 years ago we bought this as a heavy value-add post covid. We couldn’t get new roofs that were leaking for 7 months, so this inhibited our reposition to improve the property, which kept some of the bad elements at the community there longer than we wanted. Fire property management company 1 , Fire property management company 2 (proverbial jump out frying pan into the fire, scary). Decided to self-manage project. This was in an early stage of our self-management journey about 2 years ago (we now self-manage 1500+ units). We purchase one half of the project with cash and the other with a bridge loan with floating rate debt (our only floating rate Sharpline has ever done, we didn’t buy a rate cap either, not smart) 4% bridge loan. We begin to execute capex plan successfully (we ripped the mansards off #MansardSlayer). The process of reposition took longer than we liked because of construction delays and bad PM companies, but we ultimately had the safety net of the 24 unit townhouse project that was getting higher occupancy that we purchased with cash as part of the syndication. So we refi’d the 24 unit with a local bank and GPs personally guaranteed the loan as we continued to do projects. This allowed us to free up liquid capital to continue executing to get higher occupancy, but we were still not there yet. We were at 65% overall occupancy on 128 units and the community was improving.

Hello everyone! I’ve just joined the group and I’m looking forward to connecting, learning, and contributing where I can. Excited to grow alongside driven professionals like you all.

Go to Classroom area to check it out. I will be adding more an more episodes in the series. https://www.skool.com/multifamily/classroom/1987cf64

I am currently located in St Paul/Minneapolis, MN, where I live and work I am here to network, collaborate, and JV. I manage a small mastermind, where I help newbie investors by their first multifamily apartments, I also do structured finance with stack funding where I structure and negotiate the deal for my clients & JV as capital partner, and lastly I am a licensed financial planning professional with a financial service firm, where I help my clients set-up infinite banking with ability to leverage $1 in three places; income protection (Get cover while earning interest and borrow from yourself), bank (Lend using your borrowed funds), and as collateral for a line of credit.

We just closed on a 121-unit in Fort Worth. Here are some things that a spreadsheet doesn’t tell you. Lender requirements can shift late in the process. We were initially expecting agency debt, but last minute requirements changed and the proceeds no longer worked for the deal. So we pivoted to bridge. Good thing we had already modeled bridge from the start. You may have to restructure entities to align with lender expectations. We formed a new borrower entity late in the process and updated the org chart to match what the lender required. That meant new documents, new approvals, and making sure everything flowed correctly from a legal and ownership standpoint before we could close. Multiple legal teams get involved. Lender counsel, borrower counsel, title, everyone reviewing language and redlining documents. A lot of back and forth. Signature pages get revised. Loan agreements get updated. You think you are done, then another comment comes in. Title items can surface that have to be cleared before anyone wires money. In our case, there were legacy items that had to be resolved before we could get clean title. That meant coordination and making sure everything was cleared so funding could happen. None of that shows up on a spreadsheet. Getting this deal to closing was a different animal. Glad we got it done. Now the real work begins.