Today, my guest is Marcy Sagel. She's the founder and principal of MSA interiors, with over 30 years of experience shaping multifamily housing, student living and senior housing and more. And in just a minute, we're going to speak with Marcy Sagel about From Blueprints to Brilliance, designing multi family spaces that rent.
J Darrin Gross
I'd like to ask you, Marcy Sagel, what is the BIGGEST RISK?
Marcy Sagel
I'm going to answer that in a few parts, because there's different aspects of the job that can be different risks. So when we pick materials for a project, we have to make sure we're working with tried and true materials, okay, materials that are not going to fail on a job, for instance, in the units, if we select a, you know, vinyl plank flooring, we want to make sure it's going to last. So we only work with manufacturers that we know are going to give us a solid product, not we're not trying to test some new product on different people. We really want to make sure that those stand the test of time from a risk standpoint. So that's probably one of the biggest things. The second thing is the furniture. We also specify all of the furniture, and are an installation. So we put all of the furniture into warehouses, and we have to make sure that the warehouses are bonded and insured and going to be doing replacement if there's any problems. And we use it. We use warehousing all over the country, and so we do a lot of due diligence to make sure that risk is minimal, and we work with a lot of the same vendors so that we make sure that we have very, very, very solid in warehousing around the country. Really, really important to our job. There's so many aspects of that the material goods that we order are sent directly to those warehouses. They have them come in on camera. They're signed for. If there's any look or damage to any box or item or palette, they immediately are under record with us to open it up, inspect it and give us a photo and report immediately, within 24 hours, so that we can report it to the manufacturer, and we want to make sure that our, you know, installations go as smoothly as possible. We have a really good track record with that, and the reason we do is because we use really good receivers. They receive it, they're knowledgeable. They take a picture of everything coming in, it's got an item number, it's got a quantity number, and then we have it on record that we can then log into their software and see all of those items online and match it up to our spreadsheets. It's very, very, very organized, and we like it that way, so we only work with groups that are very organized and can follow sort of the regiment that we're used to, so that we can minimize any of the risk.
Today, my guest is Lissette Calderon. Lissette is the founder and CEO of Neology Group, a vertically integrated, lifestyle driven residential and commercial real estate firm that specializes in transforming undervalued neighborhoods into sought after communities, and in just a minute, we're going to speak with Lissette Calderon about solving for housing's greatest need, a focus on workforce communities.
J Darrin Gross
If you're willing, I'd like to ask you. Lissette Calderon, What is the BIGGEST RISK?
Lissette Calderon
Well, I think in today's world, probably the biggest risk you have is uncertainty. And how do you underwrite uncertainty? You know what happens next? How do you underwrite whether it's Harris insurance numbers, construction costs, what does that uncertainly look like, and what, how do you underwrite that? So, you know, how do we do it? You know, we really can't avoid it because, you know, we're developers. So of course, our job is, you know, we really think about a how do we minimize it? So we make sure that, you know, every project, you know, is built, oftentimes, by the same team, the same architect, the same project, and, you know, same contractor, and so forth. And then, you know, we enter into a guaranteed maximum price contract, so ahead of time, we already know what that number is going to look like. Of course, we're building contingencies. So we minimize those uncertainties, so that that's, that's always the hard part, and then in terms of, you know, transferring the risk, and then the insurance, and that's probably how you get to a little bit of the avoiding the risk. You know, especially in South Florida, one of the things that people always talk about is kind of like sea level rise, flood level and how does climate play into what we're doing? Well, I can't move our projects out of South Florida because they're in South Florida, you know, the, you know, number of our projects. So in terms of transferring the risk, you know, we think about Master policies. Our projects are on master policies. So again, we're looking at the risk, kind of throughout the entire portfolio, not just on one independent portfolio and that that has been, you know, very effective for us in terms of mitigating our insurance expenses. Because really, the two biggest uncontrollables that we have as operators are real estate taxes and insurance. So real estate taxes, we've really been able to address that in Florida through, you know, kind of this statutory. Uh, you know, or an instance now that live local, and, you know, we're really able to address that and work with that. And then, from an insurance standpoint, it's always, you know, the next big challenge. And the way insurance numbers, you know, have gone up historically, and we've been able to mitigate that through the master policy and, you know, and how do we avoid, to the extent possible, avoiding is we build really well, you know. So we've got the flood panels, and we build that the right elevations, and we put in, you know, kind of the right, you know, glazing and glass and everything that Mills meets or exceeds the South Florida building codes. And then, you know, we try to go into neighborhoods that we know make sense from a you know, kind of climate standpoint. So Isla pad is up on a ridge. And so we really take into account a lot of these things, and we think about it. And, you know, it's always very exciting to us, you know, after, you know, a big storm, you know, where you'll see kind of flooding on the streets, and some of these pictures that go nationally, our areas, you know, are immediately dry right after the storm, so it's, you know, and I guess that's how we probably avoid it. We build in great locations, and we build a great product, you know, how do we minimize it? We get into, like, you know, guaranteed maximum price, and really kind of understand what the uncertainty and really try to mitigate that uncertainty. And then, terms of transferring, it's, you know, we look at master policies and how we put those in place.
Today, my guest is Allen Buchanan. Allen Buchanan is an S, I, O, R, and is a nationally recognized commercial real estate broker, columnist, speaker and creator of the sequence success framework. He's also a principal at Lee and Associates in Orange County, California, and in just a minute, we're going to speak with Allen Buchanan about building a successful career in commercial real estate.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenbuchanan/
http://www.allencbuchanan.com/
J Darrin Gross
If you're willing, I'd like to ask you. Allen Buchanan, What is the BIGGEST RISK?
Allen Buchanan
Darrin, for me, the BIGGEST RISK is relevance. And I use this in a micro sense, in a macro sense. The micro sense is, I'm 68 years old, and so I realized that I'm on the back nine, maybe the last three holes of my career. And so maintaining relevance with those with whom I deal, first and foremost, family members, clients, friends, etc, there's then a relevance in terms of the commercial real estate profession. I know you've had guests on your podcast that specialize in artificial intelligence, and if you look at the ways in which artificial intelligence is chipping away at what all of us in the sales profession do, you'd have to realize that there's a greater risk that at some day, commercial real estate brokers become, you know, irrelevant. So to me, that's the biggest risk that we face, both on a micro and a macro level, going forward.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenbuchanan/
http://www.allencbuchanan.com/
Today, my guest is Bob Lachance. Bob Lachance is the founder and CEO of Riva Global, the leading virtual assistant staffing company for real estate investor professionals. Excuse me for real estate professionals, and in just a minute, we're going to speak with Bob LaChance about virtual assistants for real estate professionals.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/boblachance/
J Darrin Gross
I'd like to ask you. Bob Lachance, what is the BIGGEST RISK?
Bob Lachance
Well, for my virtual I'll give you two answers. My virtual assistant company, it is AI, so stepping ahead of that, and in being aware of that and training our virtual assistants be to become experts on that, that now gives me the insurance I need to stay in business as a real estate professional, I would say, you know, if your niche is rehabbing properties or niches commercial, train yourself on another niche, just in case something happens, right? So, for instance, in the residential real estate world, wholesaling is starting to become more challenging in some states. So if you're just a wholesaler as an example, start buying and holding to offset those risks. Start learning how to rehab to offset so offset those risks. So it's really putting more tools in your tool belt and whatever industry you're in. So I would say that would be, that'd be something to do. And I started real estate 21 years ago, and where you start is never where you end, right? I mean, you could probably attest to that, Darrin, you probably didn't start in insurance, insurance brokerage and things like that. You've probably gone through a series of experiences for you to get where you are now.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/boblachance/