GI229: Outperforming the Real Estate Market with James Nelson

James Nelson has over 25 years of real estate experience. He is one of New York City’s top investment sales brokers, closing over $5 billion in property sales and loans. He has launched 2 successful real estate funds totaling $350 million while being a limited partner in dozens of transactions. James is a Wall Street Journal Best-selling Author, and a regular lecturer at; Columbia, Fordham, NYU, Wharton, and Colgate.

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Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host Charles Carillo combines decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now, here’s your host, Charles Carillo.

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have James Nelson with over 25 years of real estate experience. He is one of New York City’s top investment sales brokers closing over $5 billion in property sales and loans. He has launched 2 successful real estate funds totaling $350 million, while also being a limited partner in dozens of transactions. James is a Wall Street Journal Best-selling Author, and a regular lecturer at; Columbia, Fordham, NYU, Wharton, and Colgate. So thank you so much for being on the show today. James.

James:
Charles, Thank you so much. It’s great to be back with you and had the pleasure of having you on my show, and you had such incredible insight that you shared with your audience, so it’s the least I could do to come here and reciprocate with yours.

Charles:
Yeah, it’s great. It’s great to have sales brokers on, uh, people with so much experience and commercial real estate. So before we get started, can you give us a little background of yourself, both personally and professionally, prior to getting involved with real estate brokerage and investing in the late nineties?

James:
Sure. So it’s most helpful to your audience. What I would say is I knew nothing about real estate when I graduated Colgate in 1998. I was an English major. It was complete luck that I went to the career service center and found a job posting to be a sales associate. And one of the first lessons that I learned about being successful in business is working with great mentors. And I was just so fortunate in starting my career with Paul Massey, who was a Colgate alum and Bob Knackle who gave me that opportunity. So from there, had a great run. 17 years, they were kind enough to make me a partner. We ultimately sold the company to Cushman and Wakefield for a little over eight years ago for a hundred million dollars. At the time, we were the number one investment sales firm selling over three times the amount of properties in New York City as the next brokerage firm.

James:
Uh, had three great years at Cushman, selling all different types of asset classes throughout New York City with an incredible team behind me, and then got an opportunity five years ago to join Avis and Young, a Canadian company that’s only been here in the US for about 15 years now. We have 60 offices here and 120 offices around the world to build out the investment sales platform here. So hopefully, and, and as we were talking about before, I have experience in all different asset classes. So for your listeners right now who are thinking about, Hey, where do I start off? Should I be thinking about multifamily retail, office, industrial? Fortunately, have had quite a bit of experience with each of those. And so just looking forward to our conversation to hopefully add some value to your listeners.

Charles:
Yeah, so that’s, uh, brings the right to our first question here. Like, so you cover the tri-state of Avis and Young’s, multi-family office, uh, development and retail, you know, where currently are you seeing opportunities for your investors that you work with?

James:
So Charles, I think the opportunities right now, and we can talk about the pros and cons of the different asset classes, but I, I think I would almost say when you ask where are the best opportunities, it really goes to seller’s motivation. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that was a, a big part of my book as far as, you know, what are some of the key things to ask when looking at an investment property and seller’s motivation is near the top of the list. And Charles, I think the next year or two, your listeners, you, you’re gonna see some of the best buying opportunities that we’ve seen since 2009 because we know there’s loans coming due. And it’s not just that rates have gone up that has put downward pressure on pricing. The the double whammy effect is that has also pushed down the proceeds. So as, as you know, the way that wealth has been created over the years, you see these families, and I’ve interviewed a lot of them on my podcast where they used to buy a property, raise the rents, refinance, take cash out, take the proceeds, go buy two more properties. And unfortunately, it’s gonna be the other way around in many cases where a loan is coming due and that loan, that refi is gonna actually require a pay down. So that’s not great if you’re a borrower, but if you’re a buyer listening right now and you know that you’re up against a seller who has to do something, it’s gonna create a lot of opportunities.

Charles:
Where do you see that happening? As I, I kind of what I see is that it’s the mid 2024 ’cause multifamily, which is what we really work with, you know, commercial, multifamily, larger complexes. I really see most, no one really took out three year rate caps, you know what I mean? They’re very expense, they’re almost twice as much as a two year back in the day. And probably still now, but you know, those two years are coming up somewhere mid 2024. So I think we’re seeing a little bit of it now for people that didn’t have rate caps, but I think even some of the more experienced, let’s say, or were supposed to be more experienced syndicators and operators, that’s gonna be 2024.

James:
Right. And for those who are thinking, who are going to need to do something in 24, they’re asking that question now. Yeah. Or if not,

Charles:
They should be

James:
<laugh> because what you don’t wanna do is 60, 90 days before your loan comes due, start to scramble. So if you’re listening right now and you have a portfolio, you have loans coming due, have that conversation right now with your mortgage broker to find out what are your alternatives to refinance or speak to the end, I should say, speak to that investment sales broker to understand what your property’s worth today. So you have options and you don’t find yourself with your backup against the wall. Yeah.

Charles:
I was speaking to an SEC attorney in Texas a couple months ago, and he was telling me half of his business is people doing capital calls and, you know, being short of money, not like it used to be, where, you know, your whole business is just new deals, new syndication, new deals, new deals, deals. So it’s, there’s a lot of people that you’re not hearing about yet, you know, they’re in trouble and hopefully they can work something out between, like you said, between their brokers and also between now their investors too. If it’s not all their money, they have to work that out too, which can be even more difficult, uh, circumstances. So,

James:
Charles, I do wanna clarify one thing though, because I think that the difference here in 2009, we saw a lot of owners, borrowers who were upside down and there was not a lot of liquidity. So this is different. We don’t have a liquidity issue, right? Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>, I mean, it’s, it’s really a result of a more conservative lending environment. So a lot of our clients who are finding themselves in a position where they need to sell because they either do not have the ability to pay down their loan or desire, they have equity in the deal. So let’s not, you know, this isn’t a matter where, I don’t think this next year or two that the buying opportunities are going to be directly from lenders. Of course there will be some and certainly some loan sale opportunities. And if we’re talking office, that’s a whole nother discussion.

James:
<laugh>, there, there we can talk plenty about dealing with the banks, but most multifamily owners out there, if they have a loan coming due and they find themselves having to sell, most of them have equity in the deal. But back, you know, a year or two before rates started going up and debt service coverage ratios started coming down, would’ve thought, Hey, I’ve got conservative leverage. I only have 65% loan to value. And today when they go to the lender, they say, no, we, we, you need to pay it down to 50%. That’s what’s creating the challenge. But the good news is those borrowers, those owners still have the ability to transact because they’re still in the money.

Charles:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great way of putting it. Now you mentioned office is, you know, I, I hear, you know, office is a blood bath. We never haven’t invested in office in many years. And, um, retail, I mean, are you seeing, is this like, is everything declining that you’re working with? There must be some, I mean, tell us like what you’re seeing really in your office in retail and what you think of those industries going forward.

James:
I’ll try to make this quick because I could speak, uh, an hour on the the topic, but just to be most helpful to your audience, fir first of all, you can’t paint this asset class. Yeah. Or I think any of these asset classes with one brush. So within office it’s very different between trophy class A, B, and C. What there has been with hybrid work, a 50% on average return to office since covid is a flight to quality. So what is leasing today is the trophy in class A. So that’s putting an enormous pressure on Class B and C. In fact, after this podcast, I’m going to meet with an office owner who has a building that’s only 50% occupied. And so we’re trying to figure out is there a way to convert it to residential? Sounds easy, but not so easy. There’s a lot of considerations.

James:
Is it zoned properly? Do the floor plates work? Okay. And then of course, most importantly, does the cost basis work? Because even if you have a gigantic floor plate, you can make it work for residential. The question is, will the cost justify it? So I think with office, it is very specific to the type of office, but with this Class BC office that does not convert well to residential, there is going to be massive distress in this space. And what is happening right now, and we’re seeing it, is lenders do not want these assets back. And so what’s happening, there was a prime office building on Fifth Avenue here in Manhattan that just traded, and the borrower owed $171 million and the owner was able to sell the property for $105 million. How does that happen? The lender says, I’m taking a short sale, I’m writing this down. As opposed to the borrower giving the keys back where the lender’s saying, <laugh>, we don’t even wanna take this over. So that’s how you’re gonna see a lot of these office buildings trade.

Charles:
Right. Very interesting. Very interesting. I I, you know, I was reading an article this morning about, uh, you know, retail being strong, uh, I guess stronger in the south and west. How are you seeing it in the tri-state?

James:
There’s been a, an amazing recovery in the retail space. And once again, maybe it’ll be the theme of this episode, not painting the market with one brush. Yeah. Retail is so specific to what and where, and in New York, that could be literally what side of the street is the retail on? Is it next to a subway entrance? Is it on a side street? What is the use that is allowed? I will tell you that the great thing is that retail has leased up in large part, uh, in New York, which is fantastic. I was just in LA unfortunately not the case. There, you see a, you do see a lot of vacancies, so whi which can lead to more vacancies. So yes, the good news is that retail’s filled up. There had to be a huge correction in the types of rents to do that. Certainly with High Street, if we’re talking about Soho Madison Fifth Avenue. But it has come back and look, even if people are not showing up to the office like they used to here, at least in New York, the tourism numbers are back, people are walking the streets, the residential market is on fire, people wanna live here. So that’s what’s really driving this retail resurgence. And I would also say that a lot of these digitally native brands are finding out that they need to have bricks and mortars well to compliment their business.

Charles:
That’s, that’s great. So working with so many successful investors over the last couple decades, I mean, what has, how important has it been for them to be successful in specializing in finding the right niche for them to work in?

James:
Hugely important, and this is really the part of my book that I start off with

Charles:
About

James:
Finding the asset class that is right for you. So first of all, understanding, you know, how much time do you have to devote to this? What is your risk tolerance? And then once you’ve figured that out, yes, finding the geography where you have that ability to specialize. And I learned this very early on as a broker, where the Massine al business model was a territory system. So I spent three months getting to know every single thing happening in Chelsea. And as a result, after three months, I knew more about that area than anyone in veteran brokers who had been doing this for 20, 30 years. But I had studied that market. I, if you’re listening to this and you’re serious about getting into real estate investing, I promise you if you can pick that neighborhood, and many people start with where they grew up, where they work, if you really study that area for three months, what does that mean?

James:
Researching all the past sales that took place, finding out what rents are going for, looking at other comparable product. If you really focus that on, on that, you are going to outperform the competition because you’re gonna know what is highest and best, what is a good price, what type of rent can you get in return? So that’s really important. And then the last thing I would put on top of that is have a business plan, have a thesis. Uh, as you mentioned, I I do a lot of speaking at universities, master’s programs, and I give one example in the Bronx right now, they’re gonna open up four subway stations. And I ask them, what do you think is gonna happen to retail values when a subway station opens up there? Now granted, maybe it’ll take a year, maybe it’ll take four years. If, if you have a two to three year business plan or, or investment horizon, you wanna make sure that you have enough time for this to come to fruition.

James:
But if all of a sudden someone who would’ve to take a bus and then a subway and take an hour to get into Midtown Manhattan, you can now jump on the subway and be here in 25 minutes. I’d suggest to you that that’s gonna have a major impact on what retail rents and what multi-family rents will be for that. And that’s the kind of thing that if you can bring that to an investor and say, look, I’ve studied this neighborhood, these are the comps, this is why I think it’s a great opportunity, and this is the why. This is where I see this area heading. I think that’s a very powerful presentation to a potential investor.

Charles:
Yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s seeing the future myself being from Connecticut, it’s like the metro North going to Bridgeport. Bridgeport not really the nicest area at all in Connecticut. However, these property values there are so high because they have access to the train to access into Grand Central. So it’s amazing what the train does, what the transportation does. So yeah, that’s great. It’s like knowing the future of what you’re doing and then kind of seeing it where before the road’s built, really.

James:
That’s right.

Charles:
Yeah. So on the other side of that, where have you seen common mistakes? Maybe real estate investors have made both, uh, beginners and also seasoned experienced investors?

James:
Well, I can personally relay this. Early on in my career, I saw a lot of incredible opportunities, but I tried to keep them all to myself because I said, wow, if I start telling people someone’s gonna go behind my back and steal the deal out from behind, you know, from under me, and look, that is a possibility, hopefully not if you’re sharing the opportunity with the right people. But I think a lot of your listeners might be thinking, I have to do this on my own.

Charles:
And

James:
They might also be thinking, I don’t have a million, 5 million, $10 million in the bank where I can do this on my own.

Charles:
So

James:
What I talk about is finding the right partner.

Charles:
So

James:
What are you bringing to the table? You’re bringing that expertise, you’re bringing the deal, which is the most valuable thing to the equation.

Charles:
And

James:
Then you are bringing that to an experienced partner to say, look, let’s work on this together. Let’s joint venture, we can, we can buy this together. I wanna shadow what you’re doing. You have the track record that will help me raise capital around this. You also have your own investors. Let’s do this together. You find the right partner where you do a couple of these investments, then you’re ready to do your own. So I would say not partnering early enough.

Charles:
Interesting. Do you have money sitting in the stock market and you’re worried about it? Or worse you have money sitting at the bank, not keeping up with inflation? My name is Charles Carillo, founder and managing partner of Harborside Partners. And since 2006, I’ve been investing my money and my family’s money into income producing properties. These are real assets, real properties with real addresses that produce real cash flow. At Harborside Partners, we provide passive investors who love real estate with a turnkey investing solution. If you want to put your money to work in real estate but can’t find deals, don’t have the time to get funding. And the last thing that productive people want to do is manage real estate. We find the deals, we fund the deals, and we manage the tenants, the termites and the properties. Partner with [email protected]. That’s invest with harborside.com. Go to invest with harborside.com.

Charles:
If you love real estate, you like the idea of passive income and believe that income producing properties will appreciate over time, go to invest with harborside.com. That’s invest with harborside.com. So I wanted to get into what we’ve been kind of talking about a little bit throughout is your, the insider’s guide to real estate investing, your book. And I was able to read parts of this book and I thought it was great. And you know, James really breaks us down from everything from finding the right property to, as he said, was, you know, raising capital, becoming partners, repositioning the property. And it goes everywhere from so many different asset classes as well that you are very, very knowledgeable about. So can you give us a little background of why you wrote the book and what your kind of goal was with writing it?

James:
Sure. Well, this is a business that can be very challenging to understand how it actually works, right? And, and you, you probably know as well that a lot of what you learned is probably by doing it on the job. So, and yes, there’s no substitute for experience and there’s great podcasts out there and

Charles:
Information

James:
Like this.

Charles:
But

James:
What I wanted was to provide a guide for readers to understand how this all works from start to finish.

Charles:
And

James:
What I found is, even speaking at some of these masters programs, some of these students are, they’re brilliant. They know how to underwrite, they can do 10 year cashflow projections. And then I ask them, well that’s great. How do you buy a property? And they just give me this blank stare. And they say, well, what do you mean, how do you buy a property? I said, well, how do you find it? And how do you negotiate it? And I think the mentality for a lot of people is, well, I’m just gonna fit this one role. I’m an analyst. I’m the numbers guy or girl, and there’s gonna be someone in acquisitions, that’s their job. Go find the property. And what I would suggest to you all is if you really wanna be a great investor, you need to understand how this all works. Yeah.

Charles:
So

James:
My goal was, and and Charles, I’m really glad to hear that you were able to get some value outta this as well. Whether you’re just starting out and you’re listening to this podcast and thinking about investing for the first time, either as a general partner or as a limited partner, or you’ve been doing this for decades, I think you’re gonna learn the insider’s edge from this, because that is really, to me, what is so exciting about investing in real estate as opposed to say the stock market where everybody has the same information, right? Real estate, you can get that inside advantage by finding an off market deal or understanding maybe a way to reposition the asset that maybe not everyone knows about. So these are the kind of things that I wanted to point out in a book. So someone could, after they read this, say, okay, I understand how this works, and I understand from start figuring out what to buy, how to bring on a partner, how to reposition, how to capitalize this, and then how to go and actually do the work and execute on it. I wanted this book to really give you an overview and a, a roadmap. So look it, it’ll certainly set you on your way. There’s no substitute for experience and having great mentors, but hopefully I accomplished that in this, this book. And your listeners, if they wanna check it out, we’ll we’ll get tremendous value from it.

Charles:
Yeah, we’ll put a link to it in the show notes. My assistant will and definitely lead people there. ’cause there’s a lot of great information. And uh, usually you have these books that are written just on certain parts of it, uh, certain parts of the business or certain asset classes. And it’s great to have one where you go through a chapter or two just about, um, recognizing different asset classes and the benefits and the abilities with them. So, uh, great, great. I wanna talk about your podcast as, as you said before, you were on your podcast or I was on your podcast. You’ve, uh, you’ve interviewed hundreds of successful investors. You know, there must be a few different recurring themes, lessons that guests have had where what they’ve learned. Can you kind of maybe what you’ve, what you’ve realized from interviewing hundreds of successful investors?

James:
I love that question and that is one of my favorite parts as well. I’m always learning by hearing people like you share their stories. But I, I love the, the common theme, I would say, uh, above and beyond, first of all, these great investors have an incredible reputation built on trust. And this is a business where that is just, it’s paramount because if you don’t have that in real estate or in any business for that matter, you’re not gonna go that far. So the, these investors have really gained the trust and the support by always doing the right things, even when it’s challenging. So I think certainly it starts with that, but what kind of takes them to the next level? You know, one of my favorite, I I love all the, the episodes, but one of my favorites and ones that come to mind was Jordan Vogel’s interview, and he is in New York, he’s built firm that has acquired over a hundred properties here.

James:
And I took a page from Nike and I entitled the episode, just Do It. Because what Jordan said was, look, you’re gonna, if you allow yourself to do it, you’re gonna talk yourself out of every single opportunity and nothing’s gonna be perfect. And he said, by the way, every time I buy a property the next day I get buyers remorse. He says, but you gotta just do it. And what he’s not saying be reckless because he’s saying, you’ve gotta look at a lot of opportunities, but when you find something that hits the box, you have to make that leap. And yes, there’s risk involved and so that’s why it’s not for everybody to be a gp. But he talks about the story where he signed a contract for a $6 million deal and he and his partner put up the $600,000 non-refundable deposit and knew that they had 90 days to scramble to find the rest of the money.

James:
So he says, look, you don’t have to, you know, maybe go to that extreme, but he said, this is it. This is the opportunity and at some point we’re gonna have to jump in. And of course, that deal parlayed into many, many more. So I think when you ask what does this have in common, it’s really that ability for action. I, I think if you’re a Tony Robbins fan, he talks about taking massive action, but it is, it is taking that step. This is not, even if you’re a passive investor, if you sit there and literally just be passive and let everything go by you, you’re never gonna find the perfect opportunity. So I guess start somewhere.

Charles:
Yeah. The perfect opportunity does not exist. And every time, I, it is funny when he says that because when I buy properties, I always think, man, I’ve overpaid a little bit on this property. I think, you know what I mean? And then a couple years later, after you’ve done what you believe you can do, you’re like, oh wow, that’s, that was a great buy. That was a <laugh>. But So overall, the years for you, I mean, how has your relationship, uh, towards money changed from being, starting with nothing and, uh, no knowledge of real estate and then coming into being a partner and selling out to Cushman to where you are now?

James:
You know, it, it’s interesting because the revenue, at least from the brokerage business or my real estate investments, that just becomes part of the scorecard. So you have to have goals if you wanna achieve them, but it’s definitely not the money that drives me. In fact, I am way more focused on brokerage, on the brokerage team. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and what the team is doing, top line revenue, I can tell you exactly to the penny what our team has done, top line revenue. But if you ask me, James, what was your 10 99 last year? I’d be embarrassed to tell you that I’d, I’d have to check, you know. And so yes, that happens after, you know, fortunately, putting in a lot of hard work, having great partners, having done this for 25 years, that I don’t have to worry about what my 10 99 is going to be every year.

James:
So for me right now, what the real benefit and, and really the value of, of real estate investing as opposed to brokerage where I get a commission, so I have to go find that opportunity, sell it, get paid, pay taxes, and then go find another opportunity. Whereas, you know, the benefit of having, generating that cash flow and all the benefits that come along with that. I’ve been fortunate very early on in my brokerage career to start investing as well, mostly as a limited partner. So that’s been a great way to double down, so to speak on it. And what that does is it allows me to do things that I have interest in, like coming on this podcast, writing a book, serving on charitable boards. So for me, it really becomes a, a vehicle to do in my take more important work.

Charles:
Yeah, interesting. Other than that great information about narrowing down to a neighborhood, let’s say in Manhattan or maybe a town or area in another part of the country. What other information or uh, what would you suggest to someone that want to follow your path and become a successful broker and then also follow with the other investments you’ve done?

James:
So advice for getting into brokerage or investing for that matter. I think finding a great mentor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> finding someone who you can really learn from someone who is really at the point in their career where either, you know, they’re, they’re still growing exponentially or they’re at the point where they wanna pass on that knowledge. And I think that first job you really, you, you wanna always be the person who says, what else can I help with? Right. D don’t just, you know, again, that’s being successful in life is always go above and beyond and there’s no substitute for putting in the hard work. I mean, I, I remember when I, I first started in brokerage and, and Bob Knackle said, look, good news, this is a part-time job. You only have to work 12 hours a day, <laugh>. So that, that, that was kind of how I started. And, you know, may maybe remote and being able to zoom in, maybe that’s help from time to time where I’m not on that five 50 train every morning like I did for, you know, close to 20 years of my career. So maybe now I get to sleep in and take the six 30 train. But, but still, it, it is that hard work, finding the right mentors and I think just remaining opportunistic.

Charles:
Great. So how can our, uh, listeners learn more about you, your business? And we’ll put that link to your book in the show notes.

James:
Thank you. So I built james nelson.com for the investors for hopefully you listening right now. This is not a, a site where you’re gonna just see my brokerage accolades. It’s really about helping you gain the insider’s edge to real estate investing. So there’s a lot of helpful guides. You can order, you can find the book there. You can, uh, access the podcast, uh, exclusive videos, white papers that I write. So that’s, that’s a great resource to really help give you tools. And then also James Nelson, NYC, which is on Instagram and LinkedIn where I’m most active, and occasionally Twitter or X or whatever they’re calling it now. <laugh> <laugh>.

Charles:
Well, thank you so much, James, for coming on. It was great to see you again and great to, you know, thank you for sharing all this knowledge with our, with our audience.

James:
Charles, it was my pleasure. This was a a lot of fun. Thank you.

Charles:
Thank you.

Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.

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About James Nelson

As one of NYC’s top investment sales brokers, James Nelson has seen thousands of deals so knows what works and what doesn’t. What makes real estate investing so exciting is that by gaining the insider’s edge, the investor can outperform the market. This book will inspire those who have yet to make their first investment and will show veterans how to step up their game. It is a must-read for college and master’s students focused on real estate as well as those who work in any aspect of the business ranging from brokers to lenders to attorneys.

Nelson not only draws on his experience as a broker but also as a partner in two successful real estate funds and as a limited partner in dozens of transactions. He has also gained much amazing insight by interviewing over 100 top investors on his The Insider’s Edge to Real Estate Investing podcast, which has now been downloaded over 250,000 times. These are the lessons that he has also shared as a guest lecturer at such schools as Columbia, NYU, and Wharton.

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