Beginning in the early 1990’s, George Bravante started with a small vineyard and winery in the Napa Valley of California. Over the past 20 years, Bravante Farm Capital has acquired over $175 million in agricultural assets including, citrus, table grapes, wine grapes, stone fruit and pistachios.
Prior to founding Bravante Farm Capital, he spent 10 years in the real estate private equity business, overseeing over $15 billion in real estate transactions.
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:
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Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have George Bravante. Beginning in the early 1990’s, he started with a small vineyard and winery in the Napa Valley of California. Over the past 20 years, Bravante Farm Capital has acquired over $175 million in agricultural assets including, citrus, table grapes, wine grapes, stone fruit and pistachios. Prior to founding Bravante Farm Capital, he spent 10 years in the real estate private equity business, overseeing over $15 billion in real estate transactions. So thank you so much for coming on today, George.
George:
Hey, I’m glad to be here. Thank you.
Charles:
So you have a very interesting, uh, background. Can you give us a little bit about your background, both personally and professionally, prior to getting involved in your current farming business?
George:
Sure. Um, I grew up in the New York area and uh, my dad was a mailman and my mom was a teacher and, uh, went to Univers, South Carolina outta high school and, uh, hardship, it’s cheapest school in the country. That’s why I went there. Very, very, very tough criteria. Um, studied accounting there and graduated. Went to work for Pete Marwick, one of the big eight firms. And then after a year there, I didn’t like it. I moved to a firm to Ernst and Young, which was Ernst and Winnie at the time. And we, uh, they were starting a real estate practice in Newport Beach, California. So that’s a pretty great place. And I went out there and took a look at it and packed my stuff in the car and drove out there. And that sa you know, I I we built a big real estate practice over three years and then I left and became the C F O for the real estate arm of the Robert Am Bass Group out of Fort Worth.
George:
It was a billionaire brothers. And anyway, luck lucky enough to meet them and work for them. And, you know, and that’s where this big number of apartments, you know, we, we were in the early stages of the R T C condo when American Savings was the biggest failure in history in the eighties. And we bought that from the government. And I ran the bad bank there. So it was 20 billion of assets, a big chunk of apartments, but it was every state in the union in Alaska. Really great experience meant it was very lucrative transaction. Then we formed Colony Capital after that. I had President of Colony for a while, and then I started having children and said, no way, I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not, because these were global businesses. Yeah. So when you’re, you know, I’m a young guy, it’s pretty cool. But when you have a family, it’s not so cool being gone all the time and formed my own business.
George:
And it was real estate to begin with. And the family I partnered with had been in the ag space for a hundred years, and they had a couple of broken assets in the Central Valley and deal junkie. George bte took a look at it and we bought ’em really cheap. And that was the first inkling about the ag space. And I just took it from there and bought another ranch, another ranch, another ranch, built a packing house, uh, sales company, farming company, cold storage, and, you know, and, and we’ve done a lot of transactions since then. And here we are. And, and now what we’re doing is, you know, really great transactions are hard to find in the areas that we would only want to do them. We have this thing we call the Oasis, and that’s the Fresno area, basically, where all the groundwater emanates too.
George:
So, you know, if you look at the Sierras, they, there’s always snow in the Sierras. It always creates runoff. So this area, the small area that we’re focused on is the place where the water is plentiful. Both surface water, which is irrigation, districts coming outta the mountains and groundwater also amazing micro climate, soil conditions also. So, you know, we’re not gonna do a lot of transactions, but, you know, I, so we started this crowdfunding idea about a year ago. We bought about 20 million worth assets in the last eight, nine months. Well, really good. And, and so we’re gonna do two or three transactions a year probably. Cause that’s all we can find. That that makes sense. I mean, I don’t need to do this anymore if I like doing it. It’s my passion to do this. So anyways, that’s what we’re doing. And it’s, uh, you know, that’s the history of it.
Charles:
George, can you give us a little background, kind of, of what your business looks like now? I know there’s a number of different divisions. When I was doing research this episode, and I was looking at one part and I said he had 14 different grape varieties. And there it’s, there’s, there’s a lot of different products that you’re offering and a lot of different divisions that you have of your company. Can you kind of give us a little overview of what it is now?
George:
So, so basically BTE Produce is the mothership and that employs all the people in inside of Brata. We have a sales company and we have a farming company mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And we have the packing house, coal storage. They’re all three tenants of Brata produce. Outside of that, we have all these single purpose entities that own all the ranches where we grow citrus being oranges, lemons, mandarins, palm, you know, grapefruit, you know, Cara car, NAS. We grow all the varieties of citrus. We have pistachios. We have about 400 acres of pistachios. We have about, we only have a small amount of stone fruit being traditional stone fruit being peaches and plums about 50 acres. Then we have about 300 acres of cherries, which is like going to Vegas <laugh> these days. So people aren’t planting more cherries. And then we have a very big table grade program about the same size.
George:
So our citrus is a couple thousand acres, and our, our table grapes are about a couple thousand acres. And inside the, the table grape thing, we have, you know, early, mid and late season. And we have green blacks and reds, you know, late, early, and you know, in, in, in, in, in the middle. And we have about 17 acres of grapes, varieties of grapes that we grow. And it’s funny because, you know, every, you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a crazy business in a sense. Everybody wants the new variety. Every retailer wants the new cool variety. So we’re always trying new things and moving on. But we, we have a significant, I mean, we, we sell, you know, Sam’s Club, Costco, you know, Kroger, you know, every, you name the retailers. We sell most of them. And we also export 30 or 40% to Asia.
George:
Interesting. Of all these things we do. So, you know, it’s, it’s a little tougher market right now because inflation’s high. So our inputs are high, but you know, the, the, the sales prices haven’t come up quite as fast. We’re lagging a little bit, so it’s, it’s a little tougher right now. But we’re in all good water areas, perhaps we grow our phenomenal, you know, we’re slow, we’ll, we’re smaller company. We, and we do, you know, 3 million boxes of fruit a year. We, we make pack, pick and ship here. That’s small medium though. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the bigger guys are 10 million or more, you know what I mean? So we’re a smaller family-owned kind of more boutiquey deal. Like our, we have a, we have a small winery in Napa. We did early as something that was like, something we have said, you know, my wife and I, we got married, had a child, and, and built a winery all in one year, you know, and we, we had no intention of ever having a winery either. Right. We just did it because it napa’s such a wonderful place. And you know, after that American savings deal, I had, I made some money in that deal. So I said, let’s buy it. Let’s buy this and build it and do it. And we did it and we’ve had it ever since. So we make really, really nice bordeaux variety of wines. You know, Cabernet, Merlott, you know, blends. It’s only 2000 cases a year. It’s a small winery bit thing, but it’s, it’s a great, great thing also.
Charles:
Oh, that’s fantastic. I have, uh, some of my good family friends, they spend, uh, the summer in Napa. So I’ve been out there many of times and, uh, I’ll have to look you up next time we’re out there.
George:
What part of, what part of Napa are they in?
Charles:
Uh, they go back between Noma and then they were in Napa and they’re like in the downtown, um, the downtown area. It’s like walking through downtown
George:
Area. Oh yeah. That’s so nice. Now we moved there in, in the early nineties. It was a war zone down there. It’s, the renaissance has been amazing now down Napa.
Charles:
Yeah. It’s, it’s, uh, it’s crazy. It’s a, they love it. It’s a very good, I mean, the climate’s fantastic, especially coming from South Florida during that during the summer. Oh yeah. I mean, it’s a great getting a difference. But, um, George, I wanna talk about like, you, you know, you’re talking about getting deals on the, on these different, um, on these different parcels of land. And can you let us know kind of what is entailed in value add, farmland investing, like what you’re doing, what you see as the future value of it?
George:
Yeah, I mean, we’re, we’re here trying to sell people to come invest with us. Right. That’s, that’s why I’m here. Yeah. So we have a transaction right now that’s live, it’s almost fully subscribed. So we’re almost done with it, but it’s a great example of what we’re, what we’re doing. So it’s two parcels, one’s a hundred acres, one’s 40, a hundred acres. Was this, it was a crazy labor contractor guy who would just, you know, people would owe him money, need his foreclose on him, and they had, and then, and then every job he was on, he’d steal a couple trees and plant it in a hundred acres. So it was a hodgepodge, total horrible property and a really great pea place. Right. The other one was a, a was a pasture land that was basically owned and operated by people making methamphetamine. Right. So, two crazy situations.
George:
We bought both of them pretty cheap and we, from the ground up, we rebuilt them. So the value add was low producing great land with great water, with great soil, both places. Great. You know, we, and we, we, we, we don’t do anything that’s not within 30 minutes of our, of my office. We, you know, we generally don’t do that, right? I mean, we have one big ranch, but an hour away, but it’s 1300 acres. So it, it’s like a, a mothership onto its own. But this, this transaction we’re doing now, so the a hundred acres is mandarin citrus, like the cutie, it goes to Cutie’s brand. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we have a relation with those guys. They’re the best. They make the most money. So that’s why we’re with them. And it’s got lemons and Cara Kara enables, which I don’t dunno if you’ve ever even Caras before, but that’s like a new thing kind of last five, six years.
George:
It’s like a pink orange and it’s more aromatic. It’s super popular. Really good actually. And then the other, the 40 acres is this great, this green grape coal great green, which is most one of the most popular grapes we make. And we make quite a bit of money with that too. So this is clean sheet. Uh, we took the ground to the ground. We, we pre the land perfectly planted the best crop. Like the, like we picked the right trellis for the right variety things people don’t do all the time. So anyway, so we’ve got those, I mean, we’re gonna, we’re gonna close in the end of May. I think this year we’re about, we’re about done raising the money. We have a little bit to go and it’s about 17 IRR over 10 years. So, you know, I mean, it could be, it could be way better than that depending on the residual value.
George:
We’re, we’re pretty conservative on this. Like, inflation’s running 7%, we’re at 2% in our performance stuff. We’re trying to make it so it’s totally attainable. We don’t wanna sell people stuff that will work. Right. So, I mean, that’s what we think of value add. And there’s, there’s different versions of value add. You could have a ranch that’s half really good and half really bad and you buy it and you fix the other half. That’s bad. Yeah. Right. The other value add that we offer is, you know, you can’t buy ag for most families because they just borrow the money and do it themselves. Cause they’re giant and they’ve been doing it for a hundred years. You know, we have, I’ve always had partners. I was a poor kid growing up. I didn’t had no money. I always need the partners to help me get there.
George:
So, you know, we’re very fond of partners and we like that environment. And I, I put up 10 or 15% of all the money in every deal we do, or more depending on how much, where I’m at that, that, that moment in time. So, you know, we’re really good partners. We’re really good fiduciaries. You know, we take my wife and Moes all the time about, we take better care of our partners money than our own, you know, because it’s important to me. I mean, growing up, like I did, you know, my, my parent, my, you know, we’re Italian and family, you know, we, we are very serious about making sure we take care of our partners and freedom. Right. And I mean, probably too, right. In a way. So anyway, so that’s kind of what we do. And that’s, that’s a really good example of what we’re trying to do. And when and when you build these things with the right varieties, the right root stock, the right water, I mean, your chances of success are so much higher. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, early on I bought ranches early on and they had a bunch of crap on them, and we did okay. But when I, when I, when I redid the ranches, I mean, we went like 10 x on the, on revenue. I mean it’s so, it’s, you know, it’s big changes when you had really good versus Okay. Which sounds funny probably, but
Charles:
No, no, it makes sense. Makes sense.
George:
That’s how, that’s how, that’s how it works.
Charles:
So tell us about, I mean, if, um, with vertically being vertically integrated in farming, how does that, we have a lot of people on here talk about vertically integrated in multifamily, which is, you know, we know how that agos, but it, like, tell us about like farmland. What, what are you doing maybe that your competitors or the farms that you’re buying don’t have in place and that’s why you’re adding a lot of value to it as well.
George:
I think, I mean, this is this, people will think this is very strange, but you know, the average farm in this valley, this valley’s giant, right? I mean, 50% of all the food in the America comes from here and we export a third of it, right? So, I mean, it’s massive, right? And I mean, I mean, average farms 40 acres still. So guys like me and guys bigger than me are, are, are, are kind of like, you know, gobbling this stuff up and making bigger things. Cause you need to be more efficient today mm-hmm. <affirmative> than citrus. I think the average citrus grow is 40 acres. And what that guy will do, so let’s say you had a listener who’s, who got inspired what I’m telling him today, right? And said, I don’t need George Bravai though. I’m gonna go do it myself. I’m gonna call a bro, I’m gonna call a broker and I’m gonna do this.
George:
He calls a broker, he finds a 40 acre piece, doesn’t know what he’s got. Probably they’ll tell him what it is, might not be what it is. He will understand how to test the soil, how to test the water. I mean, they’ll tell him kind of what to do, but it’s a crapshoot, right? Then he’s gotta find a guy to farm it for him. And that guy will charge him twice as much as I’m charging our people. He goes, I charge everybody the same. I mean, it’s, it’s a market below mark, probably a below market in number because if, if you’re a little farming company, you gotta make money, right? I mean, you know, you don’t have a scale to pass all this stuff over, so you’re paying too much for the farming. Right? Then that guy’s got a buddy at a packing house and says, Hey, I’ll, I got a guy that’ll take your fruit, right?
George:
They’ll pack it for you and they’ll, you know, and they’ll, they’ll do okay, but they will pick another exact right moment. They won’t, they won’t make sure it’s going to the right buyer. They, they’ll just pack it so you’re losing money there too, right? So I mean, those two things are massive numbers though in the, in the scale of what we do. I mean, we, we, I mean you, I mean let’s say we’re averaging $18 a box this year on naval oranges. That guy could be anywhere from 14 to 20 depending on who he is with what he is. So it’s vertical in that we can offer, and I’m not even talking about this stuff, we can offer cheaper. Like we buy a million boxes, so we get him a little bit cheaper. The the commercial packing house isn’t gonna give you that discount. They’re gonna keep that for themselves.
George:
So, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s kind of economies of scale as well as there’s no middlemen making money. You know, we make it one at one, one place total. And, and, and we don’t make that much money packing anyway. George Bravai makes all his money at the farm level. You know, we drive all the value to the farm and then that falls out the bottom of the, you know, how we, how much money we make that year. That’s how I make money because I mean, packing fruit is not a way to make money cuz I mean we keep, if I make 500 grand this year in our packing house, I’m gonna spend 700 buying new equipment, <laugh>. I mean, it’s just kinda how it works. So, but I mean it’s, it’s a great tool though. I mean, like we, we spent 400,000 a couple years ago to put high bricks detection in with, so I mean every orange or carrier that goes over our line, we know how much sugars in each orange. So in Korea and, and Vietnam pay more for high bricks fruit. I mean no house our size even has that, you know what I mean? But our sales team uses that to make another dollar or two a box, which doesn’t sound like much, but when you do a million boxes is a lot. So, so anyway, that’s kind of how I think about why we’ve done what we’ve done, why we’ve spent all this money building this place and you know, all that. Yeah. So it it, you make you do better for sure. Yeah.
Charles:
Yeah. I liked the, uh, the, one of the first things you said was, uh, it was Ron having more control and picking at the right time. And that’s kind of, I think the main thing about most vertical integrated firms, uh, in any part of real estate is just more control over the whole situation. And, you know, big private equity firm, if they had man their own property management, they’re not gonna make more money. You know, like you said, they’re, it’s not gonna be that much more money on doing the property management, but it’s more control over the whole thing and getting that extra
George:
Little bit outta take that to take that thought one step further, right? Let’s say my farmer example of they didn’t pa it was supposed to be picked, it is an at, let’s say it’s an at Atwood orange, right? That’s gotta go in January, gotta get Atwoods off in January, may early February, right? A lot of guys will wait, they won’t get to it till March, right? So when you pick, when we pick stuff into a bin, you know, 950 pounds of fruit in a, in a urethane container, basically that’s how we pick and transport fruit, right? We’re trying to get 21 cartons out of that bin packed and shipped, right? And, and we do that regularly, right? If, if you wait till March on that example, they’re gonna get 15. Cause the first gonna be soft pliable, you know what I mean? So just thinking about a $20 a box, you know, 15 times, 2300, you know, the other thing is like four 50, I mean, that’s a huge delta, right? So utilization is so critical to this, to this vertical integration that we do. We spend all of our time trying to make sure we sequence the fruits so we get the most box packages per box, you know, per bin sold into the market. Sounds simple. It’s really hard to do it. Really great <laugh>,
Charles:
I would imagine. So it sounds, it doesn’t really sound that simple. It sounds like it’s a lot of work to, uh, maintain everything between, everything from, you know, from vine all the way to sale, you know what I mean too.
George:
Um, it’s a, but I mean it makes a difference.
Charles:
How does your company like yours, I mean, protected your downside risk? I mean, environmental risk, uh, obviously where you’ve located it minimizes some of that, but how do you kind of protect yourself against, uh, any other environmental risk that could damage your crops?
George:
Well, first of all, we have, we take the maximum crop insurance and everything we have. So there’s federally sponsored crop insurance on everything. And basically what that does, it protects you like all your inputs for the year are covered by that. So if you had a wipe out year, like it rained, like hail wiped out your crop, you get all your farming back and start and try it again next year, big, that’s a big thing because, you know, without that it’d be super risky, right? And, and the fed is figured out it’s better to subsidize a little bit each year than have a national disaster one year. And then they pay all the money in the universe in and they, it is really a bad deal. So that works really good. Um, we have a, we have a lot of water, which mitigates a lot of the problems other people are having, don’t have a lot of water, right? I mean, we only buy where there’s a lot of water. So when it gets really hot, you know, we can dump the water on and, and the trees aren’t stressed and they’re fine. So, I mean, it’s things like that in the area we’re in, it’s, it’s a, it’s a critical, I mean, I wouldn’t wanna try to do this in other places. People are doing it. So your odds are not that great.
Charles:
So George, what would you say is some of the top reasons why investors would need or should have farmland in their portfolio?
George:
I mean, I, you know, like I’m all in on ag, right? I mean, I used to be, I, I’m, I’m not a believer in the stock market personally. I grew up in New York around the penny stock craze and half of my friends were crooks. They were doing it, it seemed like to me. And I just have a, I just never have done it. We’ve done hard money lending and stuff like that, but we’ve never been to stock market. So I’m not, I just don’t understand that why people would want to buy air, you know what I mean? It’s like, you know, 50 times earnings, I just don’t get that. Yeah. But I would say, you know what, what happens in my experience, and if you look at history, these assets, the good ones, like we’re gonna do appreciate two to 3% a year forever is what happens.
George:
It’s gonna continue to happen, right? And then, you know, we sell stuff a dollar at a time, right? You go to the store, you buy an orange, it’s 50 cents, right? We pick fruit, put it in a box, ship it to market. I mean, people are buying more and more fruit and less and less junk all the time as the millennials grow up. And I mean, it’s, it’s a growth market worldwide. You know, supply is shrinking every day. So, you know, I think it’s a safe place to be like, you know, I’m not cheering for, for recession. We do better in recessions cuz people don’t go out to eat during recessions. They go to the store. So if you look at our business over the last 20 years, when you have a little tougher environmental stuff, we did better. So, you know, and I, and I don’t think people should dump tons of money into ag, but I think and what we’re, what we’re offering, I mean, I would, I mean, I got a lot of my very close friends that are doing this with me because they’ve seen what I’ve done over the last 30 years and they want a little exposure to it.
George:
You know, not a lot, but they want, you know, they’re putting a hundred grand in or something, they’re maybe worth 5 million or something like that. So I think people, I mean, it’s safe, it’s predictable and then you’re making your, I mean you’re making two, 3% a year and you’re gonna make, I don’t know, five, 6% minimum on your cash flow. You know, it is, there’s, there’s huge depreciation benefits in this. So you, you shelter your income the first four or five years as we go, and then you recapture later at cap gains rates. So it’s pretty efficient. And then we’re in this thing called the Williamson Act, where property taxes are real low on Ag land, so you get a benefit there. So I mean, it’s a, it’s a very safe growth industry because people are gonna keep eating this stuff forever and the better we we’re in one of the best places on earth to do it. Just, you know, climatically and soil wise. So that’s why I would do it.
Charles:
George, you mentioned cashflow. What is something, when does cash flow normally start on one of your deals? Now obviously it can differ deal to deal, and some are at different stages, but what does it usually start time-wise from someone? Time they invest till time they get a distribution.
George:
It, it, it depends on what we’re buying, right? So this new program we’re doing, we’ve done three, we’ve done about 20 million, right? We’ve done three deals. If you count the one we’re about to close mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
George:
They’re starting in year one or two because all these things are mature, right? And it grows a little bit because there’s, invariably there’s a block we need to replace or it’s young and not producing yet. But, you know, it, it kind of, it’s like seven to 10% moving up kind of. If you, if you look at the first 20 million, it’s, it’s immediate return basically in, in, you know, in the 14 months after we close will be the first distribution of about seven to 10% probably. So, I mean, but, but I mean, as we go forward, that’s why I’m encouraging people on this last deal we have because it’s, it’s fully done, ready to go. It’s making money a little bit. It’s gonna get better and better over the next couple of years. You know, we gotta go build it now, it’s gonna be tougher. It’s gonna be like four years before you get cash flow, which I’m not sure how the, it’s gonna be harder to find people that, I mean, you, you get a better product at the end and it’s pretty good execution, but still people want money quicker than that generally. Yeah. So, but the ones we’re doing now are pretty immediate.
Charles:
Okay. Interesting. So over the years of your working career, what have you found, um, or even since you started your farm business, what have you found to be your biggest challenge?
George:
This will sound strange, but you know, one thing I, you know, I’m, I’m a guy who believes, you know, I don’t need to do everything. There’s, there’s people that are better than me at everything, right? And I got this ag space and I’m hiring these theoretical experts to do a lot of different things in our last 30 years, I fired all of ’em. I’ve done it all myself and my own people because we never came out with the experts because they were working for themselves. They had other clients. They were not as capable as they per said they were. They didn’t care as much. So the biggest learning curve, you know, I just don’t think I can do it better than the expert, right? I just, I’m, I’m, I went, I mean, I’m a confident guy, but it’s the weirdest thing, right? Because I just, I figured out we can do it better than everybody else, just like the other guys have figured out over their careers. And you know, I always, I always thought people are like little insular, you know what I mean? Like, why are they that way? Why are they using and the reason is because you do better. So that’s been a huge, huge learning curve for me to adapt to using our own people hiring the best. But they have to work for you where they’re, where you control their day-to-day activities and they’re all in on making you more successful as a company. So anyway, that’s a, that’s been a big, big thing for me.
Charles:
Great answer. So George, how has, uh, your relationship towards money changed over the years from starting from, uh, not so much money to, you know, all the properties and all the land that you guys have now?
George:
You know, I, I have three sons that are wonderful, great, really successful, great kids, 20, 29, 27, 25. Great. You know, and I, and I’ve been, I think I’ve been smart enough in my life. I told them from the beginning, it doesn’t matter. The money’s not important. It’s the ride. You know, you gotta enjoy what you gotta do. You gotta have great relationships with people you gotta enjoy. And I’ve been lucky, I met some of the most interesting people on earth, my private equity days. And you know, I just, and and and and also the idea of, you know, I’d rather make less doing it my way. So, you know, and I mean, you know, I was a poor kid, hungry. I wanted to make money. I mean, that was my main thing. I was a paper boy when I was a little kid. And the people where I grew up still remember me as this little kid saying, I’m gonna be a player someday.
George:
I didn’t even know what that meant. <laugh>, you know, and I was five years old, so, you know, so I was a hungry, wanted to make money kind of kid. And, you know, and I, and I was very lucky, made some money early in my, and you know, and I, my family was much more driven by doing the right thing, being a good person, and being happy. And I’ve always been that way, you know what I mean? I, I, I’m, I don’t wanna go out of business, so I’m, I’m focused, but I’m, I, money’s not that important to me. You know? What I do is really important to me, but, you know, the money comes if you do a good job. And, and, and, and my wife and I are a family. We’re not consumers of giant amounts of money. You know, we don’t need, you know what I mean? We just have a normal life and you know, and we, we do nice things. We go to nice places and stuff once in a while. But, you know, we’re much more, you know, we’re a million. The book The Millionaire Next Door, you know? Yeah. The guy next door, it looks like he’s, yeah, I mean, I wear the same jeans every day. They, people at the, at the McDonald’s think I’m some bagman, you know, I mean, so it’s, I mean it’s different that way.
Charles:
Uh, it’s such a great book. Great Pull that like 20, 30 years old. That’s a fantastic book my dad gave. Thats me when I was, when I was young. Um, but very interesting and very true. Uh, older I get the more I learn. That’s true. But, um, so George, how can our listeners learn more about you, your business and your offerings?
George:
Yeah, I mean, we have a really good website that we’ve worked on really hard. It’s, it’s brata farm capital.com. And we put, we’ve spent a lot of time explaining n video form what we do, right? And, and if you sign up for it, you know, you’re not signing up to buy anything. You’re signing up to get our information. Also, there are some really great testimonials in there for friends of mine and associates of mine have invested with me from one guy the was a chairman of Air American Airlines that was successful guy in the world. I mean, and how he and I got together, I mean, it’s, if people want to know kind of about us, those testimonials are great because they’re from the heart, from guys that just didn’t know anything about me or what we do that have been investing for 10 years with us and how they, you know, it’s, it’s really interesting.
George:
And then we have a lot of stuff about what stuff means, you know, like for instance, ranches don’t trade on cap rates, they trade by the acre. That’s why the values are low, lower than they should be. I mean, on Mandarins you at the cut stuff, I mean that stuff, I mean we’re, that stuff’s trading at 40, 50,000 an acre at an eight cap rate, it’d be 200,000 an acre, right? Yeah. People would never pay that because their, their condition that cap rates don’t matter. Very predictable too. It’s every year you’re making good money on that stuff. So we have a whole section on this, on our website about how, why that is. So, I mean, it is good. It’s good. And I would always to say, you know, I don’t know when this podcast is gonna air, but, you know, we have four weeks to go on this offering we’re doing, it’s real good. So, you know, anybody’s listening, you know, and they really like this idea. This ranch is almost foolproof. You know, we only got 300,000 to go at a 4 million. But, you know, if somebody was interested, they, they should, they should hit the website and go look at it cause it’s real good and we’re not, get something that’s good for a while, put it that way because it’s just gonna be hard to replicate, you know?
Charles:
Awesome. Well, um, thanks so much. I was on your website for about an hour yesterday preparing for this episode. So it was, there’s a lot of information on there and a lot of terms that I wasn’t, uh, aware of or familiar with. Um, I was able to get cleared up. So anybody that’s really interested at all with learning more about ag farmland, definitely go over to his website. And I wanna thank you so much for coming on today, George.
George:
Hey, I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
Charles:
Have a great rest of your day.
George:
Nice. See ya.
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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George has spent the last 20 years building a vertically integrated farming business. In the early 1990’s he started with a small vineyard and winery development in the Napa Valley of California. This initial taste of farming ignited a new passion for agriculture and investing in the San Joaquin Valley.
In the past 20 years Bravante Farm Capital has acquired over $175 million in agricultural assets including, citrus, table grapes, wine grapes, stone fruit and pistachios.
Before founding Bravante Farm Capital, He spent 10 years in the real estate private equity business as the President of Colony Advisors, Inc. Prior to Colony George was the President of American Real Estate Group where he led the managed liquidation of $15 billion in real estate assets of the then failed American Savings Bank.
While at Colony in the early 1990’s, George acquired, managed and sold at huge profits a roughly $2 billion portfolio of multi-family apartment buildings and while running the American Real Estate Group, he managed a multi-family portfolio of $3 billion. On his own account, George has owned and sold apartments for roughly $40 million.
Before his time in private equity, he worked for Ernst & Young. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting.
George currently serves on the board of directors of Sabre Corporation and of the KBS Growth & Income REIT.
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