101 – How to Be a Developer and a Multifamily Syndicator as a Millennial With Jay Chang

Synopsis

Jay is a real estate investor based in Los Angeles and currently works for a real estate investment company that creates large commercial developments. In this episode, we’ll talk about transitioning from a traditional engineering career into real estate and how to get into multifamily syndications as a millennial.

Key points

Investing While Working A Full-Time Job

Jay shares about his full-time job in construction management at CIM Group. He elaborates that his role involves anything from managing subcontractors, building inquiries, managing the schedule, to managing the budget. He is also in-charge of entitlements, and in some cases, handles re-designs to make the project cheaper. All these while doing his side hustle in apartment syndication.

Challenges In His Job

Since Jay is very hands-on with his work, he directly deals with people, especially inspectors and city planners. This can be very challenging at times because, as Jay pointed out, some of them are very picky. If you’re lucky you’ll get to deal with nice inspectors and city planners, but basically doing a project will always be different because you don’t who you’re going to get every time.

Apartment Syndication As A Side-Hustle

As mentioned earlier, Jay does apartment syndications as a side-hustle in addition to his job in construction management. Here, his primary role is pulling money together for deals, analyzing deals, talking to brokers, and networking with investors. He is primarily looking in properties in Phoenix where he is raising funds from $5 million to $10 million.

On How He Started In Apartment Syndication

Not happy that he’s not acquiring enough deal-making skills as he wants to in his current job, Jay took actions to learn as much as he can. He started going to some meetups and there he discovered about the idea of apartment syndications and how he can do it even if he’s not working in a company. Still eager to learn more and start on his own, Jay has started his own meetup group in downtown LA.

On Looking For Syndication Deals

Jay shares that what’s challenging about doing a side-hustle, which in his case is apartment syndication, while doing a full-time job is looking for deals. It is difficult nowadays and having a job only makes it harder as it is unrealistic. Jay’s solution to this challenge is to be heavily involved in networking with investors and brokers especially in places he wants to invest in.

Talking About Buying Criteria

In terms of apartment complexes, Jay and his team look for properties they can add more value rather than stabilized ones. For Jay, a good property is one where they can add value to at least 40% of units. If the property has been value-added to multiple times in the past, then it’s not what they’re looking for.

Maximizing Learning Resources

As Jay pointed out, finding a badass mentor to help you learn is difficult. However, what you can do instead is to maximize the learning resources that are available like podcasts, websites like BiggerPockets, books, etc. In Jay’s experience, even just listening to podcasts on your way to the gym makes a lot of difference after a year.

References

More from our guest

• Hestia Capital