Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Impact

Podcast hiatus.

Dear friends of all things good in real estate.

The year has been too busy (all good) resulting in too little time for podcasts (a little bad). This is a little bad because I love my podcast show – I get to talk to such remarkable people working on such remarkable things.

Now the “busy” has reached a level that I cannot ignore. To give you context here’s a taste of my daily life: A complete (unexpected) renovation of a tiny lake cottage up in northwestern Pennsylvania that has now stretched on for 8 months; an innovative housing project in the heart of Melbourne (Australia) with Breathe Studio that just broke ground (meaning I will have to be there for a month or two in the fall); five new partners who have joined me on Small Change to take it to the next level; a coworking space in a property I developed in ‘the aughts’ that we recently took over, to grow and diversify for the local community.

Since I’m no superwoman, I need to take a brief podcasting break. Will you forgive me?

I’m looking forward to being back at the mic in the spring. I appreciate all the positive feedback and with your patience, I’ll have more amazing people to introduce you to in 2025.

Yours forever in real estate.

PS. Now might be a good moment to catch up on some old podcasts but good ones here, or your favorite podcast feed.

The case for social housing.

The opera and apple strudel are the hottest tickets in Vienna these days, right?

Wrong!  US natives are invading the Austrian capital to take a look at their social housing projects.  Hordes of politicians, housing advocates and journalists tromping the cobblestones, trying to understand how housing can be more than just a profit center, and probably eating a little apple strudel on the side.  It’s part of the culture.

What’s special about these housing projects?  Through cross-subsidization they offer high-quality housing to everyone.  Rent is based on income with high income earners subsidizing low income earners.  Rent can be as low as 4% of income.

Equal opportunity for everyone. 

Fast Company asks, “Will the U.S. ever embrace social housing?” And we wonder too. The housing market is driven by profit here.  What happens when non-profit projects really start to compete?

Pittsburgh champion.

If you’re looking for examples of urban revitalization, look no farther than Pittsburgh. 

We can thank people like Shawn Kichline, principal of Oxide Real Estate Development, for embracing the gritty urbanism of this city (where I live), and showing through his redevelopment efforts how livable and appealing it can be. 

A few years ago, Shawn used the real estate crowdfunding platform (Small Change) to raise $238,500 in equity to acquire and redevelop the Buvinger Building, located at 4407 Butler Street. This was his first solo project. He redeveloped the historic building in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood into some rather lovely apartments and a pretty hip ground-floor restaurant reminiscent of Asian street-food stalls.

The results were striking, and even more so were the financial returns. Investors were fully repaid with a 21+% IRR.  With this leg up, Shawn has moved on to larger projects … and so has Small Change.

Pittsburgh is known as the City of Champions and we think Shawn is one of them.

Take a look at  Shawn’s successful crowdfunding campaign and tell us if you agree.

Inage by Jonathan Greene

From $124,000 to $350,000.

Maybe this is not super big news to you, but it is to me.

In plain English, there’s a recommendation on the table that if approved by the SEC, will permit small businesses to raise up to $350,000 without the burdensome financial review requirements that currently exist.

This promises to be a momentous change for the small-scale developers who come to my SmallChange.co platform seeking to raise a little capital from friends and family, neighbors and enthusiasts. It will simplify and speed up the process for them AND reduce their costs.

And all of this inches us towards a more level playing field, making it a little simpler for small, women and minority developers to get a foothold in the very un-level landscape of real estate development.

A big thank you to the SEC Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee for pushing this forward. Here’s their recommendation.

Small tranches.

It’s not efficient to finance a $430 million project with small tranches of capital. And yet Small Change is.

In early April 2024, Small Change, launched an investment opportunity into 22 Drydock Avenue in Boston’s Seaport district. The property is slated to be the city’s first life sciences building to achieve LEED Platinum and net-zero carbon emissions and has very lofty DEI goals.

Related Companies (led by a woman) was selected a few years ago by the City of Boston to develop 22 Drydock, an R & D building to be fully occupied by Vertex Pharmaceuticals (led by a woman). And Boston Real Estate Inclusion Fund (BREIF), negotiated a small position ($3.75 million) in the $130 million equity stack required for the project.

Put another way, they further diversified the capital stack from a single, big, diverse investor to now include multiple investors—over 40 women and people of color. While the offering is not exclusively available to that group, BREIF is using its network to target diverse capital.

This is an opportunity to invest alongside the big boys. While (disappointingly) it is not open to non-accredited investors (you can take that up with the SEC), it is a very big step forward to providing opportunity where normally there is none.

Read the Q & A here. But be quick. BREIF is closing in rapidly on it’s maximum funding goal.

Image courtesy of BREIF