Investment Opportunities, Finding Land to Develop, and More (Office Hours)
The discussion covered Tyler Cauble's recent investment opportunities, insights from filming deal case studies, adaptive reuse strategies, the role of YouTube in his business, and tips for commercial real estate markets and deal timelines.
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Key Takeaways:
Tyler discussed new investment opportunities through his syndication platform and encouraged listeners interested in investing to contact him.
He shared stories from deals he has filmed for his YouTube series to provide a full picture of deals beyond just the outcomes.
Adaptive reuse of vacant office space into flex/industrial space was highlighted as a good opportunity currently.
Networking and using YouTube has become a major part of Tyler's business and how he sources deals and clients.
Markets like Chattanooga, Greenville, Asheville, and Huntsville were mentioned as up-and-coming smaller markets to watch.
Deals can take a long time, with one of Tyler's taking 3 years already, so having multiple deals and projects helps stay motivated during long timelines.
About Your Host:
Tyler Cauble, Founder & President of The Cauble Group, is a commercial real estate broker and investor based in East Nashville. He’s the best selling author of Open for Business: The Insider’s Guide to Leasing Commercial Real Estate and has focused his career on serving commercial real estate investors.
Episode Transcript:
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This episode of the commercial real estate investor podcast is brought to you by cre launch Pro. This online commercial real estate program is designed to take you from beginner to pro commercial real estate investor with access to all of my courses, our online community, and monthly group coaching calls. Learn how to confidently buy your first commercial property today at www dot c r e launch pro.com.
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Welcome back to the commercial real estate investor podcast live from Nashville, Tennessee in the cowboy group studios. Today with another episode of office hours. This is the weekly livestream that I do to answer any and all questions that you have around commercial real estate. So if you want some free coaching, I guess you get what you pay for. But jump in ask your questions in the live chat. And I'm happy to get to it. Let's talk about some updates real quick before we dive in any questions. So this I guess it was yesterday, I posted on my Instagram story about some new investment opportunities that we are working on at the moment. For those of you that have been following me for a while you probably know that I syndicate all of our commercial real estate investment projects. Well, the majority of them, some of them I just bought with a couple friends. They're done through what's called a 506 b syndication, meaning I have to have a pre existing relationship with you in order for you to invest in our properties. But you don't necessarily have to be an accredited investor, you just have to know how real estate investing works. So if you are interested in jumping in on some of our investment opportunities this year, go to Tyler cauble.com/invest. And we'll set up a phone call and be happy to talk to you about what we got going on there. This week has been fun. We've shot two stories of the deal. That is my favorite YouTube series we've got going on right now. It's the content that I wish I had when I first got started in commercial real estate. So it's you know, the story behind the deal, right? The full story, not just a hey, look at how amazing this is that we did it. Now it's we're getting into, you know, how did you find it? How did you fund it? How did you raise the money? What went wrong? What went right? What was different from what you expected getting into this project? And what were the returns? How much money did you actually make on this project? Was it even profitable, some of them are not. So it's been a fun week, getting to work on content like that. I always enjoy you know, really diving into these projects. I mean, it's just a it's a fun thing for me to kind of play journalist right and and learn a little bit about what's going on in other people's deals. This week, if you're in Nashville, we are having a happy hour. At base six, we are doing that I probably should have booked up the time before I went live. We're doing that tomorrow at 5pm Central Standard Time. So that's Wednesday, April 3 at basics that's at the wash here in Nashville. So anybody is welcome to come on out. If you're interested in commercial real estate, come grab a drink and hang with us. Josephine Safford and I are going to be hosting that. And we're doing that monthly, we used to do this a little while back, we would host a monthly happy hour, we kind of both got a little bit busy, and it fell off track. So now we're getting back to it. And we're looking forward to connecting with you all. You know, we're also we have been working our tails off trying to get ahead on YouTube, right now we're basically doing the videos a week before they post, which, you know, isn't the worst thing in the world. But it would be a little bit nicer if we could get ahead and have you know, several weeks of room just in case it's tough. You know, especially with the type of content that we do. It's it's very time intensive, labor intensive. And, you know, just thought intensive honestly, with the way that we want to make sure that we're portraying everything so that it's it's best received and understood. Because a lot of the topics that we talked about in commercial real estate can be very complicated. So hopefully, we'll be able to get ahead of that here in the next month or two. We're looking forward to that. Because, you know, it's it's a lot of work. I didn't expect this getting into the YouTube side of things, I thought that it would just kind of be you know, a little part time thing that I do here and there. But it has become almost my full time job. And a lot of people were surprised by that. I'm actually spending more time on YouTube than I am just about anything else other than running our investments. At this point. You know, I used to spend the majority of my time focused on brokerage, working with a property management company. Fortunately now I've got you know, amazing teams that are handling all of that for us, otherwise I couldn't be doing this. But it does, you know, YouTube's interesting, it generates 70 to 80% of the business for my companies now you know whether that's, you know, people that are looking for, you know, to buy investments anywhere in the country, we work on Triple Net investments across the country. We've got people that want to invest with us at our at Hamilton and then you know, of course Have the group coaching coaching courses, stuff like that, which is a lot of fun to get to do, but it's interesting. I mean, you know, YouTube is totally changed the way that we do business. I saw an interesting article this morning from his now that I wanted to dive into this my buddy Dave, CO, Dre. If you're familiar with Greenleaf Dave was actually in our investors roundtable for a little bit. But you know, he's he had always talked about how you could convert single and two storey office spaces into industrial flex. And, you know, this is this article actually highlights him and what they're doing. I think it's pretty fascinating this from biz now. It says more than 30% of office spaces in metro Atlanta are vacant. That's crazy, like 30%. That's a crazy amount. So you know, there's a lot of owners that are trying to embrace adaptive reuse, convert underutilized office space into multifamily, industrial or other assets. And Dave's Dave's company Greenleaf is converting a lot of these into more attractive uses without breaking the bank. You know, he typically spends anywhere from 10 to $20 a square foot to convert these these offices into flex space. So you know, they're doing a very cost effectively. Let's see, he says, while some of these properties may look deserted on the outside, they're actually in excellent shape on the inside with quality amenities, a sound layout and strong market potential due to being in a prime location. That's the great thing about converting these older office spaces into flex space. Even if it's an older office building, it's still going to be higher quality than a lot of industrial space. Right. So you know, the office spaces, the restrooms, etc. And then you've got drop ceilings, which you know, typically have taller ceilings above that. So rip the drop ceilings out. And, you know, see what you can do there. Let's see, he's also saying, you know, one property that they deemed ideal for flex conversion was formed flex a single storey business park in Peachtree corners, a northern suburb of Atlanta. It was a two building property built in 1998, and enjoyed high occupancy for many years, until a large move out happened, which left the property 59% vacant. Greenleaf saw that as an opportunity. So they I mean, they said it's got a great layout, natural lighting and space, it was cost effective opportunity to bring new life into this excellent sub market. So you know, one thing to think about as you're going out there, I mean, you know, a lot of a lot of people that I talked to, through this channel are interested in developing their own new construction, flex space. That's not the easiest thing to do. It's not I mean, it's relatively easy compared to the majority of, you know, different commercial assets that you could be developing out there. But development is not easy. Development is actually the hardest thing you could do in commercial real estate. In my opinion, a lot of people make it seem like it's a lot easier than it really is. And it's not, I mean, typically, I'm recommending to clients, like, get in, get out there, get, you know, two to three properties under your belt. And then let's talk about what it looks like to get into development. However, doing adaptive reuse like this, going out and finding a single or two storey office building and converting it into flex, that's relatively straightforward. Now you need to make sure that the zoning applies, and that, you know, hopefully, your MEP, and everything else is sufficient. But that's a good opportunity right now, you might be able to get some office space on discount and get out there and converted into flex. Let's, let's get into some questions here. Real career Young Money is saying how would you find commercial property to develop, working to build a warehouse in Chattanooga, Tennessee, hard to find land to build? Well, that's kind of funny considering everything I just said about development. But real I'm gonna assume that you've been doing commercial real estate for a while. I mean, there's there's a ton of land out there to develop. I mean, Chattanooga has a bunch of open land everywhere you go. I mean, whether you're, you know, going south towards Rossville, you're going north, towards Red Bank. I mean, there's, there's been Soddy Daisy, and there's plenty of land out there for you to build. So what I would do is just go out, find a major corridor that you like, and start driving and get, you know, 1015 minutes outside of town and see what sorts popping up because that's where the lands going to be more affordable. And you know, the types of tenants that you're going to be going for when it comes to this flex space, are not going to be as picky about needing to be right downtown. That's the one thing that I realized, you know, a lot of people struggle with is that they think, oh, you know, I want to build flex space. I need land, it's like in the hottest area of town. No, you really don't want that because it's just gonna be unbelievably expensive. Nobody's gonna be able to pay the rent that you're going to need in order to, you know, justify the cost, the build cost, so that's what I would recommend for that. Here's another article from biz now that I wanted to cover because we met Bob Knakal in Atlanta. Not too long ago, he announced today that he is starting his new investment sales firm with a focus on AI, which I think is pretty interesting. Artificial intelligence was part of the conversation that Bob and I had when, when we were down in Atlanta. And you know, I think we're actually releasing this video this week. So you'll see it.
I think it's actually going out today. Yeah, it's going out today at 530. So stay tuned. Today 5:30pm Central Standard Time, we've got a video on Bob Knakal, the interview with Bob Knakal going out. But he said in the interview, you know, if you're not going to be replaced by AI, if you're a commercial real estate broker, but you certainly will be replaced by somebody using AI. And I thought that that was a pretty interesting quote. So you know, he's, he's going in all in on AI looks like he's hired Seth sandwich who boasts an AI background and has worked at tech companies, Uber and square as his coo team consists of seven people which Knakal plans to grow to between 15 and 20. You know, good to see him going out and restarting his own firm again, he was with JLL for a little bit, you know, Mackey nasil, was his brokerage firm back in the day. And he was very intentional about doing that. He went out, grew it and wanted to be acquired and sell it. And he did that. And then, you know, worked for some corporate firms for a little bit. And now he's, he's getting back to it. But, you know, I think it's, I think it's really interesting to see that, you know, Bob Knakal, who's one of the best brokers out there, I mean, he's sold over $24 billion, with a commercial real estate that is billion with a B, he's had multiple years over one and $2 billion in sales. Even he is leaning into AI. So that's, you know, one thing that I'll challenge you, how are you using AI in your business? What are you doing to stay ahead of the curve? When it comes to AI? John is saying, Tyler, good morning, what's the best way to get into commercial real estate as a career without being location dependent analyst roles? Hmm, yeah, John, I would say being an analyst is probably the best, like location independent role in commercial real estate out there. I mean, of course, you can be a virtual assistant, but that's not really going to get you as to where you want to be. Being an analyst is great, though, because it's at the end of the day, it's just market data, you can do that from anywhere, you can make the phone calls to the market to get you know, you know, talk to appraisers talk to brokers, boots on the ground, whatever, to collect all the data that you need. You can underwrite from a coffee shop anywhere in the world, it doesn't really matter. I think that, you know, being an analyst is pretty good. It's like you couldn't be a broker, right? Because you've got to be on the ground building relationships. You couldn't be a developer because you got to be on the ground building relationships. I mean, that's, that's the toughest thing about real estate in general, is that you are very location dependent. I mean, I've thought about that before. I mean, fortunately, I love Nashville, and I never want to leave the city, I could see myself having a second home somewhere else eventually. But I don't ever want to leave you know, this this town. And if I did, it'd be kind of devastating. I mean, it's you know, you're not necessarily starting all over by going to a new city. But you're starting over from fresh, starting over fresh. It's it's difficult because now you got to get out there and rebuild all of those relationships that were so important when you were getting started and building your business so Yeah, certainly something to think about. I mean, I get asked all the time, like you know, I want to do commercial real estate Should I do it in my you know, smaller town? Or should I go ahead and move to a big city? And my answer is usually just where do you want to be where do you see yourself in next 10 to 15 years like if you don't want to be in a big city, stay where you are, I mean, you know, your your income potential may be capped, but you're gonna love where you live and the cost of living is probably lower. You know, if you don't like where you live, then yeah, go ahead and move somewhere else and start your commercial real estate career there. That way you don't have to worry about you know, switching midstream because that is not easy. I've got a couple of buddies that have done it and man it's it's tough because you basically have to spend the first six months in any market you move into just networking like crazy to meet every single person you can max love interest saying, Hey, Tyler, appreciate the work you put in for us absolutely Max happy to do a man. Which asset type is currently the best investment opportunity. Can you list a few up and coming commercial real estate markets there aren't as well known. So Max, you know, it's it's tough for me to say which asset type is really the best investment opportunity. In my opinion, it comes down to what is your skill set? What are you willing to learn the best? And what do you enjoy? Right? Like what do you actually love? Because I think that any asset class could actually be just as good as anything else. I don't think that there's one where it's like, yeah, this is the clear winner. I think it comes down to the market. The investor, the strategy, there's so many different factors that go into it. You know, look, I think multifamily is bloated right now. But there are also people out there that are finding really good multifamily deals and making great money, right. It's very rare. But I mean, people are doing it. I love industrial right now, just because I think that there is a very long term opportunity for industrial, I see a lot of, you know, manufacturing coming back to the United States at some point. So to me, it seems like that's going to be a very good long term investment. And it's also relatively Amazon proof, right? Because you've got the service businesses that can't really be replaced by ecommerce. You know, we're talking plumber, plumbing, electric, electric, you know, podcast studios, whatever you want, that can kind of go into a flex space. So I do like industrial. You know, look, I think self storage is also bloated in many ways unless you're building because the cap rates are just so low. But again, there's people out there that are buying successful Self Storage deals. I do love industrial outdoor storage. I mean, if you want to talk about, you know, up and coming, markets that people may not, that may not be as well known. I mean, I'm in Nashville, so I'm paying more attention to the markets that are immediately around me. I love Chattanooga. I mean, hands down. What an amazing city. My girlfriend's parents live in Greenville, South Carolina, that market is awesome. I think you know, Asheville, North Carolina is pretty interesting. I like Huntsville, Alabama. I wish Birmingham would take off, because Birmingham is really cool, but it just doesn't quite seem to be able to get there. So yeah, I mean, those are probably the markets that I'm paying attention to most that are you know, smaller that people may not necessarily be paying attention to. Oh, Jeff, what's going on, buddy? Good to get to see you, man. saying good morning. Just wanted to say I love these live shows looking forward to visiting CCC and talking more about how to best share my redemption story through commercial real estate as I rebuild real time. Jeff, good to see you, man. Thanks for jumping in the live stream. Glad to hear you're enjoying it. And I'm looking forward to seeing you here at CCC in Nashville and catching up. Had a lot of fun in Vermont. So for those of y'all that don't know, Jeff is a brother of mine and go abundance, our mastermind. And so he's he's coming to visit me in Nashville. So we're gonna have some fun. Looking forward to seeing you, Jeff. What actually, while you're here, why don't we get you in the studio, we'll just go live, we'll talk about your story, I think it'd be a lot of fun. shoot me a text. I know, I'm not the best at texting you back. But I promise I will respond to evidence, say if you had to choose what would be easier to lease out 1000 square feet of storage with electric or 1000 to 3000 square foot flex space. Also, in regards to networking, what's the best way to meet others in commercial real estate? Who else and I would probably go with 1000 to 3000 square feet of flex space. But it depends I mean, is this the same space. And you're gonna have to deliver the flex space with more work into it, like you're gonna have to spend more money, I would kind of run the cost benefit analysis of having to invest that capital into it to determine, you know, if it's going to be worth it. But typically, like storage is great. But unless you have storage at scale, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, you know, for 1000 square feet of storage, do you get to be able to get 1000 bucks a month, you know, I would imagine maybe 500 bucks a month. I mean, I think it'd be tough to get 1000 bucks a month unless somebody has something really nice they want to store. Whereas on the on the flex space side, I mean, people will be willing to pay well over $1,000 a month, if they're able to operate their business out of there. So just something I would look into. It depends on the market. Of course, I would go and make sure that I understood exactly what the you know, occupancy. Vacancy rates are which tenants are moving in the market. But at the end of the day couldn't hurt to kind of advertise for both, right? I mean, sometimes, that's what we'll do on some of our assets is just market it for any potential user that we think might be a fit. Let's bring him in and see if we can get
Jake is saying Tyler, glad to finally catch one of these live. Yeah, Jake. Glad you're able to join us, man. How do you stay motivated, working on deals and building a business when sometimes deals take three to five years to get done? Oh, that's a brutal question. Because I am. I'm in the middle of a project right now. That is some serious deal fatigue. We've been working on this. It's on my salt ranch Hotel. We've been working on it since 2021. So going on three years, and we're just now about to get our permits. It's taken us two years to get permits from the city. I mean, Nashville is just absolutely miserable to deal with. There's an there's a developer that just announced two weeks ago That suing the city over the permitting process. I wish they would open that up to a class action lawsuit because I would happily jump in. But it's it's tough because you know, the city doesn't want to seem to fix the problem. And what are you going to do sue the city, then you're going to create a bunch of enemies that don't really I mean, it's just there's a lot of red tape and politics involved. And I think it's BS, but it needs to be fixed. So yeah, I mean, when you're, when you're dealing with deals like that. I mean, I guess you just focus on a bunch of different things, right? I mean, I've got the salt ranch Hotel. Of course, if that was the only thing I was working on that, yeah, be absolutely miserable. But we've also got, you know, the deal out in Chattanooga, we're working, you know, putting together a second version of the wash, we're looking at an indoor climate controlled self storage to build, we're looking at doing some industrial outdoor storage, I'm looking at a single tenant net lease deal. There's so much that we have going on. So it's not like that's the only thing that's consuming my mind day in and day out. So I mean, that's probably how I do it. And also, I guess I'm just kind of used to it. That's, that's really just what this business is, you know, for the last 10 years, it's always been that way. And I say last 10 years, because that's what I've been in the business. But it's been that way since you know, the dawn of time, it takes forever to get any of these deals done. But I mean, also kind of think that's a good thing, right? I mean, it keeps the people that are not serious about commercial real estate out of the industry describe. John is saying what is the best way to get phone numbers to cold call prospects? Thanks for your time, Tyler. Absolutely, John. So the best way is, I mean, there's a couple different ways. I mean, one, you can just go on their Instagram or Facebook and see, you know, what number where it goes, sometimes LinkedIn also has that, right? I mean, that would probably be the office number four, you know, but if you're cold calling, the office number is probably the one that you're gonna want, right? You're gonna get to the gatekeeper, you're gonna say, hey, you know, this is so and so is Jimmy there, whatever, right? Sometimes they'll just patch you right through. The other way, is just look up where we kept their address on, you know, white pages. You can also there's some AI out there, forget what they're called, you know, there's different kinds of AI that you could use, I think you could use something like zoom info, to get phone numbers. So there's many different ways to do it, you could do the volume, which would be like going for a zoom info paying $1,000 month for subscription, and just calling a bunch of people. Or you could be you know, more intentional and you know, take it more of a sniper approach. And just spend as much time as you can on the websites and this and that, and the other, trying to find that information. To be honest with you, I haven't cold called and probably over five years, maybe over seven years. So I'm not very caught up on that I haven't had to, because I went out and created all sorts of different fishing lines. For me to catch fish while I'm out hunting, which my hunting has always been networking in person and meeting people in person that we don't have to cold call. So hope that helps John Kelly, G'day, y'all. Thanks for doing these live chats Tyler so informative. Of course, Kelly happy to do it. These are. These are always a lot of fun for me. It's, it's good to go live with you all and catch up on commercial real estate and see what's going on. It's never never a bad time. It's always fun to me. We've got what 65 People live with us right now, which is pretty cool to see. But yeah, there's a whole bunch going on. And who knows? Who knows what we're going to be doing next. That's the fun thing about this stuff. Right? So well if there are not any other questions, and we'll just go ahead and call it a day. Appreciate you all for joining me live and we will see y'all in next office hours.
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This episode of the commercial real estate investor podcast is brought to you by cre launch Pro. This online commercial real estate program is designed to take you from beginner to pro commercial real estate investor with access to all of my courses, our online community and monthly group coaching calls. Learn how to confidently buy your first commercial property today at www dot c r e launch pro.com
Each week, I'm going live at 8:30am CST for my "office hours" to answer your questions about commercial real estate on the show. Let's hear what you'd like to know when it comes to brokerage, investment, and development!