Speaker 1: You know, this narrative about gentrification happens over and over
Speaker 1: and over, and I was like, man, I know.
Speaker 2: A few of us that are flipping.
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody that's really trying to get into
Speaker 1: the development game, and you know, kind of change the
Speaker 1: narrative so we have some control over that. So twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: that's when I decided to kind of get off into that.
Speaker 3: So what you buying land in twenty thirteen was that
Speaker 3: the next step.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was going to buy. I
Speaker 1: just knew what I was gonna do is stop flipping
Speaker 1: and try to figure it out. So I just started
Speaker 1: talking about it, and man, it came full circle. That
Speaker 1: same my same line brother that helped me get into
Speaker 1: the game. He had an old tenant reach out to
Speaker 1: him that used to be in one of the properties
Speaker 1: and say, hey, I'm over here in fifth Ward and
Speaker 1: the landlord over here isn't taking care of property. I
Speaker 1: think he's on drugs. And so you know what he
Speaker 1: heard was opportunity. So he reached out to me and
Speaker 1: he's like, man, I think we got opportunity to go
Speaker 1: pick up a few houses over here. So I went
Speaker 1: to go meet with the guy ended up being a
Speaker 1: whole block, got a grocery store on it. How that
Speaker 1: okay true story. At the time this was in the hood,
Speaker 1: it wasn't worth nothing. It was probably worth three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand the whole block because everything was kind of run down.
Speaker 1: But it's in the area where you tell somebody'm about
Speaker 1: to go to spend three hundred thousand, They're like, man,
Speaker 1: are you crazy? It's the hood, nothing but drugs and
Speaker 1: prostitution over there. You're gonna waste your money, you know.
Speaker 1: So what I ended up doing to talk him in
Speaker 1: doing the deal, I offered him four hundred thousand for it.
Speaker 1: So but of course I didn't have the cash to
Speaker 1: pay four undred thousand. So he actually had inherited the
Speaker 1: property from his dad. His dad was like a real
Speaker 1: estate taccoon had like twenty six blocks over there, twenty
Speaker 1: six blo, twenty six blocks. Who twenty six blocks, And
Speaker 1: this block happened to be the one that they gave
Speaker 1: this this uh, this kid, and he was like the horrible.
Speaker 2: Kid, you know what I mean? He watched it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So so this was the one he had
Speaker 1: and he still wasn't.
Speaker 2: Taking care of it.
Speaker 1: So I offered him owner finance scenario where it's like,
Speaker 1: I'll give you ten percent now on the finance. So
Speaker 1: that's when the instead of you, instead of going to
Speaker 1: the bank, the owner or that actually doesn't have any
Speaker 1: debt on the property will let you make payments over
Speaker 1: time to buy the property from them. So I gave
Speaker 1: him ten percent of what we agreed to the four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand, so forty thousand dollars which came from me
Speaker 1: selling one of my rental properties, and then that allowed
Speaker 1: me now to control that whole block of property and
Speaker 1: it had the grocery store on it and then had
Speaker 1: the houses, but everything was really run down.
Speaker 2: So instead of fixing it up, what I decided to do.
Speaker 1: Was do parole housing for felons because it's really hard
Speaker 1: for them to find anywhere to live. So I would
Speaker 1: rent them out a single room in each one of
Speaker 1: the houses, charge them three to fifty a month or
Speaker 1: something that they could afford because of the type of jobs
Speaker 1: they could get, you know, they didn't have much income,
Speaker 1: or they like a halfway house pretty much like a
Speaker 1: halfway house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they call them sro housing.
Speaker 4: And then so the state paid you that right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes sometimes if it depends on what program they're in.
Speaker 1: They get some type of housing assistance, but most of
Speaker 1: the time, no, they had to go get a job.
Speaker 1: So that's what made it really good, because you talk
Speaker 1: about a low risk tenant, you got somebody that's happy
Speaker 1: to be out of prison. They was in prison for
Speaker 1: non violent offense. I didn't do violent people. They had
Speaker 1: to keep a job and they had to keep somewhere
Speaker 1: to stay, and ninety nine percent of the places wouldn't
Speaker 1: even allow them to live there. So they were like
Speaker 1: they were like built in good high revenue for me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean as collectively in each house.
Speaker 1: Whereas I could have rented that whole house for five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to a regular family, now I'm making eleven
Speaker 1: twelve hundred dollars off that same house, you know, with
Speaker 1: this program. And because you were erected in the rooms
Speaker 1: ndom individual rooms, and most of them had trades, so
Speaker 1: they were like carpenters, electricians, plumbers. They all earned their
Speaker 1: trades in prison. So anything went wrong, I just dropped
Speaker 1: off materials. They were the wind is built in and
Speaker 1: they were just happy to have somewhere to live, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that worked out that was a win
Speaker 1: win man and then that was twenty thirteen, fourteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: I did that in twenty sixteen. Redevelopment kind of started
Speaker 1: in the area that I was in. Something else that
Speaker 1: I always watched too, even when I was flipping, is
Speaker 1: what the city's plans were. And you can go to
Speaker 1: the planning Department's website and it'll tell you what the
Speaker 1: planning to do five years, ten years down the road.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of the game that we don't
Speaker 1: pay attention to, but you know, the other group's pay attention.
Speaker 2: Where can you find that information that Usually you.
Speaker 1: Can just google it, like like like Planning and Development
Speaker 1: Department or Urban Planning for whatever city you're in, and
Speaker 1: it'll pull up on that website. You know, it's usually
Speaker 1: a dot gov type website, and it'll have all their information.
Speaker 1: A lot of us talked about the city council meetings,
Speaker 1: so you can look up city council meeting minutes and
Speaker 1: they'll tell you about anything big, any developer that's proposedness
Speaker 1: to do something in a certain area. All that has
Speaker 1: to be public publicly announced. So but what I what
Speaker 1: I noticed about Houston was like everything was going to
Speaker 1: counterclockwise around downtown and the fifth one neighbor that I
Speaker 1: was buying it was the last quadrant, So I knew
Speaker 1: eventually it was gonna come. I just did don't win,
Speaker 1: you know, and so yeah, so that's how I got
Speaker 1: into it. And twenty sixteen is another guy started building.
Speaker 1: So then I figured it's time for me to try
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get it done.
Speaker 4: So what is your all right? So what's your philosophy
Speaker 4: on gentrification? What's your how do you feel about that?
Speaker 1: So gentrification has a very negative connotation in our community
Speaker 1: because we are never.
Speaker 2: The ones revitalizing that neighborhood.
Speaker 1: And what happens is the people that are revitalizing are
Speaker 1: looking out for themselves or their own groups. It's not
Speaker 1: that they don't care about us, is that they have
Speaker 1: their own.
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Speaker 1: Security personal agendas that they're moving forward, and so we
Speaker 1: can either continue to watch it happen or we can participate, right,
Speaker 1: and we can participate in the way that we kind
Speaker 1: of control the narrative of what's being built, who's being
Speaker 1: built for, and what happens to the surround the community
Speaker 1: that we're building in.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So, my goal with my project is, you know, most
Speaker 1: of the time when you hear about black builders in
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods, it's low income stuff, and I feel like
Speaker 1: that's great, Like, we do need to look out for
Speaker 1: the low income people, but we got to attract the
Speaker 1: people that were successful, to people that made it out
Speaker 1: those neighborhoods back to those neighborhoods because we need that income,
Speaker 1: we need that demographic. If we ever want a grocery
Speaker 1: store to come back. We can't sit and depend on
Speaker 1: the government to do that. And right now, what happens
Speaker 1: is the people that are successful, they go and buy
Speaker 1: houses in the suburbs. Right It's not because they don't
Speaker 1: want to move back, it's because they have no options.
Speaker 1: So my focus was, well, let me start building some
Speaker 1: some market rate stuff, not low income houses and stuff.
Speaker 1: But try to track these working professionals back to the
Speaker 1: neighborhoods with a high quality product that they know they're
Speaker 1: gonna pay the same price they're paying in the suburbs
Speaker 1: and in the city, your value is going to appreciate
Speaker 1: a whole lot more, especially when that neighborhood starts to revitalize.
Speaker 2: And that's kind of what you've done with.
Speaker 3: You know, the land that you bought in twenty thirteen, right,
Speaker 3: which is your the most recent development that you worked on.
Speaker 2: So fourteen it's the fourteen Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fourteen units individual house townhouses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to talk about that. How that came about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's the same property that I bought with
Speaker 1: the grocery store and everything. So twenty sixteen, I decided
Speaker 1: to just tear everything down when I saw there's another
Speaker 1: developer that was building houses deep in the neighborhood and
Speaker 1: he was selling them for two fifty before they were complete.
Speaker 1: He wasn't even listening them on MLS. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: so that tells me that there's a mindset, there's enough
Speaker 1: people out there are willing to save one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars because everything else inside the city Loop was like
Speaker 1: ENTI sixteen Loop was two three fifty or more so.
Speaker 2: But people would.
Speaker 1: Rather save that money and live in a neighborhood that
Speaker 1: was still pretty rough. So I was like, well, if
Speaker 1: he can do this deep in the neighborhood, I'm right
Speaker 1: on the feeder to the highway, you know, I got
Speaker 1: a view of downtown. I should be able to do
Speaker 1: something with my property too. And so that's when I
Speaker 1: decided I'm gonna move forward with this initiative to try
Speaker 1: to build these townhouses.
Speaker 2: And it took a lot of work. It took me.
Speaker 1: Building the right teams. I had no idea what I
Speaker 1: was doing. Goes back to what you're talking about earlier
Speaker 1: with the consultant. I had to find the right team,
Speaker 1: the right I had to find a builder that had
Speaker 1: enough experience that was willing to kind of lend his
Speaker 1: knowledge and time to me, of course for a fee,
Speaker 1: you know, had to pay him to be my consultant,
Speaker 1: basically teach me how to do the first project.
Speaker 2: But that's what I did.
Speaker 4: So what's what's your your plans now? As far as
Speaker 4: how many projects are you are you working on? Like,
Speaker 4: what's your what's your vision?
Speaker 2: Looked like? For the next five years.
Speaker 1: Next five years, I want to finish this project, which
Speaker 1: would probably be finished next year, and I want to
Speaker 1: continue to build uh, the same model in the same neighborhood.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to make this like a real
Speaker 1: world example that can be duplicated in other cities, like
Speaker 1: we can go in, we can buy the land. And
Speaker 1: I didn't mentioned my entire team is from the community too,
Speaker 1: so like my builders, my real estate brokers, my insurance brokers, everybody,
Speaker 1: the contractors as well, contractors as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm working with a black builders, so and it's
Speaker 1: not just anybody's people that got good reputations, but we
Speaker 1: kind of always silo ourselves and we never.
Speaker 2: Really collectively work together on stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And the goal and the most important part
Speaker 1: of all of this, whether you're flipping another industry a
Speaker 1: lot of people in it's whole selling or building new construction,
Speaker 1: is ensuring that you put the product in front of
Speaker 1: the right end buyer. Because if you're flipping, you call
Speaker 1: yourself buying the block. But if you're not watching who
Speaker 1: you're selling to on the back end, you're still gentrifying
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. So my goal is really to educate us
Speaker 1: on like, like I said, the working professional on why
Speaker 1: it's better for you to buy over here. So I'm
Speaker 1: building the first three now, got contracts on two of them.
Speaker 1: Both of them are young, young black professionals, basically all
Speaker 1: in gas professionals.
Speaker 2: Townhouses, right, the townhouses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a dentist, a black dennist from from
Speaker 1: Dallas that's looking at buying one, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: all about making sure that we create that model because
Speaker 1: right now that gentrification narrative is the only thing that's
Speaker 1: that's that's real and for our people, we do better
Speaker 1: when we see examples of something that's actually working. And
Speaker 1: so when this is complete, I want to make sure
Speaker 1: that this model is as much exposed as possible. It's
Speaker 1: not about me making all the money. I want people
Speaker 1: in other cities to do the same thing, you know,
Speaker 1: to say it's possible, we really can't do this.
Speaker 2: And this is the example.
Speaker 4: How do you evaluate like what area you want to
Speaker 4: I know you say you look at it like the
Speaker 4: city plans, but do you have like a set formula.
Speaker 4: It's just kind of like you just know the area
Speaker 4: and you just kind of have a good feeling because
Speaker 4: you can't buy in some bad neighborhoods and they don't
Speaker 4: get better, right, So it's like, I mean, how do
Speaker 4: you know like this is this is probably going to
Speaker 4: get better.
Speaker 1: It's all about your network because you got to be
Speaker 1: talking to people in the industry. So a lot of
Speaker 1: the realtors that I work work with, they work with builders,
Speaker 1: and you know, you gotta have a network of commercial
Speaker 1: realtors around you too, because they know where the commercial
Speaker 1: developers are looking at, what areas are looking at. So
Speaker 1: it's a lot of it's word of mouth in addition
Speaker 1: to what you see on the city plans, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you gotta have your foot in the door.
Speaker 1: You got to be on the inside understanding where they're
Speaker 1: moving that and you just kind of ride that wave
Speaker 1: along with them.