Retail Real Estate Investing (Shopping Centers & NNN) with Michael J Flight
MJF 001 PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF!
This site was created to take the mystery out of Retail Real Estate Investment (i.e., Shopping Centers and/or Net-Lease Single-Tenant ( NNN, Triple Net ) real estate! My goal is to help you generate Cash Flow and Wealth by investing in Retail Real Estate. You will learn how to purchase a shopping center or single tenant retail property. The information on this website will teach you the skills to analyze a retail real estate Crowdfunding offering. You will also be able to make better-informed decisions on investing with a Sponsor/Syndicator. You may also be interested in partnering with my firm, Concordia Realty Corporation.
“BECAUSE OF MY EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE IN ALL FACETS OF INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE, I AM POSITIVE I CAN HELP YOU GET THE KNOW-HOW AND CONFIDENCE TO START INVESTING IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE, OR TO BECOME A BETTER INVESTOR IN A PASSIVE RETAIL REAL ESTATE OFFERING!”
RETAIL REAL ESTATE IS THE MOST EXCITING TYPE OF INVESTMENT YOU CAN MAKE!
IT COMBINES FOOD & FASHION WITH CAPITALISM & COMMUNITY.
My goal is that you will know:
1. Retail Real Estate and Shopping Centers as an Investment Class.
2. How To Evaluate and Analyze a Shopping Center or Single Tenant Retail Real Estate Asset.
3. Setting Up Your Team.
4. Negotiating the Purchase and Sale Agreement.
5. How to Raise Equity and Finance Your Retail Real Estate Investment.
6. Understanding Retail Real Estate Specific Lease Terms and Issues.
7. Leasing Shopping Centers and Single Tenant Retail Real Estate.
8. How to Manage and Operate a Shopping Center.
9. How to Redevelop a Shopping Center or Single Tenant Retail Real Estate Asset.
10. How to Prepare Your Shopping Center/Retail Real Estate For Sale.
I have been involved with all types of real estate since 1985. My brother Jeff and I bought our first 3 flat in 1987 when I was 23 years old.
Through my company Concordia Realty Corporation, I have personally invested in, developed and re-developed more than $250,000,000 worth of property. My partner, Cory Andrews and I founded Concordia Realty in 1990, at the height of the Savings & Loan Crisis. My company has been successfully connecting sound economics with experience in real estate for more than 28 years. Concordia has redeveloped, repositioned and revitalized properties in Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. I have personally consulted on projects from Arizona to Maine and from California to Washington DC to hit North, South, East, and West in the United States. I have had the pleasure to even assist people in Italy and Romania with real estate and business consulting.
This success has been continuous through the peaks and drops in the commercial real estate market including the Dot Com Bust and the Great Recession of 2008.
REAL ESTATE IS CYCLICAL
THERE WILL BE DOWNTURNS
YOU NEED THE KNOWLEDGE OF SOMEONE WITH EXPERIENCE
TO PREPARE FOR THE NEXT CYCLE
You create value in Retail Real Estate at Acquisition by buying right and Financial Engineering. You create and maintain value during ownership by Operations; specifically through Leasing, Expense Reduction, and Risk Mitigation so that your property is positioned for sale or refinance.
I have personally bought repositioned and then sold many properties over the course of my career. The majority made great money for my partners and me. But, to be honest, they were not all profitable, I have had 3 losers which were painful yet valuable learning experiences. I am proud to boast that all my loans have been repaid. It has been a point of pride for me. We also have enjoyed excellent relations with our contractors and vendors making sure they get paid on time and in full.
Most value creation in Retail Real Estate comes from signing leases with tenants. It is the combination of tenant rent and the creditworthiness to continue to pay the lease over many years that takes a building built for $100 per square foot and turns it into a $300 per square foot property. I have personally negotiated many retail anchor tenant leases, in addition to ground leases, build-to-suit lease and lots of “Mom and Pop” stores, many who became great friends. I learned a lot about leasing from my partner Cory; he is so good that he was able to get a major national tenant to LEND us the money to get the development completed; not once but twice.
I have experience with ground-up development but to be honest my skills have always been better suited to redevelopment. It could be tearing down half of a 300,000 square foot strip center to build a supermarket or a Ross Dress for Less, or emptying out a dying mall so that it can be demolished to make way for a Super Walmart. The redevelopments needed to be shepherded through the entitlement process and once the shovel goes in the ground it’ll have brought up issues like remediation of environmental contamination; overcoming geotechnical issues like rock and poor soil; and solving on-site water detention problems (and flood mitigation). A few of the redevelopments threw me into the deep end of the pool with large project construction oversight.
Another favorite strategy has been to create value through subdividing the out parcels of a shopping center and selling them off to arbitrage the higher prices paid for Single Tenant Triple Net Retail assets.
I have navigated many tenant bankruptcies from single store sole proprietors to massive chains such as Circuit City, G.C. Murphy, and Service Merchandise. We even participated as a stalking horse bidder in the bankruptcy auction process. It was an absolute home run deal which goes back to relationships collected along the way in your career.
I have done Conventional Financing with Banks (Community, National, and International) and Life Insurance companies; CMBS Loans; public-private partnerships including Tax Increment Financing and Sales Tax Rebates; creative financing using tenant as lender. Our equity partners have been Friends and Family; Private Equity; Life Insurance Companies; Hedge Funds and Canadian Limited Partnerships.
I have served as an expert witness and a Property Operations consultant to Trammell Crow Company. Concordia Realty has been blessed to have as clients for Property Management and Asset Management a diverse lineup of individuals, Insurance Companies, publicly traded REITs and a Foreign Joint Stock company, Pension Fund Investment Managers, Hedge Funds and Family Offices.
Additionally, I intend to teach you the tricks that can take an increased value through adjusting some of the terms of the lease and focusing on operations to squeeze expenses for yourself and reduce operating costs for your tenants.
My partners and I founded Concordia Realty Management, Inc., to provide property management, consulting and accounting services for Concordia Realty Corporation investments as well as third-party services for institutional owners, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and private real estate ownership entities. My responsibilities include overall management of the two companies, key client relations, creation and implementation of operating, leasing, redevelopment strategies for properties operated by Concordia.
In 2008, at the start of the Great Recession and taking a cue from Baron Rothschild, “Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own.” Jim Stillo and I founded Truefield Realty Advisors LLC. Truefield is a real estate investment firm that specializes in the opportunistic acquisition and repositioning of distressed single-family homes, fractured condominium developments, value-added apartment projects, high yield multifamily acquisition opportunities, non-performing loans, and mezzanine loan workouts. Jim is a long time collaborator with me, and we have together owned multifamily buildings, completed condominium projects and loft conversion projects.
We created a fund, raised money including Canadian institutional investors to buy, rehab and flip Single Family Houses ( SFH ). Jim and I have experience with Fix and Flipping over 100 SFH. We also completed the workouts on broken condo projects and several Single Family Home portfolios for banks and other lending institutions. Jim Stillo is one of the best residential real estate brokers I have ever met. He has regularly sold in excess of 100 houses per year.
I have owned and operated shopping centers, office buildings, multi-family apartment buildings, and portfolios of single family homes in addition to condominium development and apartment conversion. I am a licensed Illinois Real Estate Broker, longtime member of International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), Real Estate Investment Association (REIA) Chicago Real Estate Council; Urban Land Institute (ULI) and the Acton Institute.
I currently am involved with the following organizations: Chicago Hope Homes/Righteous Oaks LLC – current Board Member; DePaul University Real Estate Center – Internship Program; Freedom Of Life România (Asociatia Umanitara Libertatea De Viata) – founding Board Member; Mission Our Lady of the Angels – current Volunteer/Dishwasher; Riverside Public Library – current Treasurer for Board of Trustees; Sunshine Gospel Ministry – Real Estate Advisory Committee.
BECAUSE OF MY EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE IN ALL FACETS OF INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE, I FEEL I CAN HELP YOU GET THE KNOW-HOW AND CONFIDENCE TO START INVESTING IN RETAIL REAL ESTATE, OR TO BECOME A BETTER INVESTOR IN PASSIVE REAL ESTATE INVESTMENTS.
Thank you for this opportunity to introduce myself!
“You either learn your way towards writing your own script in life or, you unwittingly become an actor in someone else’s script.” John Taylor Gatto.
