Knowing your Real Estate Market with Navi Sandhu | Ep. 102

- Hey everybody, this is Darren Powderly, welcome back to our next edition of StreetBeats. Today, I'm with Navi Sandhu with Fifield Companies in Chicago, Illinois. Navi and I have done several deals together, it's been a pleasure to get to know her over the past year or so. And I knew of Fifield Companies for about 20 years, because as it turns out, I went to university with the Fifield family. And so when we had a chance to get to know Fifield and Navi here, it was kind of like old friends coming back together in this business setting. Navi, welcome to StreetBeats, it's an honor to have you on today. Looking forward to learning more about multifamily development, yourself and Fifield Companies in particular. So please introduce yourself.

- Thanks, Darren, great to be here and we're very happy with the execution of our deal so far on the platform. So look forward to working with you. My name is Navi Sandhu. I am vice president of acquisitions and finance at Fifields Companies. And what that really means is I work on finding new sites and securing those new sites and raising the capital for those sites, and then there's an element of overseeing the development as well. And my focus is predominantly in Florida, so we've been very active in south east Florida, and we are now trying to expand into southwest Florida in the Tampa, St Pete area. And I work with a team of four other DO people, and all of us, essentially divide the country and we conquer different markets, but all have similar skillsets in terms of finding new sites and working on the capital raising and then also managing the development. So the other markets that we're focused on right now are Denver, we've got another deal in Denver, right outside of Denver in a city called Inglewood.

- Hmm-mm.

- And so that deal we're currently working on the entitlement process and that's a public hearing process, so our team has been traveling out there a lot and meeting with people in the city and getting the city council on board for that development. And Phoenix, we are definitely trying to make a big push into Phoenix, it's a new market for us, so a lot of learning, and Nashville and Austin are other markets we're tracking, we continue to do deals in Chicago, that's our home market. So we are actually are working on a really exciting high-rise project on Main and Main in Chicago. And that's actually a sister project to our Sinclair deal, which is one of the highest performing deals in Chicago. And LA is also one that has been a very active market for us. So we continue to track LA, it's a bit difficult right now to get anything done there, given the affordable housing requirements that have gone into play the city of LA. So it's difficult and it's a very competitive market. There's a lot of money chasing LA. So, but we continue to track it, we have a lot of experience there, we've had people live out there for the last seven or eight years, so that's a market we're gonna continue to track.

- Navi you guys do some of the most impressive buildings, when you go to the Fifield company's website, for those of you listening, you'll see what I'm talking about. They're just beautiful large luxury apartment buildings and some of it as Navi just explained. Some of the hottest locations around the United States, and so you mentioned some areas that you're actively developing, I know we've done deals in Florida together. Clearly you're from Chicago, the firm's history is Chicago, how is it that you decide which markets to focus on? Because these are, it's multi-year, we're talking at least two to three years before you get a project and from the identification and the studies to actually delivering a project and then leasing it out, it's probably even longer. So those are long-term investments. Can you tell us more about your homework and how you go about identifying which market and even which street corner or which block?

- Hmm-mm, hmm-mm, yeah, no, that's a really good question. So at least for LA, our experience there was with a, we had a partner. So we actually had a co-GP partner in LA who was local in LA, and we ended up doing 15 deals with them over seven years. So that group had, yeah, they had local knowledge, they were the boots on the ground and wanted to learn the development and Steve and the founder of that firm got along really well and we had a very successful partnership. That partnership, we've done a lot of deals together and now we have different focus areas. So as we think about other markets, we do spend a lot of time on the ground in those markets, a lot of people do ask us, how do you guys source deals being in Chicago? I mean, essentially we have, I'm gonna be out in the Miami next week for a few days. All of our team members are always out in the different markets, and we spend a lot of time talking to capital markets brokers to land brokers and even meeting with sellers of land so that we can understand how they view values. And so, for example, in Miami, we actually had spent two years there before we put our Aventura deal under contract. We previously had a deal in downtown Miami under contract that we entitled. We did not end up pursuing that deal because we learned that there was a lot of supply concern in downtown Miami. It's hard to get high-rise done because there's so many buildings coming on the market. So we ended up learning that, hey, let's target some other micro markets of southeast Florida that we know that there's a supply story.

- Sorry, can I just pause on that for a second?

- Hmm-mm.

- I think that really is an important point for the audience members who are trying to decide about know Fifield and, their standard or quality. I think there's a bit of a misconception about some real estate developers who will just build to build, right, just to earn fees. And you just mentioned that you probably spent quite a bit of money on this downtown Miami project and then decided to, did you sell it at that point or did you just not proceed to purchase? And you had this acquisition, I'm sorry, this pursuit costs as they call it where you spend money to come to the no decision, tell us a little bit more about that because I'm sure it was a difficult one.

- Yeah, yeah. So, Fifield does, so what we typically try to do is put a deal under contract for an extended period of time. So that could be between nine to 12 months before we actually buy the land. And what that allows us to do is not only go through the entitlement process, but really, really understand the market and understand where investors and capital partners wanna be. So we then go out and try to get reconnaissance about that specific deal in that time period. And so we continue with the entitlements, we continue with our construction drawings, digging into the site, but at the same time, we're understanding if this is a deal that our partners are interested in pursuing. So with the Miami Worldcenter deal, we were parallel pathing that, getting our entitlements for the site, we did not buy that site at that point, we just had it under contract to purchase after a certain period of time, but we were also talking and working with a lot of different capital partners to see If there's interest in coming in as a partner. And what we realized, and it was a hard decision for us, we did spend a fair amount of pursuit dollars, which is, that's the name of the game in development. There is the element of walking away from a deal, not throwing bad dollars at bad dollars is how we say it. So for that specific deal, we realized that there are 1000s of units coming online in Miami Worldcenter in downtown Miami and this is just not the right time for us to pursue this deal. So we ended up as a group and this takes months before we decide this and we try not to give up, but we all sit down as a team, we have an investment committee where we spend two to three hours hashing out a deal. And before we decide to continue to spend significant dollars, we go through all the merits and the risks of the deal. And for this specific deal, we decided that this is just not the right time and not the right project. It's probably not the right time to build a $200 million, 40 story high-rise in downtown Miami. And so we ended up walking away from that after spending some pursuit dollars.

- It's so interesting, this example in Miami, because I think, we all know that this great migration has happened and Miami is the recipient of a lot of migration from the northeast. And the connection between New York and Miami is that it goes back a long time and it's just accelerated, so to make that decision against sort of maybe the headline news about the migration shows an even finer level of detail and the underwriting. So I know that underwriting a site in a development is both art and science, and we say, keep your boots on the ground, like you literally mean driving around and getting to know each neighborhood in addition to studying the third-party data, in addition to interviewing market experts and participants, right?

- Hmm-mm, yeah.

- So.

- Yeah, we're also, some of our partners do this as well, but when we go to a new market, we also like stay right next to our site, right, whether if it's a hotel, it doesn't have to be fancy or an Airbnb, we're trying to stay where the development will be built. So we understand the dynamics, we understand the traffic flows, we understand pedestrian flows, we know if it's loud at night. So we try to make ourselves part of the community when we go into a new market. And, we had another deal in Denver as well, where we were exploring garden, plus the single family for rent and given lumber costs have increased three times since we, or three X, since the time that we put that deal under contract, we had a three hour investment committee meeting where it's myself, our deal people, Steve Fifield, really hashing out this deal, going through every single detail, going through all the scenarios. And I'll tell you, Steve loves scenarios like he loves to slice and dice different scenarios, and it was a really, really hard and difficult decision, and we ended up dropping that site as well because lumber costs were just too high, there was no site, there was no clear path for those costs going down in the next two years where we decided that we would love to get into single family for rent, we would love to do a garden deal, but this is just not the right deal for us given how thin the returns are.

- And Navi, this is breaking news because the lumber price phenomenon and just skyrocketing, that's within the last couple of months and Denver, you love Denver, many people do for the same reason, it's the recipient of the migration. So it must be hard to walk away, it's like so many things are right, but you crunch the numbers and you're like, it's just not this project not now, right. And so.

- Yeah.

- You walk away from that bad money and look for a better site in Denver, that area to put the good money.

- Exactly. And it also gives us a chance to learn what we could do better as we're underwriting the next site. Right, so for Miami Worldcenter, I mean, now we understand what it takes to build a 40 story high-rise.

- Hmm.

- And we understand that, hey, we can build an eight story or a 12 story concrete building for costs that are much less, let's really amenitize the building and go top-notch unit finishes and find a unique location where we could get similar rents to those high-rise buildings.

- Hmm.

- And then with our Denver project, I mean, what we've learned is that site costs and impact fees, like those are two major forms of our budget that we need to be very, very cognizant of. So yeah, the silver lining in walking away from a deal is that firstly, we've learned a lot more about that market and what we could do better, but we've also made some good relationships as well, whether that's with local architects, local attorneys, like groups that know that wanna be a part of our development team. One of the key elements of us being successful in other markets is the fact that we don't have an in-house property management team and we do not self GC. So what that means is that we're going to different markets and selecting the best of the best. So for Aventura actually, the deal that we did on CrowdStreet, we're actually going through.

- Yes.

- We're going through an RFP process right now with three different property managers, we're gonna be sending out requests for proposals, we'll be interviewing all of them over the course of a few weeks and we'll select the best property manager. But during our due diligence process, they've also helped us with a lot of research and information. And similarly with our contractors, we went out to bid with two different prominent contractors in Ventura and, we're gonna select the best one. And so it's a matter of us being able to put together the right team in every market we go to and the same firm, even though they may have an office in a different market, may still not be the right team for that market. So our model of not being verticallY integrated works for us because we could go out and select the best teams.

- I've seen both models, and I know the pros and cons of like having everything inside one firm, they call vertically integrated as a company, a property management, construction and everything and I've heard the reasons why some firms go that route and it makes sense. I get why that works for some companies. I totally understand, especially when you're based in Chicago and you're doing deals from LA to Miami, and in-between, it seems almost impossible. How could you be an expert in every one of these major markets with extreme competition where you need to differentiate yourself, you need to deliver on time on budget and like you're leveraging the skill sets and expertise of all those local professionals, now picking the right one, that's the challenge I'm sure.

- Exactly, yeah. But we've got really seasoned people on our team, Kevin Farrell and we have two others, well, we actually have three other senior construction managers who've all been at major GCs. They've built every type of building you can imagine from high-rise office buildings and downtowns to garden products and suburbs. So these are really experienced construction managers.

- Hmm.

- I mean, I learn so much from them every single day in terms of how to evaluate why a GC is better than the other, or GC for Aventura for example, what they do is they self-perform concrete. So what that means, and concrete is the biggest trade in that building, it's 100% concrete.

- Wow.

- So they're controlling the biggest trade, they control that timeline. And so for us, the main timeline and construction is so critical.

- Hmm.

- And to number one, deliver the project into the right leasing season and also to control your interest costs. So the fact that we chose a GC that controls the biggest trade for us is a huge win in that.

- Now that's, I'm smiling because that's brilliant. Like I can picture you, not only at like the top of a, at a board meeting and the top of like a big bank, and your beautiful offices there in Chicago, and, but I can also picture you talking to construction people onsite about concrete and it's an interesting sort of, range of professionals that you have to work with in your role and at your firms. So is that interesting?

- Hmm.

- I mean, it must be.

- Yeah.

- You know, wow.

- It's so fun. I mean, it's so fun, we've talked about, if I feel like, should we create divisions? Some companies have divisions, right, you've got your acquisitions division, your capital markets and your development and they're all very separate and that's great, right? You have experts in each of those fields, but at Fifield I mean, we're a lean team, right. We're very, very selective.

- hmm.

- In how we hire, it takes us a long time to hire.

- Hmm.

- And we ensure that the people we're bringing in are competent and, they don't have to be jack of all trades, but they can at least ask the right questions and they have a good sense and a good intuition, right. That's in a good sense judgment. So, for me, it's so fun, right. You go out and you find sites, that's the fun part around the markets. Capital raising is the hardest part, it's always hard to find money, but then the development is really fun as well. Or, picking up out unit finishes and picking out what types of colors, what the theme of the building will be, what we name the building. And so those are a lot of the fun elements that make the job rewarding. And that's how our team here is structured. And Steve really encourages us to go out and learn what we wanna learn and then be really involved in what you really wanna be involved in. And not everyone's gonna wanna understand the nitty-gritty of the construction or choose the unit finishes, but at least we have the opportunity to be involved in those decisions. So our model here is, I think it's really conducive to learning a lot.

- It seems so, like kind of like a cross training of all those different areas of expertise. And then I'm sure there's investment committees internally because you have to present internally, not only to Steve, but other people in the investment committee. And so you really have to I'm sure prepare for a lot of information 'cause you know that if there's one area, for example concrete, where it's a key element of the project and yet, maybe that's someone's weakness, right? It's like, I'm great at capital markets, I'm not great at concrete, right or other elements of a project. So you really have to be an expert across all of those areas that are required in development. And your track record at Fifield really does speak for itself. So the organizational structure that you set up there is a winning structure for Fifield, so. So thanks for going into that, that's cool. And thanks for also going into the project that you recently had decided not to do. Let's go down the path of the projects that you are you told us about the locations in the cities and those cities aligned with the CrowdStreet market outlook We haven't done much in downtown LA, but we've done a lot sort of in the surrounding areas and that's for reasons of size and return profiles and so forth, but those secondary cities with rapidly growing populations, now that's been our investment thesis from the beginning. We couldn't really compete in Manhattan or downtown LA or San Francisco, and so we were like, let's go to where there's a little exciting but less competition from capital. And we built up some good expertise in those markets as well. Now we're seeing a lot of participants, both developers as well as capital, which is good. And, but we're seeing that the market dynamics change quite a bit. I've got sort of a two-part question first like, tell us about a project that you will certainly have, you know made a decision to proceed with given everything that you've learned or a project that you're sort of pursuing, what led you to that decision?

- Yeah, definitely. So, like I said, our markets are very similar to the CrowdStreet thesis. So we typically do like a very thorough investment committee as many groups do. And so one of the projects that we formally decided to move forward with was our Inglewood project outside of Denver.

- Yeah.

- And I'm sure you know that submarket being from.

- Denver. Yeah. And so that project is, so we don't have to buy that land until later this year, but when we say moving forward, what we're doing is spending dollars on getting the site entitled and moving through with our architect, getting those drawings ready. So, and that's a fair amount of pre development that goes into those costs. So what we're doing there is, so Inglewood is an interesting submarket. We looked at Denver, we spent a lot of time looking at Denver and we realized that, it's either really difficult to put land under contract because we don't agree on the value or certain submarkets are becoming oversupplied. And so we honed in on Inglewood, which is a market that had less than 200 units, apartment units deliver in the last few years. So definitely a supply constraint story, not a lot of pipeline there. And this is a site where we can build a four story wrap product, so meaning we have a parking garage in the middle and then we have a building that wraps around it. It's wood-frame construction, our proforma does account for the higher lumber costs. And it is a nice little area that's close to the light rail that takes you right into downtown Denver. The light rail will be expanded so there's a bridge that takes our residents to a walkway that then takes them to the light rail, which is about 10 minutes away. And then another unique part of the project, which I think is fun is that it's right next to the largest climbing gym in all of north America. So it's sort of a, that's one of the major draws for tenants. Like I think entertainment and lifestyle is a huge draw for tenants. And we're realizing that with the shift after COVID, right, there's a lot of people who move to different markets for lifestyle, for lifestyle and for entertainment. So the climbing gym we think is a great amenity. So that's a really exciting project, we feel really good about our rents. We're not top of market, we're conservatively underwriting our rents and accounting for higher lumber costs and the deal still works all day. So that's a project that, yeah, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from capital partners and even from city council on the project. So we are very excited about moving forward with that. And that'll be our first deal in Denver in a way for us to establish ourselves.

- Excellent. Well, that sounds exciting, I'm glad you're in Denver, Denver's itself has a very competitive market.

- Hmm-mm.

- So great to know that you settled on a site that you like, and you'll be proceeding there. Inglewood's interesting too being south of Denver with the access to like the Red Rocks Amphitheater area.

- Hmm-mm.

- You have pretty quick access to the foothills and then up into the mountains, which so many people value if they're moving, even within Colorado, but to Colorado for the first time. So that's excellent.

- Yeah.

- So, .

- Yeah.

- A little bit, but also, kind of along the lines of how do you make the most informed decisions about sites and where you're gonna spend the pursuit costs prior to closing on the land and then going vertical with your development. You just got home from San Diego. I am seeing you were in San Diego earlier this week at NMHC, what did you learn? What was the vibe like there coming out of COVID and then more importantly, so what are some of the big takeaways?

- Yeah. So yeah, NMHC is the National Multi-Housing Conference. It usually happens in San Diego or Orlando actually last year, it did happen in January, 2020, in Orlando, this year it was in San Diego. So typically there's about, I would say seven to 8,000 people there and there was only 2,500 people, so a much smaller audience and a much smaller crowd. So from that perspective, it was actually really nice. We weren't shoulder to shoulder, we can find a space to sit and talk to partners, but overall like thematically, we heard a lot of similar themes. And I would say we met with about 15 different groups that are really active in investing across the US and the smiles states and the Sun Belt states are overall across the board, everyone is interested in those markets, given the rent growth and given where construction costs are. I think a lot of it is the rent growth and the demographic shifts to those markets. So Phoenix, that's a market that across the board, every single partner wants to get into. Phoenix has had a huge amount of rent growth over the last couple of years, and the job story is really good with a lot of tech jobs going to Phoenix and it being a logistics hubs. So Phoenix across the board, everybody is positive on . Denver's also another market a lot of partners wanna get into, but like you said, it's a difficult market. So a lot of partners are interested in our Denver deal, which is also in an opportunity zone. So that attracts the opportunities on capital and southwest Florida as well. There's a lot of groups that like southeast Florida, some of them don't understand it. So they're not keen on entering, but southwest Florida, Fort Myers, Tampa, St. Pete, that market has also had a lot at rent growth and population growth over the last year or so. And most partners are focusing on garden product, meaning three to five-storey elevator service park deals and attainable rents, so rents that are predictable. And however there are groups that are still focused on a select mid-rise or high-rise just has to have a unique story, either high barrier to entry or a supply constrained, which our Aventura deal and Inglewood deal have. So, we felt really, really great about alignment with a lot partners.

- Can we dig into that, the rental range a little bit more, this is fascinating to me with, the lack of affordable housing in America, which is pretty much everywhere. The skyrocketing costs of single family housing, we've been on a bullrun in multifamily. Multifamily has performed well since the great financial crisis coming out of that. So it's been a long time, 10 plus years now.

- Hmm-mm.

- And, for a while there was like class A, class A luxury, top of the market, the nicer building, the mower amenities, the higher the rents and the market was sustaining that trend. And what I just heard you say is, institutional investors are looking for now, kind of lower rise or garden style, middle of the range rents. Can you just explain what's driving that and what exactly does that mean for your strategy?

- Yeah, yeah, it's interesting to see such an interest in that type of product and Fifield has always been building renter by choice deals. So, in Chicago our deals were always highest, some of the highest rents in the city, because it's a renter by choice. Like they can buy a house if they want to, but they choose to live in this certain part of the city. And so they're okay paying $2,000 for a one bedroom or over that. So, however, I think what's been happening with this influx to people in secondary markets is that these are not all renter by choice, these may be people that are, they're entryway in, they're on path to be a homeowner at some point, but they're not there yet. And so this lower rent strategy provides housing for that demographic. So when we're thinking about garden product, you're thinking between 1400 to $1,700 a month in rent, and that's much, much lower than, in some instances that's half the cost of a class A high-rise building in some of those markets, and Fifield has never realized it, but there's a huge amount of demand and a huge amount of absorption for that type of rental range. And also, I think part of it is that people want more space. And so the garden product, typically the average unit size is about 900 to a 1000 square feet, and they're weighted more towards two bedrooms, whereas in high-rise product, you're doing a lot of studios and one beds, and you're not getting that same type of space. So people are looking for space at lower chunk rents and we're definitely seeing.

- And these are like the two or three story projects that one would see around their community. And they'd been popular forever, and lots of older sort of set in 1970s and 80s builds out there for this when land was abundant. And, like that was like a less expensive way to build multifamily apartments. And so, it's not like they went out of style, but we did see a surge of class A's with towers, and a lot of migration to the core, or urban centers and inner city, but so that is interesting to know that that's sort of meeting a market demand that institutional investors see that, it is a cure for affordable housing, at least a help and assist a step forward in helping that lack of housing availability. So in the two bedrooms.

- Hmm-mm.

- It's probably driven maybe by, some of the demographic shifts, not so much of people migrating, but the millennials now being in their 30s, having children, going through the pandemic, like needing more space, as you mentioned.

- Hmm-mm.

- Baby boomers looking to sell their single family homes, and downgrade a little bit.

- Yeah.

- They could live in two bedroom apartments and make life a little bit easier, sort of downsize it for themselves. So it's major age and demographic shifts that are driving some of these trends, all that.

- Yeah yeah. And, it's interesting in Fort Myers, so we recently started looking at Fort Myers as a market, which is south of Tampa, St. Pete. And we realized after touring a lot of properties and some of the class, not class A, but some of the newest properties that have been built, they're all garden style.

- Hmm.

- 30% of the renters are actually snowbirds, meaning.

- Hmm.

- They come down to Florida for half the year, and instead of investing in a timeshare or living in a hotel, or actually buying a condo down there, they're willing to rent, they're willing to rent for $1,600 a month for the whole year. And if you do the math, that ends up being cheaper than those other options.

- Totally.

- So.

- Yeah. Airbnbs right now are really expensive. And I mean the condo and housing prices as everyone knows, they're out of control. So it's placed.

- Hmm-mm. many people out of that, that makes a ton of sense for a snowbird.

- Yeah.

- Maybe for half a year that you're not gonna be there for at least a month at a time, maybe you can rent it out.

- Yeah. Yeah, however, I will say that the urban trend, I still think exists, like people do still wanna be in cities. We have a portfolio of about 1500 units in Chicago, all in different, we're downtown Chicago. And we have seen leasing velocity come back very strong. And we have two lease ups where we've done 24 leases a month since April. Or actually, since February, since the vaccines.

- Hmm.

- Get rolled out. And that's pretty much on trend with our proforma lease up and our two other properties are stabilized, we're now at pre COVID asking rents again, we reduced our concessions from two to three months, at some point we were sitting at two to three months concessions down to two to four weeks. And the demographics haven't changed, it's the same type of demographic of person, it's still, like, I would say usually young professional for some of our buildings and which are lower rent. And otherwise we've got in Sinclair where I live where average age is 34, and most people are working downtown and demographics have stayed the same. So that tells us that people wanna be in the city as well. We've still got that demand to be in the walkable environment where, you've got the amenities and you can walk to work and walk to restaurants. So we definitely still think that there is a story there. We might not be building at the same pace in those markets, but we still are interested in building in those environments.

- Makes complete sense. I mean, I'm a longterm believer in the big cities. Yeah, and they still have all the same attractions and reasons that they had pre COVID and minus some restaurants and some small businesses, but there'll be a new generation of entrepreneurs that will come up and create new retail experiences and dining experiences and so forth. So while tragic, again, the silver lining is that it gives a new wave of business people to create the environment in the cities and elsewhere that they believe in, in the future. So yeah, I too am very bullish on inner cities and more urban centers, but it's kind of, everything's firing right now in multifamily it seems like, or at least coming back, to the levels, I'm glad to hear that they're back to pre COVID rental rates and reductions, and you're seeing that activity really increase as well.

- Hmm-mm.

- This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for being a customer of ours at CrowdStreet. And thanks for taking such great care of our investor members, our mutual investors throughout the projects that we've done, looking forward to doing more with you and Steve and the team at Fifields, so.

- Same here. Thank you so much for having us. We're really glad to be, provide us with our thoughts and thanks for profiling us. And we look forward to getting more deals done together.