(Real Talk Series 7) Adam Lipkin
Guest: Adam Lipkin
Topics: Hannon Armstrong, C-PACE
Transcript:
Chris Ressa 0:02
This is retail retold the story of how that store ended up in your neighborhood. I’m your host, Chris Ressa. And I invite you to join my conversation with some of the retail industry’s biggest influencers. This podcast is brought to you by DLC management.
I’d like to thank one of our sponsors, retail openings and closings.com. In today’s dynamic retail landscape, tracking openings and closings before they take place has never been more important. Having this intelligence is an undeniable competitive advantage, retail openings and closings.com also known as Rock Tracks, future openings and future closings, comprehensive, accurate and reliable the rock is your crystal ball and the key to making well informed decisions with confidence in today’s evolving retail climate.
Today, we have Adam Lipkin, the sea pace guy from counterpoint, Hannon Armstrong,
Adam and I actually recorded this a couple of weeks ago, and the audio quality wasn’t good, you know, some of the challenges from a work from home environment. But we’re all working through it. And we wanted to make sure we got the content out to everyone because we think it’s some interesting information and happy to have you back, Adam.
Adam Lipkin 1:28
Thanks. It’s great to be with you.
Ressa 1:29
Thanks for being able to do this again. My friend.
Lipkin 1:32
Yeah, no worries, man. And so the C pace guy. So you know, we talked about this a little bit last time. Why don’t you tell us? What C paces? Yeah, I’d be happy to. And
but let’s just back up to because I think that, you know, why do I call myself the sea bass guy. And I think it’s, it’s interesting, you know, we met if you remember through social media group, and Gary Vaynerchuk. And we have a lot of mutual friends that really, we met through something completely unrelated with commercial real estate, and it was around reputation. And the world of being able to get your your thing out there. And frankly, what you’re doing with podcasting, and sharing your message and really building a following, so people know who you are and what you’re about. We both care about that. And so I think it’s really cool to be able to do something like this in that same regard. And I really use that naming of CPAs. Because I want to have that be at the top of mine, like the only guy that somebody thinks of if and when they do have this thing called CPAs come across their desk, they’re like, oh, yeah, that guy Lipton. He’s the one who’s the CPAs. Guy. So I appreciate you giving me that plug. And it’s been nice to play out that way over the last few years to have that be the top of my recognition. But at a high level, see paces construction financing. And its construction financing, that’s done in a real special way. It’s growing quite a bit, but it’s enabled at a state level. And it allows property owners to finance a lot of their construction costs using an assessment structure to repay the loan, as opposed to like a first mortgage lender that would take a secured interest. So what does that mean to take an assessment, you know, position, right? A lot of people might say, what is that? What is that even mean? But pay stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy, what it really should be is property, assess construction expenses, because clean energy throws people off and makes people think that you got to like upgrade your property above code, and you got to do all sorts of lead stuff. And you really just got to have certain types of items that you’re going to be improving your property with, or building with, you know, they’re gonna always be there in any new development, things like your lighting your building, envelope, your H back. And it’s a nice pocket that’s available if you’re in a market that is active with this program. So I could talk a little bit more about the things that you need to look for, for criteria, but essentially, it’s specialty construction financing.
And that’s interesting. So first, good point on the intro, we did meet at a Gary Vaynerchuk conference. And so and we’ve both been trying to improve our brands on social media. So good point, starting there. So as it relates to C pace, so let’s unpack what you said a little bit. So let’s start with who are some of the borrowers who are some of the people that access this financing? And why would you try to access this?
So this could be from some of your biggest mall owners in the world, like Simon, this could be some of your developers that would use this as a replacement to equity or maybe more expensive capital. It’s really quite the gamut. There’s so many uses of it. I can tell you probably some of the criteria where I feel there’s bigger hit rates on it. But essentially why you would use it is this for the simple reason that might be cheaper capital for your real estate projects. Simple as that. And it really just comes down to could you get access to using it as much as you’d like. PACE financing is like at a rate of under 6%. And, you know, to the extent that you could use that, instead of raising more equity, a lot of people would want to use that across all property types and across all types of geographies. And therein lies the main challenge with CPAs. And it really just comes down to some lenders are more friendly to it than others, the same way that some lenders are more willing to do in hotel financing in this market than others are using mezzanine financing with them. So you really need to look at it in terms of the way you look at a lot of things like what are the criteria to be aware of, there’s a lot of people that peddle this, and they make it sound like it’s like a panacea, like it’s, you know, great for everybody. But in reality, you got to drill down a little bit further and see, you know, what kind of profile is the best fit. And I find it’s for folks that are looking for higher leverage non recourse financing, and they’re typically going to be working with non banks, if it’s a development deal, or if it’s a, what’s called an existing stabilized retail center. There’s a lot of folks that use it for their improvements, they might use it to pay for their lighting in their parking lot. Or maybe they need to do a new roof. And it might be an option for them as well. So quite a bit of uses for it.
Speaker 1 6:06
And so how does it work? You mentioned it’s, it’s assessment based, it’s not like a normal loan. So walk us through the mechanics of how I, I would get this funding, what is an LTV look like? You mentioned that it’s used in some sort of bridges, sometimes it’s a replacement for additional equity. Give me some of the mechanics behind it.
Lipkin 6:28
Yeah, absolutely. So you know, the idea of it is that there’s this thing called assessment financing. But really what we’ve seen for years, I think the stat I heard was over 200 years now, people have been using an assessment that’s added to the tax bill, usually as a non ad valorem to pay for a variety of items, a lot of times you’ll see it for community benefits, like your sidewalks and streetlights. And anybody that’s been involved with masterplan communities, they get that structure that oh, there’s going to be an assessment added, you know, for this specialty community. So that assessment structure has been pretty constructive for a variety of real estate needs. And so fast forward to 2009. Case got started in California, and it was initially intended to help homeowners finance their solar panels in an affordable way, the idea being that it’s a lot to come out of the pocket 50 grand or even more for a big solar job. And there’s a lot of folks that started thinking about how can we make it more affordable. And the thought was, could we spread this out over a long period of time, and have some security that will get repaid. So the thought was, if there’s a way to put it on the tax bill, that gives the lender a good sense of security. And you could have an ability to do that over in some cases, 30 years we’ve seen, so what’ll happen is, is instead of paying 50 grand, and I’ll use this for commercial, I’ll use a retail center, since I know that that’s really the niche, but let’s say somebody had a $50,000 solar panel job. Now, by using PACE financing to basically have a payment plan for it, they might only have an extra, you know, let’s call it three grand a year as the payment plan that’s added to their tax bill that can be paid off if they decide in the future to sell their property or maybe refinance it, show play that out with commercial properties under that same scenario, let’s silient
Speaker 1 8:11
quick, yeah, so I borrow the money from a bank, I pay it back through my taxes. The taxing authority then releases that money back to the bank.
Lipkin 8:25
So the way it works, you have three parties involved, it’s a good point to back up a little bit on the structure, you have a lender, in my case, I’m with a public REIT, we had mentioned counterpoint, Hannon Armstrong, it’s actually providing the dollars. So that’s the first thing to be aware of that when people hear this assessment thing, and they hear that there is this public component, they’re worried like that they have to get approval from the local municipality. And you don’t have to do that once pace is active in your particular city. That’s it as long as you’re within guidelines. But essentially, you have the local taxing authority acting is I would almost call it the servicer of sense, like they’re collecting the taxes. This is an extra line item. So let’s say your tax bill is 500 grand, but out of that 500, you know, maybe 100 was the pace annual payment, that 100 goes from, you know, getting collected to the impact to the lender, in my case, you know, my group, but you essentially have that as like the pathway, right? You’d be paying back the lender only in this case, it’s going through the tax bill, to get repaid ultimately to the lender at the end of the day. Not really much different in terms of what you would be doing if you were paying a lender through principal and interest compared to you through the taxable same payment.
Ressa 9:36
And our you guys you guys are lending the money.
Lipkin 9:39
We’re lending the money directly. And what’s neat about our particular group is it’s a direct balance sheet program. And so let me even just share a little bit about the company because like a lot of lenders it’s not like a one size fits all like you’re just doing paste and everybody could do the same thing. There’s a handful providers out there, some of which do it all around the country and markets where it’s active. I I found out about this group three years ago, through a longtime lender, friend of mine, I’d been a broker for most of my career at groups like HFS, back in the early 2000s, like going back to oh five, and then with some other groups since then. And I never heard about pace until the summer of 17. Three years ago, it’s been. And it was through a longtime lender, that he joined the group that I’m now with to build out their origination platform. And we talked about and I said, you know, it’s not too often then in real estate financing, you get to be involved with something very innovative and interesting, and get to show up in a cool way. And so I said, I said, Man, this could be a really cool thing over the next 510 years, it seemed like it was really moving in the right direction. I liked it. This group was a big public REIT, Hannon Armstrong, if you look it up, it’s like trading under the ticker hassy. It you know, 5 billion assets under management, they were balance sheet in this pace amount. So I felt like it had a lot of a lot of sustainability, no pun intended, because it is a sustainable product. But I thought it was a really cool, you know, visibility, there was a lot of credibility with that. And so that was really cool to be able to have a group that was just really well set up in this industry. And we’re the direct lender, is how you could look at it, the direct paste Lender of this product,
Ressa 11:14
got it. So and you’re out going to find you’re trying to, you know, put out the money by going to find people who need this particular type of financing.
Lipkin 11:25
Yeah, people that need construction financing, this may be an option. In some cases, you know, I would say the first two are, you got to first make sure your property is in a location that has pace. So like we said, it’s not everywhere, a state has to enable it. Like for example, Florida, has state legislation allows property owners to do this. But then you have to have individual cities allow it. And so that’s usually the first criteria. Like if you had a shopping center, and you said, Hey, Adam, we’re thinking about doing some cap x, we’re in Miami, and it’s going to be about a million bucks, you know how much a piece is available for it, I might first say, Hey, Chris Miami’s available, it’s an active market. And I might look at your budget and say, out of that million, it looks like you’re doing some new lighting, you’re going to be doing some, you know, roof work. And I might say half of that budget is pace eligible. And I might give you some financing terms that are like a mid 5%, five and a half, five and three quarters level. And that might be one of the few options, you might have a bank as an option, there might be benefits that this is non recourse, it’s on the tax bill. So a lot of folks like that it’s off balance sheet. So there’s a lot of perks by having it be pace as opposed to maybe a traditional lender,
Speaker 1 12:35
does it does it affect my other borrowing capacity on the project?
Lipkin 12:42
It affects it in the sense that it’s really your senior lender that has to be cool with it at the end of the day. Now I find for existing properties. When you’re putting in this work, that’s pace eligible, it’s typically energy saving work. So what I find happens is somebody says, Hey, we’re going to be putting a new H vac system, and it’s going to save us 300 grand a year, you’re gonna pass that through to your tenants as well. But now you have in a way to help them finance those cost savings. So there can like go up a little bit. But the savings I’m sorry, there can like go down a lot. But their little bit increase in this, we’ll call it this interest payment to finance it is going to be let’s call it less than half. So whereas you might be spending 300 grand a year on the pace, you might save 600 grand a year in the energy savings. So that’s an interesting benefit I found for commercial properties is that there’s an ability now to finance energy savings for tenants. And I think in a market like this where anything you could do to reduce gross rents annually is interesting. This might be a good mechanism. And you just have to have a lender that’s cool with it. But I find that a lot of banks and life companies have done it for existing real estate. It’s more the CMBS lenders, I’ve found that for existing that it’s been a little more challenging today, like I typically we’d say that’s very low probability to date. I do think in the next couple of years, that’ll open up to, but I think if you have a bank or life company, they would go for it for sure.
Ressa 14:05
And the on why don’t you give us you, you just recently did one of the biggest CPA steals in the country. Why don’t you give us you know, a story about CPA steel so that people can see the start to finish and how it’s kind of maybe kind of put this together for everybody?
Lipkin 14:26
Absolutely. It is good to have examples. So I’ve done a few pretty cool. Like I love being in this room, because there’s some cool, like, metrics that you could set. And I’ve been lucky to have some nice successes that back it up. But, you know, in this COVID crisis, we got done a ground up apartment development financing. That was about a $50 million project was in LA and Koreatown. And it’s a perfect example of I have a very strong capital advisor I work with we do a lot of business together, how to develop a client that had this site and they might have initially thought you know, a lot of people would have people say they have the landed a lot of cases, they typically go to a broker they say get give me as much money for as little cost as possible. And by the way, throw in and make it non recourse, right, that’s, that’s the wish list, right? So you try to come up with a blend of, you know, good enough leverage at a good enough rate that you could execute on it. And a lot of folks, as they’re doing bigger projects, you know, 30 $40 million loans, you know, it’s important to have it be non recourse with just a completion guarantee. It’s, it gets challenging really quickly, when you start having 30 $60 million contingent liabilities on your balance sheet. So those are, those are like the wishlist items that I have a lot of brokers come to me with, and have you been a broker for years, I get the challenge. So what somebody might have done until this crisis is they might have had one of the banks out there, get them 65% financing on that project that was maybe at a 4% rate. And they might have gone to a mezzanine lender or a preferred equity group, that might have been a little more expensive, we’ll call it 1011 12% To get to the 80% level. And that might be at a blended rate of, I don’t know, mid five, let’s call it. And I couldn’t do that. Because in that same scenario, with $50 million development, the amount of pace that I could get is about 10, maybe even I think it’s actually 15. And California, you could get more items, there’s are things like your foundation in California that you can include within can get 20% of the project cost, which is about 10 million bucks there, right? So it’s a good chunk of change. The challenge has been to date is it those banks that are offering those dirt cheap rates are like, I don’t want this pace thing in front of me, you know, I’m doing 65% In my three and a half percent, I don’t want this third party lender coming in for 10 million and getting their five and three quarters, we’re not going to allow it the way they might say we don’t want Ms up to a certain level, although some banks do have some as lenders allow. So that scenario really is challenging to get done. What has been getting done. And when I got done here is we have a lot of private lenders and they become huge, and they’re only going to get bigger now in this crisis because the banks have become the more conservative ones. But the private lenders are probably pricing closer to seven 8%. So it’s a little more expensive, but they’re also not as restricted. And they’re much more Kudo allow things like pace, which helps blend down the rate. So in this case, we had one of the private lenders that we work with that likes pace and says hey, we could pick off more good quality business. They like multifamily, which, frankly, in this market, I think has been the least impacted in the financing world. And they said, We love this. We love the location. Koreatown is a hot market, it’s only growing. They said we’ll do this up to 80% combined with pace, and it’s a good metric to be aware of because the lenders that are doing it, they still care about the things they care about anyways, which is LTC and LTV. They just look at pace as combining with their senior. So instead of saying, you know, we’re gonna get to 70%, LTC and our senior, they might say we’ll get to 80% combined with pace, which is what they do here. And what typically I’m finding is, is they’ll back into amount they do. So if I did 25%, they might have done 55%. So here’s a perfect example where the bank prep scenario wasn’t available. It would have been nice if it was but we came in, you know, our rate was right in the high fives, the SR was at eight, and we got about 80% financing, you know, they did a $3 million Sr, we did around a 13 or so million dollar pace. And that really set the bar to get that 80% combined leverage for a big deal like that. And we put some press out on it, it got picked up in a lot of papers, it was I think was the very first week of April, it was like April 2, so that was really cool. To be able to get that done. We had to deal with, you know, virtual notaries and all sorts of crazy things out of the box appraisals that were coming in a little funky. And and I think that that’s becoming more and more of a creative solution at a time like this where a lot of lenders just aren’t available under the same terms they were before the crisis.
Speaker 1 18:48
Yeah, the end. So how pervasive is paced? Like, what is the market size of this right now? What’s going on in the pace? How come? People don’t know about it?
Lipkin 19:01
So, so funny, a buddy of mine, he posted something on LinkedIn today. And he was talking about how, you know, like a business conference. And now like, it’s like a big thing for Office brokers to be doing virtual tours. It’s like, Yeah, dude, somebody people been doing that for years, right? So I joke that said, there’s that classic quote, that First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, and they ridicule you, and then they compete and fight with you, and then you win. And so it’s neat that I’ve seen this with pace that I mean, three years ago, people were like pace. What’s that? You know? And there’s still a lot of people that are like, what’s that? And I think the main reason is it still small industry. But this small industry did one and a half billion last year in total volume on the commercial side. So it’s not nothing. And just to give you the growth of it, I got into this in 2017. And I’m really just focused on doing it for construction. There’s a lot of people that do it for that scenario I mentioned where you want to do some upgrades on your existing centers, you have more of a stabilized property. To me the big growth is happening on new construction. So much of that budget is hard and soft cost to qualify. But when I got into this into During 2017, typical pay size was 3 million. The total volume of the industry was 50. Okay, this last year 2019, the volume just approached 500 million. Okay, we got a hospital deal done, that was 55 0 million, I had gotten a $22 million hotel deal done in Chicago, I got a $12 million deal done. So the size of the deals are getting much bigger as well as the volume is going through the roof. There’s a good industry paper that I put out a month ago, there’s like a leading industry body called case nation. And you know, there’s projections that call this to be easily in the 10s of billions by 2025, you could imagine, you know, New York City was a market that we expected to be on board this year, but with the whole COVID crisis, likely that’ll be for a second quarter of 2021. It is available in New York State, but not yet in the city. But you think about the volume of construction, it gets done in the city. I mean, imagine that you start popping in pays for like 10 to 20% of that on some number of projects. And so this is ballooning and and it’s growing exponentially. And so I think that is really what happened. I think I got a little bit lucky right now, where folks just frankly needed other options. And right now is the time where a lot of folks are just paying attention to a newly because you just don’t have as many options to get financing for at the same level. So it’s a good time that you’re hearing a lot of people mention it, I think you only see more of it. Like I got into it early, not as early as some some event and doing it even three years before me it’s a long time to be waiting for this to finally start hitting. But I’m excited about it. Now, I think I might have told you I mean, I went 18 months before closing a deal. I mean, this was definitely like a road to ditch really dig deep plant seeds get a lot of at bats, but frankly, having closed really just because it wasn’t there yet on the lender side. But last year is when it really picked up I really got lucky start to have some good hits around March of last year. And thank God, you know, it’s been growing really well. And even right now, during the crisis, it’s becoming a really exciting option to suggest for folks that still want to move forward. But I think on the multi site is where we’re really trying to focus on
Speaker 1 22:09
do you see it? In like what I’ll call and I love the word a peanut butter and jelly deal. A very innovative butter
Lipkin 22:17
and jelly is basic. It’s the basic what was it? What was the basic deal?
Speaker 1 22:23
I don’t know, let’s we’ll use retail. I don’t know. I’m going to build a Starbucks just on a corner. I own the land, it’s very financeable norm, you know,
Ressa 22:33
I want to I want to finance my construction for my Starbucks DCC pace getting into something that’s, you know, where there’s, there’s not a challenging debt market where it’s pretty simple to do. It’s a it’s not a complicated transaction. See, pay is gonna be a player in the peanut butter and jelly.
Lipkin 22:50
So it’s available there for sure. It’s available in at Starbucks for about 20% Your cause I think it would come down to what lenders will allow it the way you want, which is like if you put it this way, it’s almost like somebody going and saying, I want 95% financing. Can I get that? And I would say probably not unless you have some crazy low land value. Maybe somebody might say, alright, your basis is so dirt cheap, maybe I won’t be as focused on the loan to cost. So could you get the CPA steal on your Starbucks? Yeah. But if you want to go to your local bank and pay two and a half percent for that money, and then try to get paid to replace your equity, I don’t think the bank would do that today. I think that for the strongest groups, you’ll get there in the next year, what they’ll do, and I’ve already seen it is they’ll allow pace over their leverage by maybe 5%. Some sliver, you know, it doesn’t have to be the full amount. So let’s say a Starbucks, let’s say it’s like a two and a half million dollar build. And let’s say I could do, I don’t know, like, let’s call it like 400 grand a piece. A lender might say, you know, I’ll give you 100 Or two, it just really depends are going to look at that combined leverage. I am seeing banks doing that already. I mean, I think do I mentioned Chicago, that was a life company, you look co big, big company, you know, union lender, and they had never done a peace deal. And it was a strong borrower. And they said, Look, we want to we want to make our borrower happy, and we’re willing to pay attention to it. So that’s how it’s gonna play out. I mean, you guys are a good example of a big shop, you could probably go to a lender and say, why wouldn’t you do this? This is something that underwrites and they’re gonna pay attention to the metrics that they already look at the coverage and the leverage, but at some level, could you get over over zero pace? Like at least some amount? I think it’s doable. And that’s how it’ll play out is the stronger profile deals, we’ll get some amount of it long winded answer, but the answer is maybe more likely in time.
Speaker 1 24:37
So one of the parts we skipped is, you mentioned like you get 20% of the project cost is that 20% of the loan cost or 20% of the project cost, project costs, project costs, and what are you financing what is that? 20%? What are we actually financing there’s like certain items correct that correct?
Lipkin 24:58
Exactly. And And that really is what the underwriting comes down to is what’s eligible. And so usually we’ll look at a budget in a development project, you just know, you’re gonna, you’re gonna have lighting, you’re gonna have a building envelope, it’s gonna include isolette, you know, insulation, you’re gonna have air conditioning, ventilation, you’re gonna have just items that will be in any new development, when you dig into the improvements on an existing, we just have to see those line items. But the first criteria is we have to add eligible hard costs that are going to qualify for pace, but usually what we see in most development projects, it’s about that 20% number. So that’s a good estimate of what’s available. And then it’ll really come down to the lenders that allow it, you know, at that combined leverage that you’re looking for. But 20% of good underwriting rule of thumb, if you’re developing a retail center, you might say, hey, you know, we can ballpark that 20% of this budget is going to be pace eligible.
Unknown Speaker 25:49
Got it? Awesome.
Lipkin 25:52
Let’s actually go, no go. I was gonna just cover one thing that I thought was interesting. And we were talking about this, that liquidity is so important right now, and we’re just coming out of now two and a half months of challenging environment, a lot of tenants have been struggling to make ends meet, it’s leading to a lot of property owners struggling to make loan payments. So what I believe will happen, and I don’t think it’s there yet, but I think you’ll see this play out over the next six to nine months, lenders are looking for solutions. And I’m seeing that more and more of them are willing to entertain, allowing pace as essentially an operating an interest reserve over a 12 to 24 month period to help their borrowers pay for their debt service. And in some cases, you know, even their operations, because some of these operations are even a little upside down in this interim period. And what’s cool Bell paces Is it pretty much in every market that it’s active, you could use it retroactively. So what does that mean? It means that if you’ve just built a project, or you just had put in some of these capital improvements that are eligible, you might be able to get 2 million books that a lender might say, we’ll allow you to post that in our reserve account, you’ll use that to pay the debt service that is now to challenge to be met from the operations of the property. And I think that’s going to be a really creative way that a number of folks will be able to give them time for their property to rebound, which a lot of folks expect is at 24 months, nobody thinks this is like 510 years permanent, they think it’s more of like a short term crisis that we have to just survive through. And I really liked this is a good short term solution paces is definitely going to be used, like I’m in the middle of a deal right now, where we’re doing that on a multi property, it’s mid construction. And rather than having the lender allow it, we’re coming in with a new lender. So that’s also an option as you might have a new lender that just cool with it to recapitalize the deal. But it allows you to keep the loan performing, which a lot of lenders care about. And it gives them a way to be able to cover that reserve, which I think is just, it’s just critical right now. So it’s a unique scenario that I think you’ll be hearing about maybe by the end of the summer, when lenders are really gonna have to start thinking like, hey, what do we do right now?
Awesome. Very, very interesting. And is there anything else about CPAs? That you think that people should know?
So I like to just provide the truth about it. I think there’s a lot of BS about it, you know, and so I think a lot of pokes, you know, they might act like oh, yeah, you could use this everywhere, and you know, you it’ll replace your equity. So I put a lot of content out there, I’m very active on LinkedIn, and I try to just be able to be like, I would call it the truth teller, and say, look, it’s probably going to be a low probability deal. But it’s probably best to have a resource, love to be that for a lot of your listeners, but get somebody who’s actually done a decent amount of business, they can actually backup the results, and rely on that expertise so that you could get questions answered and not feel like you’re going into an area that you know very little about, and somebody tells you something and you’re relying on it, and then you go down the road, you know, you’re relying on this source of money, and it’s not available and everyone’s disappointed. So find an expert that could backup the results. I really think that’s important in every area. And too few people do that, unfortunately. And they and they pay the price down the road.
Speaker 1 29:09
Awesome. sage advice? Well, listen, it’s been awesome learning about C pace. And I think the listeners are gonna find this interesting, especially during this time, I think it’s helpful for people to explore options like this. We’re going to pivot and we’re gonna move to the last part of the show called retail wisdom. Are you ready? It’s our rapid fire round.
Lipkin 29:34
Do it man rapid rapid fire go.
Speaker 1 29:36
All right, first question. Best piece of commercial real estate advice out there for the listeners.
Lipkin 29:42
I mean, it’s in line with what I just suggested. Get somebody who could backup their results. It’s amazing how many people promise you and I see this all time with lenders. I’ve been in this space most of my life. Oh, yeah, we could get you 90% financing at 3% rate and all this stuff. And everyone’s afraid to ask like Oh, Can you show me a deal that you’ve done that with you know, it’s like you’re almost afraid you’re gonna piss off the lender and lose it so I mean the advice is is get somebody to give you some results you know, it’s like give me a track record it’s not you know, come on so that’s the thing is just find out a little bit of somebody’s history do it in a polite way you’re interested in it. You’ll be happy you did
awesome. Good advice man. Next fan favorite question. Extinct retailer you wish would come back from the dead
I love Entertainment real estate. I think that’s the retail that’s not going away. There was like some places down here that were just awesome waterparks I mean, geez. Especially now having a family like I’d like to see another waterpark. We had this one called Six Flags Atlantis it’s now like the Oakwood center in a endanger right across from a danger point like, you know if you know South Florida, you know right in that area. And it was awesome. Everybody loved it. It was like the waterpark in South Florida. We finally got one in Turnberry last year although they charge an arm and a leg if you’re not staying at that hotel. I want another waterpark Chris, another waterpark in South Florida.
Unknown Speaker 31:10
Awesome. Last one, it’s getting to be beach season. One of the hottest beach products for 2020 are Beach, sand socks by Yeah, beach sand socks. And so if you go to sand socks.net
Lipkin 31:36
Oh, it stands socks is actual company got it. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 31:39
they are on sale right now.
Lipkin 31:42
I’m not looking by the way I’m right here with you.
Ressa 31:46
Splash sprites, low top sand socks. What is a pair of these go for? They’re really used like for sports on the beach and whatnot to you know, protect your feet a little bit but you know, still be able to run on the beach and whatnot. soccer, volleyball. 1799 they were 1499 they are now 997 But thank you for playing. Good discount, okay. All right, man. Listen, it’s been real. Great catching up. I’m glad we got to do this again. Yeah, man. Thank you for listening to retail tools. If you want to share a story about a retail real estate deal that you were a part of on our show. Please reach out to us at retail retold at DLC mgmt.com This show highlights the stories behind the deals from all perspectives. So it doesn’t matter if you’re a retailer, broker, entrepreneur, architect or an attorney. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to retail retold so you don’t miss out on next Thursday’s episode.