Episode 15: How Paragon Investment Partners Are Dominating Multifamily Real Estate One Multi-Million Dollar Deal At A Time

Acquania Escarne 0:00

You are listening to the Purpose of Money podcast. How Paragon Investment Partners are Dominating Multifamily Real Estate, One Multi Million Dollar Deal at a Time.

You are listening to the Purpose of Money podcast, a podcast where we talk about ways to build wealth and create more freedom in your life today. I am your host Acquania Escarn.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Purpose of Money podcast. This week we're going to continue the series that I'm doing for the month of June on investing in real estate. In case you missed it, please make sure to check out Episode 13 with Tanya Salseth. She's a real estate investor who's managed to invest and manage her properties from anywhere in the world. She lived abroad. She purchased properties from overseas and now she lives in the US and actually runs her business from another state. Now this week, we're going to talk about multifamily syndication and why you need to think about real estate as a great way to build wealth.

I was doing some research and here's what I learned. America has the most millionaires and more than 18 million people with a seven figure net worth. Unfortunately, that is not equally distributed among the people. Black people make up 13% of the US population, but only possess less than 3% of the country's wealth. In fact, when you break that down into single black women, the net worth of a single black woman with a degree age 20 to 39 is -$11,000 to $0. Come on y'all. When I read that, I had to read it twice because I was like, there's no way they actually have a negative number here. But yes, single black women with a degree, aged 20 to 39 have a negative net worth. Single black woman with a degree aged 40 to 59 have a net worth of $6000 to $9500. And single black woman with a degree who are over the age of 60, $11,000 in net worth. Now, let me tell you why this is a problem. In your 60s, you want to retire and yet you don't have enough money to do it. In comparison to white women with a degree ages 20 to 39, their net worth is $3400 to $7500. That is way more than African American single black women and it's a positive number. But white women aged 40 to 49 have a net worth of $25,000 and white women ages 50 to 59, have a net worth of $117,000. $117,000 like they're in the six figures. And white women with a degree over the age of 60, have $384,400 as their median net worth. Do you know why these discrepancies exist? Because I was startled by the stats. And I had to know more. So I kept digging, and found out that some of the greatest reasons for the discrepancies is the pay wage gap, of course, because black women are earning 62 cents for every dollar white women make. But also because of inheritance and education. White women are more likely to inherit land, money, resources and pursue an education in comparison to young black women. And we've learned from COVID-19 in 2020, that moments of crisis those who have the least will hurt the most. So that's why I am determined to spend this month talking about the importance of building wealth, building generational wealth, and pursuing entrepreneurship, and real estate careers. You can do entrepreneurship and invest in real estate and still have a nine to five, where you're earning a paycheck. This series is here to empower women of color to take a stance and use their creative investor money from their nine to five to invest in ventures that will create passive income and more wealth for their families. I hope that you stay tuned to the entire series. I hope you take advantage of the gems because this is great information. And our guests are doing it now and many of them also have other businesses or nine to five jobs so I know that you can do it too. Now let's dive into the episode. This week, I have a dynamic duo on the show named Pam Dorsey and Nikki Dade from Paragon Investment Partners. Pam Dorsey and Nikki Dade are multifamily real estate investors focused on acquiring properties that generate passive income and working class communities. They founded Paragon Investment Partners with a desire to build a solid multifamily investment portfolio, while introducing value add opportunities for investors and the community. Paragon Investment Partners is invested in 300 units today.

Without further ado, let's kick off this conversation with Pam and Nikki.

Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying the episode. I just wanted to take a break to share with you one quick tip on how I am creating more free time in my life today. I am a busy mom, entrepreneur and a 9-5 employee. And I have to be honest, I used to used to use trips to the grocery store as an opportunity to relax and go up every aisle and take my time and sort of have mommy me time. But since I've taken on more responsibility and extracurricular activities, I just don't have the time to go grocery shopping anymore. So I've embraced Instacart, which has helped me save hours of my life and get the grocery shopping done without me having to step into a store. Instacart delivers groceries from your nearby grocery stores right to your home, and saves you hours on shopping. You literally can do everything online or even from your mobile phone. And most of the time, they can deliver the groceries within an hour. So you get the food that you need to save time and you create more freedom for you to do other things, which is what I love. Check out Instacart for yourself, I have a code that allows you to earn $10 off and a free groery delivery on your first purchase. My code is AESCARNE14c. Or check out the show notes where I have a special link that includes the code there too, just for you. Hope you try it out and let me know what you think.

So hey ladies! Welcome Pam, welcome Nikki to the show. We're so glad to have you on the Purpose of Money podcast. I'm really excited about our conversation today about real estate investing and multi family units because that's your specialty, right?

Pam Dorsey 7:44

Yes. Thank you for having us!

Nikki Dade 7:47

Welcome. So before we get started, I kind of want to talk about your partnership and how you guys know each other because a lot of times I have people ask me "Should I do Get into real estate by myself, or should I get into real estate with a partner?" And I get different, I give different responses because I've done both. So I want to know your perspective. You know, why do you guys particularly work together? And how do you know each other?

Pam Dorsey 8:13

So we've known each other for 25 years, family friends. And we also had like interests in real estate, having owned properties before that single family that we have rented out from time to time. And then just expanding our interest in the way of getting more knowledgeable about it from an investment perspective. Still on our own separate tracks we had interest in and learning more about owning and operating. And I even went as far as to get my license to do mortgage settlement process work and settlement. So I am a licensed title insurance producer in Maryland. And then Nikki got a real estate license and we kept coming back to the fact that we have these like interests. And we decided to put our interest and our resources and our time together to build the business, which we did two years ago. And we haven't looked back. So I think it was born of, you know, our desire to be entrepreneurs, which we have always were serial entrepreneurs. We have several businesses between us, but then combining those like interests into what we started two years ago at Paragon Investment Partners.

Nikki Dade 9:33

Thanks, Pam. But I have a question to follow up on that then. Bcause you mentioned your serial entrepreneur with several businesses, so I'm hoping that those are all going well. What made you decide to then invest in real estate?

Pam Dorsey 9:47

Real estate is, as you know, one of the most proven methods of growing wealth and long term wealth. And it is solid and stable in times like this where the markets are volatile, we have better control of the asset. There's greater tax advantages specific to multifamily. It was about economies of scale like us putting forth resources and effort on a broader scale with a greater return, but probably with the same level of effort that we would if we were trying to do a fixin flip project or a smaller scale, single families, but separate single families, right, just decided that that was the best investment strategy for us.

Nikki Dade 10:34

Oh, that's pretty cool. So Nikki, I want to ask you a couple of questions, because you also are very busy prior to becoming a real estate investor. What are some of the things that you did before? And how did that contribute to your experience and desire to also get into real estate investing?

Yeah, so I mean, I've been in both the public and the private sector, but never really had a lot of Financal Education or understood it from a literacy standpoint, just because I really didn't have that within my family. So seeing that there was a lack thereof there in that particular space, it really encouraged me to want to aspire to do more with that. I didn't have the resources that I needed to actually pursue my higher my secondary education at the time. And it was only, you know, really because my mom, she was a single mother, she was a teenage mom at the time, she had three kids just didn't have the resources, you know, available. And so with that, it really put a desire and in me to make sure that I changed how I did things, right? So that I could create opportunities and a means in a way for my child, you know, when it was time. So I decided to really look into what I needed to do and learn. I had gotten in a bit of a trouble with my credit when I was in school as well. And so I just decided I'm not gonna do that anymore. I really want to have some type of freedom, I want to have the, the vehicle to make sure I can support my child. And and I knew at the time we were looking at real estate. It's already tried and proven. It's something that's that's there, it is certainly a way that you can build generational wealth and leave a legacy. And that was something that we really desired to do. So we were like, "well, let's go ahead and do it." Especially when our current president was put on the ballot. We were like, okay, now's the time. I mean, I'm serious.

Acquania Escarne 12:41

He's quite an investor himself. So it's kind of assumed that that'll be a market that's going to flourish and probably not have as much scrutiny or challenges, so I can see your mind and thinking that through and thinking this is an opportunity. So that's excellent.

Nikki Dade 12:59

And it turned out to be correct.

Acquania Escarne 13:02

Yep.That's a very good assessment on your part. So that's where it kind of leads me to my next question that Pam you can answer or Nikki? Why apartment syndication? So you did mention a little bit about scaling. And how that could be more lucrative for those who are not familiar with this space or what apartment syndication is, can you kind of explain more about what that means? And why it's more profitable to have multi units multifamily units than a single house here and a single house there?

Nikki Dade 13:39

Okay, so that's a two fold question.

Acquania Escarne 13:43

But Nikki, I know you could do it.

Nikki Dade 13:45

We're gonna start with a thought. Apartment syndication. Simply put, it's just a group of investors that pull their money together to purchase larger real estate acquisition. That's the simplest way to put it so that people will understand. But if you were actually pursuing a single family on your own, you would what? You would source the deal on your own, you would find a deal on your own, you would manage the project and then ultimately collect the profits on your own, right? In a syndication, you now split that amongst the group. So it's separated into two different categories. There's your active investors, which is the GP, which is the general partners, they're actually responsible for your day to day operations, managing the project, sourcing the deal, finding the loans, securing the loans, also finding investors actually come into the project, and they manage the asset the entire time. Then there's your limited partners that come in which we call the LP, those are your passive investors, so they're able to actually invest the money into the project, and now collect we're what we call mailbox money.

I love that term. I never heard it before, but just for the listeners background I participated in a virtual meetup with Nicki and Pam. And that was one of the terms that came up and I love it. It's basically another way of saying passive income, money that shows up in the mail. You didn't have to do any work to get it or at least not active at the moment. Passive Income may require some work in the beginning for example, invest in the apartment syndication deal, or having cash to put towards it, but it doesn't require day to day activity, day to day labor, exchange of your time for money.

No fixin it, no toilet, none of that. Great.

Oh, yes. mailbox money. I love it. I love it. So, Pam, how, if you can can you explain how you finance a deal? Because it's my understanding that multifamily units- these are like apartment buildings. These are apartments subdivisions. They're a lot of units you guys yourselves you have 154 units.

Actually, have 300 now. Wejust closed on a project just yesterday. It's 146 units in Columbia.

Acquania Escarne 16:15

Wow, okay, over 300 units in your real estate portfolio. That's amazing. That's amazing.

Pam Dorsey 16:23

So Nikki actually speaks better to our financing because she's our numbers lady.

Nikki Dade 16:28

Okay, okay, so Nikki, can you break down the numbers? Because I want people to understand what this really is. Like, how much does it take to there's two part question How much does it really take to be an investor? Like one of the people in the deal? And then how much are these deals on average, the ones that you've actually participated in?

Oh, okay. So I was beginning to explain also how the deals were broken out, right? So there's two types of offerings that you have and their private offerings, by the way, just basically means that they're not publicly traded on the stock market. So there's a 506 B. And then there's a 506. c, the 506. b is one we it's funny, I heard someone talk about this, but you can think of this as your buddies, right? You can invite your initial sphere of influence, right? You have to have a pre existing, substantive relationship with these people to actually let them know about the project that you're actually working on, right? And you have a mix of investors that actually come into that project, either non accredited investors, which basically I should probably start with accredited accredited investors, which means that you have a network or liquidity that is over a million dollars, with or without your spouse or if you're non accredited and actually fall in the other category. Does that make sense?

Acquania Escarne 18:04

Yes.

Nikki Dade 18:05

Okay, with the 506 b offering, you can invite both types of investors in those particular projects with the 506c offering, it's limited to just accredited investors. And essentially what the Securities Exchange Commission is trying to do is essentially protect the investor out there with that, with that mandate.

So you're breaking down, what types of deals you can have and who can participate, right? So you're either an accredited investor, who you said has a net worth of over a million dollars, it could be with your partner or it could be by yourself, why didn't you have others who can participate who are somehow connected to you whether you have a business relationship or you've worked together on some initiatives in the past, you can invite them to participate in a deal depending on what type of deal it is. So the second question was, well, how much do these really cost? You know, if you're bringing a group of people together, how many investors regardless of the definition of accredited or not accredited, how many investors do you typically need to come to the table? And how much money are every is everyone putting up to purchase this acquisition?

it's typically a minimum of $25K, to join in, in these particular offering. And it can go up or anywhere to as high as a million, the acquisitions that we've participated in and I'm going to speak to those. For instance, this one that we just closed, that was $9.1 million. We had in our last acquisition for Abby Lake, which was 152 units, that one was $8.6 million, and we had about 65 investors that actually came into that project. You're also limited to the number of non accredited Investors or sophisticated investors that you can bring into the project too which is 35. But in terms of accredited, there's no limitation on that number.

Acquania Escarne 20:08

Okay, so that's a good reference.

Pam Dorsey 20:10

Yeah, I will say it also is deal specific, because we there are deals that we get introduced to, to be considered for that the minimum is $50,000. And a lot of times those are the A class properties in the space. So, we've seen as low as 25, but it's often $50K.

Acquania Escarne 20:34

So what what is the class? Is that the neighborhood of the property or is that whether it's two bedrooms or three bedrooms and two baths? Like how do they do this class?

Nikki Dade 20:46

Class A, Class B

Pam Dorsey 20:47

It's a combination of neighborhood and the asset. So the year it was built, what are some of the characteristics of the property, so it's a combination. You know, if it's in the in a bad neighborhood that you probably are going to have to, it's empty, there's no occupancy, you're gonna have to do a lot to get it rentable and keep it rented. It's usually a D class property. C is older like 30 something years old. It's um, you know, it has some deferred maintenance...

Nikki Dade 21:22

Those are going to be your value add opportunities.

Acquania Escarne 21:24

Right. That's like a flip. So basically,

Nikki Dade 21:28

Or larger scale.

Acquania Escarne 21:30

Okay, so it's still like when we were back in grade school, A+ properties are the superstars, right? Yeah. probably fairly new awesome neighborhoods, great schools, not difficult to rent, very good retention,

Nikki Dade 21:43

Luxuries and amenities.

Acquania Escarne 21:44

Right luxuries and amenities. Okay, and then your D properties need a little work, probably going to have a lot of turnover. So that's more work on the people who are running the day to day and then your B and Cs are your lane where you do really well at finding the potential, right? Aand using that leverage leveraging that potential to make it a more profitable investment for your investors. Right?

Nikki Dade 22:10

Exactly. And it's a longer hold. It's typically like a five to seven year hold.

Acquania Escarne 22:15

Okay.

Nikki Dade 22:16

And to give yourself a cushion, they normally push it out to seven. But it's typically five years.

Acquania Escarne 22:21

Okay. So the five years is that how long you're projecting to own the property? Or is that how long you're projecting before you make a return or a profit?

Nikki Dade 22:32

That's how long we're projecting to own the property, to hold the property.

Acquania Escarne 22:35

Okay.

Nikki Dade 22:35

We're getting paid distributions, basically, once we close on the project at the end of the first full quarter of ownership.

Okay, great. So you're also distributing dividends or profits every quarter?

Yep.

Pam Dorsey 22:51

Quarterly.

Acquania Escarne 22:52

Quarterly. So in your opinion, because you're real advocates for real estate and I agree, I do think so. I think it's a great way to build wealth. But there are so many ways to invest in real estate. And there are other ways that are passive as well. For example, I have ownership in a real estate investment trust, or RIT. Do you feel like apartment syndication is more profitable than RITs? Or house flipping? Or is it just a matter of your comfort level, and the projections that you want to make? How much money you want to make?

Pam Dorsey 23:26

So we aren't we don't operate in the RIT space, so we can't speak to that. But for us, it's about several things. So it's how do you want to make your profit? Do you are you do a project and get a chunk of money and roll on to roll that into the next project? Or do you invest for long term hold, cash flow, consistent cash flow over time? And for us, we wanted to build portfolio and have long term security over time. So you It just depends on how, how you want your investments, what you're wanting investment strategy to be, and it can be combined. Because sometimes what we've found in the space is apartment syndications take a long time. Multi sourcing multifamily deals, if even if they're not a syndication are harder to come by. And so you have to have the shorter term strategies to sustain you until you're able to do that next long term view.

Nikki Dade 24:36

Hmm, that's a great point. So what do you mean by they take a long time to source? Are you saying that if someone tells you about a deal today, It'll take a while to close? Or are you referring to the fact that for the most part, you want to keep the property for five years so this is about a strategy where you may be involved for five years?

Pam Dorsey 24:56

I'm talking about the former. So it's it's the market is really hot for multifamily investing. And because the stock market and other investments are more volatile, you know, you have people wanting to get into the real estate game. And you have a lot of big older groups who have been in this space longer, they have more experience, they have long money, and they can swoop in and you know, take over a deal quite quickly. So it's it's harder to source feel that we see deals all the time, but they have there has to be enough skin in it for us to even put up the money that's going to be required to take it down the effort. You know, it doesn't take a long time to do that. It's takes me longer to find the right deal. So there are tons of deals to be had. But are they the right ones based on your investment strategy, what returns you want to make, how much you know, effort, and your investor pool? You have to your investment pool is going to be made up of people who have the same goals and values for what they want to get out of the deal as well. So it's it's a marriage, and you have to make sure the deals that you're getting into are going to be beneficial in the long run, not just for yourself in what you're trying to accomplish, but for your investors as well.

Nikki Dade 26:16

Right. That makes a lot of sense. Nikki, are you trying to say something?

Yeah, I was also too because it every this this business on the commercial investing side because it is commercial investing. It is a relationship business. And so you really have to work hard to build and cultivate those relationships to get the right deal. Right?

Acquania Escarne 26:37

That makes sense.

Nikki Dade 26:37

We typically call off market deals. So she was saying we see a lot of deals and those are deals that we have. We're actually on listings with different brokers, brokerages, but those are typically the ones that are already picked over, right? But to get those pocket listings, which are those listings that they kind of hold for those buyers that they know that are going to close, those are the relationships that we're trying to build and cultivate and build a lot of. So you have to work on those. We're new, you know, within this space right now, which is why it's so important that we really push, you have to really partner with people that are more experienced than you are, and leverage their resources and leverage their network and come into them and allow them to teach you, you know, the process, which is what we're doing. And while you're growing, you can also learn at the same time while you're building your portfolio, and then in preparation, when you can actually take over the project.

Acquania Escarne 27:32

So how did you find your mentor or your support system? Were you already actively involved in real estate meetups or did you know this person and then decided I'm ready to take the next step? Can you help me and solicited their help?

Pam Dorsey 27:46

We found our our first mentor we found just through research online.

Nikki Dade 27:54

Yeah.

Pam Dorsey 27:54

And we interviewed with him and you know, he was able to ask questions. We were able to ask him questions. And I'm very new. We were three months into two months into our starting our business. So we didn't. We didn't we knew what we wanted to get out of the relationship from an educational perspective, but so much about this is about this space is beyond just what you're going to get from an education perspective. I don't want to undervalue that. Because that's really important where we are in it two years, and there's so much more for us to learn. But at the time, as I said, we were two months in, and then, you know, so we went through the education, we went through group calls and sample deals, learning the business, getting our getting our knowledge that way. And we learned later after, we felt we got to a point where we felt we knew as much as we wanted to know without jumping in. We're experiential learners. So we want to, you know, go out and do a deal. And just get our feet wet, learn the lessons. And so we quickly learned that we needed to be networking more, we needed to be exposed in the multifamily space more. And we started seeking out other advisory opportunities. So we started bringing people on our team. In addition to the relationship we have, we started expanding our advisory team to be able to pull and pull in different resources for the things that we were continuing to learn because initially we were learning about smaller scale multifamily, we quickly learned, okay, there's this whole syndication space over here. How do we get our feet in that like? So we started making those relationships and learning from advisors in that space who leveraged us into how we got involved in into the syndications that we did.

Nikki Dade 29:49

That's really awesome. So I do have to ask because so far we shared all the good news. You're over 300 units, you found a mentor online successfully, you have been able to master this business and get to this level in two years. But I want to know about the challenges. It's not all easy peasy. You don't just sign up and then the mailbox money starts. So tell us what are some of the challenges you faced after you had the mentors in place that you had to overcome? And what did you do to overcome those obstacles?

Well, so Pammy talked about a very eloquently, that was actually one of our lessons. Our store ship that we signed up for, we quickly found that it wasn't really the right fit for what we needed to do. We again, we're firm believers in you either pay up front, because you're going to pay either way. You're going to pay upfront, or you're going to pay in lessons that you learn on the other side. So we decided to pay up front. But when we got in the program, we realized, wait a minute, you know, what is the purpose of us paying for this program if we aren't really able to leverage the resource that we have here? So we didn't really have the access that we thought we needed to have. We weren't able to actually partner with the other protegees that were in the program. We didn't know who was in the program. We didn't say that this particular mentor didn't have any live events where you could actually capitalize on that particular opportunity as well. There were just a number of things that we found that didn't fit for us. Obviously, there was money that was spent, but it was a lesson that was learned for us as well, you know, in that particular space, that wasn't what we needed. Now we had to go and find someone else and continue to go through that. We also jumped into our first deal because we you know, Pam, you talked about us being experiential learners. So we learn by doing. We got our butts kicked.And I mean, swiftly!

Pam Dorsey 31:48

We're still bandaging those wounds. Yeah, we're still putting..

Nikki Dade 31:54

You know, we couldn't initially find our deal you know? We had spent the time really making sure that our credit was where it needed to be. We thought we had all of our ducks in a row. And we could not get a lender. We were like, what is going on here? Like why? We went through that. So finally, almost to the end of the deal, we actually had to fire our loan officers because they weren't performing.

Pam Dorsey 32:20

They weren't performing, you know?

Nikki Dade 32:25

And we had to go with the hard money lender at the almost at the eleventh hour, right? And we said, then, "we will never be in a situation like that again." Right? That we didn't have the right fit again. We didn't know we did our research we thought we did our research anyway, but found that it didn't work out. So this particular time, we said well, since we don't have the network and the liquidity to play in the space that we were actually looking to play in, that's when we decided to put people on our team. See that's also another beauty in this apartment syndication space. We the reason why we didn't think, or have the bandwidth to know that we could go into a space this large, was because we didn't know that you could actually put people on your team in place on your team to support you in areas that you don't have. That's something that you don't have the capability of doing in the single family space. So you have people that actually sponsor your loan, you have people that actually guarantee your loan, you know, we don't have the network and liquidity. But there's someone on our team that does, which affords us the opportunity to move forward in those deals. So learning that was that project that that project that we tried to find on our own, that we're still paying. So. So we had to go through that we've actually had to fire our property manager on that on that project as well. We had to go through getting a new property manager. So there's, I mean, there's been bumps and bruises, but we also understand that our why is a lot larger than all of the other adversities that we're going to be faced with through the business. And so we keep pushing forward, knowing that it's a long term play, and it's a long term hold, and stay encouraged. And you have to keep people around you as well, that are successful that you can use as examples to kind of talk to you. That's when your network really plays a part as well. And that support system, and we just keep fighting, but no, it hasn't been roses the entire time. Even with this deal that we just closed. It was a missed opportunity right before that. But our investors believe in us and you know, stay with us and went into this next project with us. Now, that was a really good deal. Really good project down in Texas that we missed out on but it's okay. You know, what's for us,s going to be for us.

I love that that's a sign of you're resilient. You're also women of faith because you're like it's the missed opportunity happen, but we're going to come stronger and better and we have a support team of investors that are willing to ride with us. So I think that's amazing. I think that it just shows you pick the right team. But you're still acknowledging that sometimes you have to work on it. Sometimes you have to let people go. And I think that's hard for people to realize that who you joined the party with may not be the people who you leave with.

Exactly.

Acquania Escarne 35:21

And you made some real decisions, like, this is not a good fit, or you are in this deal, but you're not doing your job and we need a loan and you're not performing. Okay? You have to go, right? And still having faith that but we're going to close the sale, we're gonna find someone. And then I think it's important that you also highlighted in real estate, sometimes you need more than one option. You know, some people call it three exit strategies. If I'm not able to flip this house, am I gonna rent this house? If I'm not able to rent this house? Am I gonna sell this house? So in your case, you are like we have a deal on a table. We can't get a loan from the loan officer. We're going to find a loan officer. But then we're going to look for a hard money lender for guys out there. If you don't know what that is, that's another way to finance real estate deals. And they're not like traditional banks. Sometimes real estate investors can't walk into a Wells Fargo or Bank of America and get funding for these types of deals. So you have others out there who are willing to lend their own money, or money of their group of investors. And so you were able to get resourceful and find other ways to finance your properties. And so that's awesome.

Nikki Dade 36:31

Let me tell you one more point. We also understand that loans are temporary stays, right. So we did, we didn't get discouraged with that. We were like, that's okay. We're going to use this to actually close the deal. But then we went on to establish our relationship with Eastern Savings Bank, who's actually our current sponsor, for all we've got now, so that we can refinance into into permanent financing. The next day, once we we started working on that we're like, I'm serious. And we refinanced out of that hard money loan and to secure financing with Eastern Savings Bank.

Acquania Escarne 37:06

And I'm sure at a much better interest rate.

Nikki Dade 37:08

At a much better interest rate. It was about in October was it? This past October?

Pam Dorsey 37:14

August.

Nikki Dade 37:15

August.

Acquania Escarne 37:16

Yeah.

Pam Dorsey 37:17

And that introduced an opportunity, 1-for our meet up sponsorship relationship, but a longer term relationship with a lender in the area who has, who knows our investment strategy, who, when we're ready to source things, we can go to them and say, "This is what we have, what can you do for us?" And they are super responsive. They put us at the top of the list. They're like, you know,

Nikki Dade 37:40

They presented it on Meet Up.

Pam Dorsey 37:42

Yeah, you can do this and this and, you know, so that they're on our team, like, it created an opportunity for us to bring other people partner to see

Acquania Escarne 37:53

Relationships, relationships, relationships. Because to have a relationship with a bank like that or a lender, like that is amazing. Because like you said, now the next deal comes along, if you need to act fast, they're putting you at the top of the list. They're looking at the numbers quickly for you. They're giving you a realistic answer in a timely manner. So you can take it or you can leave it.I think that's awesome.

Nikki Dade 38:16

We have that same relationship with our commercial lenders as well, Greystone. We did the same thing. So we, we knew we were going to pursue multiple things, right, we were going to have units that were going to be a little bit smaller inside that wouldn't quite meet the criteria of the other space that we're playing in the larger space. So that was Eastern Savings Bank, but for our larger lending vehicles, we partner with Greystone who's our Platinum Sponsor, and that was a whole task as well, and she'll tell you I stalked her.

Persistence, another great entrepreneur quality. Oh ladies this conversation has been really awesome and I'm so glad you shared so many Real Estate gems with my listeners. Before we close out, can you please let us know how can we follow you and find you on social media if we want to continue to connect.

Pam Dorsey 39:09

On Facebook, we're at Paragon Investment Partners, and on Instagram, we're Paragon Partner.

Nikki Dade 39:18

Got it. I'll make sure guys to include all of that in the show notes, also links to their website. So you can check out Nikki and Pam as they continue to grow their business. Congrats again on expanding and 2020 this is going to be a big year for all of us. And I'm so excited for your success. And I hope that everyone subscribes, listens, shares. This is a great topic. This is something that more people of color more women need to be involved in. So I hope that this was helpful for you. Feel free to send me any questions if you want to learn more. Thanks for listening.

Acquania Escarne 39:55

I really hope you enjoy that episode. Personally I was inspired to start Investing in multifamily syndications. These are big multimillion dollar deals, and we need more women at the table. I hope some of their advice you heard today will help you get started and do your research on how you can get involved too. Remember you can get the episode show notes on my website at the Purposeofmoney.com\Episode14/. Remember to connect with me on social @ThePurposeofMoney on Instagram,or @Purpose_Money on Twitter. You can catch the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Podbean and Podbay. They're all great apps that you can download and listen to the podcast on the go. I'm keeping this series on real estate investing going by releasing a new episode next week. Check it out on Wednesday, June 17. In the meantime, keep building generational wealth.

Thank you for listening to the purpose of money podcast for more resources and information check out my website ThePurposeofMoney.com. And while you're there, please sign up for our newsletter so you have the latest information on new episodes and blog posts. Until next time, keep building generational wealth $1 at a time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai