Solomon is the CEO and founder of Reunion Investments. His business focuses on tertiary real estate markets and they currently are working with the department of defense to provide military housing, which basically guarantees rent for his investors. He explains how he is able to help his passive investors get high returns in uncommon markets.
Solomon Floyd Real Estate Background:
- CEO & Founder of Reunion Investments
- Managing Director of the CTX Global Real Estate Fund
- Served in the US AirForce as an Airman
- Located in Dallas, Texas
- Say hi to him at : https://www.reunioninvestmentsllc.com/
Best Ever Tweet:
“Look at these markets and how they operate now in this crisis, and how they handle these issues to be prepared for the future.” – Solomon Floyd
TRANSCRIPTION
Theo Hicks: Hello, Best Ever listeners. Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m your host today, Theo Hicks, and today we are speaking with Solomon Floyd. Solomon, how are you doing today?
Solomon Floyd: I’m doing great, man. It’s been a beautiful day here in Dallas, Texas, and to be honest, working from home has become a lot more manageable.
Theo Hicks: That’s good to hear. Today we’re talking about the Coronavirus and how it’s impacting Solomon’s business. Before we get started, a little bit about his background. Solomon is the CEO and founder of Reunion Investments. He is the managing director of the CTX Global Real Estate Fund. He has served in the U.S. Air Force as an airman. He’s located in Dallas, Texas, and you can say hi to him at Reunion Investments LLC.
Solomon, before we start talking about the Coronavirus, do you mind telling us a little bit more about your background and what you’re focused on today?
Solomon Floyd: Yeah, absolutely. My background is, as you said – I’m an airman and entrepreneur from Dallas, Texas, who’s focusing primarily in tertiary markets, and utilizing military and municipal housing contracts to essentially get a form of guaranteed rent to my investors.
Theo Hicks: Alright, so tertiary markets… What types of programs are those, that guarantee rent to your investors?
Solomon Floyd: At the moment Reunion’s biggest focus has been our military rental program, where we use our DOD Housing Contract to house military members in exchange for what would be guaranteed rents. So in times like these, where a lot of landlords are scared, and like “Oh my god, what’s gonna happen to my rent?”, my investors aren’t really feeling that, because from the history of time, they’ve never not paid rent for military housing, and they’ve never not paid military members.
So now, my investments have the ability to wait this out and take their money out of the stock market, put it into more real estate that’s gonna house military members, and get them that guaranteed rental income every single month.
Theo Hicks: So the houses that these military members are investing in – people will come to you and say “Hey, I wanna buy a house that’s essentially guaranteed to collect rent”, and then do you help them through the entire process of buying the house, putting in a resident, managing it, and it’s just a complete passive investment for them?
Solomon Floyd: Exactly. We make it as easy as possible. Reunion understands that no one’s going to be able to make it out to these markets as easily as we are. We already have infrastructure there, our boots on the ground are there, our construction company is there, and our property management facilities are also there. So we make it as easy and as passive for most investors to say “Hey, I wanna help the community grow, and I wanna help these people who service every single day, but I also wanna make money.” That’s a very easy thing to do when you just factor in all the amazing possibilities that we can do.
Theo Hicks: So right now there’s been no issues with rent collection from any of these during the Coronavirus, correct?
Solomon Floyd: Exactly. It’s been a matter of we may have a little issue on how many people are getting stationed and where now, just because some troop movements have halted… But the people who currently have rentals with us, their rental amounts aren’t being affected.
Theo Hicks: Perfect. I guess it’s really not much to talking about the Coronavirus, unless you think that might change in the future… But you expect it to not really have an impact at all, even in the future?
Solomon Floyd: [unintelligible [00:04:03].18] We’ve gone from doing originally maybe 35 deals a month, to now, we’re coming into April, and I’ve got 62 deals on my table. People have panicked, and Reunion offers them the ability to put their money someplace else. So as the Coronavirus goes – it’s not necessarily about Reunion, but when you really think about it, it’s a place about tertiary markets. Tertiary market investing is something that a lot of people overlook, because the distance is scary. There are so few distance investors out there, at least in these markets that are so small. And these tertiary markets provide you a great ability, especially from any investor’s standpoint; they don’t have Uber Eats, they don’t have Favor, like we have in Dallas. They don’t have a form of technology aspirations toward them… Which means now, they’re relying on the system that we are. Who’s gonna go deliver their food?
You see these people wait in line, and this offers people the amazing ability, especially now that we’re mimicking things similar to 2018, to innovate in these tertiary markets. There’s still innovation that can be done, whether it’s the rentals technology, self-driving cars, whatever it is. That’s the best part about tertiary markets.
Theo Hicks: What types of returns do your investors make on these types of investments?
Solomon Floyd: For us right now, we are showing anywhere from 35% to 60%. That depends wholly on the investment, but we don’t do anything below 35% ROI when it comes to doing any of our real estate that we’re pursuing.
Theo Hicks: And this is for your company or for the investors who are investing?
Solomon Floyd: For the investors who are investing with us.
Theo Hicks: And that’s 35% cash-on-cash every year, or is that including profits from the sale?
Solomon Floyd: Profits from the sale go up a little bit more. Primarily, a lot of people use our housing for rentals. Sales are a little bit different; they’re a little bit higher, depending on who you’re selling to.
Theo Hicks: So you’re saying that if I invested 100k, I’d be making 35k to 60k every year, in cashflow?
Solomon Floyd: Absolutely.
Theo Hicks: So why isn’t everyone doing this?
Solomon Floyd: I think a lot of people, again, have that fear about these tertiary markets. I can take 100 people up to Wichita Falls, and maybe 25 of them are gonna be like “Oh, man. This is it for me.” I think it’s fear-based primarily, and the thing is, they don’t know much about that market. A lot of people are comfortable investing at home, especially in the economy that we had a couple of weeks ago… But not anymore. [laughs] Ideally, people are comfortable investing at home now.
A lot of people are part of Reunion, so I can’t say that no one’s not doing it, but I can say that more people are getting into it now more than ever.
Theo Hicks: And you said you do about 35 deals per month, and now it’s just exploded more? How are you supporting that deal flow? Have you had to change your marketing strategies, or have you always had more deals than you could buy?
Solomon Floyd: I think right now we’ve definitely had to change the marketing strategy. We were able to go to networking events, go to conferences, speak to people, and now we’re having to pivot to doing a lot more online digital marketing, which is odd for real estate companies, in my opinion… Because you can do most of that in-person. That’s where the connection is made. But getting people to do that next step over the internet I think will be kind of challenging. We’ll see what happens… But that’s just how it is.
Theo Hicks: So what types of online marketing are you doing now?
Solomon Floyd: We’re about to start hitting up YouTube and seeing if we can connect with our investor base ther. That’s where a lot of people are looking at more real estate things as it grows. YouTube’s becoming a pretty popular channel for real estate investors to see what could happen, I suppose… So that’s what we’re gonna start marketing, as well.
We’re also about to do our first LinkedIn advertising, which apparently is very challenging… So we’ll see how my team does, but I’ve got complete confidence that they can make it happen, if they’ve got me this far.
Theo Hicks: And then what about finding investors? Do you have enough investors at the moment to support those number of deals that you’re needing to do, or are you also needing to pivot your investor lead strategies as well to online?
Solomon Floyd: I think we’re gonna have to definitely pivot the investor strategies online, as well. We are always looking for people to come in. Our newest product that we’ve created was in short-term JV deals that anybody could do in these tertiary markets… Because for us, there’s always gonna be a company that wants to buy these back here in the next couple of months, once everything flattens out, and convert them into a REIT. We’ve already had several companies approach us saying “Hey, if you can get us 100 cash-flowing properties, we’ll come by and buy them in July.” And they’ll put them under contract before everything else is really set in stone.
So it’s basically a guaranteed buyer, where all you have to do is go out and build homes, buy homes. Let’s say I need 100 – I’ll just contact a group of investors and say “Hey, I need help getting these 100 homes built/rehabbed/whatever”, knowing that there’s a buyer on the other end, as soon as they’re done. It’s kind of the perfect strategy for most people.
Theo Hicks: Do you focus on a specific market, or is this national?
Solomon Floyd: My DOD contract extends all over the United States, to every single military base, and tertiary markets exist throughout everywhere in the world, so yeah. Right now we’re targeting 18 markets. We’ve done about 12 overall.
Theo Hicks: If someone wants to do what you do, would they need to have previous military experience, or is this something that your average person could do?
Solomon Floyd: It’s something that your average person could do. For example, a buddy of mine – we were seeing what was happening in Flint, and we kind of thought to ourselves “The root problem would primarily be water filtration. How can you filter that water enough to put it in everybody’s home?” And the conclusion we came to was why don’t we just put three serious water filters in everybody’s front year, and run the water through there, so that way it’s clean on the other side?
We got about ten investors together, and we all put our money together, and I think we bought in total 30 homes. We replaced the plumbing all the way to the street, put in a three-series water filtration system, so that way the homes in Flint, Michigan had clean water. And we just rented it back out to the owners, or if the owners wanted the homes back, they’d buy them back from us. So anybody can do it. Tertiary markets exist for everybody.
Theo Hicks: And what about the DOD contract?
Solomon Floyd: The DOD contract – that’s a little bit harder to secure, but that’s a matter of just doing your own research to figure out what each base is in need of. In fact, if you go through the process of becoming a government contractor, it’s really not that difficult. I wish I knew all the logistics behind that, because I didn’t actually do my process. Somebody else did it for me, and that’s what made my life a little bit easier. But definitely research more into that, because the government is looking for housing, whether it’s military, veteran housing, or any sort of housing.
In fact, the best one to do, that doesn’t require you to be a military housing contractor, or any DOD contractor, is VASH. The VASH is essentially Section 8 for veterans, except with way better perks. It’s only a year that the veteran gets the voucher. The rents are substantially higher, and if any damage is caused by the veteran, the VASH program covers that. So that’s a great one for people to get involved in and help out as well.
Theo Hicks: Okay, Solomon, is there anything else we haven’t talked about that you wanna mention as it relates to your business and the Coronavirus?
Solomon Floyd: No, man. I think ideally most people just need to start looking out for these markets, as that’s where the opportunity is gonna be. When this is all over, I don’t imagine that the real estate markets – they’re gonna pick up again. They’re gonna be exactly where they left off, and that’s exactly the case that we felt every single recession. So explore outwards and help these other communities, and you’ll be able to see now they will become the benchmarks for investing in the future.
Look at them how they operate now, in this crisis, as a tertiary market, and how they handle these issues, and see where the benefit and the value is, for yourselves and for the people that live there.
Theo Hicks: Alright, perfect. Thanks for sharing that, and thanks for sharing all of your advice today. Solomon does DOD housing contracts that houses military members, and he said that military members have never not been paid, and their housing contracts have never not been paid… So his business is going to be — not necessarily unaffected by the Coronavirus, but it’s gonna be affected in a positive way, because it sounds like he’s getting more deals this month than he had in previous months, due to the fact that there has been an explosion of demand for real estate in his tertiary markets due to Coronavirus.
He mentioned that you can get a 35% to 60% return on your investment. So people who are interested in passive investing should definitely check out his website and the deals he has to offer. Again, that’s ReunionInvestmensLLC.
We talked about how he has to change up his marketing strategies, which most likely we are gonna have to do as well, due to the Coronavirus… Because you can’t go to meetup groups or in-person events anymore. So he mentioned he’s gonna use YouTube to connect with the investor base, he’s gonna use LinkedIn advertising as well.
Then he also mentioned an interesting investment strategy, which is to pursue VASH, which is essentially Section 8 for housing.
Solomon, thanks for joining us today. Best Ever listeners, as always, thanks for listening. Stay safe, have a best ever day, and we will talk to you tomorrow.
Solomon Floyd: Thank you so much, Theo. I appreciate it.