WS1919 Applying Aerospace Engineering to Real Estate Investing | Jonathan Nichols

In today's episode of the Real Estate Syndication Show, we had the pleasure of speaking with Jonathan Nichols, co-founder of Apogee Capital. Jonathan's unique background in aerospace engineering has provided him with a skill set that has proven invaluable in the world of real estate syndication. He shared insights into how his engineering mindset has influenced his approach to underwriting and risk management in real estate investments.

Key Points from Jonathan Nichols:

• Asset Management: Jonathan stressed the importance of asset management in the success of real estate syndication. He and his wife joined an asset management mastermind to excel in this area, as it's crucial for turning numbers on a page into reality.
• Debt Strategy: During 2021-22, Jonathan made the conservative decision to avoid high leverage bridge debt, which has paid off as his projects are now benefiting from low-interest, fixed-rate debt.
• Underwriting Tips: Jonathan provided tips on underwriting, such as being cautious with loan assumption deals and ensuring adequate leverage. He also mentioned the importance of understanding cap rates and their relationship with interest rates.
• Market Outlook: Jonathan shared his thoughts on the current market, expecting a slow first half of 2024 but reminding listeners of the long-term fundamentals of real estate investing.
• Advice for Investors: He advised stacking conservatism in reserves for operating expenses and CapEx to prepare for unexpected costs and emphasized the importance of cash flow management.
• Finding Investors: Jonathan discussed the evolution of finding investors, starting with friends and family, then growing through references, and now exploring social media platforms.
• Giving Back: Jonathan and his wife are service-oriented and have participated in building homes for families in need, which has been a meaningful way to give back to the community.

Listeners can learn more about Jonathan and his work at Apogee Capital by visiting their website, ApogeeMFC.com, or by following him on LinkedIn.

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Transcript

Jonathan Nichols: Usually in engineering, we like to say that you always want to be accurate. And when you can't be accurate, you have to be conservative. Businesses don't go bankrupt due to a lack of value or a lack of assets. They go bankrupt due to a lack of cash.

Whitney Sewell: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I'm your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Jonathan Nichols. He and his wife founded Apogee Capital in 2020 in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Previously worked 10 years in aerospace engineering, And he dives into some of that today and how that has helped him in the syndication business. But he's a mentor in the Michael Blanc program, owns numerous residential investments and a top-rated short-term rental business in the Arlington Entertainment District, a bachelor's degree and master's degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M. And so he enjoys racing and Ironman triathlons and travelling with his wife. He's going to jump into some of the most important things I think you need to know, whether you're active or passive today. And it's playing out in our, you know, in the cycle, right, of real estate today. And so you're going to learn a lot from him that you need to be focused on, like I said, whether you are active or passive. Jonathan, welcome to the show.

Jonathan Nichols: Hey, Whitney, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, honoured to have you on, looking forward to diving in. And you have some unique skill sets or unique background of skill sets that have helped you in this business in a big way. And I'm looking forward to learning from you and the listeners learning from you as well. But let's jump in. I know you and your wife both are, you know, you left careers and hit the syndication business head- on full- time. Give us some of the details there and even the transition, maybe some highlight there that helped you all to make that transition successful.

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, absolutely. And so as you mentioned, my background was aerospace engineering. I grew up wanting to be an engineer and always was fascinated with aviation, and in particular, kind of the numbers and analysis that went behind successful aircraft design and missions and stuff like that. So that's what I grew up dreaming about and hit the real world, the corporate world, where I worked for a local aerospace company for about eight or nine years before I finally left my job. And I just kind of figured out that while I loved aerospace, you know, the corporate life wasn't necessarily my forte. And so the question is, what are you going to do? M y wife and I got married about seven years ago. And shortly after we got married, she informed me one day that we needed to find a hobby together. And so I didn't have any clue of what that could be. But we both kind of read a little bit and learned a little about real estate investing. And so we thought, hey, what about this idea of doing a hobby of real estate investing so that it pays us instead of paying for the hobby, you know, like what most people do. And so, you know, off we went. We started by house- hacking a fourplex many years ago. That's how we got started and converted all those to short- term rentals. And then continued to build our single- family portfolio using additional properties for short- term rentals and did that for a few years. Anyone in that industry knows that's extremely intensive from a management perspective. We still own all those properties, and still run them, but we realized we needed a different avenue to build a scale and build a legit business. And so that's when the idea of multifamily syndication came in for all the reasons I'm sure your listeners are already familiar with. But in my background doing aerospace engineering, I gravitate towards the acquisitions, the analysis, a lot of the numbers and strategy that goes behind the business. And then my wife's background in consulting, she gravitates more towards asset management, project management, and the execution of business plans. And then we kind of meet in the middle on capital raising. So that's us. That's Apogee in a nutshell.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah. That's incredible. I love the, just the skill sets that you're able to bring to this business, you know, from the aerospace career. I mean, that's a big deal to leave something like that. Right. So I, uh, it's, it, it's not a, uh, a small decision I'll say, right. Uh, you know, to jump into something like this and leave that behind.

Jonathan Nichols: It's not. And, you know, as you've probably already intuitively gleaned, you know, it wasn't my intention to ever leave that career when we started in real estate. But, you know, I saw the potential of this industry, especially for someone that's, you know, willing to work hard, is smart, that's dedicated. And I just said, hey, if I stay in the corporate world, I'm limiting myself. And so, you know, over time, it just kind of weighed on me heavier and heavier until finally, I leapt . So no regrets now.

Whitney Sewell: Can't believe you would leave such a secure position for something like this.

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah. Well, I don't know about that.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah. Right. Exactly. That's my whole point. That's my whole point. No, congratulations again to you and your wife and just making the leap and the success that you've had. And you have to take some risk, right? To, uh, to, for a bigger reward, uh, ultimately. And so absolutely. taking control of your all's financial future. Right. And so, yeah, congratulations again. Well, let's jump in. I want to I want to learn to do some underwriting or vetting a deal like aerospace engineering. I think you can help us help us do just that. And why don't we jump in there? I know you have a numbers background, right? And that was your bread and butter. But how do you apply that now to this business? Help the listeners and myself to maybe think through a deal like you would.

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, so let me give you two kinds of examples. Obviously, we could talk all day long about numbers, but let me give you one that's gone incredibly well, and then let me give you another one that hasn't gone so well. So, you know, my background, obviously a lot of numbers, you know, but much of engineering is about risk management right so there's always something that can break there's always something that can go wrong but understanding what that risk level is is it acceptable and what can be done to mitigate it is a lot of what we spend our time on as engineers and so you can probably immediately see how that would translate over to the multifamily space. We started syndicating back in the 2020 COVID era. The whole industry has been full of dynamic challenges ever since we started in it. One of those challenges, one of the questions we had to answer as active sponsors on deals was how we were going to approach underwriting and acquisitions when it came to debt during 2021 and 2022. Coming from a background where I didn't work in finance or anything that re quired debt, I found a couple of local brokers who work in the multifamily space and began to build relationships with them and talk back and forth about risks and stuff associated specifically with high- leverage bridge debt. And so we made the decision that for our company, during that 2021-22 era, we were not going to use any bridge debt, any floating rate debt on deals unless it was extremely high- value add, like traditional projects you would use bridge debt for. And unfortunately, at that time, it resulted in us probably doing about half the number of acquisitions that our peers did. But you fast forward to today, and as you can probably guess, all our projects are low- interest, fixed- rate debt, still doing distributions, just trucking along. And so that's a decision that I'm particularly proud of that I think was accurate. Not that I knew everything that was going to happen, but just to me, the risk seemed unacceptably high at the time.

Whitney Sewell: That was a great decision.

Jonathan Nichols: It was, it was, but lest I, lest I stop while I'm, you know, kind of tooting my own horn, let me switch to the other side and talk about something that didn't so well go . Um, so we've also invested, um, passively in several deals, um, you know, particularly with retirement funds where we can not use those funds within our deals. And, um, there are two of those deals in particular that are struggling right now. And the mistake that I made with them going into it is that I spent a lot of time focused. on the numbers, right? So I said, OK, is their rent growth reasonable? Are their rent comps reasonable? Are their expenses reasonable? On and on and on, all the things that you would look through and sort of analyze. But what I didn't take the time to look at was the team in detail. Not that I didn't ask questions about track record, not that I didn't see the slide of full cycle deals at 2x equity multiples, but just I didn't take the time to understand if this team was able to execute these projects. Two of them in particular right now are struggling. They're probably going to pull through. But what I would tell people who are looking to passively invest is that it's so important to not only understand the numbers inside and out but also have a relationship with the sponsor. There's a reason for 506B syndications, you need to have a prior existing relationship, and it's because that relationship goes a long way in you understanding what types of capabilities and what kind of integrity that person's going to have as they're executing on a project. I think that had these particular two projects been managed better from an asset management perspective, they would be in a different position today. That's a big lesson learned for us in our investing career.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, a couple of questions to follow up on here. I want to go back to the one that went well for a moment, and then we'll come back to that one also. But you talked about evaluating that risk, right? And it's what we all have to do, right? Depending on where we're at now, we're investing in a journey. Y ou mentioned you must understand the risk level and your risk tolerance. And it's different for everyone, I know. But maybe what were a few of the questions that helped you to evaluate that risk? risk, or maybe dive in there just a little bit more to help us to evaluate risk that way, that helped you to determine, OK, this is too much risk for us.

Jonathan Nichols: So one of the most fascinating things to me in the commercial real estate space is the cap rate. This idea is that you have this number that relates income to the value of the property. And, you know we know if you can simply change the income, the net operating income of the project, you can change the value of the project. But then when it comes to, you know, the dynamics of the cap rate, we have no control over that as investors. And so I think to understand cap rates inside out, how they function, and what's realistic is one of the most important things to look at, both as an active deal sponsor or as a limited partner if you're investing. And so for me, when I sat down to look at cap rates back in, say, the 2021 era they're at historical all-time lows. And you have to ask the question, why? T he reason is that you can leverage these deals so high for such a low- interest rate. And so a lot of people during that era, even like the first half of 2022, would make statements like, well, cap rates and interest rates are uncorrelated. There is no connection between the two. which may be true from an equation standpoint, but it's not true when it comes to a practicality standpoint of like, what can you afford to pay for a property? The debt that you have access to has a lot. And so then for me, the question just became like, well, will my buyer, when I go sell these properties, have access to the same level of debt that I do today? And so for me, I just felt like it wasn't reasonable to say that they would because we had never seen that amount of leverage at such low rates before in the history of commercial real estate. So I think that would be one example of weighing risks. Usually in engineering, we like to say that you always want to be accurate. And when you can't be accurate, you have to be conservative. And so there are some things that we can look at fairly accurately in multifamily. I would say rent comps, you can be fairly accurate. You can see the properties around and have an idea of what your product is going to rent for. Even expenses, most expenses, you can have a pretty good idea, although taxes and insurance the last couple of years might argue with me on that point. But something like a cap rate you have to be conservative because you don't know which direction that, that it's going to run across the life of your business plan.

Whitney Sewell: Oh, I mean, I'm sure learning that the hard way at the moment, right?

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, absolutely.

Whitney Sewell: So I love that, uh, that quote there, you said, uh, you must be accurate. And if you can't be accurate, you better be conservative, right? That's something to think through when you're underwriting a deal for sure. Or whether you're active or passive, right? Uh, it's like, man, are they, how accurate do I feel like they are on these assumptions? Right. And they hopefully are conservative at the same time. You mentioned, obviously, the ones that aren't going as well now . And it seemed like a lot of that was more focused on the team than the underwriting. And you can relate this to either of those things. But even as a passive investor now, what's changed in how you're vetting operators now versus how you did then?

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah. So I think there's this, there's this secret sauce that no one talks about. Shouldn't say no one talks about it. It's undervalued within our industry. It's called asset management. It's the ability to take those numbers on a page and turn them into reality. And so, you know, my superpower is kind of the acquisition, the business plan. My wife's superpower is asset management, but the common denominator in both of those failing projects. And many of the projects that I see struggling right now are a lack of ability in asset management. And so for us at Apogee, we decided this year we were going to join a year-long asset management mastermind, both of us, even though my wife is the lead in that for our company. Because while we were doing a good job as I mentioned, our deals were doing well, we wanted to be not just good at it, we wanted to be excellent at it because we could see how that differentiated successful operators from those that were not. As someone vetting a deal, as a passive investor who's interested in investing in a deal, you want to understand the track record, not just of teams going full cycle on a deal and showing an equity multiple when cap rates are compressing, but an actual track record of asset management, which simply boils down to being able to increase the NOI for a business plan that's written down during the acquisition phase.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, I love your focus on asset management. No doubt. It's so important how the deal is being operated, right? And that there's experience around the operations, even to your all's extent, to go and join a mastermind, right? And surround yourself with other people who are doing that well. Yeah, especially within your own business. But I can see how, as a passive investor, it's going to, I mean, even that mastermind is going to inform how you're asking questions of who you're investing with.

Jonathan Nichols: Absolutely. Absolutely. No doubt. I t's probably going to eliminate, you know, a lot of most operators from the, from the checklist, right? Because it's, it's, it's not an easy job for sure.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, no doubt. It is a very difficult job, whether it's a third party or in-house management or asset management, or, I mean, there's, there's a lot of things to think through there as a passive investor. And, you know, is this group prepared to operate in a, Not just an up market, but in a down market, too? Right. And that's what's hitting several folks as we speak, you know, as well. Anything else, Jonathan, around like how maybe you look at a deal now that maybe even came from your aerospace background or that it's like, you know what, Whitney, this is like one of the top few things that I know I need to know or as a past investor or active, either one.

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, I think this tip will be a little bit more useful probably for active investors than passive. But one thing we were taught in engineering school, I think everyone thinks that you try to just overcomplicate everything as much as you can. And nominally, engineers gravitate towards that side of the coin, so to speak. But we had a professor in school who we were going through coursework, and to solve a given problem, there were like, let's say, three or four different equations that you could use. T hese equations ranged from very simple to incredibly complex. And needless to say, the incredibly complex method would solve any problem. But the simplified formulas only solved certain problems, like certain genres of this problem, right? And so he told us and enforced that if we used the complex formula when we could have used one of the more simple ones, we would not receive credit for that problem on a test, right? And what they're trying to teach us was not how to use a formula. It was how to think through What is the most efficient way to solve this problem? And so, yeah, there's several different things that that I like to look at on deals as an active investor. You know, when I'm investigating some of them are very, very personal, like personal preferences. It could be, for example, that I tend to favour better locations. I'm not a C- location type of investor. I'll buy a C property, but it's got to be in a B or better location for me. That's a personal preference. because there are investors that go by and see D locations who are incredibly successful, right? Um, but then there are other things that just, as you run the numbers, you learn, Hey, this is a little trick, or this is something I can look at to help me that deals. And so, um, I don't know if I already mentioned this, but, you know, we went through a mentorship program early on in our multifamily investing career, and we're out now actually both coaches into that mentorship program. And so, One type of deal that I see a lot now is loan assumption deals. For anyone in the audience that's not familiar, it's simply when you take on the current owner's debt on the property to get a lower interest rate than what you could get on it today. Sometimes people mistakenly think like, well, there's a 3%, a 4% rate on this property, it's a good deal. But the thing that they don't immediately look at is what's the amount of leverage that you get with that loan. And so if you look or you analyze a lot of these deals, you'll find that they get, say, 50, 55, maybe 60% leverage if you're lucky. And when you're in the 50% leverage range, unless there's just a ton of value out on the deal, it's not going to work no matter how low the interest rate is. And so I'll talk to my students and be like, look, if the leverage amount is 50% or 55%, just throw the deal out. It's not worth looking at. Now, on the other hand, if it's, say, 65% to 70%, it's worth taking a second look at and seeing, if is there any value i n this deal. Let me give you an example. We did a loan assumption deal last year and the leverage on it came in at 71%. That was a big thing I highlighted to my investors: we were getting a solid leverage point, which at the same time meant a solid price point. We're not overpaying based on the debt on the property for this transaction. And then I have another student who's been working on a deal and they're at a 68% leverage point. And so that was one thing I highlighted to them when they came across this deal i t could potentially work based on that. So that's one small example, but I think you kind of develop these rules of thumb with some practice.

Whitney Sewell: No doubt, the more deals you see, the faster it happens, right? You come to those conclusions. Well, Jonathan, I ask everybody, especially those who are operators or active in our space, just what you expect to happen. Right. Everybody asks me this, you know, I want to know on the show, you know, what's, what do you expect to happen over the next 6, 12, 18 months? Uh, cause ultimately what, and nobody knows exactly or for sure. Right. But what we believe is going to happen affects what we're doing. Right. And so we all have some kind of opinion because it does change what we do. Uh, but what are your thoughts on just the market over the next year, at least?

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, absolutely. Let me put that in light of we have a deal that we purchased a few years ago, and it still has a little less, I think, than three years left on the loan for this deal. We were having a GP meeting recently to discuss that. A lot of the conversation centred around this question of what we think is going to happen. And that I think pretty much everyone agreed on right off the bat is that now's not the best time to sell if you don't have to. And so there's not a lot of transactions going on simply because the only people wanting to sell are those that are either highly distressed or those that bought so long ago that they have an incredibly low basis. T herefore, let's say that 20% of their deal has reduced in value over the last two years is just not that important to them. They have better opportunities to pursue. And so, you know, I think that the Fed has already hinted that they're going to be dropping rates at some point this year. I don't expect to see that in Q1 because I think they're still pretty cautious about, you know, inflation staying low. But, you know, if you look back at history, typically whatever that they hint at or say they're going to do, they will do that and then some. So, you know, they say they're going to raise rates two years ago, they raised rates and at a much faster rate. and many more times than most investors expected. And so I suspect if they've hinted at, you know, lowering rates a few times this year, we will see that by the end of the year. And, you know that will open up a lot of transaction opportunities for buyers and sellers going forward. I think that at least the first half of 24 will probably be pretty slow. But, you know, one thing I was thinking about this week, we can talk all day long about what's going to happen this year or next year. But I think that it's really important, especially as you're talking to investors, to not forget the fundamentals of real estate that we can be very confident in. The last few years have been very challenging just because we've had things in our economy that we haven't seen before. We haven't seen in a long time, like COVID, like 40- year high inflation etc but the fundamentals of real estate would suggest if you buy a deal at a good price today it has some value component to it you execute on that business plan and you have the flexibility to exit and say the next five to ten years you're going to win. Now, whether you hit a 10%, a 15% or 20% IRR, that's down in the weeds. We can debate that, but you're going to win as an investor. And I think it's really important to remind our limited partners of that. Many of whom are, you know, maybe not as in tune with the market and they only see what they see from the news and remind them of those fundamentals that are substantially more important than anything the Fed's going to do in the next six to 12 months.

Whitney Sewell: Yeah, I appreciate that reminder as well for us, the listeners, and just to remind our investors of that as well. It is a long-term game, right? Absolutely. It's not an overnight rich success, I guess. for passive or active investors. And so I think that's a great reminder. There's a lot of fear in the market right now. And hopefully, you have set your deals up with proper debt, long-term fixed- rate debt, and you have time. Right. You have time like you're talking about, you know, over the next five, 10 years. And it's OK if the market goes down some right now. Right. You're not hopefully you do not need to sell this year like you're like you mentioned. But, you know, speaking of that, you know, any other tips on maybe how you prepare for a downturn? You know, you're looking at the underwriting or maybe there's a few things that are like, you know, we want this much in reserves or we want this, you know, this type of loan to value or whatever it may be. Any anything else around that?

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, so I think there are two things. One is the asset management piece. As I mentioned, in both the deals that I'm involved with as a limited partner, the reason they are distressed to the level they are is because of poor asset management. Floating rate debt, yeah, if you have a rate cap, it may cause you to have to pause distributions or something like that, or buy an expensive rate cap with a capital call from investors. But it's not going to necessarily put the deal in jeopardy, at least from what I'm seeing. It's usually poor asset management behind it. So I think that's probably the first thing to look at.

Whitney Sewell: I was going to say, no, the asset management piece is crucially important. I think you've hammered that home, and even earlier, just many details around the importance of the team. No doubt about it. Is there, and I get to ask this all the time, and since you're a numbers guy, I just wonder, any thoughts around proper reserve amounts?

Jonathan Nichols: Oh, yeah, that's that's a good point. So it's interesting when I was an engineer one year, they told me, hey, for career improvement this year, we want to send you to a business acumen class for the day. I had no business training at all at this time. And I think it was either very early on when I was getting involved with real estate or You know, maybe, maybe not at all. And so I don't remember anything from that class the entire day, except for one lesson that I learned. And that businesses don't go bankrupt, due to a lack of value or a lack of assets, they go bankrupt due to a lack of cash. And that stuck with me. From that day, it's the one thing I learned and I've carried it with me both in our investments and finances, as well as on our projects. And so, you know, one thing I encourage my students to do is just really stack conservatism when it comes to your reserves, both with your operating reserves and with your reserves for CapEx. you need to make sure that you have money for those contingency things that come up because, on a multifamily property, there will almost always be something, a five-digit, six-figure type expense that you were not expecting in the realm of CapEx. I think that reserves are really important. I f you have floating rate debt, that even becomes more important to save for potential rate caps or floating rate interest, et cetera. So absolutely.

Whitney Sewell: That's a great quote right there as well. Yeah. Businesses don't go bankrupt due to a lack of value. They go bankrupt due to a lack of cash. I've heard numerous people talk about, you know, with no cash, you crash.

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, absolutely. That's a more succinct way to state it for sure.

Whitney Sewell: That's awesome. What's your best source for meeting new investors right now?

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, that's a good question that I'm working to a nswer. So I don't know that I have the perfect answer. Historically, we started with friends, family, and professional contacts. We have a lot of professional people who invest in our deals due to our work backgrounds. And then I would say after that became references, right? People were happy with how their investments were doing. And so they would refer their friends, family, professional contacts. Today, I've started experimenting a lot more with social media. I'm very active, like on LinkedIn, and Instagram. But I'm still working to crack the code there, to be honest. I think that the most important thing is just really treating your investors well and making sure that you put them first. Because in my experience, references have been crucial in adding investors to your list.

Whitney Sewell: Jonathan, what's a metric or two that's important to you? It could be personally or professionally.

Jonathan Nichols: One thing I've become a big fan of over the past few years is the 12- week year goal- setting system. And just kind of a 20- second recap for anyone's not familiar with that, you set goals every quarter instead of an annual basis because it puts kind of more fire underneath you to go accomplish them sooner. O ne of the things they state in that book is that an 80% or higher success rate In accomplishing the actions that lead to that goal usually means that you want to be successful at it and so that's one metric that I chat track pretty religiously you know I have a few goals for the quarter. I'm you know business- related goals and associated tasks to reach those goals and trying to keep it above that. The 80% mark is really important, just because I've seen that to be true as well. I f you can hit 100%, that's great. But if it's a goal, that's probably going to be difficult to do. So I think that's a good mark to understand.

Whitney Sewell: No, that's helpful. I love the book recommendation too. I've not read that yet, but it sounds like something I would enjoy.

Jonathan Nichols: It's worthwhile. It's worthwhile. It couples well with the book, The One Thing if you've read that book. Those two go together very well, I would say.

Whitney Sewell: Awesome. I have read that one. Jonathan, how do you like to give back?

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, my wife and I, actually met in college in a service organization that we were a part of. the Kiwanis chapter at our local university. We've always been service-oriented people. I would say having our own business has made it slightly more challenging just because we tend to work a lot of nights and weekends now. But one thing that we've enjoyed doing the last several years and haven't gotten to do it the last year or so, and so we need to go back this year is, doing the homes for hope building experience where you go down to San Diego and go across the border and spend like a four-day weekend building a home for a family there that's something to me that's just been super impactful that I remember a lot um really kind of puts in perspective how good we have it you know in our everyday life and is a good opportunity to help others but I would say probably the thing to me that I've tried to latch on to focus on just one or two big things that I can give back to as opposed to doing 100 different things to let us have an impact. But that's one thing that I've enjoyed doing for the last several years.

Whitney Sewell: Awesome. Well, congratulations on the extreme flexibility of being an entrepreneur now, right? So now you get to work 80 hours instead of 40.

Jonathan Nichols: It's true. But, you know, we have so much fun that we don't even care.

Whitney Sewell: That's awesome. I love that you all get to do it together as well. So, Jonathan, thank you so much for your time and being with us today and just the focus on asset management within your business, but also as a passive investor. I think it's such a good thing to focus on and hammer on, you know, whether you're active or passive. you need to know who is operating that deal and the experience level, you know, it's not just in good times, right? And so when there's bad times or a down market, man, we can still perform. And so even highlighting the deals that you invested in that were good and bad, and I think that helps think through, you know, for the listener as well. So thank you again. How can listeners get in touch with you and learn more about you?

Jonathan Nichols: Yeah, absolutely. So our website, which is Apogee MFC, like multifamilycapital.com has a lot of information about our company. Also, I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you look up Jonathan Nichols, I'm sure you can you can find me there and you know, happy to chat with anyone if something here resonated with you or you have a question.

Whitney Sewell: Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you're telling your friends about the Real Estate Syndication Show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to lifebridgecapital.com and start investing today.