Ep31 Ricardo Outi: Leveraging Data to Drive Capital Investments

Today we are pleased to have Ricardo Outi on the show. 

 Based in Miami, Florida, AIC Capital is a research-based, data-driven alternative investment platform. The firm specializes in capital allocation in private real estate on behalf of funds, institutions, family offices, and high net worth individuals. 

 Ricardo has over 20 years of Wealth Management and Real Estate Investment experience. Throughout a career with Citigroup, Ricardo held positions of head of strategy and business development at Citi Offshore Wealth Management in Miami, Head of marketing and sales strategy in Tokyo, and a senior position at Citi Ventures in Singapore.

 In today’s episode, we dive into:

•  The backbone of AIC Capital’s strategy, their data and market research tool that has been developed and perfected over years of data sourcing and data management. 
• We discuss how the company manages to filter over 3,000 opportunities that hit their desk every year.
•  And we hear about the first steps Ricardo took when deciding to leave Citigroup to prepare him for the next chapter in his career. 

As a friendly reminder, please keep in mind that anything discussed herein is for conversational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice on behalf of Ricardo or AIC Capital.

LinkedIn

Email: Ricardo.outi@aic-capital.com

The Handbook of Real Estate Portfolio Management by Joseph L. Pagliari 

The Age Curve by Kenneth W. Gronbach

FROM THIS EPISODE:

ON DATA

“We have research reports that we read. We stay attuned just to ensure that we are in sectors and cities that we want to locate capital in. The data and this research is the backbone of what we do and why and how we allocate capital.”

“Data has been improving. We live in an information age and data is like the new oil of this economy. So any company that is not leveraging data is just missing it [opportunities]."

ON MARKET DEMAND

“Depending on the sectors there are more variables that are more important. That's what we call the drivers of real estate demand. For example, if you are in the residential rentals/multi-family/single-family sectors what you want is to basically retain. You want job growth, population growth; Population growth will lead to rental growth and home price appreciation. Those are the key drivers of demand.”

ON RISK

“If you're prudent in terms of your capital stack, your amount of leverage; if you are prudent doing your homework in terms of being in the sector, it's very hard to predict losing your capital and losing your investment there.”

“During downturn moments drives a lot of uncertainty across the board. And uncertainty drives people to freeze when it comes to making decisions like buying a house and making an investment. For us we like those moments. We like those moments because when you do your homework and are comfortable in your sectors and the capital decisions you're making, you have less competition.”

ON SUCCESSFUL INVESTING

“When you really want to be a better real estate investor you really need to have both your feet really in the industry. You need to own assets. You need to be in there. You need to be talking to your property managers. Besides researching and looking at data, you need to be investing your own money as well so you have skin in the game.”