Profiles
Learn from the best and brightest in the real estate investment space: Who they are, what they do, and a little of their secret sauce.
Back To: All Topics
Profiles
Learn from the best and brightest in the real estate investment space: Who they are, what they do, and a little of their secret sauce.
Back To: All Topics
Forensic Investing, Risk Management & Real Estate
George Koo's Professional Profile Academic Background: PhD in Quantitative Finance & Technology: Virginia Tech (in process) Master of Liberal Arts in International Realations: Harvard University Chartered Financial Analyst Certified Public Accountant MBA and BS in Finance and Accounting, respectively: St. John’s University Professional Positions & Experience: CEO & Chief Investment ...
One-to-One with John Manes & Pinnacle Storage Properties
When John Manes, CEO of Pinnacle Storage Properties, talks about the self-storage business, he gets directly to the point: “We buy under-managed, under-enhanced, and under-expanded self-storage facilities. We go in and fix them up, increase value through revenue management strategies, do expansions when the market demands it, and take a ...
Riding the Real Estate Roller Coaster with Jamie Wooley
When Jamie Wooley, founder and owner of W Streets Inc., a Dallas-Fort Worth-based real estate solutions company, started investing in late 2015, she already knew she had no plans to take things slowly. That was why four months earlier, she had turned in her notice where she worked as an ...
Ken and Anita Corsini: Tuned In to the Market
When Ken and Anita Corsini first entered the world of real estate in 2005, the scene was very different than it is today. “It’s amazing to think back about the market cycles we’ve been through,” Ken recalled. “2005 was a screaming hot market, then 2008 brought it to a screeching ...
Think Realty’s Newest Resident Expert: Shawn Woedl
Title and affiliations: Senior Vice President of National Real Estate Insurance Group (NREIG), former Vice President of CORE Insurance Group, former Vice President of the National Condo and Apartment Insurance Group Courses: • Intro to Risk Management • Protecting Yourself and Your Properties • Insuring Your Fix-and-Flips Experience: Shawn Woedl ...
Sourcing True Success in Housing
Today’s first order of business for Stephen Rosenberg, CEO of commercial real estate lending, investment, and advisory firm Greystone & Co., is simple, but it may catch the uninitiated by surprise. It is not, for example, allocating the approximately $30 billion in assets that his company manages, nor is it ...
Amit Aggarwal: Refining A Real Estate Platform
Amit Aggarwal joined Auction.com as its chief technology officer in late 2017, but the experienced senior information technology (IT) leader had his eye on the needs of the national housing market for more than a decade before the hire. As early as 2005, Aggarwal was watching the residential real estate industry, ...
REI Club Members Take on the “Total Gut Job” Tudor with Detailed Plans
I’d like to say that after the Affinity REI Club closed on its first investment property in February, we dove right into renovations while sporting plaid shirts, overalls and big, cheesy grins, then promptly unveiled the gorgeous Tudor to sparkly-eyed buyers after 21 minutes of action and nine minutes of ...
Case Study: Moving from Single-family to Self-storage Investments
*Sponsored Content Long before John Manes and Robby Dunn launched Pinnacle Storage Properties, and eventually partnered with Erik Osterhus, they both owned single family and multi-unit real estate investments. Like many novice investors, they spent time fixing toilets, rehabbing units, cleaning carpets and investing time, energy and effort into working ...
Investor Spotlight: Stephen Rosenberg
When Stephen Rosenberg started Greystone & Co. with a telephone sitting atop a desk made from an unpainted wood door and two rusty file cabinets, it was easy to maintain his focus on keeping humility within his corporate structure. “We had plenty of humility back then,” he recalled. “We had ...
2 Flipping Indicators Most Investors Miss
The housing market is hotter than ever, but nearly every active real estate investor across the country insists change is in the air. From buy-and-hold investors to fix-and-flippers, the real estate investing community has an eye on the housing market’s “tipping point.” In hot markets like Seattle, Washington, and Washington, ...
Corporate REI Club Helps Employees Invest in Real Estate
A buzz of anticipation filled the first Affinity Real Estate Investment Club meeting. “So, show of hands. Who in the group has never before invested in real estate?” asked Mike Wrenn, Chairman of Affinity Worldwide, Think Realty’s parent company. About two thirds of the members raised a hand. “Okay, who ...
For more than 10 years, Rick Sharga has been the voice of change in the real estate industry. That is not something the now-renowned housing and foreclosure expert will ever tell you he saw coming. When Sharga, now executive vice president at Carrington Mortgage Holdings, joined the real estate space in ...
New York City’s Cheapest Rental Rate at an End
This past March, an 84-year-old actress was struck and killed by a car just a few feet from her home in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City and one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. When she ...
Investor Spotlight: Mark Filler of Apex National Real Estate
Mark Filler, founder and CEO of Apex National Real Estate, has already hit some pretty big milestones in his career. After 20 years in the mortgage business and founding (then selling) multiple national companies, the Harvard law school grad and business partner Chris Shaxted, who has 25,000 new construction homes ...
Find an REI Partner Who Just “Gets It”
Hello, fellow real estate investors! My name is Tom Olson from the Good Success mastermind community. Finding service providers who understand the unique challenges and risk exposure we face as real estate investors can be a point of frustration. Because of this, I started using National Real Estate Insurance Group ...
When Dennis Cisterna, CEO of Investability Solutions, joined the Altisource Portfolio Solutions offshoot's “one-stop shop” for single-family residential (SFR) investors, he did so with a clear mission in mind. “It should not be difficult to acquire, finance, manage, and structure partnerships in real estate,” Cisterna said. “There is a place ...
Investor Spotlight: Memphis Investment Properties
This article was originally published in April 2018 Think Realty Magazine. Memphis Investment Properties (MIP) has been actively investing in the Memphis, Tennessee, real estate market for nearly four decades. the company offers complete turnkey real estate investing services, meaning that real estate investors who wish to own rental real ...
Regional Spotlight: Washington, D.C.
This article was originally published in the April 2018 Think Realty Magazine. When the national housing market collapsed in the mid-2000s, Washington, D.C., homes lost nearly $120,000, on average, from their overall value. Median home prices in the area bottomed out in July 2009 around $355,000, a steep fall from ...
ALPS Helps Keep Your Properties Safe
Affinity Loss Prevention Services (ALPS) is your source for information and resources to help you avoid preventable losses at your investment properties. Any loss costs you money, but it could also result in serious injury, the loss of a tenant or a claim, causing fluctuations in your insurance costs. If ...
Staying True to the Mission: The American Dream
“Just about everyone's American Dream is to own their own single-family house. If they can’t own it, then they want to rent it,” says Bruce McNeilage, co-founder and CEO of Kinloch Partners, Kinloch Homes, LLC, and Harpeth Development, LLC. If you think his corporate titles are lengthy, wait until you see ...
2017 Think Realty Honors Winners
Each year, Think Realty honors the leaders and change-makers of real estate who represent the best the industry has to offer. These individuals are nominated by their peers, and the finalists are determined by an independent panel of judges who are former Think Realty Honors recipients themselves. Their stories range ...
Think Realty Resident Expert Ben Rao, “The Entrepreneur”
Title and Affiliations: Executive Vice President of Think Realty Benefits, Think Realty Resident Expert, Founder of Community Buying Group (CBG), Founder of RentFast, President of Direct Data Consulting, Inc., Senior Partner at the Summit Holding Group, former Senior Consultant & IBM eServer Solution Specialist, host of E2 Hustle podcast for ...
One-on-One with the Atlanta Housing Authority
Real estate investors often cringe at the words “local housing authority.” While the term has a long, storied, and often strongly negative connotation, most of that negativity is due to decades of miscommunication between real estate investors and these organizations which are, in truth, dedicated to providing affordable housing resources ...
Breathing Life into Communities
When Tammy Phelps looks at a possible future investment, she also looks back. The leader of Capital City Real Estate Investors Alliance (ccREIA) and multifamily investor recalled her own struggles when she evaluated and eventually purchased her first multiunit community in 2007 after a terrible accident left her unable to ...
