How Impact-Driven Deals Can Create Strong Investor Returns

Jasmine Nazari (00:00)
what I’ve noticed or what

we’ve been

sitting with and…

trying to find workability within is gaps between the expectation of sellers and the expectation of buyers. So you would think that still within any kind of market, anything’s possible. Well, we’re finding that it just doesn’t pencil. The risk and return profile, given the fact that the floor was still shaking under us as interest rates are shifting, it kind of feels like it’s hard to make sound predictions what has to help

cap

rates will look like.

Scott Bursey (02:08)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros Podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey.

and pros were exploring a massive sector of the market today. We’re talking about investments that do good and make great money. Our guest, Jasmine Nazari of Urban Green Investments is a visionary and she’s bringing the impact fuel we all need to drive our portfolios into the next decade. Jasmine is here to show us how green investing is the new standard for high returns. Jasmine, welcome to the show.

Jasmine Nazari (02:38)
Thanks so much for having me, Scott. Congratulations on all your success and for spreading so much knowledge with everybody. caliber of your podcast is exceptional.

Scott Bursey (02:48)
Well, thank you for the kind words and

for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey. Please tell us, how did your career begin and what is your main focus now?

Jasmine Nazari (02:57)
Yes, I started as a soil biogeochemistry major at UC Davis. So my background is actually in agricultural systems and soil mineral management. That includes things from ⁓ soil physics and mineralogy all the way to soil chemistry and the way that we use them for mining and ⁓

farming and kind of everything in between. It was a fantastic program. soon after, it was a very competitive program to get into. And while I was there, I realized the

metrics that we were focusing on were things like

cations and anions and moles and ⁓ things in microscopes all the way to things that we would see in this beautiful country of ours. And ⁓ I will say that there was a

little gap in my identity. I’m Persian, I’m of Iranian descent. And I always joke that the zeros were in the wrong place for my family relative to the comma when it came to jobs in soils.

⁓ It’s a phenomena.

and very important part of our country. And I hope to get back to it ⁓ when I’m older.

So yeah, so I interviewed with a company of fabulous family who kind of took me on under their wing as I started as an assistant at Urban Green Investments. ⁓ I started as an assistant to our fearless leader and wonderful CEO, David McCluskey. And he believed in me and the rest of the team did too. And they’ve taught me a lot of what I know. And I’m a self-starter. So one thing led to another and they kept acknowledging

⁓ my hard work and gradually made me a partner ⁓ after I implemented certain technologies pretty successfully. We were Juniper Square’s fourth client and we were CrowdStreet’s seventh client or something along those lines and I was helping another company

Dropbox, San Francisco.

yeah, these technological ⁓ implementations, there was an accounting tool too that we Yeah, so implementing these tools inspired them to make me a partner at the firm and then ⁓ now I’m COO and I’m.

very in love with my firm and what we do and our investors most importantly. A long intro but yeah.

Scott Bursey (06:06)
That is an incredible journey. Now let’s inject some high level strategy into this conversation. What is a couple

of core strengths that your firm offers the market?

Jasmine Nazari (06:21)
Yeah, so I think what Urban Green has, we initially started off being ⁓ sponsors ourselves. So we were doing, ⁓ our CEO actually started ⁓ doing, ⁓

these things called TIC conversions in San Francisco. a specific type. It’s similar to a co-op in New York. It’s conversions from one type of ownership to another type of ownership where you could sell the unit separately. And while this was fine, ⁓ was ⁓ the company was growing really quickly. And we realized that what we were actually really good at was picking investments, not necessarily only executing upon their business plan, but selection was the strength and negotiation of those prices were the strength of the

of our team.

So right when I had joined as an assistant, our pipeline was as big as our assets under management. So we had like…

less than 20 assets under management and our pipeline was equivalent. So we quickly realized that what our investors came to us for was deal selection. And so very, very, very organically, we found ourselves in the Co-GP model without really having the jargon for it about 12 years ago. And so it is it has become much more prevalent today because it offers efficiencies and higher margins and a better alignment of

the truth, which is not everyone is good at everything. And so you could partner up with firms like ours to round out any tools or gaps in skills that you may need. for instance, we so so to answer your question about what Urban Green does distinctly, we are an opportunistic Co-GP shop. So if there’s any GPs out there, they’re looking for someone to work with that can kind of sit in the Co-GP seat with them. And we could go up pretty high into the

into how much equity we can raise is significant because we’re backed by the…

family office, but once we’re able to help be a true partner in the sense of the word, if you need us to increase our capital commitment, to bring an LP’s terms down, you can really work with us on a variety of things. always say our CEO comes, actually my wonderful partner Barrett said this, he’s so right, our CEO comes from a place of yes, so we want to find workability at something that’s a triple win for everybody, wins for our investors, wins for the GP, and wins for Urban Green. ⁓

So to answer the question again, pretty lengthy answer, but ⁓ so what we do distinctly is we are able to help round out any needs that the GP may have, whether that’s in supporting them with deposits, whether that’s balance sheet support, investor relations, which is what I love to do, and operations. And then we have, we can support on the asset management side as well. and accounting. ⁓

wonderful colleague Amy hasn’t made a mistake in 15 years. So I hope that helps.

Scott Bursey (09:20)
Hahaha

absolutely

and is there any challenges that you’re watching closely right now?

Jasmine Nazari (10:02)
Yeah, thank you for asking.

what I’ve noticed or what we’ve been sitting with and…

trying to find workability within is gaps between the expectation of sellers and the expectation of buyers. So you would think that still within any kind of market,

anything’s possible. Well, we’re finding that it just doesn’t pencil. The risk and return profile, given the fact that the floor was still shaking under us as interest rates are shifting, it kind of feels like it’s hard to make sound predictions what has to help

cap

rates will look like.

I know that no matter when I what I’m saying right now is very grounded in today, which is April 21st, 2026. So if someone’s watching this in a year or if someone’s watching this in a month, things could drastically be different. So what I say right now is bound to be right and wrong at the same time. So but yes, that pattern of gap between expectation management between buyers and sellers is very real right now.

and finding opportunities that pencil while cap rates are hard to predict is extremely hard and sobering.

It’s a matter of agility too, and I think if you’re able to get in and out of an investment pretty quickly, you should have been fine, but it just was too risky for us. If you could have bought something two years ago and sold it by now, good for you. But for us, has been a little bit hard to sleep well at night, knowing that this is a bit of a long…

it’s a bit of a long tale.

Scott Bursey (11:49)
And speaking of opportunities, Jasmine, what do you feel is the biggest opportunity right now? This could be a market shift, a new offering, or just part of your business that you’d like to double down on.

Jasmine Nazari (12:00)
Yeah, I think now it’s…

I’ve been using my time to really keep improving operations, coming up with tools that are proprietary for us or tools, patterns, practices that are proprietary to us that so that we

could find those opportunities doesn’t mean that the seller will agree to our offer, but we’re to find them at least to at least be on the court rather than in the stands. so opportunities for us looks like looking at different real estate asset types or asset class. Yeah, asset types. it’s whether that’s cold storage,

or different types of industrial. We have fiber optic steel, that’s pretty fantastic. ⁓ We’re looking for other type of, ⁓ other real estate to invest in besides multifamily in office because ⁓ that’s something that the supply and demand ⁓ is way more interesting to us than what’s already pretty prevalent like data centers and pretty frothy too.

Scott Bursey (12:59)
I love that framing.

And is there any challenges you’re watching closely? This could be market risk, competition, access to deals, ⁓ capital, you know, that sort of thing.

Jasmine Nazari (13:12)
Yeah, I think that a dear, dear friend of mine and I talk about this often, but it’s kind of what will asset valuations be when as AI

permeates the economy more. if, as certain people are predicting,

employment will shift drastically or our relationship to compensation and salary and time will shift drastically, whether that’s we go into a much more fee for service economy or a much more entrepreneurial or more vocational trades, like all these sorts of shifts, it’s gonna be a decentralization of how.

Yeah, basically what I’m trying to say is, as our economy and our the spine of it, which is the consumer, as that shifts, as their income shifts, what’s going to happen to asset valuations? So if the big pockets right now, if those the consumer is the main ⁓ spine of this economy, then and if their pocketbook is changing, their ability to make money is changing. And there’s a there’s a lag or there’s some ⁓ time lag. And as they figure that

out or as we all figure it out. ⁓

I do think that’s important to be aware of. It’s not a fatalistic, drastic thing. I do think that it’s going to be even more important to be sound in your underwriting and not too rosy. So that’s something that I’m very present to is what would asset valuations look like along with the deflation that could occur in such a scenario. So deflation occurs, then again, who’s going to be paying those rents? Who’s going to be paying those high values? Who’s going to be, is that that same

economy. Yeah, who’s going to be what’s going to happen to asset values in that economy?

Scott Bursey (15:41)
Spot on, think. That was well illustrated. Is there any golden nugget or advice you’d like to leave with our listeners here today?

Jasmine Nazari (15:53)
I have a few books I like to share, I don’t know who has time to read anymore, but these are some good ones. I love the Zeckendorf book. Zeckendorf is, think, the godfather of private equity real estate. built some… Yeah, he’s a big, big… Has had a huge impact on real estate, and he has a biography called Zeckendorf.

And then another book of mine, a favorite book, is called Cradle to Cradle. The book itself, spoiler alert, is a polymer.

and it’s a book about how chemistry is actually the answer to design and a healthier planet and how to make

financially sound decisions in the process. He like it talks about how sustainability if you were to say, my relate my romantic relationship is sustainable. That’s not really the goal. You want to say my you know, you want to have an abundance mindset and this chemistry is this the way there. I also think that ⁓ some advice I have is contact me

if you’re an innovative GP and you want capital that’s ⁓ agile and

comes from a place of yes, and we invest nationwide. We’re a fun group to work with. We are out of San Francisco, but we can meet you anywhere and happy to hop on a call. My email is [email protected], J-A-S-M-I-N-E at urbangreen,

and then the first three letters, letters of investments, inv.com. Yeah.

Scott Bursey (17:32)
Awesome.

And Jasmine, where can our listeners pick up your publications?

Jasmine Nazari (17:38)
I have a website jasminenazari.com ⁓ that I post my thoughts there. ⁓

Obviously, please reach out to me on LinkedIn too. One thing I kind of forgot to mention was I…

I also do fix and flips on the side. always say I don’t have any children yet. So I do fix and flips on the side. I’ve done several ⁓ with a dear friend in San Francisco, the Bay Area for several years, but also now I’m doing one in New York. so for anybody who’s ⁓

in this space and they’re looking for how to integrate more real estate into their lives. ⁓ I highly recommend doing fix and flips. They’re fun. You get to meet new people. It gives you a deeper understanding ⁓ for what where costs are, whether that’s with contractors or materials. It’s all connected. I highly recommend doing that. And then I also would recommend more women join this industry. I’m not sure if that’s OK to say or anything,

this this industry is

full of very respectful, genuine, welcoming men. I have never had a bad experience. It’s been extremely healthy and embracing. yeah, I just hope that more young girls join in a technical capacity.

Scott Bursey (19:07)
Jasmine, this has been pure gold. Thank you for joining us today.

Jasmine Nazari (19:14)
Thank you.

Scott Bursey (19:16)
And for our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We have more exceptional guests, just like Jasmine, coming your way that are making huge moves in the market. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.