Commercial Real Estate Operator Explains How Bigger Problems Create Bigger Profits

Mark Vincent Fansler (00:00)
Atleast three minimum generally around four in every venture and the reason for that is because when market cycles hit if it hits you and you’re in a single cycle and that’s your cycle that went down single occupancy type then you’re in trouble for a while unless you’ve been very good about hoarding money to withstand the storm you’re in trouble and that’s usually when people go belly up well when you have commercial mixed use when one’s down the other three are redundancy income. They just continue to do well because their cycles are still doing strong and they just keep going until the other one comes back.

Michelle Tack (02:09)
Hi everyone, I’m Michelle Tack. I am the leader of the podcast today for Real Estate Pros. I’ve got a great gentleman that has an incredible amount of owner operator experience, not just in one business, but businesses that all feed into his main core expertise. Mark Vincent Fansler, Mark, just want to give a shout out to folks that are listening today.

Mark Vincent Fansler (02:33)
Hey, how’s everybody doing? I appreciate everybody coming and taking a listen. Thanks for having me on.

Michelle Tack (02:36)
Thanks, Mark.

Absolutely. Mark, one of the things as we were preparing ⁓ for this show today was, you know, I was very impressed by your ability to have all of these businesses work together for the common purpose. For those that may not be from your world, can you talk or from your environment with your experience that you have, can you talk to ⁓ what your

main focuses, your business, and what markets you serve.

Mark Vincent Fansler (03:09)
Sure, I’m in commercial mixed use real estate. And for the folks that may not know what that is, that means there are three or more occupancy types in the same venture or on the same parcel of land. And occupancy type means, you know, one’s residential, apartments, one’s condos, retail, office, restaurants, industrial, manufacturing, they’re all individual occupancy types. So we put stuff together that plays nice.

with each other that support each other. ⁓ All in one venture. Typically,

Michelle Tack (03:39)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (03:43)
least three.

minimum generally around four in every venture and the reason for that is because when market cycles hit if it hits you and you’re in a single cycle and that’s your cycle that went down single occupancy type then you’re in trouble for a while unless you’ve been very good about hoarding money to withstand the storm you’re in trouble and that’s usually when people go belly up well when you have commercial mixed use when one’s down the other three are redundancy

Michelle Tack (03:49)
Right. All

Mark Vincent Fansler (04:13)
income. They just

Michelle Tack (04:14)
right.

Mark Vincent Fansler (04:15)
continue to do well because their cycles are still doing strong and they just keep going until the other one comes

which generally is, you know, three, four, five years, depending on how severe the cycle is. And then, you know, they all follow each other. So one might go down and then a different cycle go down. Then maybe one of your other ones will go down, but then the first one’s back up again. So it’s always healthy. So that’s why we focus on that.

Michelle Tack (04:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm

Mark Vincent Fansler (04:39)
And my companies collectively have capital funds, a capital club. I invest nationally in commercial mixed-use real estate under M Vincent Assets. ⁓ I have a realty company that’s in six states that does residential realty with one set of people, commercial realty with another set of people, and some of those people

have business broker license. Like I’m licensed to do business brokering as well.

Michelle Tack (05:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (05:55)
They are in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Florida on the residential side. The commercial side, the licenses give me what’s called portability and I can do license in any state. So we do that. I have a management company that manages properties for clients, maintenance companies that manage, maintain properties for clients, whether we manage them or not, like hospitality groups sometimes will have their own management, but they need maintenance. That’s in Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

I own a steel building company that’s national. We have plants in 13 states producing steel to deliver building packages across the country for things that are under two stories, non-structural. So it’s not mid-rise and high-rise, but under two stories. And then I have a marketing company that sort of generates the leads for all that stuff and a high-ticket mentoring program for people who want to be in commercial mixed-use space.

Michelle Tack (06:36)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

That’s that’s awesome. What really impressed me was, as I sort of indicated before, is your ability to have, you if you think about a wheel in the middle is multi commercial multi uses your focus, but you have all of these businesses like spokes on a wheel that integrate with that. What has been?

the key to no business sometimes, you know, I’m not saying perfectly smoothly, but to keep the business running smoothly. How have you been able to do that? Cause that’s it. That’s you have a complex environment that you’re dealing with.

Mark Vincent Fansler (07:21)
Yeah, it’s good people. mean, I can’t run all this by myself. I’ve got people, I got great people around me. You know, I’m pretty good at finding the folks that can do what I need them to do, get more out of them than they think that they can do and help them grow and expand. And I couldn’t do this without them. You know, I have all these companies, the investment company I run myself and the capital clubs I run have staff that helps with it, but I’m the one that makes all the decisions there. The other companies, I have people running those companies.

Michelle Tack (07:46)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (07:50)
and I give them a great deal of freedom and I run all the business behind the scenes for those. I show up when I need to help close events, help close on deals. I show up when they’re having an issue, how do we fix this? How do we do that? And we meet, you know, every week we meet from like seven in the morning to seven at night, each of the companies one right after another. And the company meetings overlap, the ones that play together. So that we all know, so we all know what’s going on in each other’s businesses so that

Michelle Tack (08:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (08:17)
When something’s happening, the other companies are fresh in their mind. They’re not stuck in a vacuum because one business is in one building on one side of the state and another building’s in a different city. Now we’re all together in one spot.

Michelle Tack (08:27)
Right.

Mark Vincent Fansler (08:29)
So there’s this cyclone of energy that these people feed into and without them I couldn’t do this.

Michelle Tack (08:34)
Yep.

It seems like how you described it earlier and now again earlier when we were preparing for the podcast that it is feels like one team to me and you talk about a cycle and effect. mean, if you really mean you’ve probably seen those in your commercial real estate.

you know areas that you’ve been in, but it really feels like one team, one purpose, even though the sub purposes are different, but to help these individuals and would you agree with that or in contextualizing?

Mark Vincent Fansler (09:06)
Yeah, there’s

a parent company that we all serve, right? And that’s Invention Real Estate. That company, we are all fighting every day for the health of that company.

Michelle Tack (09:10)
Yep, yep.

Yep. Yep.

Mark Vincent Fansler (09:19)
because that’s

the one that makes all this other stuff possible. And if management fails, it affects three other companies. If maintenance fails, it affects two other companies, right? So it’s important that they’re all successful in their own right, but they all play off of each other.

Michelle Tack (09:28)
Yes. Yep.

Yes.

Mark Vincent Fansler (09:39)
When they hear the sales meetings going on, like I’ll bring a company leader in when we’re having sales meetings at one company, just so that they know what’s going on, they can take it back to the other company. They sit in and they hear about all the three, four, five, 10 things that they got going on.

Michelle Tack (09:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (09:53)
and what are their struggles right now, I bring the other company leaders in, they’ll sit in on that. They can take it back. They brainstorm with their teams to help them fix it.

So you’re not just stuck with the talent that’s in that team and the experience that’s in that team to fix it. You’ve got the other seven companies helping you figure out how to fix that. And they have the relationships and the opportunity and the leads to fill the voids for each other.

Michelle Tack (10:45)
Yes.

Yep. Can you, know, for every operator, and by the way, that makes total sense for every operator that’s out there that’s listening, right? We have people that again do investor, large investor funds. We have folks that are ⁓ doing, you know, big commercial entities and, know, residential only, but you know, they’re commercial, right? Apartments in Los Angeles. have people that are, you know, have come from a variety of different backgrounds, but are,

You know successful, but they’re always trying to learn and you. You had mentioned lifelong learning. Learn from other people. Can you give an example of when they’re you know for all operators there’s a time in the business where it got real when there is something that happened that maybe. We didn’t see coming or that came from the you know the outside and that you had to pivot quickly to redress the problem.

Can you give any of that Mark discussion on that?

Mark Vincent Fansler (11:53)
Yeah

It’s similar to the Maldi family that you were referencing. They’re considered commercial only by loan. They’re a single occupancy residential. Once you get over four units, they’re considered a commercial loan, a commercial project, but that single occupancy still puts them at risk. We had a venture that I was buying that we were going to take and do that with, just fix it, because it was horribly managed and maintained. And we were just going to fix the problem and keep it that way. But.

Michelle Tack (12:00)
Okay, yep.

Mark Vincent Fansler (12:21)
We got into it and it was a HUD run project, meaning we all know what the vouchers are. That’s for an individual and they vouch, they can go anywhere they want with that voucher.

Michelle Tack (12:26)
OK, yep.

Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (12:33)
a HUD run project is, that they support the project as a whole, not the individual coming in, right? So they underwrite them too, but it’s the venture. So if it’s a building, there’ll be one check from HUD, not 60 of them if there’s 60 units in it. And we got into it and found that there was so many problems in the relationship from previous that HUD was being unrealistic in their expectations.

Michelle Tack (12:46)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

really, that’s interesting.

Mark Vincent Fansler (13:03)
in their expectations because they were penalizing the new owner, which would have been me, because of what the other person did instead of just looking at me for who I am and what I do with ventures. So what we ended up doing with that venture, because they were expecting stuff from us that they don’t expect from any other thing. And rather than fight them, which could take years, because who’s got enough money to fight HUD? You know, I submitted notice.

Michelle Tack (13:07)
Ugh. ⁓

Mm-hmm. That’s unfortunate.

Yeah, right.

Mark Vincent Fansler (13:29)
and said we’re going to terminate the agreement. That sparks a year-long process to get rid of them permanently so that we can move people out and help them find places to live. But at the same time, I did a deal with the VA for veterans housing. And we did it in the form of dormitory-style housing.

Michelle Tack (13:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (13:47)
where the dorms are two people per bedroom rather than maybe one person for the entire apartment. And what that does is it created for the one bedroom apartments, it was pretty much a wash. The cost comparing was two. But when you got into the two bedrooms, it doubled the rent. When you got into the three bedrooms, it tripled the rent. And as a result of that, I could also…

Michelle Tack (13:49)
Cool.

Right.

Yep.

Mark Vincent Fansler (14:11)
Because of the restrictions that HUD had, there were sections of the building that weren’t being utilized that I was not allowed to convert into residential units. I was not allowed to convert into something else because it hadn’t been underwritten in the deal. It had to be left as unutilized common space.

Michelle Tack (14:18)
Okay. huh. Okay.

Understood?

Mark Vincent Fansler (14:26)
So

as a result of that, could change that now. So we added extra units. The couple buildings are next to each other. The intent is to tie the two buildings together because we’re going through that now. We’re tying the two buildings together, moving all the common area into the first floor, adding two more floors of apartments, and then all of the common areas I’m adding additional uses to for VA services. One would be psychiatric care, counseling, doctors, all that stuff to support.

Michelle Tack (14:41)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (14:55)
the needs of the veterans that are in that building. Job

Michelle Tack (14:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (14:58)
training, job placement, all that stuff is going to be in the building

now. And as a result, the income valuation doubled for the building because of the income it was. So it was kind of a good thing, the problem came about. But it causes about 12 months worth of headache to get there. But with that at the back end of it, it’s worth it.

Michelle Tack (15:51)
Wow, that’s incredible. That’s incredible.

Yep, yep.

Yeah, and I think that that underlies when I remember someone that was my manager at one point said, you

if work was easy, you wouldn’t have a job. Everybody in work is there to solve a problem. I don’t care if you’re working at, you know, a local restaurant or you’re CEO of a company, it’s solving problems. I thought that was sort of interesting. Exactly, exactly right.

Mark Vincent Fansler (16:20)
Right.

Yeah, the bigger the problem, the more you can get paid.

Michelle Tack (16:30)
We had talked about, lastly, I’d like to wrap up with how do you use your network today? I mean, you’ve been doing this for 45 years. Can you talk about, because you’re doing some interesting things out there and being of service to others. Can you talk about that a little bit before we wrap up today?

Mark Vincent Fansler (16:45)
Yeah, I use the network for a couple different things. We’re constantly chasing talent. We’re always looking for better, not better, but more people because we’re growing. We’re constantly looking for capital. So we look for people to invest in our ventures through either the funds or the capital club or just a venture. And we look for

Michelle Tack (16:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, right, yep.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (17:11)
opportunities to invest in real estate. And what I mean by that, I’m not looking for somebody to bring me a venture that they’re doing and they want me to invest in their venture. I want them to bring me deals that I can buy or partner in and be the person who’s responsible for its success. want controlling interest. So we use our network. Everybody who who we are, mean, everybody who knows who am, know what we do.

Michelle Tack (17:14)
Mm-hmm.

Great.

Yes.

Right, okay.

Mark Vincent Fansler (17:36)
And they’re

constantly looking for stuff for us. They’re constantly looking for people. They’re sending capital our way. The effort that we put into the personal brand over the last year has done wonders. Because now, when I go to sit down with somebody, before they would look into the company and know who the company was, but they didn’t know who I was. Well, that’s changed. Because now I get people like Bally’s

Michelle Tack (17:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, right. Yep.

Mark Vincent Fansler (18:00)
calling us, the casino folks.

Michelle Tack (18:02)
wow, that’s awesome!

Mark Vincent Fansler (18:04)
telling us we’ve got some stuff, why don’t you come in and sit down. And I’ll do what I normally do and research them and go sit down with them, ready to give them my spiel to make them want to choose me instead of someone else. And I’ll get started. And they said, no, Mark, you don’t need to sell yourself. You don’t understand. We’ve already selected you. We hadn’t even met. So that worked out pretty good. We’re working on a project with them over in Jersey now. so the network.

Michelle Tack (18:20)
We are, that’s great. That’s good fortune. That’s hard work. Yep.

Good for you.

Mark Vincent Fansler (18:31)
is very much the lifeline of our business. know, so between social media and all the people that are exposed to us that I’ve yet to meet, they, even they are reaching out to us and say, hey, I’ve got a friend that I’ve turned on to you. They’ve got some capital. Can I put you guys together? Or my friend just inherited a piece of property.

Michelle Tack (18:34)
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mark Vincent Fansler (18:55)
here’s the basis of it, is there anything to be done with it? I’ll do a quick analysis of it. Yeah, we could probably do something with that. And they’ll schedule and we’ll sit down and talk about what can be. So the

for us really is the lifeline of the business. You know, we can market ourselves to death, but most of our business comes from the people we already know. The marketing just introduces us to the next people. And as we get to know them, that’s when the real business comes.

Michelle Tack (19:20)
Yeah, makes

sense. ⁓ Mark, you’ve been fabulous today in terms of explaining, you’re welcome. You know, your commercial mixed use methodology.

Mark Vincent Fansler (19:24)
Thanks.

Michelle Tack (19:30)
your patients and wanting to be of service. So Mark, can you provide your contact information and spell out ⁓ your email contact? Often people say it, you know people may not have heard it or what have you before we wrap up today.

Mark Vincent Fansler (19:46)
Sure.

Sure. Yeah. So for those who don’t know me at all, just Google Mark Vincent Fansler . You can learn all you want to learn about me there. You can reach me directly at info, I-N-F-O @mvincentrealestate.com. That’ll come directly to my administrative staff here and we’ll be back in touch with you right away. You know, we certainly want to hear from

Michelle Tack (20:05)
Awesome.

Mark Vincent Fansler (20:15)
people who are interested in maybe joining the team, one of the teams that we have, people who have capital who are interested in investing and somebody’s got a long successful track record, you know what that looks like because you can come on board as a lender and get a flat rate interest rate so you know exactly what you’re getting every month. You can come on board as an investor and with an investment you get whatever your per rated share of the ownership is, you get the equity, you get the net revenue after debt service and the biggest piece

Michelle Tack (20:24)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Vincent Fansler (20:45)
is the cost segregation and depreciation. Because it can offset any taxes you have in any other income just by being part of a venture with us. And then obviously you want to hear if you’ve got real estate or if there’s a building in town that you know about that you might not even be related to. You just would like to see somebody do something with the building. Go take a picture of the information on the side of building, it to me, and we’ll take a look at it.

Michelle Tack (20:49)
Yep.

Right, yep.

That’s great.

Well, look, Mark, thanks so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. For those that are on this podcast listening, if you found value, please continue to ⁓ subscribe with us. And those that have found value but are not subscribers, please go ahead and sign up. ⁓ We encourage ⁓ the sharing ⁓ and service and knowledge in

Obviously, Mark is a great example of that. Thanks Mark. Continue ⁓ success. Yes, absolutely.

Mark Vincent Fansler (21:38)
Two things in closing if I may.

May 30th I have a pain to profits.

free webinar. People are welcome to join. If you’re listening to the podcast and you’re interested in attending, just shoot me a message on the info@mvincentrealestate and I’ll shoot you the link so you can register. It’s free. You don’t need to pay for any of it. And two, I’m up for visionary of the year with the cancer, blood cancer united folks. have a fundraiser that we’re doing right now. We’re trying to raise a quarter million dollars for the folks to help take care of the people who are dealing with this and their families.

while they’re going through it. if you’re if you are interested in a corporate sponsorship there’s a ton that comes with that. We’d love to talk with you and if you’re just an individual who would like to support that we’d love to hear from you just shoot me a message at info@mvincentrealestate and I’ll send you the information you can scan it and do it directly from your computer it goes directly to the organization.

Michelle Tack (22:37)
That’s great.

Thank you so much, Mark, and continued success.