Dont Get Lost! Key Tips for Navigating Syndications Effectively

Brett McCollum (00:01.004)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I am your host, Brett McCollum, and I’m here today with Brian Ferguson. Today we’re going to be talking about navigating syndications. That’s right. But before we do, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 5x their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. Without further ado, Brian, how are you, man? Doing good, man. Dude, good catching up to getting to know you a little bit before the show.

Brian H Ferguson (00:24.524)
I’m great man, how are you?

Brett McCollum (00:29.862)
Always love doing that part, getting to know everybody. I feel like I should have known you a long time before now, man. So I’m excited to get into this, because you’ve got a lot of cool things you’re working on, and I’m excited to talk about it. But before we do, can you do me a favor? Let’s back up a little bit, give some context, some history. Who is Brian Ferguson?

Brian H Ferguson (00:49.87)
Sure, I’m out of Victoria, Texas, was born and raised here, town’s growing, but kind of grew up in a smaller town. Got two brothers, so grew up in a house of boys. You know, went, I’m the middle. I’m the middle, yep, yep, that says a lot. And, you know,

Brett McCollum (01:06.062)
Youngest or oldest? There it is. Okay, keep going.

Brian H Ferguson (01:16.078)
Parents got divorced when I was younger, so I grew up with my dad. He was an oil field guy, got hurt in the oil field, had to go back to school, decided he was gonna go back to school and become a teacher. So, know, the whole walk into college every day, trying to rebuild things. So we didn’t grow up with a lot of money and I just, you know, kind of always, you know, was searching for the next thing, went from, you know, I remember selling magazine door-to-door stuff when I was a kid all the way up to becoming old enough to start selling motorcycles. I got in the auto industry.

I was in finance and auto industry, ran a finance department there and then started watching house flipping TV shows and navigated into that and fast forward 19 years, here we are.

Brett McCollum (02:01.232)
Wow. Dude, that’s… Alright. Well, let me back up a little bit, because I think I know this a little bit too. Wife kids? What’s that look like?

Brian H Ferguson (02:09.282)
Yep, so I married three wonderful kids, wonderful wife. I got a 12 year old son, 10 year old son, six year old daughter. So two big brothers and a little girl. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (02:20.076)
Yeah, dude, we’re similar. My little bit different on the ages. I’ve got four. I’ve got 11, eight, six, and almost three. And

Brian H Ferguson (02:28.066)
Yeah, if my wife had it her way, there’d be a fourth one too. we’re a.

Brett McCollum (02:30.957)
No, listen, that was one of those things where I’m like, yeah, I love that boy. My youngest he is. I love that boy. We thought, listen, I don’t know. I’m doing this. We thought for sure we have three kids already. At this point, we know what we’re doing. We’re competent parents. We got this. This dude is another type of kid, man. Like he’s like, am. He is the jackhammer that like, you know, he thought you had a path created. You know, I’m to jack it all up.

Brian H Ferguson (02:57.39)
So I tell my wife, because she always talks about our daughter, was like, she was so easy, she didn’t cry, she was just perfect baby. I’m like, yeah, the next one’s not going to be that. That’s not going to happen again. Plus, we already went from four to five. I was like, hey, table for four, no big deal, right? Five minute wait. Oh, five of y’all? It’s going to be half an hour. I’m like, what do you think happens when you get to six? Yep.

Brett McCollum (03:15.685)
You gotta get another vehicle. gotta do, mean, it’s a whole, dude, it’s a thing, man. But same time, it’s like, we love it at the same time, right? Like you can’t picture your life without them and all that, you know? But yeah, it’s a different thing, man. But all right, let me back up a little bit. So you mentioned that, was it at a young age? Like, and I don’t mean to like pull too hard on this, Brian. So if I am like, like, parents divorced, how old were you in that?

Brian H Ferguson (03:21.761)
Yep.

for sure.

Brian H Ferguson (03:41.185)
So my parents got divorced when I was 12. kind of off and on again type deal and then 12 is when it was like officially. But my dad was already, I guess it have been a few years prior, maybe when I was nine or 10. My dad was an oil filled guy and he…

Brett McCollum (03:47.544)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (03:54.265)
That sounds like,

Brian H Ferguson (04:03.82)
It was more of like like would go around and check on the rigs, et cetera, and went to a rig. They were shorthanded, so he jumped up there. Well, they had failed to put the, that was down due to some maintenance or something and grabbed his arm, almost took his arm off. So he was right-hand, he’s right-handed. So had to learn how to write with his left hand. They told him he never used his arm again. And then something called him that he was gonna go get a degree and teach four-year-olds.

Brett McCollum (04:18.945)
Brett McCollum (04:30.052)
Yeah, wow.

Brian H Ferguson (04:30.73)
all filled to teaching four year olds and then

But you know that, then during all that my mom left, he’s not working, so he’s walking back and forth to college. So like I said, I don’t know if you ever remember, you get the magazines in the mail, they sent out these magazines back in the day and you could go sell the products and then you got a percentage of your sales. So I would literally take those magazines and just go door to door and sell them like wrapping paper or junk, know. We just kind of did everything we can to get by, you know. It was me and my older brother, my little brother,

Brett McCollum (05:01.935)
Great, bye.

Brian H Ferguson (05:04.112)
moved with my mom and so it me, my older brother and my dad and we just, like I said, did what we did to get by, didn’t really have a whole lot and then eventually he got his degree and you know, things got a little bit better but you’re, you this is what, late 90s I guess? So late 90s teaching four year olds in a public school isn’t necessarily, you know, a huge paycheck on either so it was, you know.

Brett McCollum (05:28.965)
Sure, yeah, now I get that. Now the reason I was saying is I relate to that a lot on my story of, you know, I was 14, 15, so a little bit older, not, you know, at the same time, like having to get scrappy to get, you know, because the financial side of it, you know, very, very similar, man. And I think when I look back and reflect on it, you know, I’ve had a lot of…

counseling sessions, things like that, you know what mean? Things like, cause I mean, as a kid, those are your, you know, pivotal years, you know, when things are happening and like it did a number, but I also can look at it and go, man, I learned a lot about life and how, and now we’re getting, unfortunately for you and I, we were too young for that kind of thing to have, that sucks, you know? And as parents, that’s something I will always like work my butt off to prevent my children like from growing up too fast. You know what I mean?

Brian H Ferguson (06:08.686)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (06:23.461)
But I think that when you look back at your business, I wonder, you know, and you went into sales pretty quickly, right? Like, and same here, like the same story. And I wonder, does that resilience of having to do that help us in our business fast forward to today of how we had to learn at a young age, you know, how to talk to people, how to communicate, how to, you know, something like it’s out there for us, you know, we have to go get it though.

Brian H Ferguson (06:49.452)
Yeah, for sure.

Brett McCollum (06:49.507)
You know, and we learned that, you know, at least I, you know, I, and I hear that from your, that’s why I was pulling on that a little bit. Cause I was like, dude, I, that resonates. I strongly remember that. do you have any, does that track at all? did that, does that, you think you can look back and then go, man, yeah, that helped a lot of what I do today.

Brian H Ferguson (07:08.972)
Yeah, for sure. we actually in the past few years.

got to our company, we run on EOS now, and part of that, and we really got to where all of our hiring and promoting, we use Predictive Index, and we use Colby C, Colby A, all that. And what I’m getting at in that is when I did it, I thought for sure they were gonna do my PI, and was gonna be like hardcore sells, right? Everybody in the building would have thought that’s it. I actually have a huge hook on that where it shoots all the way to the opposite side of the spectrum almost.

Brett McCollum (07:16.741)
Mm-hmm.

Brian H Ferguson (07:44.096)
not my natural. And it’s funny. And then when I really thought about it, I’m like, if I walk in somewhere, like I’m going to show from when we started out and I was showing a house or if I’m meeting with an investor, whatever it is, like, I don’t thrive on like setting up that investor call, but I know what needs to be done. And so I really spent like the last two years really reflecting on that because I just always thought like I’m just this natural born salesperson. I mean, I remember I was a kid, they would tell me, oh, you you could sell ice to an Eskimo, right? Like that used to be like, my parents and grandparents would say that. But then I really started thinking about

I’m like that I really don’t thrive on that. I do it out of a necessity but because of all the hardship at a young age that Necessity to succeed inside me is so big that like I’ll go out there and do something that is a complete opposite of my personality Which is it is not natural for me, but I do it because it needs to be done Like it has to be done and I have to be good at it. So It was really interesting to see that but as I reflected on that the past few years and like you said like different counseling sessions and all that which everyone should have them like they’re healthy for you, but

Brett McCollum (08:28.005)
That’s right.

Brett McCollum (08:43.087)
I agree.

Brian H Ferguson (08:44.12)
It just really made you realize like I’m doing this out of the necessity. I’ve now since learned where my natural things that I do that just now I just I really thrive and it feeds me but selling stuff is not one of them but I do fairly well at it so it’s it was interesting to learn.

Brett McCollum (08:59.375)
Yeah, that’s funny how that, yeah, I agree with that. mean, same here. I feel like selling is a natural born thing, that sort of thing. But you know what I don’t like to do? I don’t like to pick up the But don’t you have to do that? know, like to some, you know, kind of thing. Yeah. But I’ll digress from that, man. That’s just, I just, there was a lot of, I relate to that a lot, Eventually, when did you get started into the real set? Like about…

Brian H Ferguson (09:10.52)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (09:27.907)
You said it was 19-ish years ago, is that right?

Brian H Ferguson (09:30.38)
Yeah, so 06. 06.

Brett McCollum (09:32.919)
Okay, so 2006, what did that look like? What were you doing?

Brian H Ferguson (09:36.366)
So we just there was actually originally three of us well there was a bunch of us in the auto business that like These two guys were gonna get together these three guys everybody wanted to flip a house right? And then we had one guy there. He was an older dude, and he had a bunch to us at the time He was like like like the Trump or the you know like like the real estate guru over here and

And he had, I don’t know, looking back, I he probably had like eight, nine rental properties, right? And so we’re like, we’re gonna partner with this guy, you know? And so we partnered with him and we all went in and flipped a house. Well, he was in, me and the other guy who’s my partner now, we kind of funded everything. And then we flipped one and then we found another deal and he had found the deals so that we went in with him. And then we flipped two with him and then the third one we did on our own and then it went from, I mean.

three, one at a time, two at a time, four at a time, and we’re still working full time doing it. Eventually my business partner left. He was a sales manager at the dealership. He left, started doing it full time, and then I guess it was, that was end of 06, so I think I made it till January of 08 doing both, and then they kind of approached me and said, hey, look, we understand you got this other business going on.

You know, like you’re gonna have to let that go, you know? And I was like, I remember it was a Saturday morning and I’m like, nah. I tossed on my keys and I grabbed a few things from my office and walked out. Then I walked out and realized I was driving a demo and I wasn’t really sure how I was gonna get anywhere so I had to call for a ride. But yeah, and then the rest was kinda, we just bootstrapped it and no paychecks at that point and you know, just bootstrapped it from there.

Brett McCollum (11:09.551)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (11:20.365)
And that goes back to what we were just talking about. You had to figure it out. You have to. Yeah. So it’s 08 at this point. We all know what’s happening in 2008 in the real estate market. But I don’t know Victoria, Texas, like what was happening in the real estate market. What was that like?

Brian H Ferguson (11:37.848)
So it was very similar and I could have been more educated and probably, you know, maybe tried to not make that decision right then and there because we were going into a market and what happened was some stuff was selling and we were buying a lot.

Luckily we had quite a bit of dry powder just because we both made really good money. We didn’t have any kids. We had great credit. We had a bunch of money put up. And then what we started doing is I was living off of selling the higher end houses were doing okay. You like you still had a decent buyer for that. When I say higher end back then like three, 400,000, which was a decent priced house for our market then, but that’s normally what I lived in. So I would, I would sell my personal houses. I kind of got like a knack for realtors knowing like they have, he’s going to live in a pretty nice house. So.

maybe I have someone looking in X neighborhood, we know you live there, sure it’s for sale and I would do it sometimes six months, nine months. I’ve actually moved like 20, 21 times at this point. like average of one a year. And, but what.

A lot of the cheaper stuff, I mean you’re buying stuff for 10, 15, $20,000 at a tax sale. That stuff wasn’t moving. So we had a ton of houses that weren’t moving. So we ended up building up this 100 plus single family rental portfolio by default. I mean, now you fast forward. Yeah, just rent it out. I mean, through this last cycle that we just came out of, we don’t do single family rentals anymore. Those had all been sold.

Brett McCollum (12:50.041)
Yeah, that’s the only option, right? Yeah.

Brian H Ferguson (13:01.73)
But we’ve recently had to put some back in, that just sat and the holding got, we’re just experienced enough to know you’re gonna either take a loss now or run it out for three to five years, let everything rebound, appreciate, then sell it off and you’ll get some depreciation out of it. So we learned that that was not, we were not like the strategic guys, that wasn’t our plan back then, it just happened. then those single families, you fast forward to the mid teen years, 15, 16.

we start selling those off and we’re 1030 wanting those into larger pieces and then that cycle just continued from like 15 14 to 14 to 22 your cycling just selling off single families and then and then eventually what happened is some of the first duplexes and four plexes were selling that off and that’s how we got into our larger you know apartments and retail centers and then

eventually you run out of things to 1031 and you’re like, and this is going really good. We’re doing really well at this. Well, now we need capital to keep buying. first year we saved up and then 22 is where we just kind of, I remember we had a 1031 and I sold it off and I have, you know, this money sitting here and I don’t remember what.

was like four or five hundred thousand bucks. I’m like, well, this even at 80 % leverage, this is not enough to buy that what we want. We had learned that, you know, how much easier it was to manage at a scale. And so I said, OK, well, I want to buy the shopping center and, know, I need a couple million dollars more. I’m going to put in this much of it. So I went got with a few guys. They put money in and then that’s when I knew what syndication was and I learned about the syndication model. And then we did another deal with those guys and then other people would call. Hey, I heard so and so invested in a deal.

I invest in a deal and I’d always told myself, I’m not gonna be this 50,000 retail investor. There’ll just be a few of us doing this. And it was at first, but then eventually everyone kind of dries up a little bit. So now you fast forward and that’s exactly where we are. We’re full blown syndication at this point. But it turned into it because I needed to bring in partners in order to put my money in the size of deal that I wanted.

Brett McCollum (15:08.901)
it.

Brian H Ferguson (15:09.292)
And I took a little bit and was like, well, I became an LP and I passively invested in some of the, I went to these conferences and I met some guys and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it. And I had money just sitting and I don’t like money just sitting in the bank. I’m not a fan of that. So I started investing in their deals, then putting them together. And then it just, now we’re a full blown capital firm, but that wasn’t the goal, but it’s where we’re at now and it’s worked out.

Brett McCollum (15:32.794)
Yeah. Yeah, I was I always am fascinated with the evolution of you know, because you’re, you’re flipping houses, you’re doing this. And then, you know, eventually it turns and I got to keep those as single family, like just a ride out the wave. And then what is the hot like getting into syndication, because I will be honest with you, most people that I talked to don’t get into syndication, because that was always the goal.

It was the thing that led to the thing for a lot of people, right? And I see that here too a little bit. It’s like, well, you know what? Like to do what I need my money to do, this is the only way I’ve found to do it. But what I think is more interesting is the fact that you’re doing it with a lot of your own capital, not just raising money from outside sources. you know, because you’ve got real skin in the game on these deals too, Yeah.

Brian H Ferguson (16:03.661)
Yeah.

Brian H Ferguson (16:26.158)
For sure, absolutely. We’re normally, some of the first deals we put majority in, we went from putting all to a majority. And then I just realized, okay, well, if I got, let’s say this deal is at $4 million raise and if I put in three of it because that’s what I have sitting, well, that’s great for this deal, but then what about the next one and the next one? So yeah, now we normally put about…

Brett McCollum (16:41.645)
Now you have nothing left or nothing else. Yep.

Brian H Ferguson (16:48.846)
10 % plus of whatever the capital stack is and that way we can we can stay aligned on all of our deals, you know

Brett McCollum (16:50.789)
huge.

Brett McCollum (16:56.003)
Yeah, that’s huge, man. And I think that speaks to integrity though, right? You know, there’s some operators out there that have gotten bad wraps, especially in the last couple of years, you know, with rates, know, interest rates, taxes, insurance, everything going skyrocket. Yeah. And all right, let me, we kind of touched this pre show just a smidge. I do want to ask you this because it is relevant to today’s market. Okay. But here’s the thing is you’ve got your own capital in this stuff too. So it’s you, you are incentivized.

Brian H Ferguson (17:08.674)
Yep, I’m in some of those deals. Yeah.

Brian H Ferguson (17:20.216)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (17:25.333)
Obviously, you got to work through this. I’m not saying you have the answer, but I imagine based on the context of how we started this show and kind of where we’re at, you got to figure stuff out. What are you guys working on right now? Like, I’m not figuring it outside.

Brian H Ferguson (17:43.502)
So right now we, so our current buy boxes is Texas multifamily and neighborhood size style shopping centers. We’re currently under contract on a deal, 104 unit deal here in Victoria. Last year was kind of slow for us. We did a, a one apartment complex in a.

portfolio of some retail buildings. This year we actually expanded out, because we’ve been in Victoria forever. We went into the KD Texas market and closed on a shopping center there, or a retail center there earlier this year. And then we’re looking at, I’d say anything within a two hour radius, of. Multifamily side, we’re looking at stuff that’s more kind of markets our size. The retail stuff will kind of go anywhere. As long as I have the right.

Because anything outside of Victoria, we third party our property management on the retail side because there’s just some great firms out there that do really great job. But yeah, that’s what we’re under contract on one now. We got an LOI out on another multifamily. we’re starting to see some decent deal flow.

Brett McCollum (18:36.506)
Okay.

Brett McCollum (18:48.953)
Yeah. What about those deals though in the last couple of years that are those challenge deals? How are you guys navigating through that?

Brian H Ferguson (18:55.478)
Yeah, so on our side, we’ve never been much on floating debt. Kind of the way we like to structure an underrated deal is, you know, like the deal we’re doing now, like we’re assuming a loan on it and

It needs, you know, needs seven figures of CapEx. I could go and, you know, get some short-term debt, but then I’m fighting on an adjustable rate and all that. So the way I structure it is I need x equity for, know, you know, I need so much capital just to cover the difference in equity. And then I need, you know, I raise the CapEx, I raise the closing cost, and that’s how we underwrite. And if it doesn’t work, well, then it’s just not the deal for us. it gives us, we’re very big on a very long-term secure debt as our first lien, and then we raise the

Brett McCollum (19:35.237)
Love it.

Brian H Ferguson (19:36.708)
the rest of it and just find the deals that work. So we haven’t had huge struggles, but we definitely had taxes go up, insurance go up. And yeah, we fight the taxes. We have an insurance brokerage and someone specializes in that. So we’re doing all the things that everyone else is doing. We got master policies.

but it was still more increase, especially on the multifamily side, it increased more than we could raise rents, right? But instead of sitting back and saying, there’s nothing you can do about it, a lot of times, take a capacitor, we buy those in bulk and we store them and sell to ourselves, things like that.

people, we had a showroom for the longest time with the warehouse when it was needed. We just got shut that down. But those things like that, and the people go, well, you’re only saving two bucks on a capacitor or 50 cents on an air filter. You are, but you can recover that $100,000 delta to the NOI.

50 cents or $5 at a time. But that’s where our 19 years of experience really comes in. Whereas, you know, I’ve met some of these guys that, you know, I first started one of these conferences and you talk to some of these guys and look at their card and you’re like, man, they got, they must have a huge firm, right? Like now they’ve been doing this two years and they still have a W-2. I think those are lot of the ones that got snake bit because they just didn’t have the experience to overcome it. And our experience came from, you know, 08, 09, getting kicked in the teeth quite a bit. And now we knew.

Brett McCollum (20:34.009)
Yes.

Brett McCollum (20:38.595)
Love that.

Brett McCollum (20:48.271)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (20:59.813)
That’s right.

Brian H Ferguson (21:01.54)
what to do with it. So now I am in some deals that did face those adjustable rate challenges, poor operations and management, and I invested with people that I truly believed in and still, I haven’t lost anything. I think the deals are recovering now, but definitely haven’t been seeing distributions. So, yeah.

Brett McCollum (21:19.651)
Right, you gotta wait it out, yeah. Yeah, we’ve been seeing a lot of that. And to be fair, it’s like, it’s across the country, right? And I interview people, you know, routinely. And it’s everywhere, man. But I think the more successful people that I talk to are the ones that have been through something in the past that they’ve learned from. Maybe it’s not a one-to-one, this happened exactly because…

multifamily and buying multi and doing all that only got popular really like what 2016 eight to 18 on you know is when it got really big you know as far as in our sphere of influences but the experience from 08 09 2010 when you were going through those single-family homes and having to do like it triggers something in your mind of I’ve got to protect this before this so this doesn’t happen and I I don’t think you get that without going through some stuff you know

Brian H Ferguson (21:54.38)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian H Ferguson (22:13.39)
For sure. Yeah, I mean.

or someone that’s guiding you along the way. That’s why, know, when people ask where to get started, you know, I tell them that you can go the route we did and learn the hard way. like, you know, I’m just, I’m a true fan of like, you want to go fast, go alone. You want to go far, go together, like find someone that’s done this and has the experience. There’s plenty of people out there that they have been through those cycles. And I mean, I’ll get there one day. I’m going to be the guy one day that says like, I’ve been through these cycles, but like, I don’t want to do the heavy lifting. I need somebody that’s young and full of piss and vinegar that’s willing to go out there and, know, do all the leg work and

Brett McCollum (22:45.348)
Yeah.

Brian H Ferguson (22:45.542)
Right now we have a good team that does that, I’m a big fan of partner with someone like that that can guide you from a phone call or some Zoom calls. No, probably shouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t take that long. No, let’s, yeah.

Brett McCollum (22:51.663)
Love that.

Brett McCollum (22:56.557)
Yep. Well, and I think for me, man, what I had to learn the lesson of is, you you’re connected, I’m sure you are too, with some of the best people in our industry. Okay. But you still have to pick up the phone and talk to them.

Brian H Ferguson (23:07.638)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (23:12.533)
And sometimes my maybe it’s from how we were that upbringing we were talking about us. I just got to figure it out. Nobody’s there. Nobody’s going to come to save me. I have to figure this out. You know, but I think that is a lesson I’ve learned in the last couple of years of, you know, things are that the market changed pretty drastically. I mean, I’m in Florida, you know, and the market here is wild, man. Like there’s some stuff that’s going on that makes no sense. You know,

Brian H Ferguson (23:22.125)
Yeah.

Brian H Ferguson (23:38.466)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (23:40.036)
Had I picked up the phone and called Brian and said, hey man, I’m going, and you’re like, dude, actually I went through something similar, you should have done it like this. yeah, that could have helped, but instead of doing that I just tried to put my head down and figure it out. That’s the wrong way to do it, and I love that you said that, but got a question for you. You made a comment a little bit ago, and I wrote it down because I didn’t want to forget it. You mentioned that the cycle we just came out of.

Brian H Ferguson (23:51.778)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (24:05.901)
Are you feeling like we’re coming out of that cycle on your side of things?

Brian H Ferguson (24:09.662)
our market for our market on.

For single, because we’re still building, keep in mind we saw the single family, we do ground up new construction and development as well. We have definitely seen that, I’m not saying it’s over, I think 25 is the year. 25 maybe going into 26 is the year that is everything stabilized? No. Are we seeing, on single family, is stuff starting to sell and rates have helped us a little bit and more so I think people on the home, like your homeowner side are realizing that.

I can keep waiting for years, but they are where they are right now. Like it’s not as volatile as it was. So we’re starting to see that pick up. We’re starting to put slabs back on the ground in our subdivision. So we’ve seen that piece. Now on the multifamily side, I don’t think it’s over. I think there’s still people that are trying to hold on. know, we’re watching this kind of, you know, we’re watching our treasuries just do this. So one day you think you’re gonna get good rates and they’re dipping and then they’re back up. But I think we are in opportunity zone right now.

Because there are, what I hadn’t seen in the past few years is when stuff was coming to market, it was still priced like we’re in 2022 or 2021, whatever. We’re starting to see, like the deal we have now is this is a forced sell from investors. We’ve just been in this cycle long enough where these investors are like, look.

We’re tired of it. And I’m in a deal passively where we all got together and we booted the sponsor as well because we’re like, look, we’re tired of it. You’re not performing. So I think there’s a lot of syndicated deals. This deal that I’m buying, they bought it in 19. I’m buying it for about 25 % less than their basis from 19. So assuming a 4 % interest rate, these deals are out there now. Is it managed right? No. Has he been taking care of maintenance and deferred? No, absolutely not. So it’s going to be some work, but we’re willing to put in the work. That’s where we add the value to the deal.

Brett McCollum (25:57.519)
block that.

Brian H Ferguson (25:57.632)
So I think we’ll start seeing a lot of those. We’re looking at another deal right now. These aren’t huge, this is like a $12 million deal and the guy is just, he’s not managing it poorly but he’s had it for a long time and he doesn’t, he got through this piece of it and I think we’re gonna see that too where these guys are just like, it’s just time. Like I wanna move.

you know, you thought of your older owners, but more so I think, you know, what forced the deal that we’re buying, right, that we’re under contract on, it started with Fannie Mae foreclosing, and it wasn’t because of lack of payments. It was due to an inspection. They inspected, they told them there was some maintenance that needed to be done. He put his head in the sand, and I think the past few years, Fannie Mae probably would have just, they had enlightened up on it, because we’re seeing them on our stuff. Like, we got it, they came out and did an inspection over some tree limbs, and these things weren’t even anywhere near the roof. Like, they’re within our, what we considered okay. I mean, they send it to us,

Brett McCollum (26:31.909)
Hmm.

Brian H Ferguson (26:47.79)
Two weeks later, they’re like hammering us. Like, you could be in default, this and that, and we’re like, boom, tree’s trimmed, here’s the invoice, here’s the pictures, done, right? But if they’re doing that, and we’re…

Brett McCollum (26:50.659)
No way.

Brian H Ferguson (26:59.48)
Perfect, know, like perfect credit with them. So like I can only imagine what’s happening. I think these guys just got used to like, I’m gonna ignore that inspection as long as I’m paying my payments, right? So that’s just one example of these lenders are just, you’re gonna start seeing it this year. And for the people that are in a position, the problem is I know there’s a lot of guys and some of them are friends of mine that they’re just in survival mode still. Like the thought of taking on a new deal is not even, that is nowhere on their one year, three year vision board right now.

Brett McCollum (27:00.761)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (27:20.261)
Sure.

Brett McCollum (27:27.162)
Right.

Brian H Ferguson (27:28.118)
And we made sure we were prepared for that. We didn’t bring all these fancy deals to market as fast as some other guys did, but we steered away from a lot of deals that just weren’t the right fit when the products were ready. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (27:38.085)
That’s what you said no to in the right time. yeah, yeah, that’s great. Man, that’s incredible. mean, what are you guys looking forward to for futures? It’s more of the same? Is there anything diversified you’re looking at at this point?

Brian H Ferguson (27:51.726)
You know, no, I mean we’re kind of I know there’s a lot of You know, I got I did some of the Bitcoin some of the stuff and I know there’s a lot of like alternative investments We’re just real estate guy by heart multifamily and neighborhood style shopping centers. Like we have some self storage We have some mobile home parks in our portfolio, right that we bought all the time and we just this last year and a half Maybe two years really since we got into the EOS model and just dialed in. We’re just very intentional on

This is the class and type of multifamily buying. We’re buying these size of shopping centers, and that’s all we’re going to do. And then the flipping still continues, but it’s a department of its own. They wash, rinse, repeat. We don’t have to do anything. They do a great job, so we continue doing that. But as far as long-term holdings, it’ll be those two asset classes and just trying to find the right deals.

Brett McCollum (28:39.223)
Love that, yeah. I intentionality wins the day. Well, cool, man. Hey, if people want to do, and they connect, and they want to reach out to you, what’s the best way, maybe, for that to happen? Social media? What’s the best format?

Brian H Ferguson (28:50.678)
Yes, I’m on social. I’m old, so I’m not on all the socials. the but fergmarcapital.com is our website and you know has a link. You can book a call. You can schedule a time and to your point we said earlier about people reaching out and calling. I always like to say this on these shows like I’m I’m an open book man like.

Call me if you are flipping a deal in Dallas and you’re stuck, call me. I’m not saying I can, but if I can help, I’m always happy to help. I book a call and I’ve had people book off these podcasts before just asking for advice and I’m always happy to. I don’t know it all, but I’ll share what I do know.

Brett McCollum (29:26.147)
Yeah, that’s great, man. And I get that vibe from you of you give first. And I think that lends credibility to your success. I get that from you, man. So yeah, I appreciate you doing that. So it’s Fergmar Capital, is that what you said?

Brian H Ferguson (29:42.286)
for sure.

Brian H Ferguson (29:47.246)
It’s fergmarcapital.com, yes sir.

Brett McCollum (29:49.178)
And we’ll make sure we put that in the show notes for you guys. And I strongly encourage you guys to connect with Brian if it’s something that resonates here in the Texas area or anything. Brian, you’ve just done, you’ve gone through so much. You’ve seen a lot of things. Yeah, guys, reach out. But Brian, man, this has been great. Thanks for spending time with me today and recording with me.

Brian H Ferguson (30:10.498)
Yeah, for sure. Appreciate you having us.

Brett McCollum (30:12.57)
Do you for sure. All right, and guys, to you as well, thanks for being here, hanging out with us, spending your time, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. Take care, everybody.