How a Nonprofit Developer Is Building Affordable Homes for 994 Buyers

Tawalla Simmons (00:00)
Well, being in a nonprofit developer space is a very small space. So we we actually have a lot of opportunities. The greatest thing that we have is the fact that we have 994 buyers on our wait list. So when we’re building, we’re not just building for us, we’re building for the people that need it most. These these are essential workers, these are disabled, these are also people and also veterans.

So our market is huge. We what we need is we need more people in construction so that we can provide more housing, actually.

Joseph Crooms (02:07)
Welcome to Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. I am your host, Joseph Crooms. Today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with. Her name is Tawalla. She’s been making some serious moves in the non-profit investment property ownership. The whole enchilada. I’m going to let her explain that more. Tawalla, say hello to everyone.

Tawalla Simmons (02:32)
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for having me today, Joseph.

Joseph Crooms (02:34)
It’s my pleasure. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from your approach, especially in the non-profit. So let me dive right in. What exactly is your market like right now? Describe it. You can tell us the whole story.

Tawalla Simmons (02:51)
Well, being in a nonprofit developer space is a very small space. So we we actually have a lot of opportunities. The greatest thing that we have is the fact that we have 994 buyers on our wait list. So when we’re building, we’re not just building for us, we’re building for the people that need it most. These these are essential workers, these are disabled, these are also people and also veterans.

So our market is huge. We what we need is we need more people in construction so that we can provide more housing, actually.

Joseph Crooms (03:25)
So Tawalla, when you say provide housing, is there a certain market group that after the construction that you put in these housing?

Tawalla Simmons (03:34)
Yes, we actually have our own if you want to call it, buyer pool. As Inspiring You to Greatness being a nonprofit, we created the Pathway to Homeownership education curriculum written with our bank regulators that I’m a panelist for. And throughout this education platform, there’s 12 classes that they go to, not just for homebuyer education, but it’s specifically making them a certified homebuyer through a mortgage readiness program.

And through that, last year alone we had over 33 graduates. So we don’t have a problem with buyers. What we do is take them through this education and then they can pick out their lot of where they want to be, and then we build their home for them. If they have fast track, meaning they have a pre-approval when they enter our program, they can be in their home within 90 days. If they don’t, and they maybe have credit challenges or they need to work on some things, then we’ll actually go through that with them while they’re in class and they can take one class per month up to one year.

Joseph Crooms (04:35)
Tawalla, the market that you operate is in Texas, am I correct? What part of Texas?

Tawalla Simmons (04:39)
Yes, sir.

Specifically the DFW area. Right now we actually own land in Dallas, Hood, and Tarrant counties. And our focus is always purchasing more land. So we’re we’re actually doing other things like building multifamily and mixed-use as well. That will just give us another market for our renters so that when they’re completing their lease, then they’ll be ready to become buyers. But our specific market is Texas.

We also serve Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Colorado as well.

Joseph Crooms (05:57)
Wow. So when you say what is your what is your book of business as a nonprofit? What is what kind of book of business do you have on your nonprofit status?

Tawalla Simmons (06:08)
That’s a beautiful question. The focus of the nonprofit specifically is taking people from where they are to where they would like to be financially, is the is the focus. So, our normal business would be our homebuyers going through class to receive their homes. But our second model of clients will be our small business and entrepreneurs. I am a certified entrepreneur facilitator. I receive clients from the SBDC, the Small Business Development Center, SBA, people that have not been approved for loans, but need to go through entrepreneurial training, small businesses that come from banks as well as entrepreneurs. I have a book of business myself of over 31,000, been in this industry for over 25 years. And what I offer these entrepreneurs is I give them an opportunity to go through our bank readiness classes. It’s called our B3, Better Business Banking. We take them through the accounting, we take them through the advertising and marketing as well as we take them through building their team and creating capital. Because if they go through all of these and they complete the pillars as requested, they’re guaranteed to receive lines of credit from 50 to a million, a million dollars. And that’s to start their real estate businesses or to start any type of business. We have people that have food trucks all the way up to people that have built brick-and-mortars.

Joseph Crooms (07:29)
Tawalla, may I ask you this question also? So your book of business, do you have like property managers and construction companies under your nonprofit status as well?

Tawalla Simmons (07:39)
Yes, sir. We have I’m actually a former property manager. My background is property management, mortgage, and compliance. And compliance being in multifamily, so that goes into commercial accounting and asset management. So, yes, when we take our entrepreneurs through our certification program, they then become a part of our Business Alliance Group to where we do have realtors, property managers, construction companies, and all of these construction companies and real estate investors and new developers, they’re all the ones that get the first right of refusal on any of our projects. So the $400 million multifamily mixed-use that we’re getting ready to build with 30,000 of commercial space that’s already 50% sold out, those projects would be specifically slated for our Business Alliance Group members. So any entrepreneur that goes through our training, the difference between us and any other nonprofit is we have guaranteed business for them.

Joseph Crooms (08:38)
How did you get into this?

Tawalla Simmons (08:42)
So my background is property management. Previously, as you know, we discussed, I started out in East Texas in 1999. And I built my business up by going property management. And then by the early 2000s, I was in mortgage. Well, I kept my relationship with the apartments so that I could then, you know, go back and talk to them about different opportunities such as effective renters. Being a property manager, I know that an effective renter is one who pays the rent on time and takes care of their unit. So I went back and I worked with other property managers to assist with that. And those communities became our communities that we can now partner with. So if those apartment communities in East Texas had any problems, any issues, even make-ready, we would go in and help them with that as well, because we do have the construction partners.

So when I moved from East Texas to North Texas in 2008, after the bubble burst, closed the mortgage company, went directly into compliance, I moved to North Texas and I had $75 million in multifamily properties in my portfolio. No one could move in or move out without my sign off and permission of approval. What I found is the people that were living in these communities in Dallas, Denton, Tarrant, and Collin counties, almost all of the Black and Brown people, Latino and African American descent people had no assets, they had no properties, and most importantly, you had three generations: grandmother, mother, and granddaughters, all living in the same apartment complex. I saw this and I wanted to do something about it. So we started Inspiring You to Greatness while I was still working in compliance so that we could offer soft skills, life skills, and job readiness training to these apartment communities. From there, I obviously resigned as a compliance officer to do the nonprofit full time. So we started the nonprofit in 2010. We received our 501(c)(3) in 2015, and we converted to a CDC in 2020 so that we could now start constructing. I was educating and training and then turning the clients over to builders, and in most cases they would come back. So the lenders that we put together, our clients receive 100% financing, no mortgage insurance, as long as they complete our classes and they go through the pillars that we have set before them, and then we also build their home. And that’s how I was able to get into it because of compliance.

Joseph Crooms (11:47)
Tawalla, thank you first of all for what you’re doing. Is there a cost for your clients to complete your program?

Tawalla Simmons (11:50)
Yes, sir.

Yes, I would have given it to them priceless. But since we offer so much, our bank regulators as well as our banking partners wanted the clients to have skin in the game. So we do charge them per class. But if they close with us, then they receive the balance of what they paid as a credit at closing. Because again, we are not in the business of taking money. What we are in the business of is equipping people for what they need. And when they go through the pillars and they build a home with us, even if they don’t build a home with us, if they build a home with one of our partners, we still offer that credit at closing.

Joseph Crooms (12:34)
When you say build a home, you’re talking from the ground up?

Tawalla Simmons (12:37)
Yes, sir. We lay the foundation, we purchase the land, we lay the foundation, we bring in, if we’re not doing the work ourselves, we bring in our subs. We have turnkey subcontractors that work with us that do their own cement, they do their own foundation. The only thing we have to call out is the people that are licensed. That will be HVAC, plumbers, and electricians. And we also have at least four of each on deck for them as well. Because in order to build a home, a four-bedroom, two-bath, or two-and-a-half-bath, two-car garage home in less than six weeks, it has to be turnkey. And in Lancaster, Texas, we have several homes that we’ve already done that with, that we usually go and show if needed.

Joseph Crooms (13:24)
Are these communities that you’ve been building, like say you put more than, you have a lot and you can put more than one home in this developer community?

Tawalla Simmons (13:34)
Yes, Serenity Estates is going to be in Mesquite. We’ve already purchased that land. We own four acres. And that land has already been converted from agricultural to residential. And we are actually going through the process now in order to get that land surveyed and platted so that we’re ready to start construction. Yes, sir. We do subdivisions. That’s Mesquite. We also have another subdivision in Tarrant County in the outskirts of Fort Worth. And then we’re building in a subdivision in Granbury. We have two homes there, and then we have three more lots that we’re purchasing so that we will… because once you build four homes, Joseph, you basically become your own subdivision, if you will. And so as for us, every time we build four homes, we get a certification as a CHDO, which is a Community Housing Development Organization. And so that’s what we’re going for. We don’t want to just build one. Our goal is always to build four within a community.

Joseph Crooms (15:16)
So you’re mimicking in Oklahoma, right? Tell me the communities that you’re, the states that you’re in already again.

Tawalla Simmons (15:25)
We’re in Oklahoma, Colorado, Louisiana, and Texas. Texas is our home base. I’m born and bred. The land that we own in Colorado, we actually own outright. That’s five acres. And that’s going to be in the, what we call it, the Rocky Mountains. It’s in Alamosa, Colorado, if anyone is familiar with that. And that is what we call mountain view land. In Texas, it would be like lake view. They had a lake view. All of our properties have something that is specific. Like the Mesquite is right across the street from Amazon, and all of our homes will have a view of the skyline in Dallas because the land is elevated. So everything that we do always has a purpose and a meaning, like the Serenity Estates name. That’s because we want to create serenity with each of our buyers, and we want to make sure that they are comfortable, they are equipped to not just purchase the home, but keep the home.

Joseph Crooms (16:25)
Well, it sounds like your initiative is to help minorities, but do you only serve minorities or…

Tawalla Simmons (16:31)
We serve everyone, everyone that signs up for the program. We’ve been in existence for 15 years, Joseph, and honestly, only minorities have applied with us. But we will accept anyone. And as you see behind me, the family, we are about building families and creating legacies so that it’s not just about purchasing a home. But if this wife and husband were needing jobs, we would help them to get the job readiness training so that they could first get the job before they purchase the home. It’s about going from homelessness to homeownership in 36 months or less. Because if a person is a renter and they can be put or displaced in 30 days or less, that’s close to being homeless, unfortunately. And we have renters that have been renting for upwards of 18 years. One of our greatest testimonies is a lady who was 67 years old that completed our program and purchased at 67. And she only received a 15-year mortgage with no mortgage insurance and no down payments.

Joseph Crooms (17:35)
So if they can start as a renter in the program, your initial goal is to help them develop homeownership.

Tawalla Simmons (17:39)
Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Yes, sir. We take them from where they are to where they want to be.

Joseph Crooms (17:50)
How did you partner with property managers, construction companies? You know, how did you own those, or are not only owning them, do you just partner with them as well?

Tawalla Simmons (18:00)
Both. So we have property managers that we partner with at at least 20 communities in Collin and Dallas County because I have clients that may need to move. Like once we purchase their home or once one of our agents sell their home, they may not have anywhere to go right away. So we partner with the property managers so that we can find out monthly what their occupancies are, so that when I have families that are now selling their homes and they’re in our program and they’re about to be displaced because their home sold, yay, and their new home is not ready quite yet, I can actually set them up with 3 to 6-month leases with our properties that we have that are partnered with us. Now, they still have to meet the requirements. You know, they still have to pass background checks. But if there is a situation where maybe there was some issues, since we have the partnership, we can work with them to help to mediate those.

Joseph Crooms (18:55)
Well, I’m blown away by what I hear. Being an African American myself, this is exciting. I’m really glad to hear this. Let me ask you this question. When, okay, the development that you have in Oklahoma, so this is your model in Texas, how established are you in the other states?

Tawalla Simmons (19:12)
Mm-hmm.

Well, it’s all based on relationship. The land, we have about 30 acres that we are getting ready to develop in Oklahoma. And the purpose of that is because of the fact that the mayor of this particular city, Idabel, Oklahoma, reached out to us and stated that they were having companies that want to relocate there, but there’s no workforce development housing. So we work directly with the cities and the counties. We were fortunate to receive a grant to purchase the land in Mesquite, that was almost half a million dollars. So with us being nonprofit, Joseph, we can do things, we can make moves that a for-profit developer couldn’t think of. When we go to a city, typically, if we were for-profit, they would ask us to show them our budget and our funding before they would ever have a conversation with us. But because we’re nonprofit, the conversation is reversed. Not only do they invite us in, but they also have funding to offer.

So that’s what makes us different from a for-profit developer. And that same for-profit developer that’s struggling, they can come through our program and a piece of that that we receive, we then will farm out to them. Because our goal is to make sure that we are helping the community building an ecosystem, not just doing everything ourselves.

Joseph Crooms (20:39)
We’re going to run out of time, but what is the advantage of private investors linking up with you?

Tawalla Simmons (20:47)
And I’m so glad you asked that. That’s a great question. I just had a private investor call before the podcast. The greatest benefit to them is the fact that we have all the work already done. We have the beautiful tax returns. We have the lines of credit. All of our contractors have over 680 to 800 credit scores. So it’ll be a no-brainer. I actually spoke with a private investor about refinancing one of the properties and doing a HELOC. That’s something that private investors do and contractors need, and we have many contractors that are needing services like that. So we’re definitely interested. And like I mentioned, I have a book of business of over 30,000 relationships that I’ve built over these past 25 years. I will easily take the underwriting guidelines of a private investor and send it out to help them just as much as they would be helping our partners.

Joseph Crooms (21:42)
And how have you attacked the veterans community?

Tawalla Simmons (21:46)
The way we are serving the veteran community is that that’s our start, that’s our priority, because veterans are the ones that need housing most. And so since they already receive the USDA 100% financing program, we took it one step further. We’re not only assisting them with obtaining housing, but we’re taking them through the education so they understand what they will be receiving.

Joseph Crooms (22:09)
First of all, I went off the guidelines, the questions because this is unique and I hope I’m asking all the right questions. But we’re running out of time. Let me ask you this. I know a lot of people listening are either early in the journey or looking to level up. I think that they’ll benefit from this question. When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, tell us some pointers on what you did.

Tawalla Simmons (22:43)
The best thing to do is to network. They can go… I’ll give you easy, I’ll say networking hacks. Just go online and look for Eventbrite. Eventbrite has meetings that are in your area that you can go to that are free. Only do the free ones because I would never pay for an event without knowing what I’m receiving. So go to it, take a lot of business cards, be presentable, no crop tops and blue jeans. These are business casual, after-five wear. Then I would also go to Meetup. And the third opportunity for networking I would give them is Toastmasters. That’s an opportunity to hone your skills as a networker if you’re not going to take my class, and also give you an opportunity to meet with other presidents, founders, and decision makers.

Now, networking with me through the Business Alliance Group, I’m going to then take you to these events and I’m going to personally introduce you. I’m going to teach you how to write, how to understand a Request for Qualifications or a Request for Purchase. Because if they want to actually get the big dollars, I mean the hundred million dollars in contracts for small business and entrepreneurs who’s going to be being able to get those government contracts, that’s a huge way to network. And I would be happy to walk them through how to do any of these.

Joseph Crooms (24:05)
Tawalla, thank you so much. So I know you can’t fake that in this space. All right. Before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, and maybe collaborate and learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way? Slow down and say it slow.

Tawalla Simmons (24:22)
Yes, sir. So I have a website personally that is thedreammaker.me.

Joseph Crooms (24:29)
Okay. And that’s your personal website.

Tawalla Simmons (24:32)
Yes, that’s my site that they can reach me directly.

Joseph Crooms (24:34)
And so that’s the dream maker dot maker…

Tawalla Simmons (24:37)
dot me.

Joseph Crooms (24:41)
Dot me. Okay.

Tawalla Simmons (24:42)
That’s my number one goal, Joseph, is every person that I come in contact with, my goal is to help them to accomplish their dreams. Now I could tell you I’m not for everybody, but who I’m for, I inspire specific people to reach dreams, visions, and goals.

Joseph Crooms (24:59)
And what are those specific people, what characteristics are you looking for in them?

Tawalla Simmons (25:04)
Just exactly what you said: someone who is hungry, someone who has a desire to move forward, someone who is teachable, and someone who is a lifelong learner.

Joseph Crooms (25:13)
Do you have any other besides the Dream Maker? Yes.

Tawalla Simmons (25:18)
thedreammaker.me. Also the Inspiring You to Greatness website because yes, I am the founder, but we have 12 board members, we have a host staff and team of over 30. So the website is iytgdevelops.org. That’s Inspiring You to Greatness, I-T-G-develops-with-an-S.org. And that way they can see everything that I mentioned: the programs, the properties, the construction, the board, everything about us is online. And I welcome them to Google me, add me on LinkedIn, add me on social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, because following me online, you can watch me work, not just hear me talk about it.

Joseph Crooms (26:09)
And what’s that LinkedIn, Tawalla? Yes.

Tawalla Simmons (26:12)
LinkedIn I am Tawalla.

Joseph Crooms (26:16)
Okay.

Tawalla Simmons (26:16)
And then Facebook is same, just T Simmons. And I think all of them will probably be the same on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. But the main one I would say is LinkedIn because we actually post our videos there of what we’re doing and how we’re doing the construction, and they’ll get to meet our president and learn he’s a certified construction project manager, GC, designer, and engineer.

These are the things that we have. Every last one of our board members carries three to four titles because we like to keep the most important things in house. Engineering and design are typically the highest expenses of a new builder or developer, and we have that already in house.

Joseph Crooms (27:00)
Perfect. Tawalla, I appreciate your story. I appreciate your time, your perspective. I took some notes myself ’cause I hope you bring this to other states.

Tawalla Simmons (27:12)
Yes, sir.

Joseph Crooms (27:13)
You’re open to it. We need more people in this space who are doing it the right way. Thank you. Thank you again for being here. And for those of you tuning in, I know you got some value from this. Make sure you subscribe. We got more conversations coming with operators just like Tawalla Simmons. So we’ll see you at the next episode of Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. Tawalla, say goodbye to everybody.

Tawalla Simmons (27:41)
Bye, thank you. I look forward to hearing from you. See you soon.

Joseph Crooms (27:44)
And tell them I’ll see you soon.

Sounds good. Thank you, Tawalla.

Tawalla Simmons (27:48)
Yes, sir, my pleasure.