How Andrew Dunn Built a Commercial Real Estate Development Company Using Data and Hustle

Andrew Dunn (00:00)
honestly, this project $68 million. Like I just whacked $3 million off of it the last couple of weeks because like I found a better widget for this. I found a better widget for that. I found this. It’s not like you’re just shaving dollars off just to shave dollars off to make a project work. You’re functionally doing that by grinding people down every day. It’s like, if you want this and you want to be a part of this, you have to be at this number.

Q Edmonds (01:54)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. And man, I’m excited to be here today. I’m excited for you to hear from my guests. listen, I’m gonna just give you, listen, I’m gonna give you a preview of this guy, right? This is what I wrote down as we were talking. This guy, and this is a direct quote, know how to hustle my ass off. That was the quote. ⁓ And I said, yeah, I’m using that as the intro. So listen, that should give you a preview.

of this gentleman here, but he knows how to work, but not just to hustle. He doesn’t hustle without intentionality. He doesn’t hustle without the data. He doesn’t hustle without the experience. He’s hustling, but he knows exactly what he’s doing. And so, man, I am so excited for you all to get to know Mr. Andrew Dunn. Mr. Andrew, how you doing today,

Andrew Dunn (02:42)
Hey dude, I’m doing great. Thanks for that lovely intro. It really means a lot.

Q Edmonds (02:46)
No, absolutely, my friend. So glad you’re here, man. And listen, sir, I am the type. I like to dive right in.

So I would love for you to tell the people what’s your main focus these days. If you don’t mind, give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got started, how you kind of got to the space that you’re in. And then also, man, let them know what part of the world you’re in. People love to know where people are geographically. So Mr. Andrew, sir, you got the floor, man.

Andrew Dunn (03:12)
Hey, how you guys doing? So going back to the roots, we’ll just kind of hit it right out of the gate started in Orange County, did my undergrad up in Washington, fell in love with a girl girl’s dad said, hey, come work for me in real estate down in Las Vegas. I said, sounds great. You know, packed up my little Volkswagen drove down there and never looked back. That guy is now my partner. He’s my mentor, one of my best friends. And then he backed me to start a commercial real estate company called vac development.

which stands for value add cowboy development. ⁓ Kind of the reason why we went with that name is, you know, there’s the Blackstones of the world, the Apollos and everything else. Like, that’s just not us. You know, like we’re down and dirty guys, more street kind of guys, but know how to be professional. So for us, we wanted to kind of pick a name that encompasses what we are and what we do. And at our core, we’re just deal junkies, right? And so, you know, we really kind of go in and just trace opportunistic

high yield commercial real estate opportunities where people think there’s a lot of risk, but ⁓ we use our own experience risk mitigation strategies to help create those high yielding risk adjusted returns for our investors. ⁓ We go syndicate, raise institutional equity, ⁓ go borrow from banks, debt funds, but primarily we are a development shop. I think about 65, 70 % of our business consistently is development. The other stuff is value add.

We’re not coupon clipper types for us. So, you we really want to earn our promote, earn any fees we charge and have fun while we’re doing it and really go find good people to work with. So that’s a little bit about me.

Q Edmonds (05:41)
Yeah. man. where are you? I don’t know if you mentioned that. I don’t know if you mind, but where are you currently right now?

Andrew Dunn (05:50)
Yeah, I’m currently in Las Vegas, Nevada, in a sin city, You’re ⁓ coming slowly to the sports and entertainment capital of the world.

Q Edmonds (05:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. man, Mr. Andrew, man. Thank you, man. Thank you for taking me through the journey, telling me what you do now, kind of how you got there, where you are. You know, as you was talking, I was actively listening. I mean, man, you’ve accomplished a lot. So I’m going to give a brief summary of what I heard because I want to make a statement and ask you a question. And so I started in Orange County, went to school in Washington, right? Not Washington State, but Washington. Did I hear that correct? All right. Met your partner.

Andrew Dunn (06:23)
Yep. Yep. Yep, that’s correct.

Q Edmonds (06:28)
Then the guy was like, Hey, come work for me. Came work for him. And then the ball kind of just been rolling and you kind of laid out what you guys do now. Dale Fonders, like you laid it out so eloquently, but is that a pretty cool brief summary of some of the things you told me? Perfect. Perfect. So man, this is the statement that I make, Mr. Andrew. I always say destiny has no wasted moments. Right? Like the moments and I’ll like, yup.

Andrew Dunn (06:42)
Yep, yep, mm-hmm, that’s right.

love that. Yeah, I’ll dig that.

Q Edmonds (06:57)
Please do. But in our life, none of the moments are being wasted. We’re reinforcing our mindset. We’re learning our why. We’re learning our passion. So I would love to know, man, from you, what has the moments taught you about yourself? Like, what has this journey taught you about you? Has it taught you discipline, resilience? Has it changed the way you think, like innovation? What has the moments taught you,

Andrew Dunn (07:19)
Yeah, I guess, you know, to back up a little bit, like kind of what triggered that hustle is that, you know, more or less parents got divorced when I was like really young, you know, three or four. I had a wonderful life. I love my dad, my dad passed away, like my senior year of school. And that’s like right before like my 22nd birthday. And, you he was like my best friend. He was everything to me.

And I remember he raised a bunch of money from a bunch of syndicated investors. And at 22 years old, I had to go tell them all, you’re not getting any of your money. Like the deal, the company’s dead. I got to finish school. I go illegally sell his car to pay for my last semester of tuition, you know, and I’m just like, all right, who do I kind of want to align myself with? My girlfriend’s dad at the time was like, Hey, what are you going to do? I was like, Oh, maybe I go work for Amazon or Microsoft, do some software sales or something.

that come work for me. You know, we go start fixing flipping homes, like everything from your manufacturer trailer, up to you know, your semi custom, you know, multimillion dollar home, the daughter and I don’t work out, but the dad and I do. ⁓ And then, you know, for me, just like that’s a deep rooted relationship. I always wanted to do commercial real estate. And it’s like, hey, how am I going to go find this? And it’s like, when I was, you know, only a few years into the business, I say to him, I’m like, at the Super Bowl party, he’s like,

I was like, Hey, I got to go up to Reno. This guy had the super world party. Tell me like, you got to go up to Reno. There’s Tesla, Google, Apple with all these data centers up there. This is 2019. I’m like, Hey, cool. We go buy our first piece of land about 26 acres. We go double our money and flip it a couple of years later. Now speed fast forward to today. You know, we’re finishing up a 335,000 square foot warehouse. ⁓ I got two more developments underway, ⁓ flipped a couple of buildings up there.

And then, you know, okay, he’s like, where’s the next one? I’m like, Phoenix. All right, go to Phoenix, go buy an office building. We converted into industrial because everybody was just buying industrial. So I had to get creative and thinking out of the box. Right. So like, I would tell you like my entire life, it’s not that people look down on me. just like, I’ve always been a little bit different. You know, I use the term like redheaded stepchild, right? Which is like what I am. And so like, for me, I’ve always had to think like, how do I kind of like

go it that way. Maybe I don’t have enough money. Maybe I don’t have the height. Maybe I don’t have that. Like I always had to kind of prove a lot of people wrong and do a certain degree and think creatively with the resources I have. So, you know, to go pitch people on some of these ideas, like how are you going to go do that? How are you going to go build that trust? Well, dude, you better know your market, know your business plan better than anybody. And if you don’t know something, just say you don’t know and let me get back to you on that. And at the end of the day, like

Q Edmonds (10:07)
Mm.

Andrew Dunn (10:08)
You run this process, you know these questions you’re gonna get, and you continually refine that process over time. I think so many people, like when they have a deal, they’re like, well, I got this deal, I’m just gonna focus on, it’s like, we’re raising money for a project right now where every week I’m trying to find a better number. Whether it’s better rent from another tenant, whether it’s shave that cost off from this, but justify the cost shaving, it’s

honestly, this project $68 million. Like I just whacked $3 million off of it the last couple of weeks because like I found a better widget for this. I found a better widget for that. I found this. It’s not like you’re just shaving dollars off just to shave dollars off to make a project work. You’re functionally doing that by grinding people down every day. It’s like, if you want this and you want to be a part of this, you have to be at this number.

And it’s like, well, it’s 10 % less or it’s 20 % less. And I’m like,

That’s how it has to be, or I’m going to continue to hit the phones until I find somebody that’s reliable, then can quantify what this project would mean to them or what this partnership would mean to them. And I think for me on a deeper level of that and how I think is that I don’t think in relationships in term of a transaction. I think in terms of relationships of decades, right? Like, and I go back to like when Jeff Bezos had an early relation, like early on, like, you know, he’s going to Amazon. It was like,

in the mid 2000s and he was talking about the dot com bubble, right? And he’s like, well, all the stocks got hit, you know, in the dot com bubble, but he looks at Amazon and he’s like, okay, a quarter over quarter, month over month, year over year, our revenue continues to increase. Like I don’t care about my stock price. So I think for me, like when I heard that it’s like, as long as you know, you’re continually refining your process and getting better day over day, making little tweaks here, there.

You know, like the Japanese art with manufacturing of Iki guy. I don’t try to turn a ship on a dime on 90 degree angle. You got to turn it slowly over time. And if you have that long-term mentality and thought process and that I’m not just here to do this part-time, this is a lifestyle and you’re thinking about it in a parabolic, you know, framework over time. And it’s like, I’m 30, right? Like, where am I going to be when I’m 40, 50, 60?

Q Edmonds (12:40)
Mm.

Andrew Dunn (12:57)
Right? This is my career. I found it. And so like, this is a lifestyle. I love the people I’m with. That’s how I treat my relationships. ⁓ Where the relationship and reputations that we like to have in the business is we’re tough, but fair, right? We’re tough, but fair. We hustle and we’re scrappy. And I want to continue that as a core value of our company and what we’re building out here.

Q Edmonds (13:23)
Yeah. Man, brother, thank you for that reflective answer. I mean, you just synthesized that answer perfectly, man. You personified that question. And I love it, man. Like everything you said, it reflects to how you learn over time. You learn from your experience and nothing is wasted. And you just, you you learn. I wrote down, man, listen, you may didn’t get the girl, but you got the dad, right? You didn’t get the girl, but you got the dad. And, but it shows again that

Andrew Dunn (13:48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Q Edmonds (13:52)
It’s still no wasted moment, right? Like there’s, there’s lessons in the losses. There’s lessons in what you gain. And I love how you look at relationships and we probably come back to relationships and it’s just not transactional because like you said, you’re looking at them in decades. You never know what you’re building on. So don’t waste the moment. Don’t waste the opportunity. And so, man, I absolutely love it, man. ⁓ I would love to know, sir, what’s next for you in the business? Like, are you looking to solve a scale next?

Andrew Dunn (15:02)
Yeah. So last year in 2025, we closed five deals for about 110 million in capitalization. And that was done with, you know, a bank, a life insurance company, a couple of debt funds, and then it was syndicated dollars, pref equity, family office money, and institutional equity. So for me, and those deals were all done in four different markets. So Vegas, Reno, Phoenix, and Boise.

Right. So what’s next is we want to continue to double down on retail and industrial. We are watching office. I want to continue to build small bay shallow bay industrial. want to watch the big box market. ⁓ And then if I can fake it work ground up retail or value add retail types of property strip centers neighborhood centers grocery anchored retail. If you can find it. ⁓ I love the call center conversion play because

call centers are kind of going away with AI or they’re being outsourced to, you know, Latin America or, you other parts of the country. And that’s really good real estate just because there are long bus lines. They’re close to retail. They have really good power and utility infrastructure, good HVAC. ⁓ And they’re usually close to a lot of interstates. So either scraping and redeveloping these call centers or bringing them to a new life and new existence.

⁓ is what I’m looking to do. And, know, for me, like we love apartments. We love that type of the business. we’ve looked at hospitality with limited service hotels, but I think I want to double down where markets that have a nucleus factor. like Reno has Tesla, you know, Phoenix has TSMC Intel, you know, ASU as a pipeline for higher education.

Q Edmonds (16:45)
Yeah.

Andrew Dunn (16:50)
Boise has Micron ⁓ Boise State University. It’s a great place to live.

in like this world of, you know, more or less climate change, if you believe in it, but like, you know, places getting hotter overall, right? So it’s like, Hey, Boise is a really good spot. And, for me, and for me, that’s kind of what we’re looking for in a geographic position, more or less, um, is how we’re kind of also looking to our business. love the Southwest mountain West. If I could go figure out something in Utah or Denver, that’d be great. But

We play in this middle market of five to 50 million a lot of the time. And I want to continue to build our high net worth capital network. I want to continue to expand the brokerage component of our business. I want to continue to expand on the asset management or third party property management of our business. And, you know, really hone in on our investor reporting and transparency of these transactions and continue to mine data, trade information.

⁓ you know, I always like to say my partner, Devin has always told me a developer is a facilitator of people, information and money, right. And ideas more or less. And so I think for me, like, when you think about real estate development and that framework, there’s different components to our business, but on a glorified and very practical sense, what are we? We’re information dealers, right? Do I know who’s doing what over there?

Q Edmonds (18:02)
Woo.

Andrew Dunn (18:20)
Do I know, do I have this tenant who’s looking to expand in this market? Do I have this capital source that needs to get money out and they’re willing to be more aggressive and have a lower cost of capital that makes my project financially work? Right? So you have to be out in the market. We’re always collecting information, restoring information. You know, we’re using Claude AI, to kind of do credit analysis, go dive through stuff and we’re using it to allow us to do more, ⁓ in the space.

So I think in our business, double down on the capital network, continue to build our execution on the deals we have and the deals we will do. ⁓ And then again, continue to use AI and implement that into our business in the way we work.

Q Edmonds (19:05)
Yes, sir. I love it, man. Again, thank you for another reflective answer, man. I appreciate it. I love the way you answer questions. You answer them very thoroughly, and I appreciate that, So I’ve got to circle back, because I’ve got to get your perspective on this, because you’ve talked about it. I loved your perspective so far, and I want to build on that perspective. And so I would love to hear your perspective on the word relationship. I heard you mention it before.

And man, I think I would love to hear your perspective. And I think our people need to hear your perspective when it comes to how you look at, how you evaluate relationships.

Andrew Dunn (19:40)
Yeah, I think, you know, there’s not necessarily a one size fits all answer to relationships, right? I think people all have their own unique values, right? Again, I might be a capital raiser, but my partner can really lease. And the way we treat the different people on the other side of the table is very different, but we align. And that’s why you got to find people that think conceptually like you do.

So you understand in the direction that you’re both going is similar, but you need people who challenge your perspective and compliment you, right? You can’t be a person who knows everything, right? So you gotta go find people who are experts in their field to help support you. So when I really look at relationships, I think of them in like decades out, right? Like a good, can have somebody today in a transaction, but if that person’s really good,

and you’re thinking you’re going to be in this business for 20, 30 years, right? Because you’re here to kind of go play the long game and do the annual compounding thing and it becomes parabolic for you. you’re going to like you burning people every single transaction isn’t going to get out right. And listen, I’ve made mistakes. I haven’t treated people in a certain way as I like to. But guess what? I’m a kid.

Right? Like I’m 30, like I continue to get better. I continue to make mistakes. I apologize. I rectify the mistakes that I made with the people that I wronged down the road. Right. But then at the same time, when people are kind of doing you wrong, you got to put them in their place. Right. So I think at the end of the day, it’s just how I view relationships is you got to tailor how you interact with people and treat people based on the circumstance, the situation, who they are, what their goals are.

you know, what their capabilities and limitations are, and you know, betting on them and seeing how can I see you for the person you are today, but who are you going to be a year from now? Who are you going to be five years from now? Who are you going be 10 years from now? And if you run your life with that thought process and framework, I think you’re going to be successful, right? And I think that’s, that’s how I view relationships overall.

Q Edmonds (21:50)
Yeah, yeah.

Man, again, man, thank you for your answer. You know, one of the things I follow up with the word relationship is the word community, right? And like you just said, you you may be good at capital raising, your partner may be good at leasing. And so community is when you have common unity, when people are together doing something, pushing a goal forward. And unity means, so uniformity is when everybody do the same thing all at one time.

But unity is when people do different things at different times, for one common goal. And so what you just synthesize when you was talking is the community aspect. I may do something different, but the goal is still the same. And I love how you talked about in like 10 year increments, but also, you know, what I wrote down when you was talking boundaries, boundaries about how this relationship is going to work. And so, man, I love it. You know, like, you know, I always say relationship when you that word down, it’s like relating in a ship.

So if we’re in a vessel and we’re going the same way, we got to see how we’re going to relate to each other. Are you going to be the captain? Are you going to stir the boat? know, what am I going to take care of? Everybody has to have their portion in order for the ship to go right. But eventually the ship, where is it? Is it in Atlantic Ocean? Is it in a pond? Like what are our boundaries around this ship? So we got to talk about what our goals is, where our placement is, where are we going to go? Because eventually we got to go to a destination.

Andrew Dunn (23:10)
Yeah.

Q Edmonds (23:20)
So all of those things come into play when you talk about relationship and community. And I think you just nailed it spot on what you were saying,

Andrew Dunn (23:28)
Dude, I love I love I just gotta say I love like the the common unity that is community never really thought about that or that kind of the relationship like I do I’m taking those so those are great man I really appreciate that.

Q Edmonds (23:39)
you, listen, absolutely not.

mean, but see, the thing is I might just gave it language, but you got the philosophy. You already got the philosophy, philosophy down fat. I may give, you know, put that language out there, but you’re literally doing what I’m talking about. And so, yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. Man, Andrew brother, this has been great, man. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing. How can I get in contact with you,

Andrew Dunn (23:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, listen, think the best way is go follow me on LinkedIn, Andrew Dunn Las Vegas VAC Development, or LinkedIn slash Andrew and Dunn for one. I think that’s the best way to really kind of see me on a social presence. And then I think deeper if you want to go see what we’re doing over here @VACDevelopment, go to www.VACDevelopment.com/invest reach out, get into our investor portal, subscribe to our newsletter on our website. You know, we publish articles, you know,

few times a month. And kind of, you know, we always have been trying to do quarterly reports for the markets we’re in. Yeah, you know, I’m just about to publish an article about kind of how the 10 year 30 year is the treasuries are rising up and why you should be paying attention and how that affects, you know, the mortgages and the housing market and the commercial real estate market. Right. Everybody is always focused on the Fed funds rate. But you know, you got to really be watching the bond market. So for me, that’s how I’d say the best thing to get in touch.

Q Edmonds (25:07)
Yeah. Well, listen, my friend, ⁓ let me say three things to you, sincerely. One, thank you for your time, right? You could have been doing anything in the world, but you gave us your time, And I value time. I think time is our most precious commodity. So we do what we do to be able to do what we want to do. You know what I’m saying? And so this is why we do what we do, is because we can choose who get out time, what gets out time. And so thank you for your time, man. Thank you for choosing to be here.

Andrew Dunn (25:25)
Yeah, for sure.

Yep.

Q Edmonds (25:34)
Secondly, man, thank you for your story, man. Bro, thank you for what I call the gift of your authenticity, even like the gift of your vulnerability, right? I think stories have a way of planting seeds in people. We may never see the growth, but the seed is there and it can take root and it can grow up at any given time, two years from now, five years from now. And so really believe you gave some seeds that can really help people course correct. So man, seriously, thank you for coming and sharing your story. lastly, man, thank you for the way you think,

your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. I appreciate you coming on, Andrew.

Andrew Dunn (26:09)
Hey, dude, I really appreciate you guys having me on love the conversation. Nice and short and just really appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for allowing me to share the perspective and you bring it out of me with the way you communicate and the questions you ask.

Q Edmonds (26:13)
Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Appreciate that, man. I do. So listen, y’all cannot deny that was a great episode. I told y’all, you know, yes, this man hustles, but it’s intentional, it’s strategic, there’s systems to it. And so please get in contact with him. His information is in the show notes. Get in contact with him, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Andrew. So sir, say thank you again, And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.