How New Multifamily Investors Can Raise Capital, Build Trust, and Scale Faster

Jeff Freeman (00:00)
we made three LOIs and we didn’t have anything stick and it was just becoming frustrating. I remember actually very specifically, we made an offer on a property that we absolutely loved in the Jacksonville area and it fell through and my brother turned to myself and we looked at each other and he goes, I guess we’re back to square one. And you, and it’s kind of true, but you also got to take those hurdles. And then the very next day I got a call.

who would end up being our future partner on our next deal. In three months, we closed on a deal that same year.

Quentin (02:00)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host Q Edmonds. I’m excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest and listen, I’m going to kind of let him tell you all the things that he’s involved in, but I love the pace of his business. I love how he’s building. I love the way he’s forward thinking is. And so we’re going to learn a lot from Jeff. And you know, I mean it because I said, if you watch me enough, know, I say it all the time is that

We all can literally be doing the same thing, but because we are involved in what we’re doing, it’s going to be different some type of way. And so it’s so important for us just to learn from each other, respect each other’s journey, because we are going to learn from each other as we grow. We’re going to learn from our failures, our mistakes, and our success. And so I am so excited for you all to get to know Mr. Jeff Freeman. Mr. Jeff, how you doing today,

Jeff Freeman (02:50)
Great, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on here.

Quentin (02:52)
Absolutely, man. So glad you’re here. And listen, I want to dive right in, sir. I would love to know what is your main focus these days, right? Jeff, if you can give us a little bit of an origin story. We love the hero’s journey, kind of how you got to where you are. And then, people always want to know where you are in the world. So tell them geographically where you are, because some people may want to reach out. Hey, is just the guy I’ve been looking for. So, Jeff, man, you have the floor,

Jeff Freeman (03:17)
Absolutely, thank you. Yeah, so I’m located on the East Coast. My brother and I decided to partner about a year ago so that we can get into multifamily investing. So our background is that we each had our own single family portfolio and those were doing great and we understood that there was a great opportunity in real estate and so we’re really excited about it, but we want to learn how to scale. And so we started doing our research. We started looking for groups, some mentorship, some courses, things that we could take to help really develop our own professional ⁓ aspirations to real estate.

We got engaged with a great network and then we started looking at syndications. We started looking at multifamily and then within a couple of months we were able to get into our first deal as general partners. And so last year we started our first syndication with a group of partners and doing our first capital raise. And that was where we learned our kind of biggest challenges that we had. And so for the folks that are just getting into, I feel like we really connect because we’ve only been doing this for about a year and a half and we’re in three deals. We have two deals in Texas.

and one deal in South Carolina. And we had to raise money for those last year during a kind of tumultuous period that was a little bit, a lot of people were holding onto their capital because of the volatility in the stock market and stuff. But we were able to raise a little over a million dollars in our first year and that had to do with just connecting and networking and telling everybody about our story. And so what I encourage a lot of the viewers to do is like, as soon as you get started, like we didn’t even have a CRM, we didn’t have a website.

we didn’t have anything. We were starting completely from scratch. And so we know exactly where you are, especially if you’re trying to just get started in this field. And we can love connecting with people and just talking about our journey, like how we started, what our hiccups were, like were certain programs worth paying to get into like a CRM? Like, are you going to pay for it? You’re going to use a free app and all that kind of stuff. And it really depends on your goals, how fast you want to grow, like, know, is the expense worth it? And so…

When we got started with all this stuff, we were really just kind of figuring it out as we went. But we stayed dedicated and we trusted the process. We had a lot of faith. We put a lot of faith in our ⁓ spiritual faith in that we can grow into what we’re meant to be. And so ⁓ when we started this journey, we were really just adamant about making ⁓ this a success. And so we stuck to it, that perseverance, ⁓ know, just seeking the opportunities, seeking the right people, the right network, all those things.

Quentin (06:22)
Ooh, Jeff, I love it, man. Thank you for walking us through it. Thank you for mentioning your spiritual faith. You probably, I probably slipped some, some kind of spiritual quote in there here and now, cause faith is a part of, big part of what I do. I can’t separate it from who I am and it drives me, right? And I just find so many connecting points. Just with, just when we talk about business, when we talk about ecosystem, when we talking about life and culture and community, to me, like it’s just some fundamental things that just seems to add up with all that, all those different things, right? And so.

Jeff Freeman (06:35)
Absolutely.

Yes.

Quentin (06:51)
So I appreciate

you saying that. And man, I’m listening to you very clearly, man, partnered with your brother, wanted to learn how to scale, got with a great network, I mean, kudos for that. First Capital Raising, you raised over a million ⁓ in a year. So I’m listening to you go through the transitions, right? And I’m listening like, you you’re kind of right on the cusp of your journey with this. But there was a journey before you got to this point, right?

And so this is what I say, Jeff. I say this once every podcast, destiny has no wasted moments, right? Meaning no matter what you go through in life, these moments you borrow from to make you the person that you are today. So like, even though yes, your real estate journey might’ve started like a year ago, but the journey actually started before then, right? Because you was building these moments to get to where you are now. So I would love to know, Jeff, what has these moments get into where you are now?

Jeff Freeman (07:21)
Ciao.

Exactly.

Quentin (07:48)
What has these moments taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline? Has it taught you resilience? Like what are these moments taught you about you, Jeff?

Jeff Freeman (07:55)
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. And one the books I really love is the book Three Feet from Gold. And it’s in Napoleon Hill Library. And what it really mentions is that ⁓ perseverance. It talks about a couple of things. One of them is stickability. That’s essentially that perseverance to see it through. Because so many people quit right on the cusp of their success. And because they’ve been driving hard, they’ve been really challenged by all the different hurdles that we’ve talked about here already. And then they just give up. And then they’re right on that

of that breakthrough and then next thing you know it, you know, they miss that opportunity. ⁓ I think that the challenges help definitely grow and mature you and it identifies your gaps. So like for us, like when we first started fundraising, we thought we were gonna come in strong. We had a bunch of people that we knew, we were getting ready to have raised. And then we’re like, we raised…

you know, over a million dollars, but we had this huge aspiration to raise even more. And so, you you got to have some of that expectation management too, that some things are going to change, some hurdles are going to change, the dynamics change for different people’s lives, what they’re looking to invest in and all that kind of stuff. And so, and then whether they trust you to, with their money and that kind of thing. So you got to build that trust. got some of that takes time. We had a lot of people in our first investment, they decided to set that one out. They realized they missed out.

And in our second investment, had people calling us back and just asking, hey, when do you have next deal? So that was pretty incredible. And that’s about the stickability, I believe.

Quentin (09:17)
Yeah. ⁓ man. And I love the word stickability. One of my words I use a lot is stick-to-it-iveness. I love saying that word. It’s but it’s the same concept, sticking to it, right? When things get tough, sticking to your principles, sticking to your core of who you are. I have a saying that I got from one of my mentors that really helped me out when I was in an impact in my life. He said, when you know who you are, you know what to do. And so that made me dig deeper and okay, well, Quentin, who are you? Are you a quitter?

Jeff Freeman (09:23)
Agree.

Right.

Quentin (09:46)
You know, you know, and,

and sometimes there are times to let things go. Right. But in your core, right. Maybe not maybe pivoting from it, you know, so you really got to look at yourself and say, who are you? If you can’t stick to this, why can’t you stick to this? Why can you build skills to stick to this? How can you build your discipline? So when you know who you are, you know what to do. You know, to build more skills, you know, when a partner, you know, when to get out of partnerships, it’s like, again, when you know your core, it just

Jeff Freeman (09:52)
Yes.

Quentin (10:15)
changes the dynamic, you know? And so I would love to know, Jeff, because I’m sure you faced some adversity as you was building, right?

Jeff Freeman (10:15)
Exactly. 100%.

we looked at hundreds of deals.

we made three LOIs and we didn’t have anything stick and it was just becoming frustrating. I remember actually very specifically, we made an offer on a property that we absolutely loved in the Jacksonville area and it fell through and my brother turned to myself and we looked at each other and he goes, I guess we’re back to square one. And you, and it’s kind of true, but you also got to take those hurdles. And then the very next day I got a call.

who would end up being our future partner on our next deal. In three months, we closed on a deal that same year.

This is last year. And so, I believe again, lot of that faith driven ⁓ connections happen like that. Sometimes it’s like, hey, you’re gonna test your patience, you’re gonna test your will. And so we believe in that wholeheartedly. ⁓ We made several other offers throughout the year. So we closed on one deal ⁓ before summer. And so we’re looking for our next opportunity, searching, searching, making offers and things like that.

had a deal really come close through. We were actually ready for due diligence. We were scheduled for that week to go out and inspect the property with our inspection team and everything like that, and a seller pulled back. And so it was just, you know, we already had our deposit money ready to go. Luckily, everything kind of came back to us. I will just put that up as we believe it wasn’t the right property. You know, they say ⁓ no deal is better than a bad deal. And so maybe there’s something missing in there, and that’s what we just held onto, that that wasn’t the right property for us.

And then same kind of similar story again, why we’re so faith driven is that about a week later we get a call from another person in our network and ask, hey, we’re sorry that your deal fell through, but we have one here in Texas that we’re trying to close out. Would you like to partner with us? And we’re like, yes, we actually had a bunch of capital that we were ready to deploy with our network and we didn’t have anywhere to go. And we’re trying to close out before December so that we can take advantage of the tax advantages that they had just passed.

as well as the ⁓ layering of revenue streams for our investors, right? Because they want to get into the deal before, they don’t want to wait three, four, five, six months.

Quentin (12:54)
Yeah, yeah. ⁓ man, I love it. Thank you for sharing these stories. Again, thank you for sprinkling in your faith, leading with your faith. Because, you know, my wife, me and my wife has a sin. I get it from her. Well, yeah, I get it from her. And it drives our marriage. When things get rough, we say time takes time, right? Time takes time. Like you can’t rush time. Some things just supposed to happen in a certain amount of time.

Jeff Freeman (13:12)
That’s right.

Quentin (13:17)
Now, what your job is to be intentional about the time, right? To be intentional while you’re in time, while time is second time, you got to be intentional, right? And so the scripture that comes to mind is where it says, we make our plans, but the Lord determines the outcome, right? So we make, we make our plans. Like we are adding, we were making our plans. He allowed us to make the plan, but outcome maybe doesn’t go the way we expect. And that’s when that stickability comes in because

Jeff Freeman (13:18)
That’s right.

That’s true.

Yep.

Quentin (13:44)
Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with the plan, just time takes time. And sometimes, as you and I know, God just got something else in mind. But within it, just being intentional, doing our part and allowing him to determine the outcome of how it’s going to go out. And that don’t mean you’re on your hands. That don’t mean not doing anything, but just being intentional, but letting him determine the outcome. Does that make sense, Jeff?

Jeff Freeman (13:57)
100%.

100 % yeah, I totally agree. One of the other kind of ⁓ lessons from that same book of three feet from gold is talking about helping others. We both believe that’s biblical and it’s also just professional. Like when you help others, you don’t just help them grow, you’re helping yourself grow. And by that kind of just seeking down and reaching down, I think there’s kind of two arms. You reach up for mentorship and then you reach down to help others. And so wherever you are in your journey, you’re helping fix it. Like again, for us, we’re in our first 18 months. We understand we got a way a lot more to grow.

But we’ve also learned a lot. We’ve set up our website, our company, our CRM. We’ve got 1,000 people in our CM when we’re growing every day. We’ve got social media posts going out all the time. So all those things, we were kind of just totally lost in the beginning. But now we feel like we share our experiences with anybody who’s just getting started in their journey. And we love connecting with people. And we take phone calls. We do Zoom calls. We do all that stuff to help. Hey, this is what we do. It might work for you, but you might want to try something else.

100 % believe in helping others. We think that’s a biblical and professional truth as well.

Quentin (15:04)
Yep. So again, man, I love talking to you because this is something I say on this part a lot. And sometimes I don’t quote the verse, but it is Proverbs 11, 25. It says, when you refresh others, you in return will be refreshed.

Jeff Freeman (15:18)
Wow, that’s beautiful. Yeah, I didn’t have that memorized, but that is a beautiful verse. That’s 100 % what we align with.

Quentin (15:23)
But here’s the thing, it’s in your heart. I mean, yeah, I quoted the words, but you’re living the action. And I think that’s the part that’s more important, right? Is that you know at the foundation of any sustainable business, the servitude. If I refresh you, I know in return I’m gonna be refreshed. If I take care of you, I plant the seed, I know I’m gonna reap it in return. And so, yeah, I’m saying the verse, but it’s about integrating and actually living it out. That’s what it’s about, you know? And that’s what I’m hearing from you.

Jeff Freeman (15:49)
Yes.

Quentin (15:51)
I love it, man. know, the synergy, bro, I knew I told I knew this would be a great part. So let me ask you this. What is the next real goal? What are you looking to solve or scale next with your business? I’m Jeff.

Jeff Freeman (15:52)
Absolutely, totally agree.

Awesome.

Yeah, so one of the things I like about Dan Martell talks about, and I have his book behind here, The Buy Back Your Time, is really to start deciding where you want to invest your time. So I have a family, know, wife and kids, and so does my brother. And that’s what we’re doing this for. We’re doing it for generational wealth changes. We want our kids to have a better starting point than we had. We want to be able to afford things that you could never dream about. I believe in goal setting. And when I say goals, I think one of the biggest pivots for me

was to set goals higher. And there’s that saying, like, you can achieve, people often underestimate what they can do in five years and overestimate what they can do in one year. And so really what they’re doing is they’re saying, I’m going to get all this stuff done in my first year and then it doesn’t happen. But what they’re underestimating is where they’ll be in five years. In five years, you can multiply yourself. And then people, I don’t think they really fully understand what it means to multiply your life. ⁓ And that is very achievable in five years. And so I would encourage people to set goals.

Quentin (17:38)
Yeah.

Jeff Freeman (17:41)
I do that religiously, obviously. It’s something that is my spiritual health, my physical health, as well as my financial health. And I think that all those things are like that symbiotic relationship. You can’t take one out and not have the other. So that’s how we plan to grow.

Quentin (17:56)
Yeah, man, you’re my type of person. mean, I’m with you. Everything I do is for my family. You know, I tell myself every day, for me, my number one goal is to love my wife. My number one job is to love my wife. I mean, I do this, I do everything else, but my number one job is to make sure I get that right. And if I get that right, everything else is going to be okay. If I can focus on that and make sure that’s right. But I love, obviously you’re book person. gave me two…

Jeff Freeman (18:16)
Yes.

Quentin (18:22)
Three Free From Gold, which I never heard of, so I thank you for that. Buy Back Your Time, I actually say that statement, did not know it was a book, so I appreciate that. One of the books I’m finishing up is called Gradually Then Suddenly by Mark Batterson. Mark Batterson is pastor here in DC, but he’s a best-selling author, and he talks about how success happens in two ways, gradually, then suddenly. There’s the seed that you put into the ground, and the seed just don’t spring up, but you had to put the seed in the ground.

Jeff Freeman (18:30)
Awesome.

Awesome.

Quentin (18:50)
But then all of a sudden, when it does spring, you start to get the fruit, you start to get the reward to put into the ground. So things gradually and steadily. And one of my favorite books, probably read it three times. Atomic Health, yeah, most people know that, know, and just being 1 % better every single day. And so I just love these grounding principles that you’re giving to people. Because I tell people, we love talking about real estate, absolutely. But it’s also bigger than real estate.

Jeff Freeman (18:54)
Mm-hmm. That’s right.

Yep. There we go.

Mm-hmm.

Quentin (19:17)
Because one of the key things that’s in real estate is you. Like no matter how she’s found, if you hold sales, single family, know, commercial syndicate, it still comes back to you. And so I’m always, I love talking to people like you who can identify, yes, I’m making success in real estate, but it’s also about me being grounded in that success and knowing why I’m doing what I do. And so, I absolutely love this. I think one of my last questions I got to get your perspective on is relationships.

Jeff Freeman (19:18)
Absolutely.

You good?

Exactly.

Quentin (19:45)
I, from, from, from you, I would love to know relationships, period, because there’s business relationships, there’s relationships with yourself. You didn’t talk about your family. So when I, when you hear that word relationship, I kind of just want to throw it out at you and get your perspective on relationships.

Jeff Freeman (20:00)
Sure, my first word that comes to mind is integrity, right? And so a person’s word and what they say, what they’re going to do, ⁓ are they who they say they are. And so I think especially in the professional side, you can say for both sides, family and professional. You know, that’s very, I feel like it’s getting to be a more rare characteristic, but you find someone with an integrity, it almost fills in the other gaps. So I also believe in loyalty. So, you know, in terms of like, you want to partner with somebody,

who’s not gonna take the money and run, right? I mean, cause like ultimately, like you wanna be part of that decision making process. You wanna be able to trust them that they’re gonna pull through on their end. You’re gonna perform on your end. So I think those are all things. And then I think another one would be respect. I think if you have a mutual respect for people, cause there’s different people at all different levels. I mean, we’ve had conversations literally with some billionaires and we’ve had conversations with people that maybe have a couple of thousand dollars in their account. And the respect should be equal.

And so I think we treat people with respect. I think we respect their time. I think we want to try to add value. We don’t try to sell them anything that’s like, you know, something that we wouldn’t put our own money into. And so I think when you treat people with those kind of those things that I think it plays out in the end in your favor.

Quentin (21:12)
Absolutely. Integrity, loyalty, respect. I mean, those are bedrocks. And I hear you. And I’m with you, you know, during this podcast. I have the privilege of talking to people on different parts of their journey, you know. And it’s very humbling that when I talk to them, once we dive in and get into the podcast, the same things kind of unfold.

You know, from the person that’s just starting off to the person that’s been 46 years in, once we start talking, the same things start to unfold. so it’s important to treat everyone with integrity, a certain level of loyalty and respect. Like I’m loyal to this craft. I think I told you before we came in, I want to create a space for a conversation. And so that’s what I’m loyal to. And so that tends my loyalty to Jeff to make sure I do for him what I’ve done for everybody else.

Jeff Freeman (21:42)
Yeah.

Quentin (22:06)
treat Jeff with respect and integrity, and then everything that’s supposed to come through is gonna come through. And so I think our viewers are getting the benefit of just treating this the way it’s supposed to be treated, right?

Jeff Freeman (22:12)
Exactly.

think in the golden rule, I think you were about to say this is treat others how you want to be treated. And so like we understand we’re still not operating at a level where we want to be, but we will get there. We firmly believe that, you know, in our actions and our faith and everything else. Also, we got to understand where we came from, our roots. And so we want to be able to help people along the way too. And so I already talked about bridging that gap, but I 100 % believe that you got to look up for mentorship and you got to help.

that people that are below you also to raise them up as well.

Quentin (22:44)
That’s what I call one of those mic drop moments, So listen, man, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,

Jeff Freeman (22:48)
Thanks.

Yeah, they can reach us at thefreemanbrothers.com. There we have some resources on there. We actually have been working on a fully customized underwriting AI agent. And so we actually use this in our own practice. What it really helped do is cut down the time from almost hours of underwriting to where we can simply drag and drop the documents. You have your T12, your OM sometimes, or rent rolls, and they will automatically spit out the underwriting for you.

We use it and it allows for variables, it allows for stress testing, and so we feel like that’s very important. So that’s available at thefreemanbrothers.com. We also have our eastcoastequitygroup.net, and that’s where we do our syndications and our portfolio for our multifamilies. So if they want to see what assets we’re invested in, we have eastcoastequitygroup.net, or thefreemanbrothers.com is where they can find our AI underwriting tool and any kind of other resources to connect with us.

Quentin (23:50)
Yeah. ⁓ man, Jeff, man. I mean, let me say three things to you sincerely. One, thank you for your time. Could have been anywhere in the world, but you chose to be here with us. So definitely thank you for your time.

Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for what I call the gift of your vulnerability, your gift of your transparency, the gift of your authenticity. I believe, like I talked about some, well, I didn’t say this, but I believe scripture says some plants, some water, God gives the increase. So I believe our story sometimes is the planting. It’s the planting of ideas. It’s the planting of course correction. It’s the planting of encouragement. It’s the planting of motivation. It’s the planting of day. I’m not the only one going through this, right?

So our stories land, somebody comes and water that we may never see the increase, but our stories have a way of planting. So thank you for coming through with your story and planting. Lastly, what I really appreciate about you is your mindset. Thank you for your perspective, the way you think and bringing that perspective to this platform. I truly appreciate you, Jeff. Thank you for coming, sir.

Jeff Freeman (24:31)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

Quentin (24:54)
Absolutely. Listen, y’all heard Mr. Jeff. can’t tell me to get the nuggets out of that, the value. Go look in the show notes, check him out, please. He got that under underwriting. I think it’s the underwriting tool, man, our tools for you. Go check with him. Check about in the show notes. Definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Jeff. So, sir, I say thank you again. And everyone else, listen, you have a fantastic day.

Jeff Freeman (25:05)
That’s right.