Private Lending Secrets for Investors | Co-Living & Shared Housing Cashflow

Nick Price (00:00)
I had seen like one common thread that was the bank always won.

And then I had a call from a friend who was acquiring a four million dollar portfolio

he got to the closing table, the seller asked him for more money. They asked for like another $500,000 on

And that turned into a three year litigation battle, where then he finally got a judgment from the court to purchase the portfolio. And he had run out of money litigating against the seller. And so he called me and said, Hey, Nick, I need to find $4 million to close his portfolio and I need to do it fast.

24 hours I had a lender lined up for him

and we were able to close that deal for

Erika (02:11)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pro Show. I’m your host, Erika, and today I’m thrilled to be joined by Nick Price. He’s been making waves in the lending and investment space. Nick, it’s awesome to have you here today.

Nick Price (02:25)
Thanks Erika, I’m happy to be here.

Erika (02:27)
Yeah, yeah. So let’s jump on in, Nick, for those who don’t know you yet. Give us the rundown. How did you get started in real estate?

Nick Price (02:38)
Yeah, so I got started in real estate in kind of like a, it was a unique way for me. I was a entrepreneurship major in college.

⁓ And I got I started building businesses while I was in college and while I building businesses I was always working in hospitality and I worked at a country club and there was a lot of high net worth and ⁓ Kind of like affluent people that were there and so I kept asking them like hey, how do I you know make wealth over time? How do how do I how do I do this? How do I you know be here at 2 p.m. On a Tuesday talking to a young kid and explaining what I do and they all kind of had the same

the same like guidelines. It was like, hey, I either started a business or I got into real estate. And so I already had the like entrepreneurship background from being in the program. But then I started really doing a deep dive into real estate. And then that turned into me taking a job to work with a real estate team, where I started as a listing coordinator, then I became a transaction coordinator, and then I became the director of tech and marketing for the real estate team. And I started helping the real estate agents.

basically do their online marketing, building up their social presences and working on their online systems and CRMs and everything like that. And then that turned into, wow.

everybody else is making a lot more money than me because I’m just operating as like an employee and not as a sales agent. So then I went and studied and I got my real estate license in 2019. And then I eventually got my broker’s license in 2023. But in the beginning of 2020, I got the opportunity to go start working on shared housing projects with a guy who was in private equity. And I wanted to learn that side of the business because I knew about like the

transactional sales side but I didn’t really know about the investment and assets under management side so I started working in shared housing and we basically went from three houses to 11 million dollars in assets under management with 115 units in that business and and then I got my broker’s license to start doing additional property management ⁓ and then I got into the lending business after I saw an opportunity there as well.

Erika (04:55)
Yeah, let’s talk a bit more about the lending. What was that moment that sparked your interest in lending?

Nick Price (05:49)
So I had always had an interest in lending and I had always seen like watching real estate transactions ⁓ pretty much like doing all the acquisitions and build outs and then the refinances on the shared housing products.

I had seen like one common thread that was the bank always won. And so that really interests me about the lending side of the business. And then I had a call from a friend who was acquiring a four million dollar portfolio and he basically went to go

close on it in 2021. ⁓ when he got to the closing table, the seller asked him for more money. They asked for like another $500,000 on top of what his purchase price already was. And that turned into a three year litigation battle, where then he finally got a judgment from the court to purchase the portfolio. And he had run out of money litigating against the seller. And so he called me and said, Hey, Nick, I need to find $4 million to close his portfolio and I need to do it fast.

And so I basically got on the phone and within 24 hours I had a lender lined up for him that I knew, a private lender, and we were able to close that deal for

And now he’s working on the refinance of that portfolio. And so that’s what got me into building the First Lending Network.

Erika (07:06)
That’s really exciting. then going forward, what was that journey like building First Lending Network?

Nick Price (07:13)
So it’s been really fun because it’s kind of like… ⁓

It’s two parts like there’s the educational side where ⁓ I’m I know a bunch of lenders locally that are either private money lenders or ⁓ debt and property debt and property capital allocators. So they do large developments over five million dollars. And so I started just building this network of all these lenders that know locally, which then turned into a list of

lenders. And it’s been really fun. Like ⁓ this past week, I’ve gotten some really great leads that have come in to First Line

network for people looking for financing anywhere from a guy that runs a GC firm that’s now looking to do flips on his own and he wants to use ⁓ private money to kind of scale out his business to some guys in Texas that are looking to do a cash out refinance on these properties that they flipped and they’re looking at potentially turning them into shared housing and then refinancing with a DSCR loan and then I got a 33 million dollar ⁓ ALF development.

just north of here. ⁓ So it’s really fun because it’s like I get to see all these awesome deals and then help people turn their deals into reality by pairing them with the right lender.

Erika (08:28)
Yeah, yeah, that’s exciting and I’m sure it’s rewarding to see too.

Nick Price (08:33)
yeah, yeah, it’s definitely rewarding. ⁓ I think when you can help empower people to make their dreams come true, that’s the best thing that you can do.

Erika (08:43)
Yeah, absolutely. on the one hand, it’s very rewarding. You’re really satisfied with it. I have to ask, what would you say is the biggest challenge ⁓ with running a first lending network? What challenges do you see?

Nick Price (08:56)
⁓ The biggest challenge is probably ⁓ competing directly against lenders ⁓ because you know people can always go directly to lenders but what I like the best about what we do is since we have such a huge network of lenders we’re able to kind of shop out private money whereas if you were to go direct to a hard money lender or a private lender that’s your only option unless you do the shopping on your own.

But I’ve noticed that a lot of people don’t do that. They just go with the first person they find. They find a really ⁓ good hard money lender and then they stay with them for a long time. ⁓ But what we do is we provide the knowledge base and the access to the lenders to help them have more than one option. So whether it’s hard money, it’s DSCR, commercial refinance, land acquisitions, whatever the case may be, ⁓ or even these larger developments, ⁓ that’s where we provide the value.

Erika (09:49)
Yeah, that’s really exciting. And it sets you guys apart. For someone who’s new in investing and they’re not really familiar with how lending goes, what kind of advice would you give them?

Nick Price (10:36)
I would say vet your lenders. ⁓ There’s a lot of people that say that they can fund deals and then you get to like the end of the deal and they can’t fund it. finding out like if you’re new to investing and you’re gonna use private money and you’re gonna put an earnest money deposit down on a property to buy, like you need to make sure that that lender’s ironclad because you don’t wanna lose your earnest money deposit because the lender falls out.

So that’d be my biggest. That’s why I like what we do because we vetted everybody. So all the guys that we know that are in our network, we know that they’re lenders that can actually lend and they’re not just like talking.

Erika (11:17)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Nick, I want to talk a bit about some of the projects that you’re involved in with the co-living spaces. Can you share more about that, how you got interested in that with investing?

Nick Price (11:28)
Yeah, ⁓ so co-living was really interesting to me because ⁓ from my entrepreneurial background, a lot of things that I’ve done, like there’s a little bus up here. I was part of a hackathon called Startup Bus where people get on a bus and they build businesses in 72 hours and you basically just have your backpack in your duffel bag. So I’ve always just kind of had that’s kind of been me, you know, like I don’t have a ton of things. I have things here in my office, but I don’t have like a ton of like worldly possessions. ⁓

So I always loved the idea of being able to be like, ⁓ it’s easy to move when you have less things. And what I really fell in love with shared housing and co-living was basically you’re living in a community with other people that are kind of like you, that are in similar stages in life and everything’s provided. So in co-living and shared housing, get furnished, most of the time it’s a furnished bedroom, it’s all utilities included. ⁓

There’s cleaning services. Some brands have events, some brands don’t. So everything is kind of included in that amount that you pay for rent. And it’s half the market rent because you’re sharing, right? It’s part of the sharing economy. So ⁓ that really sparked my interest from like an end user role. And then when I started seeing how much more ⁓

gross cash flow you could get from co-living versus a traditional rental, that really sparked my interest because, you know, some of these houses are, you know, let’s say you have a six-bedroom house and that six-bedroom house may have been a four-bedroom house before and a four-bedroom in that zip code rents out for $2,500, $2,800, but with the shared housing, you could get $6,000 in gross rental income. And so it becomes kind of a cashflow machine for the investor.

And so that’s really what piqued my interest about it. It was like twofold. It was like the end user side where I see the benefit and the social impact and how it’s helping people. ⁓ And then from the investment standpoint, I saw, wow, this is a great opportunity to make cash flowing assets.

Erika (13:33)
Yeah, that’s really exciting. Where are your co-living projects?

Nick Price (13:37)
So all the co-living that I’ve been involved in is in the Tampa Bay area. ⁓ I’m now working with another group that does co-living and they work with investors and we’re doing more in the Tampa St. Petersburg area and then looking to scale out into the ⁓ Orlando, Jacksonville areas.

Erika (13:57)
That’s really exciting, Nick. For anyone who’s interested in getting into this themselves, what would be like your number one tip with doing a co-living space?

Nick Price (14:07)
⁓ Learn everything you can about co-living before you do it. ⁓ There’s some great operators now that are marketplaces ⁓ that help people kind of do all the interpersonal issues. ⁓

I had to learn the hard way of dealing with multiple personalities in a house and not having kind of like a much larger marketplace that could find people and do that. We had to build all our own systems and pair people together and learn about interests and things like that. But like right now there’s PadSplit, which I’m sure some of the viewers probably have heard of PadSplit. They have 22,000 units nationwide and they’ve really built a great system for co-living. ⁓ So that would be like check out everything on PadSplit.

⁓ The group I’m working with is called Scale Your Real Estate and they teach people how to do co-living. That’s another great group.

There’s tons of documentation online. There’s CoLiv, which is ⁓ kind of like an online community for co-living operators all over the world. Co-living is not like a new thing. It exists in Asia and Europe pretty like commonplace. It’s just newer to the United States.

Erika (16:01)
Yeah, yeah, that’s really interesting. Nick, when it comes to investing or with building your lending business, have there been any networking or real estate groups that have been very valuable to you with your growth?

Nick Price (16:16)
yeah, definitely. There’s a ton of online communities that I think have been really great for me. A lot of stuff on Facebook. There’s a lot of hyper local Facebook investor groups, especially in the Tampa St. Pete market and then in the Florida market. Those have been really great. I’ve made a lot of connections through that. ⁓ I’ve gone to a lot of meetups that are… I just went to a really great meetup last night that is called the Elite Investor Mindset Group. ⁓

And that was 300 plus ⁓ investors from the Tampa Bay area. And just, you know, you’re just networking and meeting people. And that was a really great event. That’s probably the biggest one that I’ve been to ever. Usually they’re like 10, 15, 30 people, 40 people. And that was 300 plus people. So that was a really cool one with a lot of value, especially for new investors that haven’t done a lot of investments. They provided a lot of really great value. ⁓

And then just, ⁓ I go to a lot of networking events that aren’t real estate specific because I find that a lot of times where I find investors is not necessarily at a real estate group because at the real estate group, everyone is an investor, but they’re investing for themselves and they might not be the type of investor that I’m looking for. was more like, ⁓ you know, the high W2 earner that doesn’t know to invest in real estate. So that’s been, those, those groups have been really good for me. Like, I’ve gone to MPI.

I’ve gone to B &Is, I’ve gone to chamber events, ⁓ I’ve done a bunch of networking and really usually the ones that I find that have been the best for me to like work with as an investor I found like through doing deals actually so that’s probably you know one of my biggest pieces of advice is once you start doing deals you start meeting the right people.

Erika (18:07)
Yeah, that’s a really cool. Nick, I want to shift and talk about the market a little, which, you know, I’m sure you have an interesting perspective with working on your own properties and then also being a part of lending. How do you assess risk and how does that influence what kind of properties you go after?

Nick Price (18:27)
Yeah, so ⁓ I always look at risk from for like my personal investing is is this going to cause a headache more than it’s going to be good for me? It’s one of the main things I look at and then particularly and

we’re at right now, we’re having a lot of issues with insurance and ⁓

Taxes just because the taxes are going up and insurance is going up. So that’s kind of shifted my acquisition model a lot It’s lowered a lot of the prices that we’re sending out for things that we want to buy and invest in But yeah, that’s I mean looking at it from a standpoint of like hey if this is gonna become a long-term rental What what’s my actual holding costs gonna be am I gonna you know if my property insurance goes up by 25 % if my utilities goes up by 25 % if my

homeowners insurance goes up by 25 percent like are my numbers still going to work and so ⁓ when I’m doing my underwriting I’m trying to be as conservative as possible because I want to make sure that anything that we put money into it’s going to be a good investment for us in the long term.

Erika (19:30)
Yeah, absolutely. And with all the work that you’ve done, I’m sure you got a few stories there. Was there a moment with your career where a deal went sideways or maybe you had to pivot fast with what you were doing with lending? Do you have a story like that?

Nick Price (19:46)
I bought a house that I thought was a house that was a mobile home.

Erika (19:51)
Okay.

Nick Price (19:51)
Yeah,

that was pretty crazy. That was like when I first got started in real estate. ⁓ It was a cash deal and we paid all cash for it. ⁓ And it looked like a house, like it looked like a ⁓ single family home. They had kind of built a makeshift foundation around it and put it on pilings. And so that was kind of a big uh-oh for me. That was like really early on in my…

Erika (19:55)
You

Mm-hmm.

Nick Price (20:20)
I was working with a partner and we bought this house that ended up being like we’re starting to do demo and you’re pulling out the walls and you’re literally seeing the metal from the mobile home. ⁓ And so that was terrifying ⁓ because the whole point was to buy it, flip it, and then sell it or refinance it. So we ended up refinancing it and putting a renter in it, but we had to go through a long process ⁓ on that property. So.

since it had already had a foundation kind of built around it, we worked with the city in that jurisdiction to work with a structural engineer and put in ⁓ like get struck like structural engineer drawings, put in the permanent foundation and get it reclassified as a single family home so that we could put a rent or any refinance it. ⁓ And so like, it was one of the scariest moments of my life. But then it was also like one of the biggest learning experiences of my

life in terms of due diligence and knowing what you’re buying. So that was a pretty scary moment for me, but it all ended up good.

Erika (21:26)
Yeah, yeah, wow. What did you take from that experience? Did you change something about your process going forward?

Nick Price (21:33)
Yeah, I don’t

zero day inspection periods anymore. I’ll never do that again. And we do a much, much deeper dive on due diligence. So every property we’re buying, I’m walking, I’m looking under the foundation, I’m doing everything that I can, even if I bring an inspector out to do the home inspection.

I’m still, I’m there every time, walking it, making sure everything’s good, making sure everything lines up with what they said, making sure I have enough timeline in the inspection period to make sure the deal is good. ⁓ But really it’s been like a ⁓ heavier due diligence, like double, triple, quadruple checking everything and going above and beyond on due diligence.

Erika (22:18)
Yeah, absolutely. Nick, for our listeners who are interested in getting into the lending space, what’s one piece of advice that you give?

Nick Price (22:28)
for they want to be lending as like a lender. So ⁓ there’s a really good book that I read called Lend to Live. ⁓ That would be a great book for anyone that’s looking to get into lending ⁓ because it kind of gives you some skills on how to like lend out your own money. ⁓

Erika (22:32)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Price (22:49)
And then my other piece of advice would be due diligence again, because if you’re going to lend your money on a deal, like these deals need like the last thing you want to do as a and I know like there’s some people have an argument here on like, well, if they don’t pay, then I can just take the property. But like you’re not in the business of lending to take properties back. Right. And

taking properties back can be a lot more work than it’s really worth. So I would say if you’re gonna lend your money to someone who’s gonna do a deal, make sure you know all the intricate details of that deal because you don’t wanna take that property back and have to finish construction or finish the flip and resell it or whatever the case may be. Unless that’s what you wanna do is acquire real estate in that way. the…

reason you’re a lender is to make money off your money not to take properties back.

Erika (23:41)
Yeah, absolutely. That was so interesting how that tied ⁓ into earlier, Nick. What would you say is on the horizon for you? You got a game plan with First Lending Network or different projects that you want to take on with investing.

Nick Price (23:57)
Yeah, so ⁓ in the horizon for me is just to continue building First Lending Network and be able to provide investors with knowledge in regards to ⁓ all the different types of private money that’s available for them. ⁓ And we want to do that on a national scale. And then for my own personal investing, ⁓ right now I’m working on a 24 unit development with some investors and then ⁓

working on acquiring some pieces of land and doing new construction. ⁓ And that’s pretty much it. It’s build the first lending network, continue to help investors utilize private capital to buy more deals and do more. ⁓ Or if they want to build larger developments, we have partners that can help with that as well.

Erika (24:41)
That’s exciting, Nick. Hey, before we let you go, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about your lending business, or maybe they want to explore a deal with you, what’s the best way for them to reach out?

Nick Price (24:54)
Yeah, so I’m posting on ⁓ all the different social media pages all the time through First Lending Network. So if they wanted to reach out via, you know, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, ⁓ I’m posting everywhere there. We just started our YouTube page and we’re posting stuff there as well. And then they can find me on social. ⁓ I have a couple of different social media pages, but the easiest one to do is to just reach out to firstlendingnetwork.com. My email is nick @ firstlendingnetwork.com.

or you know find me on social. I’m really active on LinkedIn so if you just look up Nicholas Price First Lending Network on on LinkedIn that’s a really easy way to get in touch with me.

Erika (25:36)
Awesome, Nick, this has been fantastic. Thanks for sharing your insights and doing things the right way in this space.

Nick Price (25:43)
Awesome. Thank you, Erika.

Erika (25:45)
And for everyone listening, if you got value from this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pro Show. We’ve got more episodes lined up with operators like Nick who are building incredible real estate businesses. We’ll see you on the next episode. Bye.