Why Industrial Real Estate Is Booming for Passive Investors with Amanda Brown

Amanda Brown (00:00)
I think educating investors on the benefits of passive investing versus active investing, I think is one of the main conversations that we have on a daily basis. And like I said, I bring a lot of that education emphasis and focus on helping investors realize the benefits of passive investing. We have a lot of investors that are fix and flip, buy and hold. They’re really actively invested in real estate and then get to a point

eventually where they say I just I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to you know manage tenants and toilets as they always say right

Michelle Kesil (02:03)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil, and today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Amanda Brown, who is the vice president of capital markets at MAG Capital Partners. So excited to have you here today, Amanda.

Amanda Brown (02:21)
Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me to join.

Michelle Kesil (02:23)
Of course, let’s dive in. So first off, for those not familiar with you and your work, can you share what your main focus is?

Amanda Brown (02:30)
So we are MAG Capital Partners. We’re a commercial real estate investment group. focus specifically on industrial. We have industrial funds. We focus specifically on single tenant net lease industrial. So that is what we’re looking at. But it’s US manufacturing across the United States.

And it’s businesses that are established and have their emphasis based on US manufacturing here in the US.

Michelle Kesil (02:58)
awesome. And which markets do you operate in?

Amanda Brown (03:02)
All across the United States, so we’re acquiring real estate from companies that, know, cold storage, U.S. manufacturing, aerospace, you know, they have some sort of business, U.S. manufacturing business here in the United States. And so we’re really looking coast to coast. We’ve, you know, bought from all the way east to west. But really, when you look at industrial, what you’re going to see is kind of a line in between, you know, Texas up the Midwest over the Rust Belt.

where a lot of US manufacturing is going to be specifically for transportation corridors.

Michelle Kesil (03:36)
Awesome, and how did you get into this?

Amanda Brown (03:38)
Me specifically, I actually was, I’ve kind of had a little bit of a winding path to, to MAG Capital Partners. I started out in education. I was a college professor. So I focused on, you know, education and then it got into some different positions that allowed me to expand into different areas of education. I then focused on residential real estate in Southern California. I’ve known actually the principal

of MAG, one of them, Dax Mitchell. We’ve known each other for very long time and he asked me to come over and start working with MAG under the commercial real estate side. And so I work with investors and that’s majority of my focus. And so I bring that emphasis of education along with knowledge of the real estate industry and commercial real estate specifically and real estate investing. MAG themselves, the principals got together in 2015 and have grown their business

to about $1.6 billion in assets under management in that amount of time. And that’s mainly in industrial. So focus on educating people on passive investing. And that’s really what we talk about every day is the benefits of passive investing for wealth building, for tax strategies, and a lot of different benefits to investors.

Michelle Kesil (05:42)
And what do feel have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to grow and run successfully?

Amanda Brown (05:50)
in terms of MAG themselves.

Yeah, so, you know, I think the company itself, are growing exponentially, to be honest, both internally and in what we acquire. We have grown in the past couple of years, especially internally. We have a our principals, Dax Mitchell and Andrew G started the company, like I said, over 10 years ago. They brought in another partner, Neil Walgren, who grew the investing side of the business. We also have

have

a construction manager on staff. We have an acquisitions team. We have a credit team. We have a full in-house accounting team. So we’ve really built the business and grown our people side of the business well in order to then grow our acquisitions and grow the pipeline of investments that we have. all of that working together, everybody is really efficiently working, very knowledgeable in what they do.

We all work really well together. We always say that you have to trust your sponsor and trust the company you’re investing with. And I can honestly say that as a group, present to our investors as being trustworthy in every way possible. We’ve done everything we can to make sure that we are serving our investors and serving our partners in the best way possible.

Michelle Kesil (07:16)
some and what are some of the obstacles or challenges that you’ve experienced in your role that you’ve learned and overcome.

Amanda Brown (07:28)
I wouldn’t call it obstacles or challenges.

think educating investors on the benefits of passive investing versus active investing, I think is one of the main conversations that we have on a daily basis. And like I said, I bring a lot of that education emphasis and focus on helping investors realize the benefits of passive investing. We have a lot of investors that are fix and flip, buy and hold. They’re really actively invested in real estate and then get to a point

eventually where they say I just I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to you know manage tenants and toilets as they always say right

and I don’t want to manage the active investments and I want to you know more passively invest with my money but I still want to stay in commercial real estate and you know stay in real estate in general ⁓ and so you know I think that’s that’s a lot of the conversations we have a lot of education on industrial I think maybe some investors when they they look at industrial they think that they need to be more knowledgeable about you know that asset class it’s obviously you know

easy transition from active investing to multifamily investing because it’s just a larger house, more or less, right? But I think it’s helping investors understand that industrial is just another asset class and there’s so many tax benefits, there’s so many great benefits to investing in industrial. And really, to be honest, when you look at some of these companies that we are acquiring the real estate, they’re very impressive, interesting companies and they’re all doing a

really amazing things. You know, when you look inside the road and you see these, these buildings, these nondescript industrial buildings, you just kind of look and you don’t really pay much attention. But when you really, you know, pull off the roof and you dig down and you look and see what they’re doing, their businesses are, are, are thriving and you know, they’re doing maybe this like one little thing, you know, for a larger industry and, just, you know, their businesses is insanely successful. So I think that’s the most exciting part about the education that we get to.

to teach to our investors.

Michelle Kesil (09:59)
And what type of investors are you partnering with?

Amanda Brown (10:02)
Yeah, so we have grown from the retail.

know, investors where, you know, it’s friends and family is really where we grew and then, you know, grew through referrals. And so we have a lot of investors who, you know, just kind of wanted a diversification from their stock portfolio. So we have a lot of retail investors. We are growing ⁓ into having, you pretty strong relationships with some family offices. All the investors that we have are accredited investors. So that’s the major, you know, hurdle that needs to be.

⁓

to be jumped to be able to invest with MAG is to be accredited. And then otherwise from there then we grow and we have a lot of investors, a majority of investors who invest in multiple different projects that we have. we have very loyal investors, happy investors and we do everything we can to make sure that they maintain their happiness and success.

Michelle Kesil (10:52)
Yeah, absolutely. And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Amanda Brown (10:58)
In terms of the company, we are growing. We have an industrial fund. We are growing that fund and opening another fund. So I think that fund model is resonating with investors. And it’s all the Singleton, at least, industrial that we have.

We have some single asset deals we offer as well. So I think in terms of growth, our pipeline of properties that we’re acquiring is pretty strong. And so we will continue to maintain that strength in acquiring real estate across the United States. And that’s the emphasis of our acquisitions team. I give them full credit for the work that they do along with the credit team to be able to vet out this real estate and be able to acquire properties.

a really strong reputation on being able to close real estate. And that’s really what led to our, you know, increasing success over time.

Michelle Kesil (11:50)
And what advice would you give to an investor that’s looking to partner with you?

Amanda Brown (11:55)
I honestly, know, kind of going back to previous conversation, I think investors need to trust the sponsor that they partner with, you know, really due due due diligence on the sponsor as well as the deal itself. And so, you know, understanding the track record, understanding, you know, what the what the sponsor does and kind of what the reporting is and how they communicate.

We are very diligent about communication, about making sure that we are staying close to our investors.

Obviously due diligence with the deals. found more recently a lot of investors are running OMS through AI and Chat, GPT, and Claude and coming up with questions and just making sure that those questions are actually aligned with their own due diligence and really understanding what those questions mean and how that fits into their investing strategy. And I think that leads as well into what their emphasis is, why are they investing?

important aspect of their process and what are the benefits to them for investing, what do need for their tax portfolio, what do they need in terms of distributions, what do they need in terms of building their own wealth and how are they going to diversify their own portfolio, I think is some of the things that investors need to keep in mind.

Michelle Kesil (13:25)
Definitely. And what would you say differentiates your firm from other competitors or groups out there?

Amanda Brown (13:32)
In terms of the real estate itself, we have a strong reputation in the industry of being able to close business. And again, I give all credit to our acquisitions team, our credit team, being able to underwrite, being able to vet out deals and find deals and then partner in order to close deals and continue to have deals come our way. We buy properties off market. We also compete against other firms for these properties and being able to actually close

real estate in this market is admirable and recognizable. On the IR side, investor relations side, are relationship based. We really want to understand and get to know our investors. We have investor events so that we meet our investors in person and we make sure that we have opportunities to have calls with our investors so that they can give feedback as well.

pushing out information. really would like for our investors to give us feedback as well and to be partners with us. And I think that’s a majority of what we want is to be really good partners, both for our investors and for our tenants.

Michelle Kesil (15:23)
Yeah, absolutely. And are there any opportunities or goals that you are excited about within your career or the company?

Amanda Brown (15:34)
Yeah, I think right now it’s exciting. Industrial is a really great asset class. I love the growth. I love to see where we have grown. I’ve been with MAG for about four and a half years now. So I’ve seen the company grow internally, exponentially, and I’ve seen our growth in terms of the real estate that we own. And it’s incredibly exciting to be a part of a company that is growing and is thriving and is very

supportive of our careers and helping us to become not only more knowledgeable but more credible in the industry. We attend a lot of events as well and meet a lot of other sponsors and lot of other investors and just to be able to stand with the MAG name and have it be recognized in the industry is, it makes me proud to be a part of it.

Michelle Kesil (16:31)
Yeah, absolutely. And where do you want the business to head to? there any like goals that you have or vision for the direction?

Amanda Brown (16:43)
Yeah, no, we’re gonna continue to grow. have new investments that we haven’t announced yet, but that are upcoming that I’m very excited to start talking to investors about. So, I think the fact that we are continuing to look at ways to bring new.

products to market. We’re not only just looking at bringing new properties to market, but really looking to expand and kind of meet investors where they are and bring new investments to those investors to not only grow our business, but to grow their portfolios as well is very exciting. I look forward to what we have coming up. So I wish I could talk about it here, but I can’t yet. But we have some really exciting things coming and it’s going to be

a really exciting time of growth for MAG within the next year plus.

Michelle Kesil (17:37)
And as far as industrial being like the asset class, how does that differentiate for the investors and like the type of maybe knowledge or skills that they need?

Amanda Brown (17:51)
Yeah, so I said before, I feel like lot of investors feel that they need to be knowledgeable about industrial and the asset class itself in order to invest in it, right? It seems more difficult because it’s outside of multifamily or something that they’re maybe used to or…

knowledgeable about. be honest, you know, it’s it’s another asset class. It’s another real estate class that’s it’s thriving. Honestly, post covid companies realized that they needed to bring their goods closer home. So we had reshoring, onshoring. We have companies that are are building up their their U.S. base and their, you know, their manufacturing facilities here in the United States. Plus, vacancy rates are so low. you know, the companies that we’re acquiring, acquiring real estate, they want to stay in their locations where they’ve grown their

business. you know, we

look at that as a benefit and educate investors on this asset class and why it is thriving here in the United States. And along with the emphasis on US manufacturing by this current government is another reason why industrial has grown. there’s a lot of opportunities and benefits in industrial and that I think is what the conversations that we have

investors kind of where they start and in terms of education in addition to then the actual deal that we’re discussing. So it’s just understanding overall the industrial market and where it is and where it’s, you know, where it’s come from, how it’s grown, where it’s going is something that we always talk about with investors.

Michelle Kesil (19:31)
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing all of that.

Amanda Brown (19:33)
Of course.

Michelle Kesil (19:33)
So before we begin wrapping up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect or learn more, where can people find you and connect with you?

Amanda Brown (19:40)
Yeah, so my name is Amanda Brown. They can connect to me directly with my email address, [email protected] They can also go to our website, magcp.com, and they can see more information about us. They can connect with us directly there as well. So there’s a lot of opportunities. We’re also very active on LinkedIn. And we look forward to meeting investors and talking about Industrial.

Michelle Kesil (20:06)
Perfect, well appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Amanda Brown (20:10)
Thank you so much.

Michelle Kesil (20:11)
course and for the listeners tuning into the show if you got value make sure you’ve subscribed we have more conversations with operators like Amanda who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode