BUILDING THE RIGHT TEAM
multifamily, buying some fourplexes in addition to the single-family properties. Like many investors, Abreu didn’t love the day-to-day aspects of owning rentals. “It wasn’t enough units to hire a third-party property manager, and I wasn’t a big fan of hunting people down for their rent and dealing with that kind of stuff,” he said. As the market improved, he was able to transition back into his preferred deals, fix-and-flips and some whole - sale. But finding contractors was difficult, “and we got burned a couple of times,” Abreu said. To help solve those problems and scale his investing, he started JNT Con- struction in 2010. “My wife thought I was crazy,” he said, “but I felt I could handle it.” As the market continued to heat up, Abreu’s plan was working. He was able to scale the fix-and-flips. They even got more creative with the fixes, he said, adding square footage and sometimes second stories to homes. The con- struction company began working for other investors, too. As Abreu’s businesses grew, so did his family. He and Tasha had three children, now 5, 6 and 8 years old. Mean- while, Tasha was working in the construction business, running the back office and accounting, while also helping with design decisions on the properties. They were get- ting stretched thin. Abreu said he started focusing on how to work on his businesses rather than in them. He worked on build - ing his teams and growing the companies. Laying that groundwork paid off. In 2019, Abreu received an offer to merge JNT with another construction company. That allowed Tasha to leave her role, “so she’s been able to enjoy raising our children and spending more time with them,” he said. He, in turn, has been able to focus on growing Elevate. He sees lessons in what he’s accomplished so far. “I’ve had a lot of success in a little bit of time, and I think it’s because of focus. I decided that this is what I wanted to do and really focused on it,” he said. “I get a lot of different things thrown at me, even different sectors of real estate, and I try to stay focused and really build this out first.” For now, he said, Elevate will continue to specialize in multifamily deals, though he said that in the future he might be open to tackling projects in the commercial sector.
ties. The client opened his eyes to that aspect of multi- family syndications. “I thought the investors buying these hundred-plus multifamily properties were just loaded with money—you know, they had millions and there was no way I could do that,” he said. “But then I got introduced to how syndi- cation works and the fact that you can raise the money from others and have them partner with you. I was very intrigued and started getting educated on how that works and how multifamily in general works. “I was sold. I went all in on it.” Abreu quickly saw that he could scale his returns from one large multifamily property much more rapidly than he had done with his single-family properties over the past decade. When he started investing in multifamily, he initially kept his single-family business going. Again, he found himself being pulled in too many directions. He One of the key lessons Jorge Abreu has learned in his career is the importance of finding the right team members—having the right people in the right seats on the bus, as Jim Collins describes it in his book “Good to Great.” “That is one of the aspects that I highly underestimated, and I feel like it is not stressed enough to people thinking they want to build a company,” he said. “A lot of it comes down to your team and who you bring on.” First, he said, he learned it’s more important for a new hire to fit the company’s core values and morals than just the job description. Next, he said, it’s critical to understand a person’s personality and whether that fits with the type of role they would fill—some people will excel at a job that is highly defined but struggle in a position where they have to create the parameters. It’s all about giving people the right tools to succeed, Abreu said. “In the beginning I hired a lot thinking, you know, ‘I can train this individual,’” he said. “Yes, you can, but some positions require you to hire somebody with more skill sets and more experience. You need to do it, and you need to pay them well.”
SOLD ONMULTIFAMILY Through his construction company, Abreu met a client who was a multifamily syndicator, buying large proper-
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