What does it take to have long-lasting success?
Today, we welcome Dave Van Horn to share important lessons he learned during the course of his 30+ year career. He started out as an agent and has been involved in residential and commercial real estate as a licensed Pennsylvania realtor, investor, title company partner, and commercial fundraiser. Networking is key for those looking to start or scale a commercial real estate business as well as being comfortable in going after bigger deals. He also gives emphasis on being trustworthy and authentic in building meaningful relationships with colleagues and clients. Serving as the President and CEO of PPR Note Co., Dave talks about what we need to know about non-performing loans and offers his perspective on the constantly changing market.
[00:01 - 04:25] 30+ Years of Expertise
- Dave discusses his vast experience in real estate
- Creating a real estate networking event helped him raise capital for CRE and notes
- Starting PPR Note Co. and focusing on commercial real estate and non-performing loans
[04:26 - 09:21] What We Need to Know about Non-Performing Loans
- What strategies they’re using in dealing with NPLs
- Dave sees risks in the nonperforming loan space and is always looking for ways to mitigate them
- Downturns are usually beneficial
- They consider unemployment as the biggest economic indicator
- We can make money in any market; what matters are our exit strategies
- Dave talks about his team and having almost $600 million AUM
[09:22 - 20:58] Lessons Throughout His Career
- Using leverage sooner to accelerate the business
- Focus on one goal and avoid shiny object syndrome
- The ultimate end goal is generating passive cash flow to reach financial freedom
- Be trustworthy and kind in order to build credibility
- Learn from the experiences of others through shadowing or mentorship
- Real estate is a team sport
- Capitalize on other people’s strengths
[20:59 - 21:58] Closing Segment
- Dave’s final advice: Don’t be afraid to go big and invest in commercial real estate.
- Reach out to Dave!
- Links Below
- Final Words
Tweetable Quotes
“There's one goal in life and that is to get as much passive income as quickly as possible.” - Dave Van Horn
“It's about being authentic and being yourself and being real, being kind, and being human.” - Dave Van Horn
“Success leaves clues. You can learn a lot from people that are really successful at doing it.” - Dave Van Horn
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Connect with Dave through the PPR Note Co. website, and find him on BiggerPockets and LinkedIn.
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:00] Dave Van Horn: And I just think it's being authentic and being yourself and being real and, and being kind and being human and all these things that people talk about today. But it's, it's quite simple, really, it's are you a trustworthy person? Do you go above and beyond even when the chips are down? I mean, I've had deals that went south, but I did every, you know, I did everything under the sun to try to save those deals or hire attorneys at my own expense and try to, you know, do everything I can. And I think people know that.
[00:00:41] Sam Wilson: Since 2007, Dave Vanhorn has served as president and CEO of PPR Note Co. It's a holding company that manages several real estate and mortgage investment funds. Dave, welcome to the show.
[00:00:52] Dave Van Horn: Hey, how you doing Sam?
[00:00:53] Sam Wilson: I'm great, sir. And yourself?
[00:00:55] Dave Van Horn: I never had a bad day.
[00:00:57] Sam Wilson: Wow. That's awesome. I love the positivity there, man. I don't hear that very often. I need, I need more of you in my life. I've never had a bad day. Tell me this, Dave, there are three questions. I ask every guest who comes to the show: in 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?
[00:01:13] Dave Van Horn: Where did I start? Well, I'm in Philadelphia. I've been here my whole life. So I guess I started and ended here. I started as an agent back in '86, '87 was I first, licensed. And then I bought my first rental property, which was a duplex that I built some commercial garages on. And I bought that in 1989. So that's where I started. And then I had gotten up to about 40, I had about 40 rentals. I was also, years ago, I've been investing like 35 years. So a lot of things happened in 35 years, but I was I had been a contractor, so I was a contractor for 22 years. So I was a realtor, a property manager. I owned a title company, you know, a lot of different things I did over the years, but I had accumulated quite a few properties. And then I managed a lot of properties for other investors as well. And that's pretty much it, but, you know, I just kept scaling that and then eventually got into raising capital and was started out raising capital for commercial real estate, and then started raising capital for notes. That's how I met my partner. I used to run a real estate event, pre-meet up, pre-all the technology you see today. It was really simple. We sat down, had a meal, got to know each other. That was, and you could bring your deals. That was how simple the meeting was. But the meeting actually grew from 12 people out of lunch. Over a six-year period, ended up being in five states, six cities from Baltimore to New York. And we had 8,000 people in our database. So it grew quite rapidly, this little, have a meal and talk about real estate thing. So that's kind of how that network actually became in a way my bank, you know, how I raised capital for other folks' deals, how I raised capital for myself and even PPR today, if you think about it, we're the, you know, we're kind of our own bank, so to speak with our private equity, right?
[00:03:00] Sam Wilson: Tell me about what does PPR do today for the listeners that may not already be familiar with you?
[00:03:07] Dave Van Horn: Well, we started out doing, believe it or not, we started out doing delinquent second mortgages, and we started as investors. So it was somewhat of an accidental business. In fact, we used to have a short sale company and that was the main business and that went out of business and the note company took off. So who knows, right? And then we went from junior liens, as we kept raising more and more capital and growing, we went into first mortgages and then, you know, have morphed into commercial notes as well. And now back into commercial real estate again, so the company's grown and diversified quite a bit, although we're relatively new to commercial real estate recently, I guess the last year and a half, two years, you know, we first started getting into short term business loans, commercial loans, construction loans, bridge loans. We actually aggregate those up. We buy them. We have an affiliate that does hard money lending and has an REO platform online that sells REO properties. And then we, you know, we also finance that stuff as well. So that's just some of the things we do. And a lot of that we do to regulate capital, but still, the majority of our business is in the non-performing loans space. We do like the commercial real estate though, because it gives us tax advantages, depreciation, things to offset the carried interest from our bulk of the business, in the loan side of the, of our company, you know.
[00:04:26] Sam Wilson: You said the bulk of your business is nonperforming loans?
[00:04:30] Dave Van Horn: Yes. I think last year we did about 325 million nonperforming loans.
[00:04:34] Sam Wilson: And what's your strategy there? Get them to be reperforming loans and then sell those off or just reperforming and then hold them?
[00:04:41] Dave Van Horn: Well there’s a couple of strategies, but no, you know, we have a JV partner, we acquire a lot of assets. They have a trade desk in New York, so we can access their desk and acquire assets. It's kind of like dollar cost averaging as you purchase. So it's kind of like this, we hurry up and purchase assets and aggregate them over time and get them, you know, reperforming in a lot of cases, and then we do go to securitization. So it's a kind of a race to securitization, so to speak. And that usually takes like 15 to 18 months. And then once we securitize, which is another way of saying refinancing a pool of mortgages down to a lower rate, we kind of derisk our portfolio by doing that. Then we're often running to, you know, wind down that fund. It takes about, I guess 33 to 36 months is the typical timeframe there. And then you can turn around and you do it again. You know, you go out and you aggregate more assets. And we use a combination of our private equity with some institutional capital. That lowers our cost of capital by, you know, marrying the two together.
[00:05:40] Sam Wilson: Right. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Do you see any risks or, I guess, any stormy weather on the horizon in the non-performing loan space?
[00:05:49] Dave Van Horn: Oh, absolutely. So I'll give you an example. In the first quarter of this year, we didn't purchase any NPLs, but although last week we just purchased 73 million. So but that was intentional because of the market fluctuations and waiting for some things to settle down. But what we're seeing now is some things are loosening out right now. And you got to realize the last, gosh, 5 or 10 years almost, it's been an upmarket, so right. No prices are in direct correlation to real estate values. So the margins were actually thin. And then we tend to take off the most when it's a down market. So it's funny, some people are like, well, what happens if there's a recession? Normally that's beneficial for us because that increases, you know, the foreclosures, things like that. But usually the biggest economic indicator for us is unemployment. The thing that's strange right now where, you know, we may see what we call a technical review session, where you have two-quarters of negative GDP. Meanwhile, unemployment's still low, you know, so it's, never happened before. So that's what's different. Now if unemployment was high, yeah, we would probably be high five in a little bit and go in this, you know, not that we wish bad luck on anybody, but it's just the nature of that business. What'll happen in a down market is assets, just get, you know, cheaper pricing, wider margins. That's really what it means. We can make money in any market. What happens is your exits shift. You know, the way you exit your deals, the way you work your deals. Perfect example of that is deed in lieu. Usually, these are one to four family residential properties nationwide, right? So a deed in lieu is a good technique for an exit in an up market. It's not a good technique in a down market, right, does that make sense? Yeah. Cause you wouldn't have enough equity to, take the deed in lieu, right? So you could see how exits shift. That's just an easy example of that. And then when pricing shifts or the loan of value and, and the equity that's back in these assets shift the way you do your workout agreements, or, you know, what do you call it, loan modifications. They could vary, you know, so you just make adjustments, just like anything else in real estate, right? And, you know, you can make money in all markets. It's just you have to shift your strategy, right?
[00:07:59] Sam Wilson: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I would imagine a lot of people, processes, procedures, you know, building the team around handling nonperforming loans has, has probably been a work of art. Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:08:13] Dave Van Horn: Yeah, it's funny you say that 'cause for many years we were asset managers. We used to do a lot of that in-house and there is a lot of compliance, but today we outsource a lot of that. So we're primarily capital allocators, more so than asset managers. And our JV partners on the West Coast actually have, you know, they have under a hundred people, but you're right. If we did all that in-house, at some point we would be a large firm like that. Whereas today, we're at like 27 people and we have considerable AUM, where like, we're just under hair, under 600 million under management. Now we recycle a lot of our money though. So it's a little different than if I said I was in multifamily and I had, you know, a billion dollars worth of property, usually that's with leverage or, but in our case, a lot of that private equity keeps moving and keeps turning. So it's a, it's a little bit different than that, where it's, you know, I bought an asset and parked the money, you know?
[00:09:05] Sam Wilson: Right, right. Completely understand. As you rewind your 30, what'd you say? 35-year real estate...
[00:09:12] Dave Van Horn: And growing, yeah.
[00:09:13] Sam Wilson: 35?
[00:09:14] Dave Van Horn: 30 something. I can't count that far back.
[00:09:18] Sam Wilson: Says the numbers guy in real estate. I can't count that far back. Tell me this, Dave, what's one mistake that you can look back on that you said, man, I wish I hadn't done that, that you could help our listeners avoid?
[00:09:30] Dave Van Horn: Wish I hadn't done that. Well, a lot of it is knowing who you're doing business with is definitely one 'cause we've had all had scenarios that didn't work out or lost money or whatever, bad partner. But I think really, I think the opportunity thing would be about leverage, about utilizing leverage sooner. And you know, even in, you know, I have a lot of coaches and mentors and, and that's one of the things that's a common theme with some of the coaches and mentors I've had where they'll ask the same question, which is what's the one thing that you could leverage that'll catapult you or your business in the next six to 12 months, you know, and that's an interesting question that I paid a lot of money to have asked of me. But it was good money, but the question sometimes would stay the same, and you go back with my coach six months later and he is asking me the same question, but things change, right? I could leverage technology. I could leverage people. I could leverage a lot of things, a JV partner. I could leverage capital. And that number one thing will shift for people based on where they're at with their business or their personal life. Oh, your personal life could be something else. What's the one thing, it's almost like the book, The One Thing, what's the one thing that I can do such that you know, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary that, you know, who's it, Gary Keller, right? So, you know, it's a great point. Great book. The other thing is, what's the one thing, what's the one goal, and by that, I mean, you know, I was a very ADHD type guy where I had shiny object syndrome, like a lot of real estate investors and control freak, and you know, all those things. But a friend of mine used to say this, you know, there's one goal in life and that is to get as much passive income as quickly as possible, by retirement age at the latest, and to have much, as much tax-deferred or tax-free as you can. It's an interesting goal, right? it doesn't really reflect your passion or what you're good at, but it does kind of sum it all up in a way because that's where we're all trying to get to with, you know, financial freedom or whatever that is, to get freedom of time, to get freedom to be able to go where you want when you want with who you want 'cause ultimately that's probably the bigger success. Now that could be different things for different people, but you get the idea.
[00:11:50] Sam Wilson: Gotcha. So if I hear you correctly, are you saying that maybe earlier on you would've defined, I guess the one thing that you said, Hey, if I paid more attention earlier on to this, this is what will move my business forward. And then also the other thing I'm hearing is that, Hey, earlier on I would've said, look, I'm going to really hyper-focus on creating as much passive income as I can. Does that sound about right?
[00:12:09] Dave Van Horn: Yes. And not 21 things, right? That's why, and then the other thing is, like, being willing to have utilized more leverage sooner. Like, I'll give you an example of that was I used to sell 75, 80 homes a year when I was a RE/MAX agent to fellow real estate investors.
[00:12:26] Sam Wilson: Right.
[00:12:27] Dave Van Horn: And looking back, I go, well, that was dumb. I had the capital. I had the hard money lenders. I was like reluctant to use hard money ' cause I thought it was too expensive. In reality, what did it cost me to give away 75, 80 deals? I was focused on the wrong thing. I'm focused on commission. I'm not focused on increasing building wealth or cash flow. Like, I was focused on commission. Think about that. That's ridiculous almost. And most people can't find 75, 80 deals. I'm selling 'em to other people and I'm going, why? I'm not thinking about I could have bought all of 'em. I should have been buying 75, 80 houses a year myself. That's a perfect example of me, like, can't see the forest from the trees kind of thing. It was all right in front of me. I had all the resources 'cause we don't, what's that saying? What Tony Robbins used say, we don't lack resources, we lack, you know...
[00:13:20] Sam Wilson: Creativity.
[00:13:21] Dave Van Horn: Yeah, it was all right there in front of me. And, you know, sometimes we just don't see that, you know.
[00:13:28] Sam Wilson: It's funny you say that. I'm not quite to the same extent as painful of a lesson, but I go back to when I started in real estate in all the houses I flipped. I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens. It's like, why did I not just hold those again? Like, here I am 10 years later, I'm like, I'm an idiot. I should have just bought 'em and held 'em I was buying 'em right. Same idea. Same exact idea. Yeah, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. I certainly appreciate that. Tell me this. You know, what's one thing you feel like you've done really well? Something when you said, man, this has been a key to success that I feel like other people should be implementing.
[00:14:00] Dave Van Horn: For me, you know, I was always a sales guy, and it was, you know, my unique ability is the ability to raise a lot of capital, a lot of equity very quickly, you know. Like, I've had cases where I raised 30 million in a month, you know, which is significant, right? And a lot of people can't really do that. But a lot of that, where that comes from, I think is probably from trust over a long period of time. So you're able to, you know, be able to connect with people, you know, you're authentic. It's just like having a, a large network, but it's more than having a large network, right? 'Cause you could buy a network, but if you have an organic network. And the other thing is like, the more you give, the more you get, for sure. And I just think it's being authentic and being yourself and being real, and, and being kind and being human,and all these things that people talk about today. But it's, it's quite simple, really, it's, are you a trustworthy person? Do you go above and beyond even when the chips are down? I mean, I've had deals that went south. But I did every, you know, I did everything under the sun to try to save those deals or hire attorneys at my own expense and try to, you know, do everything I can. And I think people know that. They know that I'm going to treat their capital like it's my own, or I'm going to go above and beyond to make sure everything's above board and can have a favorable outcome. Now things can happen. But I think a lot of it's how you handle it and how you communicate and things like that.
[00:15:29] Sam Wilson: Excellent. Excellent. Appreciate that. Tell me this. When you look to the future and you say, Hey, in five years, this is where I want my companies to be, this is where I want to be. What does that look like?
[00:15:40] Dave Van Horn: Well, I, I might be retired in five years. Now, retirement's a funny word. I don't see me stopping like in the traditional sense, let's leave it that. But now, I think my company, well, we already know. We already have a 10-year vision and things like that. In five years, we'll be at about 3 billion under management. We'll probably be at around a billion in private equity. And then hopefully we can build a lot of good as well along the way. So, you know, we do a lot of things to try to impact the community, whether it's affordable housing type things and, other programs that we're working on. So, hopefully, we will be able to give back more and, take care of our, all the stakeholders, our staff, our investors, and help others build wealth, really. It's that whole share, build, and preserve wealth concept.
[00:16:26] Sam Wilson: Right. No, I like that. I like that. Dave, here's a question for you. When it comes to scaling or starting out or somebody that's saying, Hey, look, you know, in the name of the show is How to Scale Commercial Real Estate. So the idea, you know, is that somebody's going, I really want to grow into commercial assets. What's one piece of advice you would give to somebody if they said, Hey, I'm ready to go large. How do I do it? And they came to you. What would you say?
[00:16:48] Dave Van Horn: Well, for one is you got to learn what you're doing to a point. So one of the things I did was I shadowed other people doing it. So when I first started raising capital, I actually went to work for a company in New Jersey and they hired me to help raise capital. But I learned a lot from them about not only raising capital, but commercial real estate, 'cause that was what the money was being used for. So you don't necessarily have to do everything yourself. You can shadow or mentor with someone who's already doing it, which makes a lot more sense than trying to go out and be the trailblazer or the first person with arrows in your back, so to speak. Success leaves clues. You can learn a lot from people that are really successful at doing it. And if it's an area that you're not familiar with build a team that is. I know the one outfit that I worked for, they were doing mobile home parks and they had never done 'em before. And they were doing storage as well. But they brought a crackerjack team together. You know, they had people on their board. I mean, the one guy was a, a mobile home developer for the last 35 years, you know, that, kind of thing. Same way with their attorney and their accountant were well versed in these areas, right? So they brought in experts. They also had a management company that was, you know, around forever. They also had a commercial broker who just specialized in mobile home parks in the Midwest. You know, it was like, they didn't just go, oh, well, we don't know what we're doing and we're going to wing it, you know? It was, yeah, it was a lot more than that. They went out and built a team that did, even though they didn't necessarily have all the skills, but most of these are commercial real estate especially, it's a team sport. You're not going to be good at everything anyway. And if you think you are, that's another problem, I think. We all like to think we're great at everything, but I know I'm not, right? I know I'm not an excellent underwriter. Does that mean I don't know anything about commercial real estate? No, I absolutely do. But there's people that like to sit in Excel all day and play around. That's not me, right? But it, that guy that's playing with Excel probably can't raise the capital either. It's a team sport just like property management, that's its own thing, right? Just like construction management, that's its own thing. 'Cause, you know, I've built a lot of stuff. And when I was a contractor, a lot of our customers had four to 600 units and we used to do the monthly turnovers, right, so I do have a strong sense of what that takes to turn over X number of units each month and things like that. So they're all different skill sets. They're all different things. And it is a team sport. It's just figure out what you're good at and bringing the folks that are good at the other parts. You know, some people are great at operations, right? Some people are great at managing people. Just because, you know, not all leaders are managers, right?
[00:19:23] Sam Wilson: Yeah, like you said, you know, build the team around, you find the people that are really good at, you know, what it is that you're not, and build them around you. Yeah, that's critical. You mentioned a lot of things I'm not good at, underwriting, man. That's a tough one. I don't know, like, I'm just not great at it. So that's really, really cool. Dave, I thank you for coming on the show today. Is there any last piece of advice you'd like to share here with the listeners before we sign off?
[00:19:45] Dave Van Horn: Piece of advice? Don't be afraid to get started. But I think a lot of it has to do with your, you know, it's always the same things. It's the sources of deals. It's the capital. It's the people, right? So it's networking. I think all those things help put the elements together and don't be afraid to do it. I mean, commercial is just bigger numbers, right? You know, I'm very comfortable doing commercial deals. It doesn't even phase me. I know a lot of people get nervous at that, but I think there's actually some advantages to it. The larger the loans get. You know, I was telling some of the people on my team that were newer, they were a little rambunctious about, you know, Hey, we're getting into commercial, it's bigger deals. But I go, Hey, guys, there's a professional appraisal done. There's a bank that's doing a lot more due diligence than us on this asset 'cause they wouldn't want to do that loan otherwise, right? So there's, there's other parties that can help out in some of these areas that give you a better comfort level. So that, you know, we don't have to be, like you said, experts in everything. There's other people that are coming along for the ride with us, whether it's our real estate broker, our lender, our, you know, title company, all these different things. They're there. If it was that crazy, they wouldn't do the loan, right? To a point, right?
[00:20:59] Sam Wilson: That's awesome. Thank you, Dave, for sharing, certainly appreciate coming on the podcast today. It was an honor and privilege to have you on here. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or your PPR Note Co., what is the best way to do that?
[00:21:10] Dave Van Horn: Probably the best way is pprnoteco.com. You could definitely sign up. We have all kinds of resources on there and definitely reach out to me. I'm also on BiggerPockets and LinkedIn. I have a distressed mortgage group on LinkedIn. You can seek me out there. On BiggerPockets, we answer a lot of questions in the forum. So anytime somebody has something, we're glad to help out, you know?
[00:21:29] Sam Wilson: Awesome. Dave, thank you so much. Certainly appreciate it.
[00:21:32] Dave Van Horn: My pleasure.
