BUILDcast: Tom Staub

Starting In 2010, Tom saw an opportunity to take advantage of distressed assets in the single-family space. Over 48 months, Tom built a team and acquired properties in the states of Indiana, Alabama, and Ohio. In these years, Tom could be found at events speaking on the topic of real estate investing. In doing so he formed a network of 45+ investors who were intrigued by his vision and began investing their own capital and took this as an opportunity to build an asset management company focused on private money loans, real estate flipping, and the multi family syndication space.

In 2016, as the market shifted towards the single family rental space resulting in compressed profit margins, Tom took this an opportunity to pivot and focus on larger projects which offered larger margins. In Tom’s words, “bigger margins equals lower risk.” Starting in Ohio, specifically Cleveland, Tom alongside his father completed their first syndication project with a successful exit and a 3X multiple on equity. They went on to do it again in Huntsville, Alabama exiting a project within 15 months. Once again, as the market shifted towards the syndication model and margins began to compress in 2017, Tom pivoted towards land development.

In 2017, Tom and the team moved to Flagstaff, Arizona where they acquired their first 80 acres of land. This was a critical point in the real estate journey as the team knew they had a lot to learn given the complexities of land development. The team invested their own capital to limit the exposure of investors given the risk and their lack of knowledge in the land development space. In other words, this was a learning project and the intention was to fail and learn as much as they could via the mistakes.

While many mistakes were made and lessons learned, the team exited the project in 18 months once again nearly 3X’ing equity invested. They went on to acquire machinery, established teams on ground, build partnerships locally for all materials and supplies, and acquired an additional 80 acres to repeat the process. Upon exit of a second project they expanded operations in Austin, Texas while also expanding in Arizona.

Fast forward to the year 2022, and the Red Oak team now has operations in both Arizona and Texas, has more than 2000+ single-family lots under development, a target of 2000 ground up townhome and multi-family units, and are targeting 8,000 single-family lots by the year 2024. Additionally, under the Red Oak umbrella, have built an engineering firm under ViewPoint engineering focused in Arizona and Texas.

Subscribe to BUILDCast on your favorite podcasting platform or visit us at https://buildcast.buzzsprout.com. For questions or to suggest other topics you'd like to hear more about or to learn more about Thrive Mortgage, please contact us at BUILD@ThriveMortgage.com. You can also see the video of all BUILDCast episodes on our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/ThriveMortgage. Thanks for tuning in!

Thrive Mortgage is an Equal Opportunity Lender, NMLS ID #268552.