Reimagining Real Estate Wealth with Dave Levenson

The first big one I did was a fun story. I was living in Hawaii at the time. I got a $500 lease option on a half-acre of commercial property near the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel. I had a one-year option and took that option. I went out, got some renderings and sketches for what I could build there. I went around the state two times trying to get people to sign agreements to lease if I were to build it, they would come. I got enough of those compiled to be arranged for financing. I built the building and filled it up over time and after fourteen years, I sold it.

What island was that? I know our readers who may have gone to Hawaii and maybe they’ve driven past the building before. I’m curious, where is it located at?

It’s north of the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel called the Kawaihae Center in Kawaihae Harbor. It’s down the hill from Kamuela where I lived with my four kids before I moved back here to California.

What brought you to Hawaii? When you did move there? What was that like? I imagine your kids are forever grateful growing up maybe on the island.

It was typical like a lot of people. I went there for three months and stayed for twenty years.

There you go and you kept doing real estate building, buying, developing and owning. Was that your focus?

Yeah, I built on four or five different towns in a state. I did a historic preservation project in Downtown Hilo. I have a property still in South Kona and Kona Coffee Country. I have a restaurant there, Annie’s Island Fresh Burgers, which my children started and won several awards and with the virus, we are shutting it down. Nothing lasts forever. We had a ten-year run there, but there are no tourists in Hawaii and they’re not even allowed to come to Hawaii.

It’s a wild time and I’m sure readers are curious. For someone who has so much experience in real estate with the bull markets and the now bear markets and what’s happening, I’m curious what’s your overall take on this crisis?

The value of a DST is for times like this. You don’t want to buy it right now. If you’re selling, you have a choice of taxes or a DST. A DST provides you with the opportunity to wait and you don’t buy at the top of the market and you don’t buy at the bottom of the market. One of my rules is I let the sharks feed. The bottom happens, foreclosures happen and the sharks come out and start picking up the foreclosure. You have lift offs and stability that is 10% or 15% off the bottom and you know the market is finally going up. You jump in and make your buy. The reason for that is you don’t want to be trudging along on the bottom for 3 or 4 years holding your property. The DST is a great vehicle for right now.

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