New member - looking to scale my real estate development business
Hi- I'm a real estate developer in the Boston area and I have my GC license and I'm also a realtor. I find my deals to either tear down and build new or gut renovate in the luxury market with ARV's being in the $2 and $3 million. I recently tired to scale my business and bought 3 projects within a year of each other and I managed the work quite nicely, but cash flow issues slowed me down tremendously. I've been thinking a lot about scaling the business and the one solution I'm leaning towards is to find a JV investor, but haven't had any luck finding the right person(s). I'm excited to see what I can learn here to scale my builds from 1-2 per year to 5-6 per year, which would require quite a bit of capital. The work load I have figured out, but the money part I haven't yet. Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.
Most Popular Reply
#1 Rehabbing & House Flipping Contributor
- NY
Hossein, based on what you described, it sounds like the bigger bottleneck isn’t your ability to find or manage projects — it’s having enough working capital available while multiple builds are moving at the same time.
Before giving up equity to a JV partner, I’d look at building a layered funding strategy around the business. That could include business lines of credit for recurring project expenses, 0% APR business credit cards for 9–12 months for eligible short-term expenses, equipment financing where applicable, and other business funding options based on the company’s revenue and overall profile.
The key is matching the funding to the use of funds. I wouldn’t use short-term capital to carry a long development cycle without a clear exit, but having revolving capital available for deposits, materials, subcontractors, permits, and unexpected overruns can keep one project from draining the cash needed to move the next one forward.
With the project volume and ARVs you’re already working with, I’d focus on creating a capital stack that lets you preserve liquidity and scale from 1–2 projects to 5–6 without automatically giving away ownership on every deal.
- Nicholas Floyd