All Forum Posts by: Joseph Lacko

Brian said that the line in the sand was when Brent and Tonya, while still at Versity, wrested control from him.  Properties that those two had sponsored while under the Versity name will not come under Brian's control. 

 But that is only in regards to the properties that Crew has agreed to let him take back and does not include a fair amount of them, including Vintage.

I was on it until I realized that it was only for about 50% of the investors that 1031 had placed in the Versity investments.  They should have reviewed who would be benefitting from the new management and only invited them. 

Just a quick response to give information on Faye's post about the webinar tomorrow: that is a webinar arranged by 1031crowdfunding and is only available to anyone who was placed in any of the Versity/Crew investments through their brokerage. It is not just for the one that Faye mentioned as we are not in that DST, but have access to the webinar as we are invested in Vintage.

I know this is a Crew thread, but would like to ask if anyone there might also be in any of the 1031Crowdfunding DSTs created by Ed Fernandez and Capulent LLC. He is the broker that put Crew in front of me and while he has been outspoken about how poorly they have handled things, his structure is not too far off from theirs. The key difference being that he has third parties managing the assets in his DSTs. I'd be open to starting a new thread, if others would like to discuss it.

Investment Info:

Retail other investment.

Cal Oaks Plaza is a Albertsons/Target/Reading International anchored community center in Murrieta, CA. Our group bought the land and developed the center from the ground up with the final phase built in 2001.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

The land for this center was bought by our group in 1993 from a bank that had taken it back from a developer as a result of the market crash in 1991. We developed the center starting in 1995 and have held it ever since. The vision we had for the emerging market of south Riverside County in the early 90’s is what led to our desire to take this project on.

How did you finance this deal?

Current financing is a fully amortizing loan that will be paid off in approximately 12 years.

How did you add value to the deal?

The positioning of the center within the community is what has led to all of the value that has been added through the years. Our relationship with JLL as our leasing broker has provided us with some very strong new tenants in the past few a years including Baskin Robins.

Like I had said, my legal team is not responding to my push for putting our DST into receivership, so I am not sure how that would go down, but I know that it should be an option (via SEC or some other legal path). I guess going after them as a company instead of just individual investments might be another option that could be investigated, but may not have any legal path to accomplish. I will tell you this additional information though: I have been in touch with someone who has worked at all of their Florida operations in property management and they have told me that they witnessed first hand the Book & Ladder (Crook & Ladder as I like to call them) redirecting funds to Crew and allowing common area utilities to go unpaid. They said that the lights in the commons area would regularly be shut off by the utility for lack of payment. I am going to file a complaint at the SEC link above.

I am the director of a portfolio that has shares in Crew's Vintage Horizon West property in Winter Garden, Florida. They had suspended distributions in 2024, but just resumed them (at 25% of what they are supposed to be) in March. I have been told by few that they are looking to UpREIT the property but will allow investors to exit with a qualifying 1031 status instead of forcing everyone into the REIT. I am not sure I believe them, but we will see. What I believe is going on now, is that they are trying to repay all of their own "invested" capital so their books are clean for the UpREIT process, where they will be able to place money on the gathered assets and pay themselves a 6% fee for the transfer of the properties into the REIT. These guys (and a few others I am in bed with) never planned on operating off of the income they would generate from operating the assets. They just thought they could keep writing deals and living off of the fees they generate during the setup. I am not sure what other DST investors received in Q3, but my quarterly report literally said that the slowdown in their ability to create new DSTs had impacted their ability to continue to make payments on our investment. I told my lawyers that this sure sounded like a ponzu scheme, but he pointed out that the operating agreement allows them to use their own capital to pay shortfalls. Totally frustrated and am on board with anyone who wants to discuss chasing receivership. These crooks should not be in control of these assets.