Hello,

This is my first post, but I've done a lot of looking around and haven't found this question asked so I thought I'd try.

I life in Sonoma County, California (US) where the average house price is $600,000 and the average rent (1bdr) is 1000+. It's very hard for young people (18-30) to move from the homes of their parents or legal guardians. This is where I came up with the idea of a community devoted entirely towards helping them find safe, high quality affordable rent in this area.

I would like nothing more than to build and manage a community like this, but have no idea how to get started or where to find investors.

This brings me to a few questions:

Is this possible?
Where do I start?
Are there any government loans/funds/price breaks that I can use?
Would banks even talk to someone my age (21) about something like this?
What else do I need to know?

If any of you could give me some information on this, I would be infinitely appreciative.

Thank you,

jsbarone

The first thing that comes to mind is what makes your idea {other than the way that you will market it} different than any other multi-family project?

The fact is that there is not much difference. As such, you would be looked at in no different manner than any other developer that is looking for financing.

Lenders will be looking for:

-Experience
-Loan-to-value
-Marketability of the end product
-Personal financial strength

In other words, lenders will talk to you but all of them will pass unless you can bring those 4 items to the table.

Regarding special programs, a lot of developments are done with tax credits. However, the largest factor for eligibility is the income of the end users. I am not familiar with the use in tax credits or municipal secondary financing for projects. For the few deals that I have done like with those components, I have enlisted the help of people more knowledgeable than me to write about them.

Good luck

Commercial Lenders like candy come in many flavors and most are specfic in what they do. Some lenders will only do Rehabs, others will only do refi, some will do it all whereas other will ignore FICO scores and focus on total project profit. The first question any lender will ask is "what is you blood, sweat and equity in this project" aka how do you add value? Do you have special skills/experience, are you putting money down, do you own or have rights to a specfic parcel of real estate etc. Address that question first and post back and we will take it from there. There are sources where you can get construction funding and then get a tak out (construction to perm) loan.