Jared Hutter
The Opportunity Zone Expo Podcast
Visionary Developer Transforms OZ Student Housing
Transcription
Jack Heald: Welcome back everybody to the OZExpo podcast. I'm your host, Jack Heald and I am here today with Jared Hutter, who is the founder and managing principal of Aptitude Development. Welcome to the OZExpo podcast, Jared.
Jared Hutter: Thank you Jack. Happy to be here.
Jack: So, Jared, tell us a little bit about Aptitude Development.
Jared: Sure. So, we are primarily a student housing development company. I started this company just over five years ago, with our intention being to build ground up student housing around the country. We at this point have now successfully completed two full developments. We still own one of them. We sold one, we sold one fairly quickly, early on in our process. And we currently have two developments under construction and we have six more developments that are in, you know, predevelopment phase that we're hoping to break ground on one board this year and break ground on probably three or four next year.
Our projects at this point have been, we have two developments that we completed in Syracuse. Ones in construction are in Louisville, Kentucky. The other one is in Conway, South Carolina at Coastal Carolina University. And we're working hard right now to really take our platform national and run across the country where we see a lot of good opportunities in the student housing space. So, you know, for us we're deal oriented, we're very focused on trying to get as many deals done as we possibly can.
They they all have to be good deals. We're not trying to overextend ourselves, but you know, we're a collection of young guys at our company and we all want to work hard and we think now is our time to really go out there and make a name for ourselves and find really good returns for our investors.
Jack: So, how did you end up here? How did you wake up one morning five years ago and suddenly decide student housing was the thing for you? Where'd you come from and how'd you get there?
Jared: Student housing. It's something I've always been interested in. I don't come from a real estate background or a real estate family, but I found real estate by accident when I was in college and got very interested in it when I was in college, I saw, you know, where other people were living at other universities. I went to Syracuse. At the time. There was no purpose-built student housing at Syracuse. The apartment I was living in was perfectly fine for our college student, no complaints about it.
But when I saw, you know, where some of my friends were living at other universities. It was known they had great amenities in the building between pools and gyms and you know, upgraded appliances and amenity rooms galore. I'm like, this is really interesting. The thing that actually interested me most about some of this purpose-built student housing that was, you know, really becoming a new thing was the idea of having a few hundred kids all in one building to me sounded fascinating. That sounded like a lot of fun. That sounds like a really interesting experience that at Syracuse we just did not have. So, it was something that really piqued my interest and having basically no real estate knowledge. But you know, being a business major, I saw supply and demand and I said, okay, well some of the schools that my friends are at that I'm seeing some of this stuff product pop up at, they're much larger schools. But I said to myself, you know, I thought it was a logical statement.
Well, demographics at the top are basically the same. So, if somebody built a 500-bed facility, it doesn't matter of surf. He says 20,000 kids, or you're talking about a school that has, 30-, 40-, 50,000 kids. The answer is no, because are there 500 kids at the top of the market who would always pay top dollar to live in the best location, To live in an unbelievable, brand new facility, well kept, well managed. And I said yes, absolutely. That there would be a demand for something like that.
So, the dream was really born for me back in 2004 in Syracuse. And it was student housing or something at that point that I started to really keep an eye on. After college, I worked in real estate development and I was doing some development throughout New Jersey. I went back to school, got a masters in real estate development from Columbia, came out of school in 2009 in the world was basically falling apart.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Jared: So, I ended up, not the ideal time to come out of graduate school, but I was fortunate to find a situation where I was able to work with another developer. We were wandering around New Jersey doing a whole bunch of deals. I got a great learning experience for a number of years across real estate, not doing student housing.
It was something that I always kept my eye on. And I said at some point, because I think everyone knows in real estate at some point you really have to either become a partner or break off and create your own company. So we always knew that or I always knew that we and a great collection of people will have to go out and create something.
So, working for somebody else was an interesting experience, got a lot of great knowledge, didn't really see my future doing over where I was and what I really wanted to do was ultimately jump into student housing. So, why student housing? Why, why did I think that I could actually get into it. I love the construction process.
Jack: Right?
Jared: I love the idea of taking something from nothing and putting everything into it.
I was never overly interested in the value-add space. I was always concerned, okay, you're going to buy a building, you really don't know what you're buying. You know, and there are people that are great at navigating those issues. It didn't really pique my interest. I didn't love the idea of you're going to rehab something, you never know what you're going to find behind those walls.
Jared: Whether environmental issues or structural issues. You know, there's a whole host of issues. Certainly in development, it's got its own set of problems. But I always liked the idea of, well, I'm creating, but those are my problems that I'm creating and I can really put my mark on something. I'm not taking something that somebody else did and making it better. Again, that's a good business for a lot of people. I'm not saying what I'm doing is better or worse, whatever it is.
But for me, I was always interested in and I was very passionate about being able to go from nothing to everything. Well, being based in New Jersey, you know, the approval process here is brutal. It's two years to get anything approved on a good day. Got a lot of large companies who have been here, you know, generational family companies that had been here for many years who have, their cost of capital is basically zero.
They're out there doing deals, they've got all the connections, they get all the deal leads and that's fine. But I saw it as, okay, how can I possibly break into that? It's not impossible, but I saw it as a huge uphill battle when I was talking. This is pre-student housing becoming the asset class than it is today. I would talk to a lot of multifamily developers and I said, “Hey, I'm interested in student housing.”
And the constant feedback that I was getting was "Oh, student housing, I would never touch that". And I would only hear from these guys who are big multifamily developers, all the problems that they saw with it, which was, you know, you're dealing with kids. So, that's a management issue with the fact that you lose, basically lose 100% of your tenants each year. Obviously, you have a renewal rate, but you lose a significant portion.
Jack: Sure.
Jared: And have a major turnover every single year. And from a repair and maintenance standpoint, it's going to be a huge headache. You have a quick turnaround. You had really a couple of weeks to turn the building back into shape. There's going to be huge damage and all this and most of these people didn't want to touch it. So, I looked at that and said, good. If these people that I know are going to stay away from this, they're going to stay away from student housing.
Maybe this is an area that I can go compete in because I don't want to compete with them on what they're doing. And all the challenges that these developers were telling me that they saw with student housing and none of them were in it. In my mind, I said, “Well, those aren't necessarily challenges. Those are just things that you have to underwrite to, be aware of up front.” And if you go in with your eyes open and our understanding of what the issues could potentially be, you should be able to navigate through them. So, I saw student housing as a fascinating place to go play and most importantly, it was a place that I felt through the sector that I felt I could actually break into and really go do deals.
Jack: So, what I hear is kind of the classic entrepreneur story. I had this need to myself, or at least a desire. I had this desire myself. I saw a way to solve a problem for myself, and then discover that everybody, you know, a lot of other people had the exact same problem. Voila. Business is born. I like it. That's a great story.
Jared: Absolutely. It's been a lot of fun. Really going, I mean, five years ago, this was nothing. I quit my job April 2, 2014. So, this is almost exactly five years ago that this whole thing was really born. The crazy part of the story is, okay, I found the property in February of 2014. I knew that I was going to go break off on my own, whether it was a month later, two months later, or a few months later, whatever it was, I really started to get that fire. And I always knew that I was going to break off on my own. The question is, when are you really ready? Yeah. I think the answer is probably never, right.
Jack: You never know, do ya?
Jared: When are you fully ready to jump? I found the property in February of 2014 I was looking for stuff up in Syracuse. I was looking at a couple of other colleges. I thought I knew the Syracuse market because I went to school there. So, I'm just looking for some stuff up there. At least I knew the landscape of, hey, if you tell me streets I could figure that out. So, I'm looking for some stuff up there.
Again, a broker who sends me a collection of a couple houses and I said, “Damn. This is just not what I'm looking for.” So, I really want to build something. Comes back to me about a day or two later and says, “Hey, here's what I got for you. This is interesting. I think I can get this.” It was a vacant medical office building had been vacant for about five years and he was like, “I think I could probably get this loose for you.” So, that's early February, 2014, I sent the first letter of intent on that property.
February 14, 2014: I didn't sleep for like three or four days. I was working during the day at my job. I was coming home at night. I was trying to run numbers, doing sketches of what I thought the building could potentially look like. I really didn't know what I was doing. I still have all the original sketches. I still have the original letter of intent, now it looks totally ridiculous compared to the professional stuff that we pump out.
I still have all of that. And the first letter of intent they get, they don't get back to me. You know, it's good and it's not good. I get very little feedback eventually, about six weeks after that, I got to the point where I had to, where I said: “It's time for me to go jump off on my own.” I did not have this property lined up.
I was desperate to go get it, but I didn't have the property lined up. My wife at the time was six months pregnant. So, I felt, failure at that point was no option. So, I put myself in what I felt was the most interesting of all positions because failure was not an option and there was no way we couldn't not succeed.
I said, “We have to do this right.” And I felt my window of opportunity for the immediate future starting to close. So, I leave my job, and I continued to pursue this property. It wasn't until October 2nd.
Jack: Wow.
Jared: That I finally got the property under contract 54. I paid 50% more than what my first letter of intent was. Truth be told, it was still a steal of a deal, which I knew. But from there, it took a long time. I was living in New York City, the property was up in Syracuse. And the interesting part was the seller, actually, his office was around the corner from my apartment in New York City. I found out that he lived about eight blocks away. There were times, and the guy was very strange that you would think somebody who's got a vacant office building with no debt on it, you know, a couple hours away, they're not making any money on it.
I don't remember what he bought it for, but it was much less than even my first offer. So, I knew he was making good money. You would think that somebody like that should be interested in at least negotiating and having a sale. Well, turns out the seller, you know, one of the stranger people I've encountered, there was times where he wouldn't get back to me.
The broker in the middle wasn't helpful. There was times where I was stalking the guy to try and get out there. I would park my car on his street. I found out where he lived, and you would track his pattern when he had to get to work and I parked my car there sometimes in the morning hoping to see him. I would jump out of the car. I probably did this about 10 or 15 times.
I would jump out of the car and pretend like I bumped into him on the street. “Gary, what's up? What's up?”
Jack: Oh, my.
Jared: Let's get this deal done. I did everything I had to do to, to get the guy to sell me the property. We had a deal; we cancel it and you go back and forth. But eventually, you know, like almost eight months later, finally got the guy under contract. And so, that was October of 2014. We broke ground on the project. And by the way, I had no money. So, that was even more interesting.
Jack: Minor detail there.
Jared: But we've talked, we broke ground, minor detail, but I always figured if it's a good deal, I may not be able to make the best economic deal for myself. But you had to start somewhere, and we had to go build a project, right? So, finally we broke ground May of 2015. Building was complete and you know, about a year later. And ultimately it was a project that we wanted to keep for a very long time. But what ended up happening is by October of 2016 we ultimately sold it to ACC who was about a $6.5 billion REIT, the largest player in student housing. So, we sold it to a publicly traded company at a 3.2 cap on the in-place income and the building was fully stabilized.
So, our investors made a really good return in about an 18 months period. Phenomenal experience all around. We made some great investor relationships. We made some great relationships throughout the industry. I think most importantly for our group, we put ourselves on the map because by selling to the largest players in the space who are definitely very picky in what they purchase, we were able to really say, “Hey, we sold the ACC.” You know, and that has helped us a lot for our trajectory moving forward.
Jack: Well that takes us pretty naturally into the Opportunity Zones. So, I've got a couple of questions in terms of your business and the Opportunity Zones. One is obviously, because of the 10-year holding period that puts some constraints on being able to do development Opportunity Zones deals that are that, that maximize the tax advantages, talk about how Aptitude Development and Jared Hutter are playing in that space.
Jared: So, I would say we have now found Opportunity Zones almost by accident. Certainly, we’re well aware, by staying abreast of everything going on in the real estate industry. And I would say just the economy in general. We're certainly well aware of Opportunity Zones as they were created and the potential benefits of them. We weren't overly focused on it, however, because we were already trudging along with our own business trying to do student housing.
We weren't really sure at the initially how in January, February, March of 2018 as this all started to form, you know, how it would necessarily intersect with our business.
Here's what happened. January of 2018, we signed a contract for a property in Louisville, Kentucky. It was very interesting. We really liked it. Great. You know, good market that we felt we could really make an impact on. For us were very focused on what the quality of the dirt is at. Um, you know, the location for under the building.
This checked a lot of the boxes for us. It was a place we wanted to go play. We're taking the project through the entitlement process and as we're getting through the entitlements, we have not closed on the land obviously, and the maps for Opportunity Zones don't start to come into play. Okay. So, now we're learning a little bit more. We're paying attention. We decided to check it out and we say. We're curious, you know, some of the sites we're looking at is anything in an Opportunity Zones is not an Opportunity Zones. Let's understand what these maps really look like. Well, it turns out that the Louisville project that we're taking through the entitlements, it sits in an Opportunity Zones. So, now we're like, well, we should probably learn more about this.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Jared: And see what the potential effects are on the project that we'd like. Anyway, we come to figure out, okay, well this is all very, very interesting. Obviously, I think you know, everyone listening to this knows probably even more about Opportunity Zones than we do at this point. Everyone is well aware of what all the benefits are. So, you know, we said this is really interesting. We, we go to our lawyers, we go to our accounts, we say, okay, “What do you, what do you guys know?”
We lucked out that both of those professions, both of the firms that we work with -- very large firms, some major clients – were well-aware of everything going on. We work with both of those firms to basically restructure our deal prior to closing and to figure out, okay, how do we take advantage of this, we're already starting to raise dollars for the project.
So, we go to some of our investors and we say, “Hey, is this going to interest here, does this, you know, how would you guys look at this?” Some people say, “We don't have games. It doesn't matter. We just want to invest in the deal. We like depreciation that's going to come off.” Other people come to us and say, "Hey, if this is real, I'll increase my allocations. I think we may be able to get some other people.”
So, we started to see that there's some traction. We restructure our structure for the deal, and we ended up creating Aptitude Qualified Opportunity Zones Fund one strictly to enter into this deal. We ended up raising, and I would say about 40% to 45% of our capitals that of our equity stack for the Louisville deal becomes an Opportunity Zone.
Now we went to all of our investors that, “Listen, we understand that you know all the benefits, the 10-year hold everything.” I told people, even on the Opportunity Zones side, I said, “Listen, I'm not going to sit here today and promise you that we're going to hold this thing for 10 years and you're going to get all the benefits.”
I said, “You have to trust us that we're going to make the right strategic decision along the way,” which is always what our pitch has been to all of our investors. We don't go into a deal and say we're going to, you know, merchant build it. We're going to hold it for five, seven, 10, certainly we have to make some projections out about what the deal is going to look like. But our pitch to everybody has always been give us on the GP side, the flexibility to be nimble and to make that smart strategic decision along the way because we always want to be opportunistic.
If somebody is going to come along, if I talk about a five-year hold and somebody comes along and gives me and gives us a crazy offer, which is sort of what happened on our first Syracuse project, I think I have a fiduciary responsibility to take it. If we talk about a five-year hold and the market's just doing great and we can keep refinancing and stay in, we're going to look at that and you know, we want to align ourselves.
We have a structure that really, we believe aligns ourselves with our investors to make that good decision, strategic decision along the way. So, we ended up raising about 40 to 45% of our capital of our equity in the deal is Opportunity Zones dollars. I believe that nobody has shown me a project yet. I actually believe we have the first Opportunity Zones development in the entire country.
We broke ground in October 18, 2018 we are fully structured as an Opportunity Fund. And to date, nobody has yet shown, I know where the first project in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I have learned over the last few months, I've spent a lot of time there that Kentucky is actually a commonwealth, not a state. I have yet to figure out what that exact means. Um, in the Commonwealth that gets out the, I know we are the first Opportunity Zone project.
And like I said, I haven't seen one yet that is that broke ground before us. So I think we were definitely in the first handful and we very well might be the first one. Now, to really answer your question, how do I see Opportunity Zones intersecting with our business. It's a fascinating place and now we're jumping into it. I've got six good deals or so that are in the pipeline. They're all Opportunity Zone deals.
Jack: Oh, that was going to be where I was going. Has this caused...
Jared: Were seeing a lot of it. And I would say for us, we don't believe that the benefits, at least for the capital that we're aligning ourselves with, will take a deal from a no to a yes just because it's Opportunity Zones.
Jack: Right.
Jared: It's still trying to do the same deals that we've been doing. It just so happens that there's a lot of universities that happened to students census tracts that have been designated as Opportunity Zones for one reason or another. You know, whether it's transient income numbers, whether a lot of universities happened to sit next to areas that just aren't so, great and they end up getting designated, okay, well whatever it is, there's a lot of universities that are in or adjacent to Opportunity Zones.
We're seeing deals that we would be very interested in anyway and they happen to be Opportunity Zones. So, we're working hard to become, as you know, as experts, as much experts as anyone can possibly be in this space. We are working right now to maybe align ourselves with some of the funds that are coming out there. We're not necessarily for us, we're not looking to have a blind fund to go after this. It's just not the way we want to structure ourselves.
We still liked doing things on a deal-by-deal basis, but for us, you know, we're seeing a tremendous amount of deal flow come our way and the best part is it just a lot of it just happens to be Opportunity Zones. So, I think that just circle back and when you talk about the 10-year hold, I like the 10-year hold, actually.
I don't love the idea of being even labeled as a merchant builder. I think when you take a long-term outlook, there's a couple of things that happened. First you build, you build a higher-quality product.
Jack: Right.
Jared: You know that you're going to be with this product for many years. I think you're going to make better decisions along the way, which I would say, we try to do anyway, even if it wasn't Opportunity Zones where we think it's a shorter hold because our hope is that a potential buyer, what ultimately you give us value for that. So, we liked the idea of being in it long-term because he builds a better product.
We loved the idea of that effectively you're betting on the appreciation of the asset and you have a long term bet on the school. And the way we focus ourselves, trying to really get those best-in-class locations. We don't have a cooki?e cutter box or a product that we drop in any university. We have our brand, Marshall that, you know, we take with us that, you know, has certainly has a lot of similarities between products, but we always, our focus has been on let's find the best location we get our hands on and design a project that fits the market and the area very well.
So, because of that and where we think it stands the test of time, one of the best amongst the best locations in the area, making a long-term bet on the university to us a is a really good way to get very strong risk-adjusted returns for ourselves and our investment group. So, we liked the idea of 10-plus year holds. Okay. For us it's good and we're working to align ourselves with capital partners right now that will take that ride with us.
Jack: So, what I'm hearing, if I was going to title this, and I might end up doing it this way, is where other people are seeing reasons not to get into a project, you see that, you see those as the specific advantages to get into the project.
Jared: I do. And here's the biggest one, the biggest hurdle there. So, you have a lot of people raising opportunity cottons , you have a lot of people trying to do Opportunity Zones deals. And I know that my comment here is going to be jaded by the fact that I'm in New Jersey. I'm a New York City adjacent. A lot of the people we know deal with are New York City. What'd you have a lot of people chasing deals in New York City. Yeah. And you have a lot of these funds that are popping up that aren't developed and they're going to need development partners around the country.
Jack: Yep.
Jared: I think for us, Aptitude Development isn't as good a position as anybody and the entire country to go deploy Opportunity Zones, own dollars because, they're certainly going to be deals in the major in- and-around major cities on the coast.
I believe a bulk of the best deals out there are going to be, you know in secondary places. Rural areas, Midwest great places. So, you know, don't take my secondary lists as they're not great, but you know, other places outside the five or six major cities and we're in a position to really go out and deploy those dollars in a very good way because we're already used to going to new cities on a regular basis. Before a year-and-a-half ago, I had never been to the state of Kentucky. I now have been there 20 plus times.
Well, we've made some great inroads there and are really putting ourselves in a position to do a number of great projects in that place were, we're going to break ground later this year on a project in, , Fayetteville, Arkansas. We've never been, we had never been to Arkansas before a few months ago. We made some great inroads. So, we're in a great position because we're already used to going to new places, creating a local connections, hiring local construction teams, local professionals, and doing projects across the country, which I don't believe a lot of people who are trying to do Opportunity Zones deals have to have the experience in doing it.
Jack: This is just an area that I am going to demonstrate my ignorance, but I'm, I'm curious about it. So, when you're putting together a deal, when you're actually building, you know, starting from, from raw dirt and going to put up a building, do you have a metric in terms of jobs generated per square foot or per room. How do you calculate that and if so, do you know what the impact is? I'm thinking specifically of the fact that Opportunity Zones program is designed to generate jobs. Well, it's specifically hoping to generate jobs. Is there a metric that you use?
Jared: I would tell you that I don't have a specific metric that we look at. When you go to the site, you look at what's going on, you know, the bulk of the jobs that we ultimately will create our construction jobs. And then there's other, not permanent, but they're good paying, good quality jobs. I was on our site in Louisville the other day, So, today is what, today is Friday. I was on the site there on Wednesday, there had to be 75 plus people working on that site right now.
Jack: Right.
Jared: So, and that's on a regular, that's just early on in the face. You know, I would say throughout a development process, we probably will typically create 300 plus jobs, you know, throughout the construction cycle.
Jack: Right. Yeah. I was just wondering if when you're building multifamily like that, if there's some way to actually say for every X number of rooms or X number of square feet, we can generate Y number of jobs that will last for the life of the project. I just don't know that. I've never heard that number. I've never stumbled up stumbled across that. I don't know if it's a thing that's worth measuring kind of like a bill of materials only for, for labor.
Jared: Yeah. And I'm not sure if there's a great way to necessarily measure that. But you know, certainly I can tell you on any construction job we do, whether it's the second job that we did in Syracuse where that was about 180,000 square feet. You know, I know for a fact there was 200-plus jobs created on that project to Louisville where the project is the size of that project. We're building a 360,000-square-foot facility. There'll probably be through the course of this easily 300-plus jobs created throughout the, throughout this construction cycle. And that's almost a two-year cycle. So, that's…
Jack: Yeah.
Jared: It's a pretty good, pretty good number of jobs.
Jack: Absolutely. As I was reading a little bit about your company, I think it was your second project that I was reading about with high-end retail as well. Is that part of the standard model that you guys are building?
Jared: So, you know, it goes back to the comment I made earlier where we try and get those best-in-class locations and design a project that fits accordingly. So, in Syracuse for the second project that we were doing, it really was a great retail spot. We took out some retail when we went to go develop the project. So, and it really made sense to put it retail there. Moving forward, we're going to make that smart decision along the way, whether it makes sense, because we know it's not good for anybody to have vacant retail.
Jack: Right.
Jared: If it fits the area, certainly, it's something that we'll look into doing. I can tell you in Louisville, we have, that's, that's not a project that really, fits a retail landscape. So, we have no retail on that one.
Jack: Okay.
Jared: Arkansas, we'll probably have no retail as well, but you know, they're all out. Some other locations that we're looking at right now that will probably warrant retail in them.
Jack: Let's talk about Jared Hutter, not just the developer, but Jared Hutter, the man. Um, and I like to find out what people love outside of their work. And I will say your love for your work is just shining through. It's quite obvious. Um, so, are, are there…
Jared: I don't feel like I work. I feel like I have fun everyday.
Jack: And it's very obvious. So, when you're not having fun doing your work thing, what kinds of things do you love?
Jared: You know, our business has really taken us a lot of travel. So, I become very used to traveling. I would say it's one of a couple of things. When I have some downtime, I try and stay home, hang out with my kids. I have two sons, they're four and two. So, I've been very involved with them as much as I possibly can when I'm around on the weekends. And typically, I'm always around for them. Yeah. I like to take them out. I've been taking them to baseball games and football games. I really enjoy going to a lot of sporting events and now that my kids are also, getting a little bit older, my wife and I are trying to travel with them more because we both really like travel.
Jared: So, it's certainly a little difficult when they're so little.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Jared: We're trying to get them do our best job now to get them used to it. So, you know, they become very comfortable with it. I was fortunate that my parents did that for me, So, I would like to get them comfortable with it So, we can, you know, really travel with them and take them all over the place. You know, it goes back to work because that's where a lot of my head is at. I can tell you one of the most fun things I've ever done, it was traveling with my son, my older son taking him up to Syracuse to take him on the construction site. You know, while we were in the early phases there. So, that was just a blast taking him around. But also, you know, certainly showing him some of the work that we get to do.
Jack: Well then of course you get to infect him early with the building bugs. So, turn this thing into a generational thing.
Jared: Yeah, absolutely. That's a, that that is definitely the goal here. You know, love to be able to work with my kids one day if it's something that they're interested in, but I'm going to push them in that way. Sure.
Jack: Well, you know, lead them. That's the best way to do it. Hey. So, I love to ask my, I love to ask my guests this question. What drives you crazy? If you were king of the world for just one day and you could, you could fix one problem, what would you, what would you do? What's that problem that drives you out of your mind that you could fix?
Jared: I would say it's the lack of attention to detail that a lot of people pay. You know, I get very frustrated when people, whether it's working directly for us, whether it's working subcontractors, people you interact with, because you know, everyone comes in contact with a lot of people each and every day. I just don't care. It really irks me when you see people coasting through the world, not caring, not trying, you know, not giving it their best because it's almost like it’s constant wasted opportunities. So, that’s number one. I would take the other one that bothers me, that gets me every single time is -- and some people may not like this -- but you know, I think it should be illegal for parents to smoke cigarettes when they're pushing, when they're hanging out with their kids. You know, that one really gets me.
Jack: There you go.
Jared: I've just been spending a lot of time in other parts of the country where people have different values and I keep seeing this more often than not. And I think that should just be illegal. I mean that just bothers me and I see it probably, once a trip when I go somewhere else, you see a parent pushing a baby carriage or holding the kid’s hand, you know, smoking cigarettes. Like really that's what you're, that's what happened. You know the impression you want to give your kids.
Jack: All right. So, that's a good problem. As king of the world for a day. I think you can probably fix that one. The attention to detail, I'm afraid that may be more wired into the genes. I dunno if that one’s fixable. Well Jared, this has been a fascinating conversation. I love your story. I think you've got a very compelling story. If folks want to get ahold of you to talk about deals or talk about Aptitude Development, what's the best way to do that?
Jared: Sure. So, you know, our website is aptitudere.com and my, my direct email, jh@aptitudeaptitudere.com.
Jack: And I will remind our listeners that information, it will be available on the website as well. Well Jared, it has been great talking to you. Do you have any last words for us before we sign off for the day?
Jared: Yeah, I would say my hope for everybody is that they can keep going out there, find something they're passionate about the way I think I've been very lucky to do and ultimately find, you know, a great partner who allows you to go do that. You know, my wife has been phenomenal to allow me to travel and continue to pursue the business that we are in and, I'm very lucky to have that.
Jack: I agree. I think you're a very blessed man, but you obviously bring a lot of skill and passion to the work as well. Well, it's been a good conversation with Jared Hutter of Aptitude Development. I am Jack Heald for the OZExpo podcast. Thanks for joining us and we will talk to you next time.
Announcer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal tax or investment advice. For specific recommendations, please consult with your financial, legal, or tax professional.
Jared Hutter: Thank you Jack. Happy to be here.
Jack: So, Jared, tell us a little bit about Aptitude Development.
Jared: Sure. So, we are primarily a student housing development company. I started this company just over five years ago, with our intention being to build ground up student housing around the country. We at this point have now successfully completed two full developments. We still own one of them. We sold one, we sold one fairly quickly, early on in our process. And we currently have two developments under construction and we have six more developments that are in, you know, predevelopment phase that we're hoping to break ground on one board this year and break ground on probably three or four next year.
Our projects at this point have been, we have two developments that we completed in Syracuse. Ones in construction are in Louisville, Kentucky. The other one is in Conway, South Carolina at Coastal Carolina University. And we're working hard right now to really take our platform national and run across the country where we see a lot of good opportunities in the student housing space. So, you know, for us we're deal oriented, we're very focused on trying to get as many deals done as we possibly can.
They they all have to be good deals. We're not trying to overextend ourselves, but you know, we're a collection of young guys at our company and we all want to work hard and we think now is our time to really go out there and make a name for ourselves and find really good returns for our investors.
Jack: So, how did you end up here? How did you wake up one morning five years ago and suddenly decide student housing was the thing for you? Where'd you come from and how'd you get there?
Jared: Student housing. It's something I've always been interested in. I don't come from a real estate background or a real estate family, but I found real estate by accident when I was in college and got very interested in it when I was in college, I saw, you know, where other people were living at other universities. I went to Syracuse. At the time. There was no purpose-built student housing at Syracuse. The apartment I was living in was perfectly fine for our college student, no complaints about it.
But when I saw, you know, where some of my friends were living at other universities. It was known they had great amenities in the building between pools and gyms and you know, upgraded appliances and amenity rooms galore. I'm like, this is really interesting. The thing that actually interested me most about some of this purpose-built student housing that was, you know, really becoming a new thing was the idea of having a few hundred kids all in one building to me sounded fascinating. That sounded like a lot of fun. That sounds like a really interesting experience that at Syracuse we just did not have. So, it was something that really piqued my interest and having basically no real estate knowledge. But you know, being a business major, I saw supply and demand and I said, okay, well some of the schools that my friends are at that I'm seeing some of this stuff product pop up at, they're much larger schools. But I said to myself, you know, I thought it was a logical statement.
Well, demographics at the top are basically the same. So, if somebody built a 500-bed facility, it doesn't matter of surf. He says 20,000 kids, or you're talking about a school that has, 30-, 40-, 50,000 kids. The answer is no, because are there 500 kids at the top of the market who would always pay top dollar to live in the best location, To live in an unbelievable, brand new facility, well kept, well managed. And I said yes, absolutely. That there would be a demand for something like that.
So, the dream was really born for me back in 2004 in Syracuse. And it was student housing or something at that point that I started to really keep an eye on. After college, I worked in real estate development and I was doing some development throughout New Jersey. I went back to school, got a masters in real estate development from Columbia, came out of school in 2009 in the world was basically falling apart.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Jared: So, I ended up, not the ideal time to come out of graduate school, but I was fortunate to find a situation where I was able to work with another developer. We were wandering around New Jersey doing a whole bunch of deals. I got a great learning experience for a number of years across real estate, not doing student housing.
It was something that I always kept my eye on. And I said at some point, because I think everyone knows in real estate at some point you really have to either become a partner or break off and create your own company. So we always knew that or I always knew that we and a great collection of people will have to go out and create something.
So, working for somebody else was an interesting experience, got a lot of great knowledge, didn't really see my future doing over where I was and what I really wanted to do was ultimately jump into student housing. So, why student housing? Why, why did I think that I could actually get into it. I love the construction process.
Jack: Right?
Jared: I love the idea of taking something from nothing and putting everything into it.
I was never overly interested in the value-add space. I was always concerned, okay, you're going to buy a building, you really don't know what you're buying. You know, and there are people that are great at navigating those issues. It didn't really pique my interest. I didn't love the idea of you're going to rehab something, you never know what you're going to find behind those walls.
Jared: Whether environmental issues or structural issues. You know, there's a whole host of issues. Certainly in development, it's got its own set of problems. But I always liked the idea of, well, I'm creating, but those are my problems that I'm creating and I can really put my mark on something. I'm not taking something that somebody else did and making it better. Again, that's a good business for a lot of people. I'm not saying what I'm doing is better or worse, whatever it is.
But for me, I was always interested in and I was very passionate about being able to go from nothing to everything. Well, being based in New Jersey, you know, the approval process here is brutal. It's two years to get anything approved on a good day. Got a lot of large companies who have been here, you know, generational family companies that had been here for many years who have, their cost of capital is basically zero.
They're out there doing deals, they've got all the connections, they get all the deal leads and that's fine. But I saw it as, okay, how can I possibly break into that? It's not impossible, but I saw it as a huge uphill battle when I was talking. This is pre-student housing becoming the asset class than it is today. I would talk to a lot of multifamily developers and I said, “Hey, I'm interested in student housing.”
And the constant feedback that I was getting was "Oh, student housing, I would never touch that". And I would only hear from these guys who are big multifamily developers, all the problems that they saw with it, which was, you know, you're dealing with kids. So, that's a management issue with the fact that you lose, basically lose 100% of your tenants each year. Obviously, you have a renewal rate, but you lose a significant portion.
Jack: Sure.
Jared: And have a major turnover every single year. And from a repair and maintenance standpoint, it's going to be a huge headache. You have a quick turnaround. You had really a couple of weeks to turn the building back into shape. There's going to be huge damage and all this and most of these people didn't want to touch it. So, I looked at that and said, good. If these people that I know are going to stay away from this, they're going to stay away from student housing.
Maybe this is an area that I can go compete in because I don't want to compete with them on what they're doing. And all the challenges that these developers were telling me that they saw with student housing and none of them were in it. In my mind, I said, “Well, those aren't necessarily challenges. Those are just things that you have to underwrite to, be aware of up front.” And if you go in with your eyes open and our understanding of what the issues could potentially be, you should be able to navigate through them. So, I saw student housing as a fascinating place to go play and most importantly, it was a place that I felt through the sector that I felt I could actually break into and really go do deals.
Jack: So, what I hear is kind of the classic entrepreneur story. I had this need to myself, or at least a desire. I had this desire myself. I saw a way to solve a problem for myself, and then discover that everybody, you know, a lot of other people had the exact same problem. Voila. Business is born. I like it. That's a great story.
Jared: Absolutely. It's been a lot of fun. Really going, I mean, five years ago, this was nothing. I quit my job April 2, 2014. So, this is almost exactly five years ago that this whole thing was really born. The crazy part of the story is, okay, I found the property in February of 2014. I knew that I was going to go break off on my own, whether it was a month later, two months later, or a few months later, whatever it was, I really started to get that fire. And I always knew that I was going to break off on my own. The question is, when are you really ready? Yeah. I think the answer is probably never, right.
Jack: You never know, do ya?
Jared: When are you fully ready to jump? I found the property in February of 2014 I was looking for stuff up in Syracuse. I was looking at a couple of other colleges. I thought I knew the Syracuse market because I went to school there. So, I'm just looking for some stuff up there. At least I knew the landscape of, hey, if you tell me streets I could figure that out. So, I'm looking for some stuff up there.
Again, a broker who sends me a collection of a couple houses and I said, “Damn. This is just not what I'm looking for.” So, I really want to build something. Comes back to me about a day or two later and says, “Hey, here's what I got for you. This is interesting. I think I can get this.” It was a vacant medical office building had been vacant for about five years and he was like, “I think I could probably get this loose for you.” So, that's early February, 2014, I sent the first letter of intent on that property.
February 14, 2014: I didn't sleep for like three or four days. I was working during the day at my job. I was coming home at night. I was trying to run numbers, doing sketches of what I thought the building could potentially look like. I really didn't know what I was doing. I still have all the original sketches. I still have the original letter of intent, now it looks totally ridiculous compared to the professional stuff that we pump out.
I still have all of that. And the first letter of intent they get, they don't get back to me. You know, it's good and it's not good. I get very little feedback eventually, about six weeks after that, I got to the point where I had to, where I said: “It's time for me to go jump off on my own.” I did not have this property lined up.
I was desperate to go get it, but I didn't have the property lined up. My wife at the time was six months pregnant. So, I felt, failure at that point was no option. So, I put myself in what I felt was the most interesting of all positions because failure was not an option and there was no way we couldn't not succeed.
I said, “We have to do this right.” And I felt my window of opportunity for the immediate future starting to close. So, I leave my job, and I continued to pursue this property. It wasn't until October 2nd.
Jack: Wow.
Jared: That I finally got the property under contract 54. I paid 50% more than what my first letter of intent was. Truth be told, it was still a steal of a deal, which I knew. But from there, it took a long time. I was living in New York City, the property was up in Syracuse. And the interesting part was the seller, actually, his office was around the corner from my apartment in New York City. I found out that he lived about eight blocks away. There were times, and the guy was very strange that you would think somebody who's got a vacant office building with no debt on it, you know, a couple hours away, they're not making any money on it.
I don't remember what he bought it for, but it was much less than even my first offer. So, I knew he was making good money. You would think that somebody like that should be interested in at least negotiating and having a sale. Well, turns out the seller, you know, one of the stranger people I've encountered, there was times where he wouldn't get back to me.
The broker in the middle wasn't helpful. There was times where I was stalking the guy to try and get out there. I would park my car on his street. I found out where he lived, and you would track his pattern when he had to get to work and I parked my car there sometimes in the morning hoping to see him. I would jump out of the car. I probably did this about 10 or 15 times.
I would jump out of the car and pretend like I bumped into him on the street. “Gary, what's up? What's up?”
Jack: Oh, my.
Jared: Let's get this deal done. I did everything I had to do to, to get the guy to sell me the property. We had a deal; we cancel it and you go back and forth. But eventually, you know, like almost eight months later, finally got the guy under contract. And so, that was October of 2014. We broke ground on the project. And by the way, I had no money. So, that was even more interesting.
Jack: Minor detail there.
Jared: But we've talked, we broke ground, minor detail, but I always figured if it's a good deal, I may not be able to make the best economic deal for myself. But you had to start somewhere, and we had to go build a project, right? So, finally we broke ground May of 2015. Building was complete and you know, about a year later. And ultimately it was a project that we wanted to keep for a very long time. But what ended up happening is by October of 2016 we ultimately sold it to ACC who was about a $6.5 billion REIT, the largest player in student housing. So, we sold it to a publicly traded company at a 3.2 cap on the in-place income and the building was fully stabilized.
So, our investors made a really good return in about an 18 months period. Phenomenal experience all around. We made some great investor relationships. We made some great relationships throughout the industry. I think most importantly for our group, we put ourselves on the map because by selling to the largest players in the space who are definitely very picky in what they purchase, we were able to really say, “Hey, we sold the ACC.” You know, and that has helped us a lot for our trajectory moving forward.
Jack: Well that takes us pretty naturally into the Opportunity Zones. So, I've got a couple of questions in terms of your business and the Opportunity Zones. One is obviously, because of the 10-year holding period that puts some constraints on being able to do development Opportunity Zones deals that are that, that maximize the tax advantages, talk about how Aptitude Development and Jared Hutter are playing in that space.
Jared: So, I would say we have now found Opportunity Zones almost by accident. Certainly, we’re well aware, by staying abreast of everything going on in the real estate industry. And I would say just the economy in general. We're certainly well aware of Opportunity Zones as they were created and the potential benefits of them. We weren't overly focused on it, however, because we were already trudging along with our own business trying to do student housing.
We weren't really sure at the initially how in January, February, March of 2018 as this all started to form, you know, how it would necessarily intersect with our business.
Here's what happened. January of 2018, we signed a contract for a property in Louisville, Kentucky. It was very interesting. We really liked it. Great. You know, good market that we felt we could really make an impact on. For us were very focused on what the quality of the dirt is at. Um, you know, the location for under the building.
This checked a lot of the boxes for us. It was a place we wanted to go play. We're taking the project through the entitlement process and as we're getting through the entitlements, we have not closed on the land obviously, and the maps for Opportunity Zones don't start to come into play. Okay. So, now we're learning a little bit more. We're paying attention. We decided to check it out and we say. We're curious, you know, some of the sites we're looking at is anything in an Opportunity Zones is not an Opportunity Zones. Let's understand what these maps really look like. Well, it turns out that the Louisville project that we're taking through the entitlements, it sits in an Opportunity Zones. So, now we're like, well, we should probably learn more about this.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Jared: And see what the potential effects are on the project that we'd like. Anyway, we come to figure out, okay, well this is all very, very interesting. Obviously, I think you know, everyone listening to this knows probably even more about Opportunity Zones than we do at this point. Everyone is well aware of what all the benefits are. So, you know, we said this is really interesting. We, we go to our lawyers, we go to our accounts, we say, okay, “What do you, what do you guys know?”
We lucked out that both of those professions, both of the firms that we work with -- very large firms, some major clients – were well-aware of everything going on. We work with both of those firms to basically restructure our deal prior to closing and to figure out, okay, how do we take advantage of this, we're already starting to raise dollars for the project.
So, we go to some of our investors and we say, “Hey, is this going to interest here, does this, you know, how would you guys look at this?” Some people say, “We don't have games. It doesn't matter. We just want to invest in the deal. We like depreciation that's going to come off.” Other people come to us and say, "Hey, if this is real, I'll increase my allocations. I think we may be able to get some other people.”
So, we started to see that there's some traction. We restructure our structure for the deal, and we ended up creating Aptitude Qualified Opportunity Zones Fund one strictly to enter into this deal. We ended up raising, and I would say about 40% to 45% of our capitals that of our equity stack for the Louisville deal becomes an Opportunity Zone.
Now we went to all of our investors that, “Listen, we understand that you know all the benefits, the 10-year hold everything.” I told people, even on the Opportunity Zones side, I said, “Listen, I'm not going to sit here today and promise you that we're going to hold this thing for 10 years and you're going to get all the benefits.”
I said, “You have to trust us that we're going to make the right strategic decision along the way,” which is always what our pitch has been to all of our investors. We don't go into a deal and say we're going to, you know, merchant build it. We're going to hold it for five, seven, 10, certainly we have to make some projections out about what the deal is going to look like. But our pitch to everybody has always been give us on the GP side, the flexibility to be nimble and to make that smart strategic decision along the way because we always want to be opportunistic.
If somebody is going to come along, if I talk about a five-year hold and somebody comes along and gives me and gives us a crazy offer, which is sort of what happened on our first Syracuse project, I think I have a fiduciary responsibility to take it. If we talk about a five-year hold and the market's just doing great and we can keep refinancing and stay in, we're going to look at that and you know, we want to align ourselves.
We have a structure that really, we believe aligns ourselves with our investors to make that good decision, strategic decision along the way. So, we ended up raising about 40 to 45% of our capital of our equity in the deal is Opportunity Zones dollars. I believe that nobody has shown me a project yet. I actually believe we have the first Opportunity Zones development in the entire country.
We broke ground in October 18, 2018 we are fully structured as an Opportunity Fund. And to date, nobody has yet shown, I know where the first project in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, I have learned over the last few months, I've spent a lot of time there that Kentucky is actually a commonwealth, not a state. I have yet to figure out what that exact means. Um, in the Commonwealth that gets out the, I know we are the first Opportunity Zone project.
And like I said, I haven't seen one yet that is that broke ground before us. So I think we were definitely in the first handful and we very well might be the first one. Now, to really answer your question, how do I see Opportunity Zones intersecting with our business. It's a fascinating place and now we're jumping into it. I've got six good deals or so that are in the pipeline. They're all Opportunity Zone deals.
Jack: Oh, that was going to be where I was going. Has this caused...
Jared: Were seeing a lot of it. And I would say for us, we don't believe that the benefits, at least for the capital that we're aligning ourselves with, will take a deal from a no to a yes just because it's Opportunity Zones.
Jack: Right.
Jared: It's still trying to do the same deals that we've been doing. It just so happens that there's a lot of universities that happened to students census tracts that have been designated as Opportunity Zones for one reason or another. You know, whether it's transient income numbers, whether a lot of universities happened to sit next to areas that just aren't so, great and they end up getting designated, okay, well whatever it is, there's a lot of universities that are in or adjacent to Opportunity Zones.
We're seeing deals that we would be very interested in anyway and they happen to be Opportunity Zones. So, we're working hard to become, as you know, as experts, as much experts as anyone can possibly be in this space. We are working right now to maybe align ourselves with some of the funds that are coming out there. We're not necessarily for us, we're not looking to have a blind fund to go after this. It's just not the way we want to structure ourselves.
We still liked doing things on a deal-by-deal basis, but for us, you know, we're seeing a tremendous amount of deal flow come our way and the best part is it just a lot of it just happens to be Opportunity Zones. So, I think that just circle back and when you talk about the 10-year hold, I like the 10-year hold, actually.
I don't love the idea of being even labeled as a merchant builder. I think when you take a long-term outlook, there's a couple of things that happened. First you build, you build a higher-quality product.
Jack: Right.
Jared: You know that you're going to be with this product for many years. I think you're going to make better decisions along the way, which I would say, we try to do anyway, even if it wasn't Opportunity Zones where we think it's a shorter hold because our hope is that a potential buyer, what ultimately you give us value for that. So, we liked the idea of being in it long-term because he builds a better product.
We loved the idea of that effectively you're betting on the appreciation of the asset and you have a long term bet on the school. And the way we focus ourselves, trying to really get those best-in-class locations. We don't have a cooki?e cutter box or a product that we drop in any university. We have our brand, Marshall that, you know, we take with us that, you know, has certainly has a lot of similarities between products, but we always, our focus has been on let's find the best location we get our hands on and design a project that fits the market and the area very well.
So, because of that and where we think it stands the test of time, one of the best amongst the best locations in the area, making a long-term bet on the university to us a is a really good way to get very strong risk-adjusted returns for ourselves and our investment group. So, we liked the idea of 10-plus year holds. Okay. For us it's good and we're working to align ourselves with capital partners right now that will take that ride with us.
Jack: So, what I'm hearing, if I was going to title this, and I might end up doing it this way, is where other people are seeing reasons not to get into a project, you see that, you see those as the specific advantages to get into the project.
Jared: I do. And here's the biggest one, the biggest hurdle there. So, you have a lot of people raising opportunity cottons , you have a lot of people trying to do Opportunity Zones deals. And I know that my comment here is going to be jaded by the fact that I'm in New Jersey. I'm a New York City adjacent. A lot of the people we know deal with are New York City. What'd you have a lot of people chasing deals in New York City. Yeah. And you have a lot of these funds that are popping up that aren't developed and they're going to need development partners around the country.
Jack: Yep.
Jared: I think for us, Aptitude Development isn't as good a position as anybody and the entire country to go deploy Opportunity Zones, own dollars because, they're certainly going to be deals in the major in- and-around major cities on the coast.
I believe a bulk of the best deals out there are going to be, you know in secondary places. Rural areas, Midwest great places. So, you know, don't take my secondary lists as they're not great, but you know, other places outside the five or six major cities and we're in a position to really go out and deploy those dollars in a very good way because we're already used to going to new cities on a regular basis. Before a year-and-a-half ago, I had never been to the state of Kentucky. I now have been there 20 plus times.
Well, we've made some great inroads there and are really putting ourselves in a position to do a number of great projects in that place were, we're going to break ground later this year on a project in, , Fayetteville, Arkansas. We've never been, we had never been to Arkansas before a few months ago. We made some great inroads. So, we're in a great position because we're already used to going to new places, creating a local connections, hiring local construction teams, local professionals, and doing projects across the country, which I don't believe a lot of people who are trying to do Opportunity Zones deals have to have the experience in doing it.
Jack: This is just an area that I am going to demonstrate my ignorance, but I'm, I'm curious about it. So, when you're putting together a deal, when you're actually building, you know, starting from, from raw dirt and going to put up a building, do you have a metric in terms of jobs generated per square foot or per room. How do you calculate that and if so, do you know what the impact is? I'm thinking specifically of the fact that Opportunity Zones program is designed to generate jobs. Well, it's specifically hoping to generate jobs. Is there a metric that you use?
Jared: I would tell you that I don't have a specific metric that we look at. When you go to the site, you look at what's going on, you know, the bulk of the jobs that we ultimately will create our construction jobs. And then there's other, not permanent, but they're good paying, good quality jobs. I was on our site in Louisville the other day, So, today is what, today is Friday. I was on the site there on Wednesday, there had to be 75 plus people working on that site right now.
Jack: Right.
Jared: So, and that's on a regular, that's just early on in the face. You know, I would say throughout a development process, we probably will typically create 300 plus jobs, you know, throughout the construction cycle.
Jack: Right. Yeah. I was just wondering if when you're building multifamily like that, if there's some way to actually say for every X number of rooms or X number of square feet, we can generate Y number of jobs that will last for the life of the project. I just don't know that. I've never heard that number. I've never stumbled up stumbled across that. I don't know if it's a thing that's worth measuring kind of like a bill of materials only for, for labor.
Jared: Yeah. And I'm not sure if there's a great way to necessarily measure that. But you know, certainly I can tell you on any construction job we do, whether it's the second job that we did in Syracuse where that was about 180,000 square feet. You know, I know for a fact there was 200-plus jobs created on that project to Louisville where the project is the size of that project. We're building a 360,000-square-foot facility. There'll probably be through the course of this easily 300-plus jobs created throughout the, throughout this construction cycle. And that's almost a two-year cycle. So, that's…
Jack: Yeah.
Jared: It's a pretty good, pretty good number of jobs.
Jack: Absolutely. As I was reading a little bit about your company, I think it was your second project that I was reading about with high-end retail as well. Is that part of the standard model that you guys are building?
Jared: So, you know, it goes back to the comment I made earlier where we try and get those best-in-class locations and design a project that fits accordingly. So, in Syracuse for the second project that we were doing, it really was a great retail spot. We took out some retail when we went to go develop the project. So, and it really made sense to put it retail there. Moving forward, we're going to make that smart decision along the way, whether it makes sense, because we know it's not good for anybody to have vacant retail.
Jack: Right.
Jared: If it fits the area, certainly, it's something that we'll look into doing. I can tell you in Louisville, we have, that's, that's not a project that really, fits a retail landscape. So, we have no retail on that one.
Jack: Okay.
Jared: Arkansas, we'll probably have no retail as well, but you know, they're all out. Some other locations that we're looking at right now that will probably warrant retail in them.
Jack: Let's talk about Jared Hutter, not just the developer, but Jared Hutter, the man. Um, and I like to find out what people love outside of their work. And I will say your love for your work is just shining through. It's quite obvious. Um, so, are, are there…
Jared: I don't feel like I work. I feel like I have fun everyday.
Jack: And it's very obvious. So, when you're not having fun doing your work thing, what kinds of things do you love?
Jared: You know, our business has really taken us a lot of travel. So, I become very used to traveling. I would say it's one of a couple of things. When I have some downtime, I try and stay home, hang out with my kids. I have two sons, they're four and two. So, I've been very involved with them as much as I possibly can when I'm around on the weekends. And typically, I'm always around for them. Yeah. I like to take them out. I've been taking them to baseball games and football games. I really enjoy going to a lot of sporting events and now that my kids are also, getting a little bit older, my wife and I are trying to travel with them more because we both really like travel.
Jared: So, it's certainly a little difficult when they're so little.
Jack: Oh yeah.
Jared: We're trying to get them do our best job now to get them used to it. So, you know, they become very comfortable with it. I was fortunate that my parents did that for me, So, I would like to get them comfortable with it So, we can, you know, really travel with them and take them all over the place. You know, it goes back to work because that's where a lot of my head is at. I can tell you one of the most fun things I've ever done, it was traveling with my son, my older son taking him up to Syracuse to take him on the construction site. You know, while we were in the early phases there. So, that was just a blast taking him around. But also, you know, certainly showing him some of the work that we get to do.
Jack: Well then of course you get to infect him early with the building bugs. So, turn this thing into a generational thing.
Jared: Yeah, absolutely. That's a, that that is definitely the goal here. You know, love to be able to work with my kids one day if it's something that they're interested in, but I'm going to push them in that way. Sure.
Jack: Well, you know, lead them. That's the best way to do it. Hey. So, I love to ask my, I love to ask my guests this question. What drives you crazy? If you were king of the world for just one day and you could, you could fix one problem, what would you, what would you do? What's that problem that drives you out of your mind that you could fix?
Jared: I would say it's the lack of attention to detail that a lot of people pay. You know, I get very frustrated when people, whether it's working directly for us, whether it's working subcontractors, people you interact with, because you know, everyone comes in contact with a lot of people each and every day. I just don't care. It really irks me when you see people coasting through the world, not caring, not trying, you know, not giving it their best because it's almost like it’s constant wasted opportunities. So, that’s number one. I would take the other one that bothers me, that gets me every single time is -- and some people may not like this -- but you know, I think it should be illegal for parents to smoke cigarettes when they're pushing, when they're hanging out with their kids. You know, that one really gets me.
Jack: There you go.
Jared: I've just been spending a lot of time in other parts of the country where people have different values and I keep seeing this more often than not. And I think that should just be illegal. I mean that just bothers me and I see it probably, once a trip when I go somewhere else, you see a parent pushing a baby carriage or holding the kid’s hand, you know, smoking cigarettes. Like really that's what you're, that's what happened. You know the impression you want to give your kids.
Jack: All right. So, that's a good problem. As king of the world for a day. I think you can probably fix that one. The attention to detail, I'm afraid that may be more wired into the genes. I dunno if that one’s fixable. Well Jared, this has been a fascinating conversation. I love your story. I think you've got a very compelling story. If folks want to get ahold of you to talk about deals or talk about Aptitude Development, what's the best way to do that?
Jared: Sure. So, you know, our website is aptitudere.com and my, my direct email, jh@aptitudeaptitudere.com.
Jack: And I will remind our listeners that information, it will be available on the website as well. Well Jared, it has been great talking to you. Do you have any last words for us before we sign off for the day?
Jared: Yeah, I would say my hope for everybody is that they can keep going out there, find something they're passionate about the way I think I've been very lucky to do and ultimately find, you know, a great partner who allows you to go do that. You know, my wife has been phenomenal to allow me to travel and continue to pursue the business that we are in and, I'm very lucky to have that.
Jack: I agree. I think you're a very blessed man, but you obviously bring a lot of skill and passion to the work as well. Well, it's been a good conversation with Jared Hutter of Aptitude Development. I am Jack Heald for the OZExpo podcast. Thanks for joining us and we will talk to you next time.
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