About Urban Infill, History of Randy Palazzo’s Development business from 1988-to present, and, the new gold!
Randy Palazzo is an author, video blogger, and the Master of infill. Urban infill is defined as new development, or renovations of existing older homes, in already existing older, established neighborhoods close to a City core. The term "urban infill" implies that existing land in these areas is mostly built-out and what is being built or renovated is in effect "filling in" the gaps. It also relates to revitalizing, or “renovating” older homes in already established neighborhoods by upgrading them, adding square footage or additional floors, splitting their lots into smaller lots that can accommodate multiple homes, or, all of the above. In many cases, you can find property in these neighborhoods where you can keep an older existing home, and split off 1 or more additional lots, very easily in many cases. Sometimes, if a home is past its economic lifespan, tearing down the old home and putting in 1 or more new homes that fit the character of the neighborhood is an option.
In the last 5-10 years or so, living near an urban core has become increasingly more popular for many reasons. Being close to services, downtown areas, a workplace, reducing travel time and avoiding traffic jams, and reducing ones carbon footprint are just a few of the reasons for this. Additionally, because these properties are hard to find, and it takes very specific knowledge to duplicate Randy’s successes, Randy trains many of his peers throughout the country, and has been for many years. When you have learned Randy’s secrets, it will unleash your ability to make a great living, while at the same time helping transform the already established neighborhoods in some of America’s greatest cities. Randy wants to share his secrets of how to create these pocket residential works of art. Finding these urban infill lots, locating and splitting properties into more than one lot, building and flipping new construction homes on existing lots, or lots that are created through lot splits, and renovating and flipping older existing homes is just some of what Randy can teach to you. He not only teaches how to locate properties, but he can teach you the best way to preserve the integrity of these great areas, while at the same time knowing how to run a successful Urban Infill business. Knowing how to locate and build is one thing, but to properly process everything from finding the property, all the way to constructing it, budgeting, managing, selling, and everything in between can be a big challenge. Randy can teach you how to manage all of this with the right paperwork and process that he has formulated throughout the years.
Randy has successfully created a system for “prospecting for infill lots”, which he considers the “new Gold”. When he finds these lots, he carefully plans what is most appropriate for a specific site, and then he begins the planning stage for the new home on the lot so that he can successfully start and finish the project, and sell it to one of his customers. Randy can teach you how to easily find these lots, and also how to build the new home. Most people do not realize that in most cases, it is easier to build a new home VS rehabbing an older, existing home. By renovating 100’s of older existing homes in these neighborhoods in Portland Oregon during the early part of his career, it lead him to create an incredible opportunity in locating already existing lots in the neighborhoods that are easy to split off, and, creating additional lots from larger portions of land in these areas. Randy also became an expert at building new homes on these lots, and he quickly learned that finding lots and building the new home was so much easier than some of the difficult rehabs he had completed. He quickly learned that when building new homes, you follow 29 simple steps, and that there are rarely any surprises or cost overruns, like with rehabs. Randy has patented systems that he will use to teach you how to be successful! Most people don’t know this, but you can build a meaningful new home on Urban Infill Lots that are as small as 25 x 100, or 40 x 50. These homes sell fast, are in very good price points for first time buyers, and look great. We also build bigger, nicer homes on lots we locate or create on larger Urban Infill lots, usually between 36 and 50 wide by 100 deep. Randy is also a pro at finding, rehabbing, and flipping existing older homes in these same neighborhoods. Randy still locates and renovates single homes that don’t have additional lots, similar to what others teach, but Randy can teach you what others are not teaching you; how to locate rehabs that have additional lots that you can easily split off, and build the new home. In many cases, you not only have the existing house to rehab, but you also have the new lots to build on. He can also teach you better ways to make profits when rehabbing and flipping older homes.
Randy also teaches you how to properly address the processing of your business, whether you are doing 1 a year, or 100. Randy currently consults for many of his peers that are fairly new to the business. Many of these peers are decent at locating properties to rehab and flip, but most are over paying, and under processing, and, not making meaningful profits. Processing every aspect of your business is not only the right way to do it, but ultimately it is easier, less stressful, and much more profitable. Randy can teach you everything in this business from finding a property, to negotiating with the Seller, opening and closing escrow after you obtain financing, budgeting, scopes, specs, finding good subs, using the right paperwork with subs so you are not caught in a jam, and all of the other significant details, all the way through the sale of your property to the retail buyer, and everything in between.
About Randy Palazzo
In 1988, while attending Portland State University, Randy obtained His Real Estate License. Randy immediately began his Real Estate career taking bank foreclosed listings. Most of the listings were in the eastside inner neighborhoods and at that time, these areas had a bad reputation of being crime-ridden areas. Soon after taking these listings, he began marketing them to out of state Investors, mostly Californians. Over the 1st 2 years, He sold over 100 homes to Investors. During that time, He began buying some of the homes himself as rentals. Over time, they appreciated at a rapid rate, and He refinanced some with banks to keep as rentals and sold others, while buying additional homes to "flip". He had flipped about 300 homes by 1994, and by 1999, well over 800. During the 90's, He had perfected a mailing campaign that resulted in about 90% of his purchases. He still uses this same mailing campaign today, as well as many updated versions online.
In 1999, He started a company called Metro Housing & Redevelopment, LLC. His intention was to grow a company that was operating in multiple states with the business model that He had created. By 2005, He was buying and flipping homes in Portland, Vancouver Washington, Salem Oregon, Eugene Oregon, Tacoma Washington, Seattle Washington, and Spokane Washington. In 2001, He had also personally begun investing in Real Estate in Tucson Arizona, and Puerto Penasco, Sonora Mexico through another LLC. Also during this time frame, He started designing "vintage" style new homes that matched the integrity of the older homes in these established neighborhoods. He built his 1st new home in 2001. During the time He owned Metro Housing & Redevelopment, He had built and sold about 50 new homes, along with flipping between 60 and 80 homes each year for several years. Most of His loans were private money from private money lenders.
In Late 2005, 3 of his employees made him an offer to buy Metro Housing & Redevelopment. Because He had about 60 rental homes at that time, and because they offered almost 1 million dollars to buy just the the company intellectual property, and no Real Estate was included in this sale (they just bought the company secrets and processes) he felt that it was a good time to cash in. He agreed to sell and stay on as a 20% profits partner, non-managing. By the end of 2006, they could not make the company work, and they dissolved that company. At that point, He was really missing the daily operations of running a Real Estate Investment Company. He thought long and hard about all of the travel He had been doing, what he was missing out on in personal life and what made most sense moving forward. He had really enjoyed building new homes, and was also good at finding infill lots and deals, and had also been splitting lots in the area since 1993. Because building new homes was more of a straight forward process than renovating existing homes, He decided to step back into the market, full force, in late 2006. At this point, He had a personal net worth in excess of 6 million dollars. He started a company called Palazzo Custom Homes. He also began drawing and designing many vintage style homes with modern amenities, and applied and received copyrights for approximately 30 home plans. Soon after starting back up, He had begun by building and selling 30-40 homes in 2007, and by 2008, He was close to 100, and had increased the number of employees to 12, and by 2009, He was building over 100 a year and had 24 employees, which consisted of 6 sales staff, 6 project managers, 1 construction manager, in house general counsel, CFO, controller, 3 bookkeepers/accounts payable staff, 2 superintendents, 2 in house architects, and a permit runner. Even though the Historic Market Crash began in late 2008, He didn't feel too much of an effect in close-in Portland until early to mid-2009. By that time, He had about 50 homes up at one time, on average. By the middle of 2009, sales slowed down, prices had dropped, and even though he had over 40% equity in 10 million plus in rental properties, the equity that He had in those rental properties dropped dramatically and went negative. After feeding over 2 million dollars of his own money into his company to try to weather the market, he ended up filing for a personal bankruptcy in 2010. His situation was short lived. Once he was discharged from his bankruptcy in May 2011, he put his vast knowledge of infill to work again, and he immediately began working off of his years of experience; He thought about what had made him a success in the past, understood where he had made some mistakes, and decided to move forward again. By 2013, he had made back over ½ of the money he lost in the market crash, and was able to buy his family home for over 1.3 million dollars, which today is valued at 2.6 million dollars.
To start back, with limited availability to cash, in 2011, and not wanting to deplete his retirement account that he and worked so hard to build, he located and sold "as is" about 40 properties to other rehabbers/investors for a fee. Over 90% of these were non listed properties that He had found through His mailing system as well as his contacts in the Real Estate Community. He had also designed a website and was selling His plans to other builders and private parties, and was building and rehabbing a few homes. By the end of 2012, He had made over a million dollars in net profits. By the end of 2014, he was back in full force, and had almost made back what he had lost during the historic market crash.
In years 2015 through 2018, he has built and rehabbed well over 300 homes, and has done very well. He continues to be a success by having great employees, sticking to his business philosophies, and taking pride in his ethics, values, experience and hard work.