Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Joe Pries. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Joe, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share my story, if it inspires even one person to take action and create something amazing that benefits their family and others that would make me very happy. Going back to around 2004/2005, I was in a relatively uninspiring corporate job that I knew was ultimately going to lay me off because I came from New York to North Carolina with my New York salary (which wasn’t that impressive but went further in NC of course), however, the firm hired 3 guys in my division shortly after, who were around 8 years younger and straight out of business school and were compensated at a lower pay scale so I knew I needed to get out. I was very interested in real estate investment but had not pursued it until I went to a company lunch for a young employee in my division who was going back to school in Boston to get his MBA. He told me about a condo he co-owned with a friend across from the UNC Charlotte campus nearby and I asked him to please show it to me. As soon as I arrived at the complex my eyes lit up and I was excited. The complex was literally a 2 lane road across from campus. Enrollment was around 25,000 students at the time (January 2005) and I saw my golden ticket out of ever working for someone again and having the ability to pursue the hobby that I’ve been involved with since I was 14, visiting airports around the world to photograph airplanes- something that was very much mitigated by having a full time job with 4-5 weeks vacation annually. Fast forward to December 2024 and I currently own 86 properties totaling 296 bedrooms and my company is the largest privately owned student housing provider at the school. UNCC now has a 31,000 student population and it has been an amazing ride, which allowed me to retire in 5 years (at 38 years old) and has given me financial freedom, time freedom, the freedom to travel to airports all over the planet and the ability to live an outsized life and meet the most amazing people, thanks to real estate and all its wonderful benefits. I do want to stress that what I do is not sexy, it’s not shiny but it’s durable, it’s consistent and creates generational wealth if properly executed. When folks ask me how I fared during the Great Financial Crisis in 2008 and COVID I tell them my rents never went down, however in the GFC we couldn’t finance new purchases for a while but otherwise didn’t lose a dime, and during COVID we did have some empty rooms as international students could not get their visas to come to America but that was a relatively small hit given our economies of scale. So having survived those 2 blasts in the past 20 years, I say- what else do you have to throw at me? I’ll be ready.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My interest in real estate was sparked years before by a good friend up in New York long before I began investing on my own. I noticed his success and always wanted to emulate his lifestyle. I read used books, watched YouTube videos about real estate investing but never took a college or other paid course on the subject. I truly believe that self-education can be much more engaging, focused, and profitable than organized/group education for those seeking to be an entrepreneur and take a very different path than the usual: go to school, get good grades, get a job, retire at 65- maybe, hopefully and pray your 401K and social security can support you in your remaining years. I did not do particularly well in school because I had little interest in what they were teaching (other than typing and Spanish in high school, those I liked and excelled at and they have benefited me significantly over the years). It also didn’t help that my middle and high schools were under the flight paths of airplanes coming in and out of JFK airport so I was more interested in the airliners flying outside than what the teachers were teaching! While my success in real estate has been robust, ultimately, when I take a macro view of what I’ve done for myself and my family’s life, it also makes me feel really good knowing that I am able to provide housing at a much lower cost than my direct corporate/REIT competitors. I take pride in providing working class American families’ children and our international students a great product at a reasonable price. I have recently expanded into providing affordable shared housing to Amazon employees as Amazon has a huge warehouse in Charlotte 20 minutes from my properties and my residents are saving so much money by staying with us at an average of $625/month per person with all utilities included and private bathroom and walk-in closet in your room- what a deal!
Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?
Initial funding for my business is a truly wonderful story. Not only because it’s a cool story but because it’s from a real person who didn’t come from money (my family was always predominantly middle-class), who didn’t have a backer/investor and who started the business without writing a check to the bank! When my wife and daughter and I lived in New York (my son was born in NC after we moved) we rented the upstairs left side of a quadplex in Queens. I was commuting to my job (a cubicle with no window access) an hour fifteen minutes each way via two subways. It sucked. I knew my future in New York was very limited so when the opportunity to move to Charlotte North Carolina came up I told my wife we’re out of here. Unlike in New York, we were able to actually buy our first house. A 5 bedroom 4 full bath home in a cul-de-sac for $281,000 in amazing and fast growing Ballantyne, we were so excited. All my friends bought houses in New York except us because we couldn’t really afford it, however, we saved up $50,000 over the years to put down on the new house and had a relatively affordable mortgage and low North Carolina taxes. When the opportunity to buy the first and second investment properties came up (January 2005), we took out a home equity line of credit and used that as down payment on those two. So when I say that we didn’t actually write a check to buy the first two properties, I mean it- we had this dead money sitting there (the $50,000 down equity in the house). We borrowed that to fund the 1st two deals so we essentially did not write a check from our savings or checking account or used any cash. So simple, so doable and has completely changed our lives. Improvements were made on the properties, new appraisals done and we pulled equity in those out to buy more. We did the same thing over and over- rinse repeat. We bought 1 property a month on average and had 48 properties within the 1st 4 years. The bank loved us, they bankrolled our downpayments, the mortgages and even put initial repairs into the mortgages, these were true 100% financing deals and we took full advantage of that. Let me be frank- they don’t teach you any of this in high school or college or MBA programs. Any regular Joe like me can do this, however today everyone wants instant gratification. Getting rich overnight is a fantasy. Mine is a get rich slow plan and folks have been doing it for centuries, I have not discovered some new cool thing, however I was able to put in the time and effort initially and it worked. They say if you can do for 2 years what no one else wants to do, you can do for the rest of your life what no one else can do. So true. Real estate is fully supported by the U.S. Government in the way of depreciation & tax mitigation. The government very much wants folks to provide housing because the government sucks at it as we know, so when you help the government, they help you. As a W2 employee I had zero tax benefits, only tax burdens as many of us know all too well.
Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?
I never sold a business, but I did sell 4 properties to “upgrade” to better ones, however, in hindsight, that was a huge mistake, which taught me -never sell! The government allows real estate investors the ability to sell a property and buy another one and not pay any taxes as long as certain minimum requirements are met. It is called a “1031 Like Kind Exchange”. So I thought I was slick and sold another investor 4 of our properties at a gain, tax free and bought 4 better properties. Well, looking back- big mistake. I profited about $80,000 (roughly 20K each) on that sale and paid no taxes, however, I sold them for $82,000 a piece (4 units totaling 16 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms). Fast forward to today, they are worth $275,000 each and if you calculate the rental income on those 16 bedrooms over the past 12 years plus the loss of appreciation/depreciation, the number is staggering. So unless a property is either severely underperforming or the area it’s in is in decline, selling, even at a profit and tax free can be a huge mistake. But I don’t look back, only forward- life is too short and we have to concentrate on staying focused and not look for short-term opportunities that may turn out to be long term disasters. Stick with what works! These days I’m often asked to be involved in various businesses but my answer is usually the same- why? I don’t want a business that has employees and headaches, I want a business that runs itself and checks come in the mail/bank account like clockwork and Uncle Sam encourages and supports it and rewards it fully. Why would I want to go into any other business at this point, I’d rather just invest in more real estate or even equities, etc. that are passive and require little effort.
Contact Info:
- Company website: https://www.
liveoffcampusuncc.com - Hobby Website: https://joepriesaviation.net
- Instagram: liveoffcampusuncc
- Linkedin: https://www.
linkedin.com/in/joseph-pries- mba-b6aa658/
