This is the real estate shop where each episode will bring you a top industry
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In this episode of the developers, we had the privilege of interviewing
Buwa Benite, principal of the DC based Dante's partner, one of a number of
black owned development companies in Washington, DC.
Let's join in.
So, well, I know you have a pretty fascinating story about how you got into
the industry and kind of how you develop your firm.
Love to share that with the general audience.
You know, as we think about emerging developers trying to figure out, well,
how do I leave my nine and five and get into real estate or, you know, how do I
grow my parents, mom and pop development company into something bigger?
Yeah, no, first and foremost, thank you all for being, as I
said, thank you all for being here.
No, I should be the one to thank you for allowing me to be here and share
my story with you all.
Look, the first thing I would say is do not leave the nine and five.
You want to keep the nine and five.
The nine and five is essential because, you know, I started out because I was
very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work for some really, really good people.
Right.
And those interesting individuals worked on some very challenging projects.
And it's those projects that for the most part sort of gave me my start and gave me
the confidence to be an entrepreneur.
Right.
So I always say like, there's nothing better than learning on someone else's dime.
Right.
It's like, you don't really have the money and you can go out there to sort of, you
know, work with folks who have the money and more importantly, understand the
business.
Right.
So I was very fortunate because, you know, not only did I have an opportunity to work
on projects and better understand how to move projects forward and the finance and
behind the projects, but I also understand that there's a business around it.
And if you're not focused on the business, it doesn't matter how your projects perform
because you're just going to constantly find yourself being a hamster in the hamster
wheel.
So look, the short answer is I'm third generation real estate.
My grandfather, my father passed on to me.
Initially, I was very reluctant to be in the real estate business because I wanted to
do something very different than what the family had done.
I basically sort of went around, you know, the earth, the moon and the stars several
times to finally get to a place where I figured out that this is what I love to do.
It was really a job that I had taken that I fell in love with.
So, you know, you may or may not know I'm a very passionate guy and, you know, I only
like to do the things that I love to do.
And if I don't like it, if I don't love it, I'm not going to do it.
So I fell into this job that was just a phenomenal job.
And it basically built, it was, it complimented all the skill sets that I had
developed over the years.
And, and that's, and it was from there that I said, I'm going to go educate myself a
little bit more about this industry.
I'm going to, you know, shadow the masters in this industry and, and learn from them
to be able to, you know, be, be, be that next, you know, Steve, Steve Ross, be the
next Chris Smith, be the next, you know, victim with fallen and Quentin Primo, be
the next, you know, the top folks that we, we all, we all grew to and aspire to be.
So, so that's, that's sort of how I got here.
Awesome.
When early on, when you got in, how did you navigate some of the challenges of
having to post your own guarantees and then ultimately building out your development
team?
I'm still having challenges posting guarantees.
Let's, let's not, let's not, let's not, you know, the elusive guarantee.
Look, look, I was telling the group yesterday, I've always been a big believer in,
in one, if you understand the business, right?
It doesn't matter how, how you build your business, right?
It doesn't matter how, how, it doesn't matter like how much, you know, right?
If you understand, like I was very fortunate to look at the business and
regardless of the color of your skin, you still have to have experience.
You still have to have liquidity and you still have to have a net worth.
So we can say all the things that we want to say about the capital markets is
concerned, which I'm sure we'll get into, but the bottom line is real estate is the
most sort of objective business that you and I can ever be in because it's
capital intensive.
So if you've got the dough, you can play.
If you don't have the dough, you're not going to be able to play.
Bottom line.
So I knew that going in.
So, you know, I worked extremely hard to make sure that I was a master of the
craft, right?
I think we make really good developers, right?
I educated myself on, on real estate finance and all that comes with.
So the only thing that I did not have was, you know, as far as a lender
looking at me objectively was just the liquidity on the network.
So part of the reason why I say don't leave your day job is because I worked
extremely hard to save every single money I made.
And that's, that's it.
It's just that simple.
So from, from the earlier deals that we did, I mean, Kervin, you know, you,
you have a consulting company.
We, we, for the first six years of the firm, we did not do one development
deal because I understood the business.
Right.
If I had done a development deal at a very early age, I would own 0.01% of a deal.
You know, you, nobody got time for that.
I don't, I don't have time for that.
I don't have time for 0.01%.
I want to own minimum 50%.
And I want to own 100%.
Right.
So I basically just stashed every single money that I made, like 90% of everything
that, that, that we made, and we just parked it in the bank account.
We did a couple of really interesting deals and the money that we made from
those deals, trust me, I was tempted.
I was like, man, I could buy that Lamborghini right now.
I could get that tomorrow.
Right.
Wow.
I gotta go hire top notch staff.
So I was like, ah, do I have, do I convince Corey Powell to come on or, or do I go buy
that Lamborghini and guess what, revealed, right?
The Lamborghini is clearly not something I still have to today.
What I saved, we saved every single money we had because that's what
allowed us to have the liquidity.
And when we did deals, we held onto the assets such that when we walked into the
bank, we could check all the boxes.
So by us checking all the boxes and you still did not extend credit to me.
Now we know there's a different conversation that we have, but at least
we could check the boxes.
So that's a lot of the money that we made from, from, from years ago is still parked
in the bank account because we need to satisfy the liquidity on that one.
The other thing that I would say to about that is folks have to learn, you know,
there's this thing we say in Nigeria where I'm from folks have to learn to cut
their coat according to their size.
And I believe in that firmly, which is like, if you only have half a million
dollars in the bank account, don't go do a 200, a 200 unit deal.
It doesn't, the math does not compute and folks are always like, well, if I,
you know, but there's a 200 unit deal, I should do the 200 unit deal.
I was like, okay, cool.
But you can program the deal all you want, but when you go say, okay,
the deal all you want, but when you go see the lender, you're not going to,
you're not, you're not going to check that box.
Unfortunately.
So we made a very cautious effort and we still do as a firm, we make it a very
cautious effort as a firm to not do transactions whereby we cannot leverage
what we have today, right?
I'm not going to go do a billion dollar deal because guess what?
My balance sheet, as much as I love to think that it can, cannot support a
billion dollar transaction.
Eventually it would, but as of right now today, it can't.
So we know exactly what our cap is and we stick to that cap until, until we
have more liquidity to be able to allow us to graduate to the next level.
Awesome advice.
So what products have you done and are there any ones that are particular,
like your favorite ones that stand out to you?
Yeah, it's like, it's like, which child is your favorite child, right?
Um, look, man, every, every transaction, um, you know, and it's, it's, it's,
it's weird, man, because I know this has been recorded.
Like if I see one, I could just hear someone calling me tomorrow and say,
what, what do you mean that that's your favorite deal?
I thought the deal we did is our favorite deal.
And I'm trying to figure out a way to answer this question.
Um, I always go back to one of my early, early deals, right?
It's, it's, um, it's a deal that I think really sort of changed the way it changed.
It sort of gave me the confidence to stick to my own script and build
a company that is mission driven.
So what does that mean?
It means that, um, we could prove to the world that we are good developers,
we could prove to the world that we are good stewards of money.
We could prove to the world that we're good stewards of public resources.
It could prove to the world that we can actually create a black and brown
owned firm that can execute and execute on a very high level.
Um, it can prove to the world that affordable housing does not have to be
what you and I know to, to call the projects.
It can actually be no different than your luxury housing.
So that project that we experimented with is called Justice Park.
So it's a project that, um, it was a public disposition of, of, of government
land, um, in a very high cost neighborhood in the district of Columbia that we were
fortunate enough to be awarded.
So, you know, there's a whole story behind the award process is, you
know, we all respond to RFPs.
You got a campaign, you got to, you've got to like, you know, compete.
Extremely hard, but luckily for us, we were the only ones that did to do
an affordable housing project.
Everyone who beat on the site was like high end condo.
There's no luxurious condo.
Brandon got architects from London to come and design the building.
And we're like, uh, yeah, we just doing affordable housing and, and we want to
do, but everyone was still looking at us with side eye, like, I'm not
sure if you have the money, I'm not, you know, I don't know, you know, pre-development
was still a thing that, you know, we had to go solve for.
And, um, look, I called a very good friend of mine, Bo Minkitti, because I didn't
have all the money to activate the deal.
Bo said, yes, he wrote me a check on the spot.
You know, I ran back with the team.
We, we, we designed the project.
We got it built.
We got it leased up in record time.
And that did just change the trajectory of the company.
That was when it, that's when everything changed.
That's when we started off, you know, we kicked off this luxury affordable housing,
um, theme that, that we, we see all the time.
Right.
And it just sort of gave us the confidence with ourselves and with our partners that
we could actually move a project.
We can actually get a project done.
So, uh, Justice Park, I would say is, is it wasn't the final product.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Awesome. I know you've done a lot, you know, over the past couple of years since starting
a business, two part question, why affordable housing out of, you know, retail office,
uh, market rate.
And then second, um, talk to me about expanding beyond your immediate area to other markets
and what that has looked like for you.
Sure.
Uh, so you heard me earlier talk about the fact that, look, um, I only do what I love.
And I, and I say that, you know, I'm not a big fan of the market.
Um, I only do what I love and I, and I say that, you know, all the time, like I'm not,
if I don't love the project, if I don't love, you know, the individuals that I'm going to,
you know, spend time working with, I'm not, I'm not going to get involved.
I always follow my heart.
I follow my instincts with everything I do.
Uh, affordable housing is the same thing, right?
It's a personal story to me.
Like I got into this because, right.
I tell people all the time.
Um, I went to school in New York and after graduating from school, I could not afford
to live in, in the city, even though I was making good money.
And as a young man in New York city, I felt like I was on the curfew, right?
Because I always had to catch the train to go back to Jersey city.
And I don't know about you, I don't like the idea of being in the curfew.
I want to party all night and, and enjoy all that New York city.
That's what I want to do.
And the only thing that was getting in the way of me partying all night was, was
affordable housing, right?
So, so it has always stuck with me since then.
So, um, same thing.
I moved to San Francisco.
I lived in a hotel for, for six months because I couldn't find a distant place to live,
you know, close to my, my, my work, uh, to my office.
So, um, you know, I had to get real creative to, that was actually my very first school
living opportunity.
That was when I went and I rented an apartment building.
I had no business renting and I went the very same day and put an ad in Craigslist
so I can, I can chop it up into, into a four bedroom so I can, I can, I can afford the
rent.
And the same thing obviously happened to me when I moved to DC as, um, I had to rent a
bedroom and eventually moved to Laurel because I couldn't afford to live downtown.
So it's always been in the back of my mind and when I eventually fell into real estate,
I basically said, I've got to solve this problem of individuals like myself making 60,
$80,000 and, and wanting to, to enjoy all that downtown living had to offer without
doing it without spending 50% of my salary in rent.
So, right.
Right. And it's a, it's a problem that I love solving till today.
It never gets old and that's why I do it.
That's, that's why I do it.
That's why it's a personal story to me as far as, um, branching out into other,
others, other states.
Number one, the problem is a problem that needs solving in high cost neighborhoods.
So thank goodness, there's a lot of issues associated with providing affordable
housing wherever you go.
So for us, it was just a natural progression because the business, I don't need to, I
don't need to prove to anybody that the problem exists.
The problem exists in New York and we just saw New York as a great market for us to sort
of expand our tentacles.
And it's been a phenomenal ride.
It's been a phenomenal ride, phenomenal experience working out of New York City.
I like that city a lot.
And, and I'm just glad that we are put in a position to help solve that problem in New
York and we're building the team.
My goal is, and I see it happening, that the New York team is going to get larger than
the DC team in very short order.
And yeah, and hopefully we'll be able to find other cities that we can do the same in as
With the traveling and managing two teams, how you practice in self care and then also
how you kind of manage in a household, keeping a wife happy and kids and such.
So let me, let me, let me, let me start with self care.
So self care, you know, I kind of think of myself as an athlete anyway.
I've always thought that way.
So I've, you know, for me, pushing myself physically means that I can push myself
mentally.
So I'm an avid cyclist.
I bike all the time.
And in the pandemic, I picked up running for the first time in my life.
I've never ever ran.
So I just started running and I, I don't love it at all, frankly.
It's one thing I don't love, but yet I keep coming back to it because I like, I like the
fact that it's really pushing me physically.
And, and, and I love, you know, I love a good challenge.
So not only so then I picked up, but I picked up running and I also picked up bootcamp
classes.
So all of those sort of physical activities have really, really sort of helped me become
a lot more disciplined, a lot more focused and just basically like, you know, like really,
you know, building my confidence level to the point where I feel like I can truly do
anything that I set my mind to.
So from a self care standpoint and also do it now, answering your question, right.
You should see my house sometimes in the mornings, right?
Like in the early mornings, like we are all one day a week, we all work out together.
Even though they don't like working on me because they think I'm, I'm like, you know,
this drill sergeant, right.
But one day a week, we all work out together.
But every day everybody is, is, is in this mission.
Everybody is, is, is in this make makeshift gym that we created where everybody's working
out.
Everybody has to work out every day.
So that's how we find the things that we like, that we like, or we have commonality in to
do together.
And we've always done that, right.
So even a drive to school can be a very fun ride because we love listening to music, right.
So the 20 minutes or 30 minutes that we spend in the car are really precious 20 minutes
because we're sitting down there trying to best each other in terms of who's got the
best playlist, right.
Like we're doing that right now.
So, so as a family, you know, as a family, we, we, we, we, we, we look for the things,
like I said, we look for the things where we have common interests and, and we basically
continue to build on those things.
Look, they, they are a part of the journey, right.
And the truth of the matter is, this is what I love to do.
And I'm very, very blessed that I have a great family support system that is supportive of
my dream to solve this problem that we know is out there.
And they're part of, they're part of the journey.
They come to the construction sites.
They travel with me sometimes to New York City, you know, and they have to suffer through
all the occupational hazard that they, that, you know, that I put them through, you know,
like I can't just walk down the street without like looking at a construction site or looking
at the brick or looking at the fenestration, right.
So they, they, they understand that this is, this is part of me and, and I'm very, very
lucky and fortunate to, to have, you know, a support system that is very, very, very
excited.
I mean, I don't know if you know, we just, we just closed, we just closed $40 million,
right.
So we got to put that out in the street.
They were very well aware when I was, you know, we've been chasing that elusive money,
you know, it was a carrot for a very long time and, and I finally plucked that carrot.
So, so, so, you know, they're part of the journey.
They, they, they, they're part of the journey.
They understand, they see it.
And when you win, they, they, they, they, they, they cheer, they cheer us on such that
we can continue to do more.
And hopefully they too are able to see that anything is possible, right, with, with, with,
with them.
So we'll see, you know, talk to me five years or 10 years and hopefully they still like
me and they still want me to be their father.
So, you know, we'll see.
And that's a very good segue.
Cause the next question was, you know, where do you see yourself in the company in like,
say the next five years?
Look, my goal right now is to foster the next generation of black millionaires.
That's all I want to do.
I want to create as many black millionaires as I possibly can.
I think so far my track record is looking good.
I only want to read reports five years from now.
I keep telling everybody I, I, I'm the latest developer you ever come across.
I don't, I don't, I actually don't like working.
But I just want to be able to, I want to create, I want to create a company of companies whereby
I have, I've had an opportunity to nurture some exceptional talent and they can sort
of run each of the silos and I'm just a chairman.
Right?
Like that's, that's what, you know, I'm actually surprised that every now and then I'm able
to add value to the organization because I've, you know, Dante's partners and all the
family, we have some really, really sharp, hardworking, exceptional human beings that
have sort of taken this mission on and taking it to the next level.
So all I want to do is just support them in their growth and in their family's growth,
in their wealth growth and health growth such that they can sort of go create all the black
millionaires as well.
So that's, that's what I want my legacy to be.
I want my legacy to be like, oh, you can point to a lot of people that, that have prospered
just because, you know, I had an opportunity to, to, to affect or impact their lives positively.
And I remember I tell people, you gave us our first shot, right?
As a consulting company and think 2011 when you're looking at that site in Southeast.
So I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Our last question, if you were to do it all over again, what would you do differently?
The only thing that I would do differently is I would have started investing earlier on,
like the whole concept of I don't have money to invest or I don't, I don't think I'm wealthy
enough to have a financial planner is the biggest mistake that we can ever make.
You know, and I'm sure you, you all, you all can relate to this, right?
We don't have dinner conversations where we talk about money as a culture.
It's just not something that, that, that we do within our, within our culture.
Right?
So the whole idea of, of saving the whole idea of investing is the one thing that I
really, really wish I did at an early age, because if I just invested $10 or a hundred
dollars a month consistently for, for, for, for 10 years, which flies by very quickly,
I don't even know if I would be doing this podcast right now, to be honest with you.
I'd be like, what?
No, man, I'm, I'm, I'm chilling.
I'm drinking my Margarita.
I'm relaxing, you know, like, don't, don't bother me.
I'm not working.
Right.
That's, that's, that's basically it.
That's, that's basically it.
That's, that's the only thing I'll do differently.
Everything else would be the same.
Sweet, man.
Any last comments you want to add?
Emerging developers to know food for thought.
Listen, the opportunities are vast and no better time than now to be a black developer
in America, as far as I'm concerned, no better time than now.
Like if you don't come out of COVID by adding an extra zero behind your, your, your existing
network, that's, that's on you.
The opportunities are way vast and, and, and, and, and there's a, there's a, there's a moment
right now, a reawakening that we hope continues so long as we continue to perform.
And, you know, just go out and get it.
Like go out and get it.
Like, don't look at like, and like, just go out and get it is what I always tell people.
Like there isn't any, I mean, Kovin, you know, there isn't any opportunity that we come in
contact with that we don't chase.
Not, especially if we feel like we can win it.
So go out and get the opportunities are vast.
It's just an amazing time right now.
So please, you know, take a, take advantage and, and, and use this opportunity to, to do
some amazing things.
So that's, that's all I have to say.
Another day at the shop, content they can't get anywhere else.