jan-2018

188 189 at a closing table across from an elderly woman who needed to sell her home,” he remembers. “My buyer called me and said, ‘I’m not buying the home; I can’t come up with my money. Sorry.’ And, he abruptly hung up. She started crying; she needed the money; she was going to be kicked out of her assisted living fa- cility if the house didn’t sell, today. I went down to the bank, took out $72,000 and I bought her home, that day, for cash. I put $20,000 into renovation and turned around and sold it, profiting $20,000.That was my first investment property and that year, 2007, I did about five of those flips. In 2008, I did about ten or fifteen flips. By 2009,when we launched DLP Realty, I was up to 30 flips and in 2010,we did 50 or 60 of them.We also launched a construction company to handle all of the construction work.” “We continued building companies and different sides to our business to solve different situations that would arise as we helped people solve their real es- tate problems.The bottom of the market finally came DREAM LIVE PROSPER (DLP) COMPANIES around 2011-2012. By then,we were flipping over a hundred homes each year, and we started building a rental portfolio.We said now is the time to hold onto properties; things are only going to go up. So,we started raising private capital to handle the increased volume of properties we were buying and we launched a private investment fund,DLP Capi- tal Advisors,which is the capital management side of our business.We started building a portfolio of single family homes, small multi-family properties, some commercial properties, and office buildings. We were buying 150-200 houses each year and continued to grow. Every year, we’ve grown our real estate business; our property management grew with all those properties we bought; our construction company grew; and we launched a title company to service all the title needs - every- thing serviced each other.” Wenner continues, “Around 2013, we really invested in scaling up on the operations side. We had 100 people in our construction company, 150-200 subcontractors working on our proper- ties, and 50 homes under renovation at all times. We asked ourselves, how do we scale from here? We decided to focus on two things –one was buying larger properties, such as big multi-family apartment communities, and also making loans to other real estate investors to buy single family homes.We started buying apartment commu- nities and making loans to other investors.We launched Direct Lending Partner, which is our other lending business.” Today, DLP has 200 employees across eight states, with assets in thirteen states. It owns