How to Become a Local Developer: Katie Neason on Infill and Taking the First Small Bet | EP #29

Episode Summary

Katie Neason’s development story starts with resistance.

 

She grew up in a real estate family and saw firsthand how painful the boom and bust cycles could be. Because of that, she did what many people do when they want stability. She chose the safe path. Corporate banking. Steady paycheck. Predictable future. But eventually that version of safety stopped feeling worth it. Missing her son’s first steps became the wake-up call that pushed her to build a different life.

 

Katie went full-time into real estate investing in 2015 and spent years flipping houses with her mom. They were good at it, and they enjoyed the creativity, but eventually realized they had built another job. They wanted to own projects they were proud of, places that added something meaningful to their community, and that vision led them into downtown development.

 

Their first project was not smooth. They bought three small lots near downtown Bryan and planned to build townhomes, only to find out the lots were no longer buildable after teardown, the zoning did not allow townhomes, and their proposed layout did not match the code. That first meeting with the city could have shut everything down. Instead, it opened the door. Because their project aligned with the city’s comprehensive plan, the city worked with them, supported rezoning, and even gave them part of the right of way, which increased the density from five townhomes to seven. That move ended up making the deal work financially.

 

That story says a lot about Katie’s philosophy. Development is not about forcing your will onto a site. It is about finding alignment. Build what you want, but build it where the city wants it too. She makes a strong case for reading the comp plan, understanding the zoning, and avoiding unnecessary friction.

 

She also talks candidly about financing, investor fit, and why not all money is good money. Katie prefers investors who know her well, trust how she operates, and are trying to preserve wealth rather than chase quick growth. That gives her projects room to breathe and keeps short-term pressure from driving bad decisions.

 

One of the most useful parts of the episode is her take on incremental development. Small projects can create multiple layers of forced appreciation. One successful infill project can make the next one stronger, and over time that concentrated effort can shift an entire area. That is what makes local development so powerful. It is not just about one building. It is about reweaving identity back into place.

 

Katie’s biggest message is simple. You do not need to start with confidence. You need to start with a different identity. The moment you begin seeing yourself as someone who can shape a place, your decisions change. And once that happens, the path opens up.

Timestamps

0:00 — Intro
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=0

1:42 — Katie’s Path Into Development
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=102

3:31 — Why She Left the Safe Path
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=211

7:40 — The City Said No, Then Helped
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=460

11:58 — Why City Trust Matters
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=718

12:28 — Financing the First Project
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=748

20:05 — Why You Need More Than One Bank
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=1205

22:26 — The Cottage Cluster Project
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=1346

29:22 — Shared Spaces Without an HOA
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=1762

30:12 — Climate, Parking, and Market Fit
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=1812

31:21 — Operating Partners vs Money Partners
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=1881

33:34 — Choosing the Right Investors
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=2014

35:36 — Why Not All Money Is Good Money
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=2136

39:15 — Why Local Development Matters
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=2355

41:08 — Incremental Development Strategy
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=2468

42:09 — Advice for Aspiring Developers
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=2529

49:06 — What Community-Driven Development Means
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=2946

52:07 — Current and Future Projects
https://youtu.be/kB001BFBFog?t=3127

🔗 Related Episodes

 

Community Development Over Capital: How Rachel DesRochers Builds Where It Counts | EP #45
A powerful reminder that you don’t need perfect capital to start. You need resourcefulness, creativity, and the willingness to move.

 

How to Start Real Estate Development: Steph Weber Bought the Land First and Built the Plan Later | EP #41
A real look at taking your first development deal from idea to execution without having everything figured out.

 

Small-Scale Development: How She Left Her Corporate Career and Built a Tiny Home Village | EP #39
Another path from traditional career to building a community-driven development project.

Full Transcript

Raphael Collazo (00:41)

Welcome to the Local Real Estate Developer Podcast. I'm your co-host, Raphael Collazo, located here in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm a commercial broker, investor, and local developer. And I'm here with my co-host, Kristi Kandel, developer extraordinaire. Good to see you, as always.

 

Kristi (00:55)

Hey, good to see you. Yeah, I'm a developer investor and I teach locals how to be developers in their own community. And today we have a phenomenal guest on who does all of that and some amazing developments in her own community. And very excited to have you on today. Welcome Katie Neason to the show.

 

Katie Neason (01:12)

Hey, great to be here.

 

Raphael Collazo (01:14)

Yeah, no, excited. We're excited to host you. And where are you tuning in from today?

 

Kristi (01:14)

Yes.

 

Katie Neason (01:18)

am in Bryan, Texas. So the MSA is Bryan College Station and we are known for being the home of Texas A and that's about it. We're about an hour and a half from Houston, hour and a half from Austin.

 

Raphael Collazo (01:23)

god.

 

Well, Texas is a big school. mean, how many students go there? 40,000?

 

Katie Neason (01:32)

It's the largest university in the country. Yeah. Yep.

 

Raphael Collazo (01:35)

really? They've eclipsed. I went to Arizona State. I know we held that title for a bit, and then Ohio State took

 

it, and then I guess now TechCNN. That's awesome. Yeah, hey, Hey, we're all very large. Let's say that. It's all very large. Once you get your own airport on campus, then I think there's a great.

 

Katie Neason (01:42)

We claim it.

 

Kristi (01:43)

Hehehehehe

 

Katie Neason (01:51)

Yeah. Yeah. It's like

 

the data center, right? Every new data center that's announced has to be the largest one ever. And so we're, you know, we're the same race. We got to have something. We're going to be the largest university in the country.

 

Raphael Collazo (01:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

That's

 

Kristi (02:03)

I love that.

 

Raphael Collazo (02:03)

Well, we're really excited to host you today and learn a little bit more about your story. So one of the things we like to ask our guests is to tell them a little bit more about their journey into development. So if you don't mind telling us a little bit about what your background is and how you got into development.

 

Katie Neason (02:21)

Sure. Well, I'm fourth generation Brianite. So born and raised here, multi-generational. I actually grew up in a real estate family. My mom was a realtor. My dad was in construction and I did not grow up thinking I wanted to be a developer. As a matter of fact, I got to see the boom and bust cycles of real estate and we went through the saving and loans crisis and I saw my parents lose basically everything they had built. So the one thing I knew is I did not want to be in real estate from that childhood trauma.

 

And so I did what society said. went and got a college degree, got a job in a safe corporate banking job. had that safe paycheck, the safe benefits, the safe life, safe future, until the safe job made me miss my son's first steps. And I thought, you know, I'm building a future, but it's somebody else's at my own expense. So I created a path to get the heck out of the W-2 world, went full-time real estate investing in 2015 and did that with flipping.

 

brought in my business partner, who's also my mom. And we flipped houses for well over a decade and we actually loved it. The problem was we just created a job for ourselves and knowing real estate is cyclical. We were like, what are we going to do next? So we thought, what kind of assets do we want to own? And we brainstormed and we came up with, we would love to own properties that we're proud of, that we would want to show off when people are in town, that are additive to the community and allow us to use our creativity, which is what we loved about

 

the flipping and that led us to downtown development. And that's how we just went all in and do absolutely nothing.

 

Raphael Collazo (03:53)

Well, yeah, know. And I think, too, regarding development, mean, you don't, it's not one of those things that has a playbook. And hopefully through this mediums like this one and other influencers in the space that you start learning a little bit more about the development space, but it's not something you typically learn in a textbook. So it's one of those things you just kind of have to dive in head first. And sometimes you learn hard lessons, but the hope is that over time you obviously it becomes a more efficient skill of yours.

 

Katie Neason (04:01)

Mm-hmm.

 

No.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, we tried to Google it. Of course, you know, the terminology isn't standard. So you don't even know what to Google when you're trying to get into it. So we met with two local, like subdivision developers in town, two older gentlemen and independently. And they both told us we were crazy and we're to lose everything. And so that gave us motivation. That was all we needed to hear to say, let me show you. Hold my beer, hold my beer and watch this. Yep. And so our very first, we bought these three tiny lots about

 

Kristi (04:40)

We'll prove you wrong. Yeah. ⁓

 

Raphael Collazo (04:42)

Hold my beer. I like that.

 

Kristi (04:43)

Huh.

 

Katie Neason (04:48)

three or four blocks from like the core of downtown. And we thought we're going to tear these down and build town homes. There had not been new construction in my downtown in my lifetime and I'm no spring chicken. So we were like, it has to work as a rental because we don't know what the price point is. We don't know if it'll appraise. We need to sell the first one cash. So we'll have a comp and you know, like all the craziness. So we go into the city with our grand vision and they were like, do you know when you tear those houses down, those lots are no longer buildable because they're so small.

 

And do you know that townhomes aren't allowed in the zoning and you're proposing five 20 foot white townhomes in this city ordinance minimum is 25. And dude, I was just like, all I literally said, well, that's stupid. That was all I could come up with. Cause I was thinking, what have we done? Right. But it worked out for us because we were building what the city wanted. And so they said, but

 

Kristi (05:36)

Right.

 

Katie Neason (05:41)

What if we work with you to make this happen? And so, yeah, that's how we got started was a big old like slap in the face to show us we really had no idea what we were doing.

 

Kristi (05:53)

Yeah, but that's something like you took the leap anyway. You just went ahead and said, hey, let's do it and we'll figure it out. And that's very much, I've gotten to know you, that's very much your mentality. Okay, well, especially have me, let me prove you wrong, but we will figure it out. There is always an answer. Keep asking why. Within that first meeting with them, did they, like, did they readily say, okay, maybe you guys would want to work with us? Did you guys have to come back to the table or just how did that dynamic work?

 

Katie Neason (05:55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

No, and I do want to, because it sounds like just go do it. It'll all work out. And I am not a proponent of that. Really. I mean, I was a banker, so I already was conservative background, right? I'd already seen how things go wrong. I was in a real estate family that went through bankruptcy. So we didn't just go in and see. We knew worst case scenario, we could sell those crap houses that we bought to a landlord who wanted that level of it wasn't us, but we knew we could sell it and at least

 

Kristi (06:22)

you

 

Katie Neason (06:45)

know, break even, maybe lose a little. So it wasn't like we were just like, it'll work out, let's just do it. But when we met with the city, no, it was to their benefit. They had already done their comprehensive plan, which I didn't even know what that was. And what we were building is exactly what the comprehensive plan said. So they literally said, hey, what if we support y'all in rezoning?

 

What if, at the time I probably thought that meant it would be rezoned, but you know, the city isn't the one who approves rezoning, right? It's the city council. But in our mind, what we heard was that they were going to rezone it and that they would allow for those 20 foot wide lots. If we would do some things, they wanted us to push the houses all the way up on the setbacks. So the parking was in the back and we're like, okay, yeah, that looks better. We'll totally do that. And they actually gave us land in the right of way. So we have really wide right of ways for fire protection back before the fire marshal.

 

Kristi (07:30)

Mmm.

 

Katie Neason (07:34)

well makes you do everything that's so stupid that we don't need the really wide right of ways anymore. So they gave us land. It let us put seven townhomes on there instead of five. Thank God, cause five turned out was break even. So all of our profit came from the city voluntarily giving us right of way. Cause we didn't know to ask for it. And so we were lucky that this we were doing exactly what they, I mean, they didn't do it cause we're cute, although we were and they'd obviously didn't do it.

 

Kristi (07:53)

Yeah.

 

Katie Neason (08:01)

I don't think they did it because they felt sorry for us because they don't care. they didn't do it because I was nice to them because I told them they were stupid. They totally did it because we were building what they wanted, where they wanted and our visions aligned. So it was the best benefit for everyone involved.

 

Kristi (08:15)

Can you, you said comp plan and then right away, can you break down what those two things are?

 

Katie Neason (08:19)

Yeah, so the comprehensive plan, every city in the country to my knowledge does one. It's a 20 year vision and it's kind of the biggest component is a land use map. And they're basically saying, what do we want built where as our city grows? And so now I tell everyone, get the comp plan, read it for the area that you want to build in. And like life's too short. If what you're wanting to build isn't what they want there, there are people who specialize in just doing that. In my opinion, life's too short.

 

I don't want to build what they want. I want to build what I want, but I want to build it where they want. So I look for where there's alignment. And then, you know, it's hard enough to work with the city when you're pulling in the same direction. Like my view is save yourself the pain and do not try and build something pulling in a direction they don't want. And then as far as the right of way, that's just the public space where the city builds their streets and puts in all of their infrastructure. And so for our right of way,

 

Kristi (08:49)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (09:16)

They had 80 foot wide right aways and for perspective a street is usually about 24 minimum of 24 foot wide. And then they have it for expansion or whatever. In this case, they had it for fire resistance so that it wouldn't jump the street. And so there it's common in our downtown to give away part of the right of way so that you can get more density. Cause that's what they're looking for in downtown.

 

Now, if I go to a different part of town and ask for a right of way, they're going to say no. And then I'm going to think, it's because my city doesn't want anything built here and they're so hard to work with. But the reality is it's because I'm trying to do something they don't want.

 

Raphael Collazo (09:50)

Yeah, couldn't agree more. And two, mean, I think that, you you found a lesson out early that most people don't find out until many, many years into it, where it's if you go with the path of progress or go with the flow of things, it makes it a lot easier as opposed to having to you have this vision of what you want there that may or may not align with the vision of what the city is wanting. And obviously, creates friction and especially early on in your

 

development career, you try to avoid friction as much as possible because friction can create conflict and conflict could lead to potential loss. And we're trying to avoid.

 

Katie Neason (10:25)

exactly.

 

Kristi (10:25)

Yeah,

 

I just got pulled in on a project in Florida and it was multifamily investors who tried their first development project. It's about three years in and they tried to build.

 

something that not only did the city not want, but the neighbors did not want. And as I'm getting up to speed trying to figure out, there any way to salvage this? I find this whole website and whole like uprising that the community has done to make sure that this will never get done. It will never get built. And I had a conversation with the neighbor the other day and she literally said, this is like a breath of fresh air talking to you. You're the first person who actually seems like they understand what's happening.

 

Katie Neason (10:50)

against them.

 

Kristi (11:04)

Like I am just trying to figure out if there is any way for them to break even and get out of this and sell it to even a future buyer and go. But it just, hate when I'm pulled, like when you come into a project, so they're ⁓ if you just would have asked some questions first and talked to the neighbors and talked to the community or known anything about the area, which we'll get into later, but you teach people to do it and they're.

 

Katie Neason (11:07)

Yeah.

 

You're so far gone.

 

Kristi (11:24)

community too because they know it and there's so much that you can gain from living in a community and developing in that community because of all the connections you have and what you know about it.

 

Katie Neason (11:35)

Totally. mean, the first, the best thing you can do is gain trust with your city. And the best way to do that is do what you say you're going to do. And I totally get it. Cause as an investor, ultimately we have to make money. And so when you're in the middle of a project, a lot of times you strip down all the beauty you wanted to put into it. Cause there's no money. And then when you're done and the city's like, that's not what we approve. Like we thought it was going to be this beautiful project and you made all these changes. And so then they start getting skeptical. You don't want to be that developer.

 

in your town. You want to be the one that when you're asking them to take a chance, they can say, well, they've always done what they said they were going to do in the past. Why won't they this time? And then there will be a project and we've had one where the neighborhood is going to be against it. So at least you have the city on your side when you get to that point. And now you're only really fighting one contingency versus the city's not happy, the neighborhood's not happy, and you're trying to push a project forward. So yeah.

 

Get the city on your side the best you can.

 

Raphael Collazo (12:37)

I couldn't agree more. regarding that first project you took on, so you mentioned how there hadn't been any real development in your downtown of significance, at least in quite some time. And you guys decided to jump headfirst into trying to develop a townhome product in that market. So can you walk us through the process of getting kind of everything situated and then ultimately

 

maybe share a little bit on the exit of that deal. Or maybe you guys still own it. Maybe you could share some insight on that.

 

Katie Neason (13:08)

Yeah, so on that specific project, we actually raised the money from outside investors, people that we know, we use the same investors, those guys are still in our projects today, not in that project, because we did sell. Because our deal is we sell anything we can deed single family, so that we can create pops of liquidity to put in as equity in anything that's multi-tenant. Ideally, we want to keep everything all the time.

 

But the reality is a healthier neighborhood is one that has both renters and home buyers. So that allows us to get home buyers in the neighborhood. Now, those home buyers that we built those townhomes for, they are the ones who fought us on our cottage cluster because they thought we were going to run the value of their homes that we built. you know, like it doesn't take very long for a person to become a NIMBY. But so on that project specifically, the investors were worried because we didn't have cops or anything. They didn't know what that was going to look like.

 

Raphael Collazo (13:36)

Mm.

 

Katie Neason (13:59)

So they wanted to do all cash, no bank debt, because it worked and this is always was a requirement when we flipped and still when we do developments, if we build something and the plan is to sell it, it has to at least break even as a rental. So that plan B is we can hold it until the market turns, because we know real estate, if you're in it for the long game, it will go up over time. The problem is when you're forced to sell it when you don't want to.

 

So that was our backup plan. So the investors are like, well, if there's no bank asking for a mortgage, there's not really a lot of trouble we can get into, but we might be stuck in it for a while. So it was seven town homes. What we did is we built the first three, all cash with the investor money. Once those were under contract or sold, we did the next.

 

Raphael Collazo (14:26)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (14:45)

and we just recycled that same money. So it took forever, you know, as far as a timeline goes, but it was what they were comfortable with. And then we split the profit on that 50-50. And so there had been, there was already momentum building in our downtown. So we weren't the first developers. We were just the first to do new construction housing. And so we just hadn't set the comps. But once that project was successful on that two block area, we've done.

 

four or five different ones. And it's because all the neighbors came to us and said, would you be interested in selling my lot or buying my lot? And we just slowly started acquiring it. And then we just build whatever makes sense for that lot and for the neighborhood. They don't always agree with us apparently, but. And because we're creatives, we don't want to do the same thing twice. So it's like we could have just kept building townhomes, but we're like, no, we did that.

 

Raphael Collazo (15:28)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (15:31)

Now we want to do a college cluster. built a mixed use in that neighborhood. We paid to have a huge drive by mural done on a building we didn't even own. We put a call out for five artists across the state and we selected five of them and they painted each one painted an 18 by 25 foot mural and it was the first public art. So like we're trying to give back. Obviously it's the benefit for the people who buy the townhomes because now instead of looking at a tilt up concrete wall, they're looking at a mural. But yet what we learned was if we can

 

Kristi (15:56)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (15:59)

concentrate our development in a certain area, every project makes the next one appreciate. So those first townhomes, there wasn't a ton of margin, but then the next project made those go up and the project we did. And then the next one, you know, it just keeps building and it's like appreciation on steroids, which is what I love about small infill development is that you can create two different layers of forced appreciation.

 

Raphael Collazo (16:04)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kristi (16:22)

And when you guys first went out of question about the lenders for did you guys get construction loans for that one and.

 

Katie Neason (16:28)

That

 

one we didn't because the investors wanted to do all cash. Now that's the only project we've ever done all cash. Everything else we've leveraged. And even the next phase when we bought across the screen and did that, we leveraged it because everyone had a better level of confidence. And all of our loans have come from commercial, regional or local banks who will do, you know, back then 80, 85%. Now it's more like 75, 80%.

 

Kristi (16:32)

Okay.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (16:54)

but and then we just raised the equity generally from investors on build to sell, it's almost always raised equity. And then on anything multi-tenant that we want to keep, we want to be a hundred percent owner, but like life's too short for us to wait to get a hundred percent of the equity. So we always put money in and we put in as much as we can. Cause to me, a nightmare is owning 5 % of a thousand doors. God bless the people who do that, but not, I don't want to do that. That's like having all those investors who are just, you're just a, you know,

 

Raphael Collazo (17:08)

Thank

 

Katie Neason (17:23)

They're all your employer. Exactly. So we want to have, I mean, we only have, think like five investors in all of our projects. And so we want to own as at least 50%, but as much as possible in every deal.

 

Kristi (17:23)

You created another job. Yeah. Lots of bosses.

 

Raphael Collazo (17:25)

Yeah.

 

That's great.

 

Kristi (17:37)

And did you find,

 

did your flipping experience help you with the loans? Did the banks just see, you've already done this project? Like how did that transition for the bank part? Because that's a big question a lot of people ask. Why would a bank give me this money?

 

Katie Neason (17:49)

I know.

 

I know it is curious. I get that question all the time. And I have not had a lot of issues getting commercial bank debt and even without jobs. And when we were doing this full time, I think part of the reason is maybe because I was a banker. So I'm presenting it in a way that they probably understand, even though I didn't really do real estate lending. did commercial working lines of credit, but like I get it philosophically. We aren't trying to be super creative. You know, we kind of fit in the box and

 

probably to our detriment because I knew more than I should have had I not known anything. I probably could have gotten a lot better deals, but I was just like, no, this is what banks do. And we haven't had a lot of trouble. Now, my banking advice is to be a bank whore. So I want to have as many banking relationships as possible because the reality is coming from the banking world, I totally know, it doesn't matter how great your relationship is, even with the market president, he has a legal lending limit and past that, he doesn't make those decisions.

 

So as you build your relationship with the bank, it actually gets harder and harder to underwrite deals instead of easier and easier because now they're dealing with their internal legal lending limits. And the more loan you have with them, the harder and the more levels of approval they have to have. So I say go in and find out what the legal lending limits is for whoever your best relationship is with and go up to that and then go on to the next bank because the higher you go, the harder it gets. And then the...

 

Other benefit is when you're in like the recession that we had for the all the apartment buildings, a lot of the banks were like, okay, we're putting a pause on any new relationships. If you don't have a relationship with us right now, like we're not bringing on new relationships until we figure out where this is all going. Well, we were doing a project right then.

 

So at least I had five banks to talk to because we had five different banking relationships. So I could still use them to compete against each other where if we only had one banking relationship and they didn't want to do the deal, we would have been screwed because other banks were saying, we're just not doing anything right now. So I'm a fan as an ex-banker to be a bank whore.

 

Raphael Collazo (19:49)

Well, and

 

to your point as well, mean, each bank has their own appetite depending on what the project is too. So, I mean, I know local banks that they're like, hey, we're not touching this product type. Hospitality has been one that's been kind of hit or miss with a lot of lenders, but I know a local lender that loves it, right? They're really looking for those types of opportunities. And there's a lot of lenders out there that don't like ground up construction. And there's others that are more open to that and they have an appetite for that. So.

 

Katie Neason (19:55)

Right.

 

Raphael Collazo (20:16)

even outside of just the relationship piece, it's different banks have different appetites for different products. I think and it exactly it changes. And just because one bank is is gung-ho to do deals this year, maybe they over leveraged in a certain category. And all of sudden, their their board of directors gets together, looks at the balance sheet and say, we're overexposed in this space and we're no longer going to be issuing loans. Or if we're issuing loans, we're not going to be competitive, you know, that sort of thing. So it changes.

 

Katie Neason (20:16)

Yeah. Yep.

 

And it can change. So I'll tell you. Yeah.

 

Kristi (20:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (20:45)

Yeah.

 

Raphael Collazo (20:45)

It

 

changes.

 

Katie Neason (21:22)

Yeah. We had this nightmare. Exactly. We were supposed to be closing our construction loan for a three story mixed use building. was 20 residential lofts and six commercial spaces. And the appraisal was done. Loan docs were like, where are the loan docs? are the loan docs? When are we closing? Like we're past supposed to close. And it was like, the

 

president or whoever the final approval is, is on a cruise with this family is inaccessible next week. Next week comes I'm like, dude, what's going on? Finally, I was like, I know enough about banking to know something is going on and they are not telling me. So I called the loan officer. I'm like, John, just tell me what is going on. Well, the bank had put a moratorium on all multifamily in Bryan College station because there had been just a huge amount of the corporate student housing projects done at campus.

 

And even though they had been fighting and the reason they hadn't told me is they were fighting this whole time. Like this isn't student housing, this isn't, but it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, the moratorium was no multifamily. And because it had 20 residential lofts, they said we can't do it. Now they worked with this, they assigned the appraiser to the new bank and helped and were very helpful in getting the next bank. But here I am two weeks past supposed to be breaking ground, starting an entire new banking relationship to get it closed.

 

And that was in the moment, you know, when we started it, they wanted it. And by the time it was supposed to close, they couldn't even get it closed, even though we had a relationship, you know, so it's a great example of you just gotta cover yourself.

 

Raphael Collazo (22:51)

Absolutely. Yeah, because you don't want to put yourself in a position to where, to your point, you had five other relationships you already had established. So you're able to kind of pivot and say, you know what, this sucks because it's delayed us and it potentially could cause some issues, but I'm going to pivot to this other person that I've already built relationships with and let's, let's hit the ground running with them and try to get this squared away. Whereas if you didn't have those relationships, you could be between a rock and a hard place. And especially when you're dealing with other people's money, creates this whole additional layer of complexity, you know.

 

Katie Neason (23:20)

Exactly,

 

exactly. So yeah, that's my banking stories.

 

Raphael Collazo (23:23)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, so one of the things I'm kind of curious about is, you know, regarding that project, so you said you had five units to essentially break even. So really, you made your money on the fifth or sixth. And then you took that money and parlayed it into a project of cottages, you said.

 

Katie Neason (23:42)

Yeah. So I mean, you know, money's fungible, but then that actually went into townhomes across the street. And then next to that, it was actually a project. was one of our latest projects was the cottage cluster. And it was just six houses all facing inward. And when we tried to do this, the city has an ordinance that every, and most cities have this unless they've adopted some sort of cottage cluster ordinance.

 

The standard ordinance is every lot has to touch public right of way so that you don't end up with landlocked lots. Well, if you build a cottage cluster, unless you do a lot of like little skinny gerrymandering, you're not gonna, you're gonna have lots that are landlocked, right? And so what I sent this to my civil engineer and said, hey, I want to propose this to the city. And he was like, no, they're never going to go for that. An engineer is great because they think in black and white lines, not in creative boxes.

 

So you have to have an engineer that says, yeah, you're probably going to look dumb when they tell you no, but you got to submit it anyway. And some engineers cannot get there. But I have an engineer here who knows she's going to do crazy stuff. The city knows she's going to do crazy stuff. But I had asked the city, would they do this? It would have to be a PD because it doesn't fit within any zoning. And they said, well, because you guys have done so many projects and you've done what you've done, we'll try it.

 

because it's called out in the comprehensive plan to do cottage clusters, but there's zero vehicle to actually be able to execute on it. So they were like, let's try this. So it was just six little houses. The courtyard is only like 30 foot wide. was only an 8,500 square foot lot. It's very small corner lot. And then it has shared parking. yeah, but it was next to the townhomes that we did. And they were convinced that it was basically gonna be low income housing, even though it sold for more price per square foot than any of their houses.

 

The houses were a lot smaller, so the final price point was less. But now that it's done, we haven't heard any complaints. And it turned out better than I thought. It feels so good. I'm like, I want to do more of this. But in the middle of it, we had a lot come up, and we went to the city, and we said, hey, would y'all support this? And they were like, no.

 

We told you we wanted to see one completed before we decided. So we weren't able to execute on that lot. So now that it's done and I think everyone's happy, we're like, how can we find another lot to be able to do another cottage cluster? Because it just feels so good and so different.

 

Kristi (26:06)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, and so you said PD, so plan development. And then when you guys did that, did you, are they, is each house on its own lot then so they can have separate owners and then they have common area or how did that part work?

 

Katie Neason (26:14)

Plan development, yes.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah. So can work however you want how we did it. I'm a fan of if you don't have to have an HOA on a small development project, don't because if you think about an HOA requires like a president, a vice president, a secretary, and maybe one and a treasurer. So it has to have four people has to in order to exist. Well, if you have six townhomes, four of those six people have to be on this board, right? And it's, just a nightmare and it's expensive for such a small group.

 

So the only thing that is shared is the parking, but it's not shared land, it's shared access. Every piece of dirt belongs to a homeowner. So the lots go to the middle of the courtyard, so everybody owns a piece of that courtyard. There is no property that no one owns and they just all benefit from. On the parking, there's parking on every lot.

 

but then we filed a shared access agreement so anybody can park in any of those parking spots. And because they're detached cottage clusters, we're not even dealing with shared roofs or shared exteriors. It's only landscaping and everyone technically owns it, but we're like, y'all should just rotate and have one person do all the landscaping and just pay them one sixth of the time, you know, like just go around and everything. I mean, I don't know actually what they're doing, but that was what we recommended. They may all have their own landscape guy. I don't know. And he just does their property lines.

 

Kristi (27:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (27:49)

But in this subdivision, because it's so small, everyone physically owns a piece of that property in private property, no HOA common area.

 

Kristi (27:59)

I I like the fact that what you just described was, don't know, be neighborly, talk to your neighbors, figure it out yourselves. Why does the government have to tell you what to do?

 

Raphael Collazo (28:04)

Thank

 

Katie Neason (28:06)

I mean, if you're in a courtyard and your houses are facing each other, you've got to be a person who likes other people, right? Cause you're not going to live in that environment if you don't want neighbors. And so it's the perfect environment to foster community rather than, yeah, having some HOA or third party manager tell the person across the way from you that you're upset at them. Like just go talk to them.

 

Kristi (28:12)

Mm-hmm.

 

Raphael Collazo (28:13)

Yeah.

 

Kristi (28:31)

was stupid.

 

Raphael Collazo (28:32)

So with parking, I'm kind of curious, you said each individual lot has its own separate parking. is the way that the properties are oriented, that the parking is it behind the properties themselves, like the actual physical buildings? Or is there kind of like a, you know how you have a strip center, you have like the main section, and then you have like shared parking kind of running perpendicular? ⁓

 

Katie Neason (28:53)

Yeah, okay, so

 

it's a corner lot. I'm gonna try to visually explain this to you. Each lot does not have its own parking because two of the six lots are landlocked, so you couldn't get to it with the car if you wanted to. But on one side of the lot, it is head-in parking, and I can't remember now. I we have a total of 11 spots, and I think six of them are that head-in parking. Those are all on private property, but that parking is intended for the whole subdivision.

 

Raphael Collazo (29:14)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (29:20)

So even though it's on private property, it's shared access. So each lot does not have its own parking. And then on the other side, we put in public street parking. So the city allowed for basically four parallel parking spots that are technically public parking and anyone can park there. But because they're right in front of this development, no one really knows that. So the owners park there, but technically it is public parking and anyone could park there.

 

Raphael Collazo (29:31)

Hmm.

 

Kristi (29:43)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (29:48)

but all the other houses have their own parking. And so, yeah, it's really for that development.

 

Kristi (29:51)

Did you see that

 

impact, like either the sale of the property or property taxes, or is it such a small amount of land it's kind of nominal and...

 

Katie Neason (30:00)

Yeah, I mean the thing we are most nervous about is, you we're in Texas and people like big spaces and everybody's going to have a car. And we were worried about like the people who aren't where the parking isn't touching their property. Like they have to walk through into their house. And even though it's only like, you know, a tiny amount of distance, it's not typical. And would people do that? So we were nervous, but it never came up once when we were selling it. Nobody said, we can't do that parking or you're like.

 

Kristi (30:05)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (30:27)

that the configuration of it was never the issue because the people who looked at it were like, my gosh, this is cool, right? Anyone who isn't interested in that configuration, they're not looking at it to start with. So yeah, we had no issues about the parking or who nobody was like, cause sometimes we get that on the commercial side. Can we have a reserve parking sign? You know, I'm always like, no, but they didn't even ask that. Like nobody said, which spot is mine? Like it just was a non-issue. I was worried it would be an issue, but it was a total non-issue.

 

Kristi (30:33)

Mm-hmm.

 

Raphael Collazo (30:38)

Mm-hmm.

 

And with with maintenance of the parking lot, there how does that work? Is it kind of shared amongst the the tenants or the owners, I should say?

 

Katie Neason (31:00)

I mean, yeah,

 

so it's a paved, not paved, it's concrete paved parking lot. And at some point, 30, 40, 50 years from now, it will be a problem and the neighbors have to figure it out and work it out. And that is the only reason why one might say we should have an HOA. And the city would probably say you should have an HOA. My belief is that is not worth having the headache of 30 years of an HOA to figure out what we're gonna do in the future.

 

Raphael Collazo (31:05)

good. Well, thanks.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (31:27)

Everyone has their own irrigation, so there's not even a common irrigation system. Like there are no other shared amenities. And I'm like, yeah, it's going to suck. They're going to have to figure it out, but they will.

 

Raphael Collazo (31:31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kristi (31:32)

Yeah.

 

Raphael Collazo (31:37)

Yeah. yeah.

 

No, for sure. And, you know, I would, I don't know the, the, the weather in college station, but I'd imagine it's probably decently nice. So even in the winter time, when you have to go to get your car, then it's probably not a big concern. know here I'm located in Louisville, Kentucky, and we're not super cold in the winter, but we do get, you know, snow and ice and such. so having a detached or having a non covered parking is definitely a problem for a lot of people. So

 

Katie Neason (32:00)

is a big deal.

 

We have one season here and it's hot as hell. So yes. Yeah.

 

Raphael Collazo (32:05)

Exactly. So that helps. lived in Phoenix. I lived in Phoenix for a long time. And that's how it was too.

 

It ranges from really nice in the winter to God, why did I choose to live in Phoenix in July?

 

Katie Neason (32:16)

Exactly.

 

So in Texas, it's always hot except February we have ice and then you don't worry about going to your car because every single thing will shut down. There will be nothing operable during bad weather.

 

Kristi (32:26)

We got down to 37 here in Fort Myers Beach the other day and I was just like, no one was out. My dog went on the shortest little walk and no one was out and I'm like, no, this is when we hibernate.

 

Katie Neason (32:36)

Yeah.

 

Kristi (32:37)

I love that. So you've talked about a couple of the projects and talked about having some different partners that you brought in and working with your mom. How have partnerships evolved for you and what's your stance in general? Because I was just talking to someone last night who's like, I do my own smaller residential, but I know if I need to step up my game and he wants to get into boutique hotels, I'm going to need partners and it gives me anxiety.

 

Katie Neason (32:51)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, so it's as far as someone is separated out as partners like operating partners and then money partners as two different ones. I am the kind of person who wears my emotions on my sleeve, which means I don't do good by myself because I'm up and down, right? I need someone to balance me out and so it's great that it's my mom because she knows that as long as it's my ideal, I love it.

 

and she will manipulate me to make it think it's my idea and I know she's doing it and I'm okay with that. So it's worked because we can work well together. And then we have one other investor in town that's a real estate investor and we'll team up on some projects. Everything else is just mom and I as the operating partner and then the financial investors. And I do have lots of opinions and strong opinions on financial partners. And that is I do not take money

 

from anyone I do not know very well and who does not know me very well. Not that you can't, I don't want to. I am a quirky personality. I'm the youngest, I'm spoiled and I'm opinionated. And so you need to work well with that. And I want all of my investors except for one, I've known over 20 years. Some of them I worked for as W2, they sell their company and now they're looking for a place. So, you know, like I know them really well.

 

I have people reach out to me consistently on Instagram. I had someone fly in from Canada. I thought he just wanted to come see my projects. And I was like, sure. He's like, I'm going to be in Texas. I'm like, no problem. I take them all around. And when he leaves, he's like, okay, so here's everything I need from you so that I'll be ready to invest in your next project. I was like, I didn't know that's why you're here. I don't take money from people. I don't know. you know, and so I, I just believe that I want you to know how I operate.

 

Raphael Collazo (34:45)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (34:50)

and you know and I know who you are. The other thing is I only take money from people who are trying to maintain their wealth. They're not trying to grow their wealth. So they're at the phase of life where they're just looking for assets that are going to hold value or appreciate their money. They don't need the money. They're not in the face like I'm in the phase of life where I'm still trying to grow wealth. So I would not be an investor for my projects, right? I'm just want the people who don't need their money back because I want to be in it as long as possible.

 

with incremental development. I don't know how it's going to turn out. I don't know how long it's going to take to appreciate. I don't know if we'll hold it forever. I don't know when the next opportunity is to sell it. So on those projects, I just want them to know we may be in this forever and to be okay with that. So those are two main things that I look for whenever I'm looking for an investor.

 

Kristi (35:36)

I absolutely love that because you're taking the pressure off. You're not just trying to take the money to take the money. like, no, I need you to be aligned with what I'm doing because this is already stressful and complicated enough that I don't want to be forced into a bad decision later. And being able to have those boundaries and that clarity is huge.

 

Katie Neason (35:53)

Yeah.

 

And the reality is stuff goes wrong and real estate is a cycle. There will be a time and the, you know, the apartment people are in that cycle right now. There will be a time when the cycle sucks. want investors who've been through cycles because we have everyone who's been investing for like the last 15 years. They may verbally tell you they understand. They don't understand. And so you're going to end up with mud on your face and maybe it was your fault. And if so, you know, shame on you, but some of it is.

 

Kristi (35:56)

Yeah.

 

Katie Neason (36:23)

It's just the cycle. And I want people who understand that and have actually been through it so that we know what to expect when they, we know when, when those tough times come. Like one of my investors told me once, cause I was like my first investor, it's like, I'm not taking your money. He actually volunteered as I seem to look at my plan and he goes, Hey, if you do this, can I invest in it? I was like, hell no. And he goes, why not? I was like, dude, I'm not going to take your money. Like, what if I lose it? And he goes,

 

Kristi (36:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (36:51)

So you think I'm not sophisticated enough to invest my own money that I need you to decide whether or not I should. And he was making a point and he did, I remember it very well. But what he told me was, look, if I lose my money on your project, it will be because there was just nothing we can do. I am completely confident it will not be because you didn't try and do everything that you could. And I like, that's the kind of, when he said that,

 

Kristi (36:54)

Ha ha!

 

Raphael Collazo (36:54)

Thank

 

Katie Neason (37:19)

Yeah, when he said that, was like, that is now the filter that I use for all of my investors. If you don't have that level of belief in me, and dude, I totally get it. I don't know if I would have that level of belief in me, but if you don't, then I'm probably not the right person for you to invest with.

 

Raphael Collazo (37:19)

Yeah.

 

Well, too, also, that's a phenomenal point. And I think that it's good to kind of make the point that not all money is good money. Just because you can raise the money from someone doesn't mean you should take the money, because I know a lot of people that have raised money from quote unquote institutional investors. And what ends up happening is when things are going good, things are going good. But if things start to go sideways, you lose control. Like they will make sure that their money is paid back. You know, it creates this this

 

Katie Neason (37:43)

As you should. Exactly.

 

Kristi (37:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (38:03)

Yeah.

 

Raphael Collazo (38:04)

this dynamic where your whole approach to how you develop or the whole approach about how your investment thesis shifts, because now it's, have to make sure that this one person, they'll essentially become the drivers of the ship. And in those instances, I mean, that may work. in some of these projects, and you're willing to kind of have that be the way that you approach it, then sure, as long as you understand that that's going to happen, then.

 

Katie Neason (38:17)

Exactly.

 

Right.

 

Raphael Collazo (38:28)

power to you, but

 

in a lot of these instances that you're describing, you probably want to make sure that you're able to guide the ship and you're not going to make unreasonable decisions. You're just, we just want to be able to have the ability to do it, the things you need to do. So.

 

Katie Neason (38:40)

Exactly. yeah.

 

Institutional money is a whole nother game, man. I mean, my projects wouldn't attract institutional money anyway. They're so small in scale, but yeah, that's a deal where they have the upper hand in any contract that you sign and you just need to be fully aware of that. And I'm like, if you tell me to breathe right now, I'm going to hold my breath. Like, don't tell me what to do. And so I am not going to sign an agreement like that.

 

Raphael Collazo (38:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, exactly. I get it. I don't blame you. I'm the similar type of mindset where it's like,

 

just don't. mean, obviously, you would never make a decision that would hurt someone that you're trying to work with as far as raising money. at the end of the day, it's like, don't want someone else telling you, hey, this is what you need to do, especially because you're the one who's in it day to day. You're the one who's

 

Katie Neason (39:19)

in it.

 

Kristi (39:20)

Mm-hmm.

 

Raphael Collazo (39:20)

looking at everything and has the best information and the best reasoning based on your experience to make the right decision. So when you have a third party coming in, and I've heard horror stories where an asset's been performing and for whatever reason, the institutional investor, they get together, look at their balance sheet and they say, well, we're over leveraged in this area. And then they have this clause within a contract and they say, hey, you we're over leveraged in hospitality. This seems to be performing, but we need you to sell it or we need to kind of get,

 

Katie Neason (39:27)

Right.

 

Raphael Collazo (39:49)

this off our books, and maybe you're not fully completed with your value add strategy and now you sell it a loss and people get upset. mean, again, you never know what could happen. And honestly, I don't have experience on the institutional side, but I've read horror stories online about it.

 

Katie Neason (39:59)

Right.

 

Yeah, totally. And you know, we're still, go ahead.

 

Kristi (40:05)

And that's,

 

I was just gonna say that's why we need more local developers and more locals doing the projects. You don't have to do the skyscraper. You can do these very feasible cottage clusters, townhomes, mixed use developments in your community and you're not only getting the financial impact in return, but like you said, you're gonna hold onto it longer to make sure it gets to its value and that comps come, but you're living in that community. So you're already benefiting from elevating your community.

 

Raphael Collazo (40:14)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (40:31)

Yeah, I always tell people there's two things that will make you think about a project very differently. One is signing a personal guarantee. Don't give me advice if you haven't signed a personal guarantee. And two, if you are sitting down at a restaurant and one of your tenants may be in that restaurant with you, you will act very differently than if you're investing in some state, you know, two over and you're never gonna have the potential to interact with those people.

 

It doesn't mean you're gonna be better or worse, but I can ensure you, you're going to be different. And with my profile on Instagram, many of the investors, mean, many of the tenants, I don't know them, but they know me. They'll recognize me. They're not afraid to come up to me. It doesn't mean we're perfect, but it also makes us act with their best interest in mind, because I'm probably gonna run into them in downtown. mean, my whole investing area is a 15 by five block area. So I am gonna run into...

 

Raphael Collazo (41:12)

Hmm.

 

Katie Neason (41:27)

the business owners and the residents who live there. And I just think that makes you a better developer. And that's why I'm such a fan of local development. Also, it lowers your risk. If I can know the market better than any institutional investor, and that's where you should be, you should know the market better than anyone else in the world. You are only going to do that in a market that you live in, that you interact with, and that you are walking regularly. Otherwise, I think development is too risky.

 

I also believe don't do one project that can take you down. That means your first project's gonna be small, and then the next one can be bigger, and the next one can be bigger. But my goal is to never do one project that if it goes down, because we are signing personal guarantees. It's not like the loans for the apartment buildings, know, even though a lot of them may realize it's not as unguaranteed as they thought, but it's not like that. Like you're personally signing that guarantee. So every project you do puts at risk every other project you've done.

 

So I want to layer it so that not one project can bring down the whole portfolio. And you're able to do that with small scale incremental development.

 

Raphael Collazo (42:32)

Definitely. No, I couldn't agree more. That's some great advice. And obviously, understanding your market is another piece of great advice that is going to be helpful for a lot of people that are listening to this podcast. so just to give you an idea of the people that tend to listen to this podcast are these individuals who were in a similar position to what you were before, where either they're A, working at a W2 job and they're wanting to take down their first development project, or they themselves have

 

Kristi (42:33)

Boom. Love it.

 

Raphael Collazo (42:58)

you know, kind of made the leap and got it into real estate and they, you know, they see a building as they're driving by every day going home and they say, wow, there's something cool that could happen here. And all it's going to, what it needs needs is someone with vision to be able to make it happen. So for those individuals who are looking to take down their first development, I mean, you've already shared a lot of great advice. I'm just kind of curious as to what would be a one piece of advice that you think above all else would be a benefit for those individuals.

 

Katie Neason (43:25)

Yeah, so my recommendation, I was actually just coaching some in-field developers in Lafayette, Louisiana, and this question came up. I was like, you know, the one thing that you can do is get around people who make the next step feel easy. If you are taking advice from people who have never done what you're doing and are sharing with you all the things that are going wrong, you will only see things that can go wrong.

 

If you get around people and it doesn't even have to be that they're doing exactly what you're doing, but they're of the mindset where they are high achievers, they are doing things and they make growth feel easy, you will start seeing the opportunity. You have to do whatever it takes to get yourself around the people that make the next step feel easy. That way you're not reliant upon yourself when you don't know anything because there's two types of people.

 

There's a type of person who's like the sky is falling, this will never work, it's not for me, all I can see are things that are gonna go bad. And then there's the type of person who's like, I can do anything and they just jump and then they get themselves into trouble because they didn't do enough to know the next step was safe. And so you're gonna be on one of those two ends of the spectrum. When you don't know anything, you don't wanna be the smart person you're relying on. You want to be around people who can kind of keep you in check one way or the other depending on your personality type.

 

Raphael Collazo (44:46)

Yeah, no, I think that's great advice and finding, you know, regarding even partnerships, you know, having two people that have very similar skill sets or very similar mindsets can be a benefit at times. But sometimes, you know, let's say you get two people in the room that are very optimistic about everything. And they're the way you describe where they just take the next step and they figure it out as they go. That could that could be positive in a lot of ways, but then they don't really think through downside risk and they don't really think through how to best

 

approach a project process to de risk something. And that could potentially lead to issues. Whereas if you can team up with someone who doesn't isn't necessarily a person who just const like is frozen by fear when it comes to risk, but someone who is more analytical in that respect, and can understand the different pitfalls that could come around the corner. I think it really does make for a good potential partnership as long as the communication is there and

 

Kristi (45:17)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (45:18)

Exactly.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Raphael Collazo (45:42)

you're able to come to resolutions together. And that's easier said than done, but oftentimes that you need someone like that in your corner, you know.

 

Katie Neason (45:45)

Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

 

And it doesn't even have to be partners. I mean, if you're just around other people, because you know, the thing I try to avoid is I call it like the headline story. I don't want to do something that tomorrow morning, if I see it in the headline, I'm going to be like, that was stupid. You know, whatever it is, personal or business wise. But sometimes if you don't know what you don't know, you don't realize you're creating a headline story.

 

Raphael Collazo (45:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (46:12)

where someone who's done it a lot is gonna be like, hey, did you think about this? And you're like, no, I didn't even know I should. But if you're around those kinds of people, they can help you think about things or help you say, dude, I get your fear. The whole toilet in the middle of the night thing, right? Like that's the thing with the rental that everyone brings up. Anyone who's done it before is gonna say, yeah, it could happen. Probably not going to, but you're either the person who's paralyzed by fear because you're afraid that's gonna happen, or you're the person who's like, nah, nothing will go wrong. It'll be fine. But if you just have someone who's been through it,

 

Raphael Collazo (46:26)

Yeah.

 

Kristi (46:35)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (46:41)

They can give you a realistic level of how much skepticism you should actually have based on experience, not based on emotions.

 

Raphael Collazo (46:50)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kristi (46:51)

Yep.

 

And like you said earlier with your investor, he's been through the first one who taught you, he's been through so many cycles. And that's where I feel fortunate early in my career. I had people that were 20 to 40 years older than me guiding me and mentoring me. And I remember we walked out of a city meeting where they just killed our project for undergrounding power lines. And like we'd already spent 250,000 and now we had an extra 200,000 of costs. And I'm like, my gosh, this is the end of the world. And Vasanthi just looked at me. She's like, we're going to find a way.

 

She's like, we're gonna come back, we're gonna digest it, we're gonna look at it from all the different angles and we found a way to go back and show the hardship and gotta keep them up and it was just like, okay. So having those mentors in your corner and like you said, it can just be anyone, a phone, a friend that you have, it doesn't have to be an official mentor but just not being afraid to be somewhat vulnerable and just asking questions and going, I don't know this.

 

And I mean, okay, if you're scared at first, throw it into chat, GPT or perplexity and start to get the lingo and then go talk to someone who knows and you will have enough of a baseline, but ask all the questions. It is not worth the time and money lost and the gray hairs and wrinkles for just trying to figure it out.

 

Katie Neason (47:56)

Exactly. Well,

 

and Kristi, you and I met in a mastermind, right? And it's a mastermind where you and I are the only developers, you know? It's not like a mastermind for developers. It's a mastermind for investors. These are knowledgeable action item, action taking people. And so I can bounce ideas off of them. They don't need to do development to be able to help me assess whatever my problem is. And that's why I'm like, just get in the room, whatever it takes, get yourself in the room with

 

with people who can help you solve problems and make this next step feel easy. I mean, that is my biggest piece of advice. I came from a mom who is fiercely independent. I'm all girls. It's me and my two sisters. She raised us fiercely independent. And I grew up that way. And I was like, I don't need anybody to tell me what to do. Why would I get around somebody else? I can do it if they can do it. And it wasn't until COVID when we're all sitting around thinking too much. I was like, you know, I feel like I've at this level forever. And I just make excuses about why I'm not going to the next level.

 

And that's when I was like, for the next year, all I'm going to do is join every mastermind that comes up. And I joined the one that we ended up meeting in. I joined GoBundance for women. Like I joined all of them and I said, I'm going to do it for one year. And then at the end of the year, I'm going to see which one had the biggest impact on my life. And I'm going to table the rest of them and just move forward with those one or two. I am telling you, it has been life changing. You can be fiercely independent and still be in the room with really smart people and

 

Both of them have their strengths.

 

Kristi (49:26)

Yeah, I was just talking to someone because I had done maybe in June or July, went to one of Cody Sanchez's weekend events and then her joined her boardroom and it was not necessarily because I'm probably never going to have a boring business because I can't help but start companies and do development. But it was being in the room with so many fired up entrepreneurs, business owners who have big ideas but then know how to break it down and know how to execute. And it's like, no, I just wanted more people like this to be around. I wanted people who understood this and can

 

Katie Neason (49:31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Right?

 

Yes.

 

Kristi (49:54)

break it down in all the ways. So yeah, if you don't have that, you can find it online. Ideally it's in person because it is just so much better, but yeah.

 

Katie Neason (50:01)

So different.

 

Yeah. Do what it takes to get there.

 

Raphael Collazo (50:04)

Definitely. So one of the things we typically like to ask the guests is, what does community-driven development mean to you? Because I mean, that's kind of a term that has been thrown around, but I think it can mean different things to different people. So it'd be kind of interesting to hear your take on it.

 

Katie Neason (50:22)

Yeah, so this is coming from a fiercely independent person who's not really great with collaboration, but no, to me, it's merging profit with purpose while reweaving identity back into place. So the development pattern that we've taken has allowed all these developments that create places we're all trying to escape from. Like we're all just like, when is the vacation so I can get the hell out of here? To me, whenever we weave identity back into our place,

 

and we do that profitably, we are creating places people actually want to be, not places they're trying to escape from. And so whenever something goes up and you're like, that didn't feel very good. It's like, that is what we are building over and over again. I grew up here in Brian College Station and I remember the mantra when I was in college, was if we can hit the right demographic and population metrics, we will finally be able to get all of the national chains and we will have made it as a city.

 

We thought that sameness was going to make us special and all it did was make us like every other city. And we've all these cities have lost their identity. So to me, it's how do we build identity and uniqueness back into our community? So not only do visitors want to be there, but the people who live there actually want to be there.

 

Kristi (51:43)

100%. I was just driving out in an area where we're going to do a potential development. And I was like, I know this massive track development after track development by shopping center with national tenants. And yeah, it has everything that you want, but there is no soul there. There is absolutely no soul. And that's ideally the component we're going to add back into this to be like, what the hell is happening? Like we are losing ourselves in our communities by doing this. So.

 

Katie Neason (52:08)

Yeah, you never hear anybody say, my God, I just cannot wait to go and visit that strip center in Houston on my next vacation, right? Like nobody's saying that. So why aren't we building places that we long to go and visit? We can, like we can do that. We used to do that. The world has done it for thousands of years. Just us and our American genius decided since World War II that there's this other. Yeah, Yes.

 

Kristi (52:15)

No.

 

white picket fences and giant lots and suburbia hell and you have to drive forever to get to your neighbor and there are

 

no third places anymore. I could get on a soapbox. Yeah.

 

Katie Neason (52:37)

Yes, and we can do it and we have done it, but no

 

one has stopped. Well, maybe we're starting to stop now and said just because we can, just like you said with money, just because we can build this way, should we build this way? And I'm just thankful that right now there seems to be a growing momentum of people questioning it and thinking about it and it will build momentum. 50 years from now, I'm pretty sure everyone will realize our development pattern is stupid, but we're just in the beginning phases to help them realize that.

 

Kristi (53:05)

Yep,

 

yep, and we're the stubborn enough ones that are willing to take our knocks and wait long enough and fight uphill battles and going, bring it on. I love that. Yes, it does. So what future projects do you have or did you just wrap up that you're excited about so far?

 

Katie Neason (53:08)

To do it. ⁓ Yep. Yep. Takes a few crazies.

 

Yeah, we just wrapped up a three story mix use building that has a whole Miami Beach, South Beach vibe that we're totally in love with every project. I feel like it's our favorite project, but no, this one really is our favorite project. just, we just, thank you. We just bought it online in October. So we're just now we've got short term rentals on the top floor, long term rentals on the second floor, and there'll be retail on the bottom. We just wrapped up a four town home development and we're keeping one, selling three. We're in the middle of wrapping up.

 

Kristi (53:34)

You

 

Katie Neason (53:51)

We're in the finish out phase of an eight town home development project. We just broke ground and are doing the rough end plumbing on a couple of houses. And we have two lots that we're trying to imagine what we want to do on those. So we'll see. Everything right now is harder to make. Well, build to sell is still working. Although I feel like no one's making decisions and nothing's really selling right now. So I say build to sell is still working. Financially, it's working as long as people will keep buying.

 

And, but even on those, it has to work as a rental as a fallback. So if we go through a phase where people can't buy for whatever reason or won't buy, we can put tenants in it and it'll break even. And so everything is harder right now on the commercial tenant side. feels like people are still paying rents and there's some activity of people looking, but people are not making decisions. Like it just feels like everything, everything's still working, but everything feels much harder than it did 18 months ago.

 

And so don't know where that leads. So we're just, know, have reserves, ⁓ be as helpful as you can, but not overextend. And so we're trying to figure out, you know, like what makes sense that gives us the ability to hold on if things go horribly wrong or to prosper when things go really well. And it's a balance, right? You just got to figure out what that looks like. So for us, we're trying to figure out on our two lots, what we want to build and what we want to do with those that are great for the community and make sense for us financially. Yeah.

 

Kristi (54:49)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

I might finally do my first new build. We've got a tiny little duplex on a huge double lot in Naples. I just got all the builders' information. We were playing a poker tournament on a Friday night in one of them. And I got to see it for myself. I'm like, oh, this is it. So potentially in April, we'll break ground if we think that the market's right. If not, we'll wait another year. But yeah.

 

Katie Neason (55:23)

Hahaha

 

Yeah, I love

 

that. I mean, I love restoring old buildings. We're in a town where our courthouse is one of the ugliest tin in the country and we don't have beautiful buildings. Like we just have a low building stock. So we had to start building. And I can tell you this after flipping for more than a decade, new construction is so easy. I mean, I love the...

 

Raphael Collazo (55:53)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kristi (55:53)

It's a breath of fresh air. Only thing is under the ground. Maybe you find

 

something, but the wall doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Katie Neason (55:58)

Yeah, but you could discover that pretty early on. There's

 

very few surprises and you can configure it. What rents today easily, especially for your commercial tenants, tiny spaces that they can afford, but it doesn't have the beauty, the character and just the soul of those old buildings. But man, is it easy.

 

Raphael Collazo (56:15)

Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to seeing the projects that you're creating. And I'd love to be able to maybe even try to see if we can find you on social afterwards and try to see if I can follow along with your journey. Because it seems like you're doing some pretty cool stuff and looking forward to keeping in touch over time as well.

 

Kristi (56:30)

yeah, you got to follow along with

 

what she's doing, which to that point, Katie, can you talk about what you're doing from your Rookie Rate Developer and anything else you have going on?

 

Katie Neason (56:33)

I love it.

 

Raphael Collazo (56:38)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (56:38)

Yeah, you can

 

follow me on Instagram at Katie develops and you can follow along and think my projects are beautiful or you can jump on the hate wagon and tell me how I've surely lying about everything that I'm saying. I don't care. Just jump in there. and then I get lots of questions. Mostly the number one question I get is how can like you're in Texas where everything is cheap and easy. And as much as my husband wishes that were true, it's just not.

 

everything is not cheap and easy here, but everyone wants to know, like, can I do what you're doing in my community? And I want to tell you, yes, but I don't want to mislead you. And the reality is that's a research project for me to find out. So it's like, I want to build in my community and I want to be a developer, but I was the person who had no information. I totally get it. I would have died to find some help back then. So that's kind of how Rookie Redeveloper was born.

 

I'm going to give you the tools to answer for your own community. I don't want you to go look at the top 10 cities that bigger pockets put out to build in and go do a development project there. No, I want to give you the tools to figure out how to de-risk where are the red flags and how you can build in your community. If you don't have any money.

 

You know, like the gateway drug, that townhome development project, that's a way to get some pops of cash to be able to build a bigger project, maybe one that you hold onto. But my whole goal with that program is to give people the confidence to reduce the friction, to get around the people that make the next step feel easy and to have someone when you think it's a huge crisis question, I'm like, that's no big deal. Just call the city and tell them this, right? You just need that. And that's what we are. We're just a resource.

 

Raphael Collazo (58:05)

Mm-hmm.

 

Katie Neason (58:09)

to give you the information you need and then to have the ideas to bounce off of. And what I didn't expect is it's full of professionals in the industry. have architects in there, civil engineers in there, planners in there, contractors, brokers, which is amazing. Cause now when you're like, I'm trying to figure out the site, like you actually have professionals in there who do that for a living, but they're all trying to figure out how can I do this for me instead of building these projects for other people. So that was like an unintended benefit that's been, it's just been amazing. Yeah.

 

Kristi (58:36)

Yeah, the bartering that you can do with that. I'm like,

 

bartering is lovely.

 

Katie Neason (58:40)

Totally,

 

and you're like, you need an architect who understands infill development. Where the people in this program who are trying to do infill development, like they understand it. So it's been amazing resources for me and for the other people in it. It's so great when you get involved in something and you're like, am I getting the most benefit out of this? This is amazing. Yeah.

 

Kristi (58:57)

Yeah, but what

 

she's doing and putting out there is incredible. I encourage everyone to go check it out because we need more people like this sharing and making this just attainable and going, hey, if I want to do it, yes, there's risk. We have talked all about that. But if you truly want to go out there and do a project with impact and purpose, this is where you go to get comfortable and familiar with it and go, OK, I got the confidence now.

 

Katie Neason (59:19)

Everything's hard, so do something that you love and do something that helps the community. You got it. It's all hard, so just pick your heart.

 

Raphael Collazo (59:26)

Definitely great advice, really. And we'll make sure to include the social links in the show notes as well. So if you guys are watching this on YouTube, go ahead in the description, you'll be able to access it. And then if you guys will listen to the podcast format, whether that's Apple podcast or Spotify, you can go ahead in the description as well and you'll have access to all those links. So Katie, thank you so much for your time. We obviously greatly appreciate it. I'm looking forward to staying in touch and following along with your journey. It seems to be very inspiring and I'm really excited to

 

follow along with the different projects that you're to be taking on in the future. And the cool thing about this podcasting format is that you get to meet people who are doing great things around the country. And hopefully one day we get to meet in person and that'd be a cool opportunity.

 

Katie Neason (1:00:06)

I'd love that we should put on a development conference or something.

 

Raphael Collazo (1:00:09)

We've talked about it. That's definitely the next step.

 

Kristi (1:00:09)

That's kind of the thing. We

 

get enough people throughout and we go, because conferences are hard as heck to put together. But it's like, hey, if we go, hey, let's do it. We've got enough people. That 100%. If we could somehow together create the bigger pockets but of local development, that would be an amazing resource for everyone and therapy for ourselves. Yeah.

 

Katie Neason (1:00:13)

Yeah.

 

Yes.

 

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Totally. We should collaborate and make that happen. Yep.

 

All right. I love it. Thank you guys for inviting me on. Thank you, Kristi. It's been a treat getting to know you and following your journey. And I enjoy talking development and I appreciate you guys giving me the forum to do it.

 

Raphael Collazo (1:00:39)

Definitely. No, we appreciate you for sharing your insights and time. for those of you guys who are listening to this on YouTube, please like and subscribe. It makes a huge impact on reach a broader audience. And we obviously greatly appreciate the support. Along with that, if you guys are watching this in a podcast format, whether that's Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please, please, please leave a five-star review. The more people who leave five-star reviews, the greater reach we receive. And ultimately, more and more people can be inspired to take on their first development project. So thanks again so much for tuning in. We'll see you all next time.