Today's guest is Greg Friedman.

Greg has more than 23 years' hospitality experience with an emphasis on deal-structure and financing. He successfully has led Peachtree in more than $8 Billion in hotel acquisitions, investments and development since co-founding the company.

Show summary:

In this podcast episode, Greg Friedman shares his insights on the commercial real estate landscape, focusing on the lucrative opportunities in credit trade for financing acquisitions, developments, and recapitalizations. He recounts Peachtree's adept navigation through economic downturns like the Great Financial Crisis and the pandemic, crediting proactive investment strategies. Greg also discusses the hotel industry's potential, driven by favorable supply-demand dynamics.

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Introduction (00:00:00)

Greg Friedman's Background (00:01:07)

Influence of Family and Entrepreneurship (00:02:00)

Navigating the Great Financial Crisis (00:04:29)

Investing During Market Disruption (00:06:39)

Hotel Investment Strategies (00:09:23)

Opportunities in the Hospitality Space (00:12:11)

Investment Risks and Opportunities (00:13:17)

Lending and Financing Strategies (00:16:58)

Target Audience and Demand Profile (00:18:44)

Conclusion and Contact Information (00:20:30)

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Connect with Greg:

Web: https://www.peachtreegroup.com/

Connect with Sam:

I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/

Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com

SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f

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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:

Greg Friedman (00:00:00) - Across all commercial real estate. I think the best opportunity set is on the credit side. The credit trade me hands down, is the most compelling trade today. And if you're doing direct lending, you know where you're financing groups to go out and acquire and develop assets or even recapitalize existing assets. And a lot of cases were, you know, ultimately driving from a standpoint of the investments we're making, we're getting, you know, outcomes that are very similar to what we would be getting if we were investing on the equity side.

Intro (00:00:29) - Welcome to the how to Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.

Sam Wilson (00:00:42) - Greg Friedman, thank you for taking the time to come on the show today. I certainly appreciate having you. Come on.

Greg Friedman (00:00:48) - Yeah. Thank you Sam. I appreciate the opportunity to be on the show with you today.

Sam Wilson (00:00:51) - Absolutely. Greg, as our listeners know, normally I give the guest bio there in the beginning, telling all about the guest and where they come from.

Sam Wilson (00:00:58) - But instead, we're going to skip straight to the same question I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell me, where did you start? Where are you now, and how did you get there?

Greg Friedman (00:01:07) - Definitely. so, you know, I graduated from University of Texas at Austin back in 1999. I spent, you know, about eight, you know, 8 or 9 years in banking before I started Peachtree going back, you know, to 2007. And, you know, Peachtree, when I originally started it, it was a, you know, small family office that we were focused on going out and acquiring and developing hotel assets. And like all businesses, we've transitioned through the years and we've transitioned into a vertically integrated private equity firm that invests across, you know, all commercial real estate property type. So we invest, you know, still very heavily across the hotel space. But we also have investments across all commercial property types as well as we have investments outside of real estate as well.

Greg Friedman (00:01:49) - And then as I mentioned, we're vertically integrated. So we own an operation development lending asset management company, so forth.

Sam Wilson (00:01:56) - That is fantastic. Did you grow up in a family of entrepreneurs?

Greg Friedman (00:02:00) - You know, I did. So my my grandfather was a huge entrepreneur. He was a doctor by trade. And he, he also owned a bunch of real estate, like any good doctor that lived in a small town in Alabama, because I grew up right outside Tuscaloosa. He was, you know, he was very focused on not only being a doctor. He was an eye doctor. He was also focused on doing everything from owning commercial real estate, you know, to owning a home building business to owning movie theaters. So he was, you know, very entrepreneurial. So he was a huge influence on my life. And he, you know, owned hotel properties. And that was, you know, that's how I sort of got into the business because he owned a business that owned hotels, but also owned a hotel lending business.

Greg Friedman (00:02:43) - So I personally grew up around the business before, you know, professionally getting into the, hospitality business on the lending side, when I graduated college.

Sam Wilson (00:02:51) - Got it. And so was that. I guess maybe that's the answer, the question that's kind of what gave you the bug early on that said, hey, this is this is kind of the direction we're going to take, but what did you decide to do differently? Maybe, you know, when you launched Peachtree that your family wasn't already involved in.

Greg Friedman (00:03:08) - Yeah. So, you know, at this point in time, when I launched Peachtree, my family was pretty much out of the hotel business outside of, you know, some limited investments. So it was, you know, my grandfather, unfortunately, he was, you know, at this point in time, he passed away shortly after I started Peachtree, but didn't have a lot of, you know, he had sold off most of his investments. And same for my mom, who was a big influence as well.

Greg Friedman (00:03:29) - But, but really went in and, you know, initially thought I was going to, you know, just focus because I knew the hotel business from a professional perspective that was out there financing, capitalizing hotel projects and have financing capitalized over 300 hotel projects across the US when I was on the banking side, so I wasn't necessarily looking to duplicate what the family business had done. I was trying to really create my own legacy. And, you know, with myself and I had a partner that still is involved in the business today. The two of us both wanted to create our own legacies, to go out, you know, acquire and develop hotel properties. And we had, you know, our own capital that we were investing. So, you know, personally was using my capital along with my partner. And then our family members were investing heavily. So my grandfather, my mom and so forth were big investors. Initially when we went out and acquired developed assets, when we set up a business.

Sam Wilson (00:04:20) - Got it.

Sam Wilson (00:04:20) - You launched that in 2007. That seems like the prime time to, get heavily into commercial real estate. How did you weather the next 3 or 4 years?

Greg Friedman (00:04:29) - Yeah. So we're good at picking timing here. So we picked it in May of 2007 when we formed Peachtree. And and that was probably the absolute peak before the great financial crisis. And so we, you know, so we went out and, you know, made about eight, 8 or 9 investments across the lodging space, in 2007 timeframe where we bought some land parcels that we ended up developing into hotels shortly thereafter, or we bought actual hotel assets. And it was, it was sort of interesting, just as I reflect on it, because, you know, it was probably the best lesson, you know, for us on the business side, because we quickly went from, you know, being able to play offense, meaning we were able to make investments to happen to play, you know, truly play defense because we were going through one of the, you...