John Coe 00:00:00  So Moiz Doriwala! Welcome to Icons of DC Area Real Estate. Thank you for joining me today.

Moiz Doriwala 00:00:06  Thanks, John. It's nice to be here.

John Coe 00:00:08  It's great. So I've reviewed your background in the introduction. You are perhaps the most unique guest I've had on the podcast, and you have at least three businesses you manage or or participated managing perhaps over the overview them and your role in each, if you would.

Moiz Doriwala 00:00:25  Oh, absolutely. So, I have a kind of an umbrella company that I formed in 2008, called Sterling Realty Advisors, and the company was formed to advise real estate operators and developers on raising capital, mostly joint venture equity, mayor's preferred equity, some debt financing. And that company has evolved into many different, businesses for me. So today where I sit with that, you know, Sterling is the umbrella company for most of my activities. Personal investment activities as well as business activities. And you know, I was just talking to John before this is I rarely do any capital raising out of sterling any longer.

Moiz Doriwala 00:01:15  Maybe every year I maybe do 1 or 2 assignments, but primarily it's the vehicle for us to invest in different businesses. So in Sterling is the investor for me into a number of personal investments in real estate, individual real estate projects, individual companies, other things where I'm more of a passive investor or more of a I'm kind of an advisor or maybe part of the GP, but I'm not the day to day operator on those investments. we also I'm also a manager in Sterling is my investment entity in a company, an entity called Book Hill Park. Book Hill Park is the manager of a series of small, funds, and it serves as a finance company where we lend money to, We're agnostic to industry, agnostic to geography. It can be real estate, it can be an operating company. It can be a, another lending company where we make loans and, you know, our our big our big deal there is we look for, you know, who are who are borrowers and what the path to repayment is and obviously business margins and other things.

Moiz Doriwala 00:02:33  And you know, that's Book Hill Park. and then, we have another entity that we invest in is a number of, mental health and, behavioral health, businesses. And, you know, and then I function outside of that. I'm also the president of a, 501 C3. Called Superior Living Foundation, Inc.. we are a nonprofit focused on owning, businesses in this health care region. So senior housing, behavioral health, substance abuse. so, you know, that's where between all of those different businesses, I probably primarily spend most of my time in the, businesses in Book Hill Park as well as Superior Living Foundation.

John Coe 00:03:24  That's great. Thanks for the overview. Before getting into your career in more depth, please share your origins and early life experiences, particularly if they had influence on your career interest in real estate.

Moiz Doriwala 00:03:37  funny enough. So I grew up in, suburb outside of Chicago, called Naperville, Illinois. you know, probably known it's always on that list of, you know, niche lists of best places to live.

Moiz Doriwala 00:03:50  You know, when we moved there in 1984, I was born in Cleveland, moved to, Naperville in 19. No, not 1982. Naperville probably had maybe 30,000 residents. today it's probably closer to just under 200,000. So, you know, it's probably the largest kind of city outside of the city of Chicago. great place to live. you know, some people would say it was kind of almost too perfect of a place to live, similar to places around the DC area, I would say. but a city that's had tremendous growth. my father was, it was a, when I was growing up, he left his, job at a, consumer products company and became a general contractor. So I kind of, you know, through middle school and high school. I grew up in, you know, with my family being involved in construction, you know, construction, industrial, commercial, metal buildings as well as being a developer. and so, you know, I had a little bit of a real estate, vision growing up, but, you know, I had always wanted to be a lawyer.

Moiz Doriwala 00:05:04  funny enough. And I always thought I would be a lawyer, but, you know, when I went to college, I studied economics at the University of Chicago. And I decided for some reason that, finance and the banking world was the right world for me. So I went to I became I got, my first job graduating college was at, a bank called, Bank one. it was a really unique program I had I had decided I wanted to it was a rotational program that was started at the first, First National Bank of Chicago. First Chicago, that was, you know, almost a three decade, year program that was a two and a half year rotational program where you kind of make your own path to the bank. It was, you know, first Chicago and Bank one was a large national bank with also some international, locations and businesses. And so you chose the path, that you wanted and your interests. So, you know, if you wanted to do, private equity, venture investing, trading, commercial lending, middle market lending,

John Coe 00:06:18  Communities was Jamie Dimon chairman at that time.

Moiz Doriwala 00:06:21  So Jamie Dimon was not when I joined, Jamie Dimon was not the chairman. but my rotation. So during that time, the bank had a lot of, had a lot of issues. And, Jamie Dimon, was brought in to be the CEO and replace, one of the McCoys who was the founder of Bank one, which was just basically a roll up of a lot of national a lot of regional lenders for Chicago was one of them. And so, my rotations were interesting enough. my first one was on the asset backed securities trading desk. second one was in the, we called it managed assets. That was the large commercial loan workout group, which at that time I had one of the largest for Chicago was a very large national lender. Commercial lender? I had one of the largest bankruptcies, ever at that time. This was in 19 oh, this was like in 99, 2000. And then after that Enron hit and then, I mean, so many more, my the bankruptcy I had with Safety Clean was just was just as a rounding error compared to what we've seen like over the last, you know, two decades.

Moiz Doriwala 00:07:33  from, from there, I did a rotation in the leverage leasing group, which was that was was the bank's, proprietary, capital base, where they did tax efficient leasing, for the benefit of the banks balance sheet. And then, By that time, Jamie Dimon had come to the bank, and I worked for him for the rotation, working for him in a group called skunkworks. so Jamie is very famous for this group and all the bank's skunkworks, which is basically a very undefined strategic group, very undefined though. So you basically do anything that he thinks we should look into. so all sorts of very random projects, but very high level access. So I would see Jamie almost every I'd be on the executive floor, we'd have office there, we'd see Jamie almost every day. He was in town, although also many other senior leaders of the bank, were, you know, on our floor or we'd see on a very regular basis.

John Coe 00:08:38  So was this before you went to northwestern? To Kellogg or.

Moiz Doriwala 00:08:41  Oh, I'll tell you about part of the program. So one of the and my last rotation where I went permanent was in the bank's merger and acquisition group, doing middle market M&A. but what was unique about this program, what attracted me to this program, which was which is very different than anything else, is that you would get an MBA at the same time that you start this program. So rather than working for two years or three years or however long, and then going to business school, one of the, requirements of accepting a job and getting into this program was that you would then you would also have to get accepted into business school at either University of Chicago or Northwestern Kellogg. and so you would get accepted and you would apply and then, for the part time program, which was the evening program. So while you worked full a full day, you would also go to school, two days a week in the evening, for two and a half years. That includes summer quarter as well.

Moiz Doriwala 00:09:47  So, it was a lot. And it's a 22 year old. It was you know, it was really interesting because most of the folks that are in the part time program are more seasoned in their career. you know, definitely, you know, at least 5 or 6 plus years older than us, and have more experience in and they're, they're going to part time, business school in the evening to basically either maybe potentially look at a career switch, but more probably developing their career. So in that program, most companies pay for your MBA. So, the bank paid for our MBA as well. So, that that was a unique thing that that attracted me to that program, in addition to all of that experience across the board, having very senior mentors. I mean, it was it was a fantastic program today. you know, during my time at Bank one, you know, Jamie Dimon came aboard. We did a merger with JPMorgan Chase. The name changed JPMorgan Chase. I moved to New York and worked at the worked in the investment bank there in the Financial Sponsors group, which was also a great experience.

Moiz Doriwala 00:10:58  And when I left JPMorgan in 2005, I left. you know, it was a job that I absolutely loved. And if people asked me today, what was a job that you miss, I missed I missed working in that financial sponsor group. you know, JPMorgan has had and probably still today has probably the best financial sponsor group on the street. the balance sheet that the bank has, you know, very few competitors to that size of balance sheet, the access to the private equity firms and the ability to, you know, originate and syndicate the types of loans that are needed to do to to do for financial sponsors and the, you know, leveraged buyouts. You know, there's there's really no better place. So, you know.

John Coe 00:11:47  You got to the big leagues real quick.

Moiz Doriwala 00:11:49  Yeah. And it was great college.

John Coe 00:11:50  I loved it big time.

Moiz Doriwala 00:11:52  I loved it. It was it was a great experience. I worked with a lot of very smart people. I, you know, I just lots and lots of great experiences.

Moiz Doriwala 00:12:06  and, you know, to.

John Coe 00:12:07  Build that program.

Moiz Doriwala 00:12:08  That I did, I built a, I built a very good network. And I've done a good job through my career of keeping in touch with people. I, you know, I could always do a better job. But, you know, I still talk to a lot of people that I worked with. so if you call.

John Coe 00:12:25  Him today, would he recognize your name?

Moiz Doriwala 00:12:27  Probably not. you know, that was that was whatever you gave me more than 20 years ago. Yeah. and, you know, I was a 23 year old. Yeah. 24 year old working for him. So I would say, I would probably say he probably would not remember me. I guarantee, you know, Jamie has like a photographic memory and I guarantee he probably remember some of the things we worked on, but also worked on. You know, we worked on, the executive management report was one of our big projects for the banks. The bank can actually, you know, leadership of the bank can actually know things real time financial, metrics, etc., real time, versus taking days to, to put reports together.

Moiz Doriwala 00:13:10  So there are a number of projects that we worked on that I think he would absolutely remember. But me personally, I'd be surprised.

John Coe 00:13:18  So why did you leave?

Moiz Doriwala 00:13:20  so I left. So interesting enough, I left because, I had just gotten married a few years earlier, and in New York in. Oh, I'd gotten married in Chicago. but my wife grew up in the DC area. and so eventually she wanted to move back to the D.C. area. and I loved the job. But, you know, I think if you want to have a balanced life, if you want to have families, spend time with your kids and do all of that, investment banking at that level makes it very tough. it's just a totally different environment. And even though I loved the professional piece of it, I think it would have it would have been hard to manage the personal my personal life. and what I wanted to do with the with the family and all of that.

John Coe 00:14:08  So what kind of hours were you working in?

Moiz Doriwala 00:14:11  Oh, my God, I mean.

John Coe 00:14:13  12 hour days.

Moiz Doriwala 00:14:14  Oh, easily seven days a week.

John Coe 00:14:16  Wow.

Moiz Doriwala 00:14:16  I mean, I mean, I had times where I slept at the office. so, you know, you hear you read these stories online, and.

John Coe 00:14:24  Are you doing M&A work?

Moiz Doriwala 00:14:26  That's right. We're doing financial sponsors, M&A like, you know, leveraged finance. And so, you know, we're continually pitching new business and trying to close the existing business. So In seven days a week was very normal, you know, and.

John Coe 00:14:41  And you were.

Moiz Doriwala 00:14:42  About.

John Coe 00:14:42  Time.

Moiz Doriwala 00:14:44  yeah. Had gotten married during the time, so. And that was fine. My wife also grew up in the industry, so she knew. She knew what what that job was like. And so but, what brought me to what? What I left because my wife's family's business in the DC area was in the land development, and, my father in law was a land developer in the area who had retired. But he came out of retirement to help a friend who, represented who came a large homebuilder came to the DC area, and, my father in law was kind of convinced to get out of retirement to help, acquire and develop, residential lots for the for the home builder.

Moiz Doriwala 00:15:32  And so he came to me and said, I have this great opportunity, you know, years and years and years worth of work. you know, you will you'll learn on someone else's dollar per se. and it's incredibly, rewarding just from an educational experience, but also financially rewarding. if you're ever interested in getting into real estate, this is a great opportunity. And the DC area is just growing. So this was in 2000 and I left 2005, before and before the financial crisis, the DC area was just booming. And, I said, you know what? I could always go back to banking. I can try this. Why not? and it would bring us closer to bring us to DC, where my wife grew up and her family is, and something she wanted to do. And, you know, I thought that was probably a good time to make that change. And so, I did it and it was it was totally eye opening, very different than what I, was used to, you know, in kind of Wall Street, you know, white collar professionals.

John Coe 00:16:39  What exactly did you do there?

Moiz Doriwala 00:16:40  So when we, we we basically did two things. One, on behalf of the homebuilder, we entitled land. And then we developed lots finished lots for the builder. and then on our own account we would also go out. I spent hours and hours with, you know, individual landowners trying to parcel together, subdivisions, assemble, assemble, subdivisions. then, you know, working with different counties. We did projects and Loudon, Fairfax, Prince George's, Montgomery County, you know, Prince William, and spending time with, you know, government officials on the entitlements, lawyers. And, you know, it was just so different than I did in Wall Street, because in Wall Street, I was used to, you know, everybody around you worked 12 hours, 14 hours, seven days a week in in the land development world. While the private side might be doing that, you are. Your partnerships are with a lot of people in the public space, and the public space aren't working those same hours.

Moiz Doriwala 00:17:47  And so for me, it took a while to get adjusted to, oh, wait, it's 7:00. I'm not going to get a response, till tomorrow, if I'm lucky. Maybe next week. Yeah, if I'm lucky. And so the patient that it created, it made me become very patient and, and candidly frustrated many times. and so that's, that's what brought me to this area. It was a great experience. you know, and the reality is, I learned that I probably wasn't suited for, land development, residential land development. you know, and then the financial crisis is kind of what you know, I'm not going to use the word ended that. But we were fortunate we had sold our last project, that we own ourselves, and we were very lucky.

John Coe 00:18:42  Because that industry got.

Moiz Doriwala 00:18:43  We got hammered. We were very lucky. So it was, you know, definitely financially rewarding that that time doing that and, you know, also just professionally rewarding. But, when that financial crisis hit and everything slowed down, you know, I said, okay, well, now this is a time for me to basically pivot.

Moiz Doriwala 00:19:04  because we don't own any land. We don't have to work out of any scenarios. We were very lucky. for my father in law, it was perfect timing because he was already already going back to retirement. And so for me, it was like, okay, well, I've been in the financial world. I've done a lot of transaction work. I now have this great real estate experience because even though it was very land based, I understand dirt. I understand the vertical piece of it. So how do I put all this together? And I went to go work for, kind of a, a newer company, Perseus Realty Capital, which was a, broker on the, helping to finance trans real estate transactions. So not in terms of investment sales on the finance side. So we, why they're why they're because that was my experience. And I wanted to continue down the real estate experience. And I'm a transaction person. So from those experience we helped raise I helped companies in the area. And, you know, actually across the country raised, joint venture equity, mezzanine preferred equity financing.

John Coe 00:20:19  So why not go to one of the big national players like HIF or NorthPark or some of the other bigger players and stuff? Why did you go to Perseus?

Moiz Doriwala 00:20:28  You know, I funny enough, I didn't interview around a lot of places, and I was new to this space. So candidly, I didn't know all the players in the space, and I liked the opportunity to be kind of at a new and small firm. had worked at very large firms. That was all of my experience. And then my entrepreneurial side, where I worked at a small might, you know, a two man shop, which was very different. So I thought this was a nice kind of way in between where, you know, you a lot of what you kill a lot of, you know, just I liked being in a small place. And I think, you know, that that has been consistent kind of throughout the rest of my career where I am today. It's always been very I'm very independent or very generally a small company.

Moiz Doriwala 00:21:23  you know, the big companies for me have always been it becomes very bureaucratic politics, a lot of other things that are hard to control. And I like I like places where, you know, you can have some some control of your destiny.

John Coe 00:21:37  So Perseus is involved now to prep real estate. pretty much. But they've gone out of the intermediary business and borne more of an asset management firm now. So, so talk about that experience. What did you learn there? And did you learn about transactional real estate more? I mean, what what did you pick up there?

Moiz Doriwala 00:21:57  you know, I had never raised capital for real estate, ever. So, you know, learning all my all my financing experience came from the corporate world. You know, a lot of it. More acid based loans, cash flow lending. you know, the big, you know, high yield deals. And so traditional real estate, something that I had never spent a lot of time on a financing that. So my a huge learning curve on, you know, mortgage financing, how mezzanine works in real estate deals and obviously joint venture equity.

Moiz Doriwala 00:22:31  Right before, you know, when I was younger, you you thought that the individual owners of property owned or even office buildings or hotels owned own the project. But that's not that's not the case. You learn there, institutional investors out there. There are private equity funds who focus opportunity funds, who focus on real estate investing. There's big, investment managers that have raised core funds, and those are the primary backers. And so you you learn that there are operators that joint venture with, you know, institutional equity. And that's how they capitalize the the equity portion of the deal. So I learned a lot about that. I learned, a brand new network of investors. And we spent a lot of time, meeting new investors, lots of new opportunity funds, lots of, people representing family offices. So a lot of time networking and trying to find new sources of capital, because, you know, a lot of our clients were major DC, developers, real estate people who already had existing relationships with the usual suspects.

Moiz Doriwala 00:23:37  And so for, for someone to hire a small company, and not go to HF or Eastville or one of the big players, you have to have a competitive advantage. You have to be able to convince them you can bring a new source of capital to the table, because every, every, every real estate operator is looking to expand their investor base. And so we spend a lot of time traveling around the country meeting new investors, and capitalizing some really cool deals, that were tough to do. And so that was our.

John Coe 00:24:10  Most challenging deal you worked on when you were there.

Moiz Doriwala 00:24:13  I would say, we worked on there was a high rise, residential building in Denver, Colorado, Although that, the developer decided, in the midst of financial crisis to right before it started, before he had a senior loan in place, he decided to, start going vertical with equity. And, he had a he had a senior loan working on this year. Loan almost financed. And then the financial crisis hit and the bank walked away and he was already up like six, seven stories.

Moiz Doriwala 00:24:55  Oh my goodness. it's a high rise. and we were brought in to help, bring, mezzanine financing in place to keep the project going. and funny enough, we, we did not bring in the senior lender, but another, another intermediary brought in the senior level lender, which was chorus.

John Coe 00:25:20  yeah.

Moiz Doriwala 00:25:21  You know and it was crazy during the financial crisis, chorus came into this deal and said, well, we don't have any exposure in Denver, so we'll, we'll do this deal. We can't do anything in the Midwest, but we'll do this deal. And so they became the senior lender, and we brought in the mezzanine lender to bridge the gap between the equity rental project. This was a rental project okay.

John Coe 00:25:42  Because it's huge in in the country.

Moiz Doriwala 00:25:44  And they you know, they finished the building in the midst of financial crisis. Starwood took over course. And you know, for the for the developer, it became a major issue of just how to deal with, you know, an opportunity fund, rather than a bank.

Moiz Doriwala 00:26:01  but I would say that was trying to find that lender was it was quite a, quite a ordeal. But we did it. And so that was our competitive advantage.

John Coe 00:26:13  Chorus.

Moiz Doriwala 00:26:13  No, no. We found the mezzanine lender that we brought in.

John Coe 00:26:15  Yeah okay. All right.

Moiz Doriwala 00:26:17  Yeah.

John Coe 00:26:18  And yeah. Well course, of course, had a rather spotty reputation.

Moiz Doriwala 00:26:24  They did. I mean, they financed they successfully financed, you know, lots and lots of Foresail project around the country. Yes. but they also kind of grew, I think, probably way beyond what they should have and probably, you know, did projects. We know they did projects that didn't make sense. and so, you know.

John Coe 00:26:43  Very aggressive.

Moiz Doriwala 00:26:44  The very aggressive lender.

John Coe 00:26:46  And it seems to me that maybe today we're back into that kind of framework again, to some extent in the, in the debt fund arena. So it'll be interesting to see if people are getting a little too ambitious.

Moiz Doriwala 00:26:57  There's a lot of money out there.

Moiz Doriwala 00:26:59  Right. And part of the problem is a lot of money out there. But, I mean, I don't know, John, from what you see with the different developers you talk to, but, you know, in the, in the, the market, the, the kind of product type that I spend a lot of my time in the health care space, we don't see a lot of aggressive lenders still today, everyone is still pretty cautious. you know, before Covid, it was much more aggressive. but today, you know, loan to cost us down. You know, rates obviously are higher. Covenants. The covenants are stronger even with the debt funds. You know, they're just they're expensive and their covenants are pretty sticks. And again, I don't I don't know what's going on necessarily in the traditional real estate space or, you know, commercial space. But, you know, for for the things that I focus on, I think they're pretty.

John Coe 00:27:51  Well, the question is, you know, how patient is that money? And if that money is not patient, they're going to put it somewhere.

John Coe 00:27:57  Yeah. And so the question is where are they putting it and how much risk are they taking. And what kind of even with a higher yield it's still high risk. Yeah. So are you over over funding certain things that should be funded I don't know. It's an interesting question today.

Moiz Doriwala 00:28:12  Well, I mean, I'll tell you if I put my other hat. You talked about private capital, you know, our our our funds that we manage under Book Hill Park, book Hill Park said earlier. Book Hill Park is our manager of a series of funds that where we lend opportunistically. yet not just real estate. Well, not just real estate. So on on real estate, we can do first mortgages. We've done second mortgages, we've done mezzanine, we've done unsecured loans, we've done secured loans, we've done asset based loans. I financed inventory, done every all the all the random stuff we funded payroll loans to, to to government contractors. That's how we actually got started. We've done factoring, all sorts of different things.

Moiz Doriwala 00:28:57  I mean, we started that business because a friend of mine was a friend with someone who's a government contractor who left the State Department, had had won a big government contract, and they had to go out and hire some engineers. And that that person came from the government. Their net worth was sitting in their house, so they didn't have access to capital, but they had to perform on their contract to to build their business. And so we worked with them at that time, the the banks in this area weren't great at lending to, you know, new government contractors. I think they're better today. They understand the business better that we went out and they said, okay, well, I gotta, you know, I have payroll in two weeks for a number of engineers that I had to hire to do this work. I, you know, Lockheed Northam, the the prime contractors are going to factor me. I won't get paid for 30, 60 days from them. So I need to be able to survive.

John Coe 00:29:53  And so you.

Moiz Doriwala 00:29:54  Let.

John Coe 00:29:54  The payroll factory.

Moiz Doriwala 00:29:55  We you know, you can't prime government contract. So we couldn't do that. But we got around the way we we secured secured that loan. And that's how we got started. We started lending at 20%. I mean, the margins were so big in that business. And those were our first loans and we made Midlands, was a returned customer for a couple of years. We help them grow their business. and that's what kind of start ups. And we've done no marketing or advertising. It's all word of mouth. We have a number of repeat borrowers or people who say, call, you know, the guys at Book Hill. we've done you know, I don't even know how many. We've done a lot of first mortgage deals and are in that business. You know, it's always for us is who's the borrower, what's the business, what's business plan and what's our path to repayment. Right. We don't want to own any business. I mean, we've we've had to garden all these years.

Moiz Doriwala 00:30:49  We've had to we had to go get a US marshal to go, repossess a go, take possession of a boat. we've been in a lawsuit with a major insurance company and a, maritime claim of a damaged vessel. We've done all sorts of interesting things. But my point, though, is going back to, you know, credit funds. You know, we've seen where our returns for years, we were always looking for for deals where we were charging rates of called, you know, 17 to north of 20% because we generally lent to high margin businesses, with the onset of all the private credit, even on the smaller side, you know, those rates today, I'd say in our fund we're looking for 12 to 15 type of, you know, yields on our on our deals. So that's come down since we started, you know, that we've been business there for almost 15 years now.

John Coe 00:31:54  It's interesting because interest rates are higher on a generic basis than when you started. So why is it just more efficient? I mean, how are you?

Moiz Doriwala 00:32:03  Well, I'll say the last couple of years the rates have moved up a little bit because of interest rates, but I would say pre-COVID.

Moiz Doriwala 00:32:11  Yeah, we had already started seeing, you know, we'd already seen. Yeah, we'd already seen our we'd already seen rates. You know, our rates already started coming down now in the last call it 24 months. As interest rates had risen, we had seen the movement a little bit, but just there's just but there's also so much private credit out there that are chasing deals that there are other lenders who who may be willing to lend, you know, less than we are.

John Coe 00:32:38  So what you're saying is your it's become competitive. So you have to compete.

Moiz Doriwala 00:32:42  A little bit. But we're also I would say we're not generating as much business either because we're not in a hurry. No. You know, for us we want to do good deals. and a lot of the capital is our own personal capital and friends, family and investors who invest in us. Where in our, you know, through three funds, time after time, that there's no gun to our head about putting. We don't have to put out hundreds of millions of dollars by certain time period.

John Coe 00:33:09  And your fund is open ended, then.

Moiz Doriwala 00:33:10  Well it is, it's close ended. But at the end of the day, if we tell our investors, hey, we weren't able to invest this in the same pattern that we have and historically been successful doing there, okay. Because, you know, this is not something we don't we don't have huge infrastructure that we have to feed, right, in order to keep operations going.

John Coe 00:33:32  So friends and family.

Moiz Doriwala 00:33:33  Yeah. And we we'll just roll into another fund if we, if we, you know, if we go beyond the commitment period of our fund and it's not a big deal and we'd rather we'd rather do that because we're very cautious with it. And I think that's why we've had such a good track record.

John Coe 00:33:51  So you talked about the framework of Sterling Realty, the original thing. How did it all evolve? I mean, what was your thought process when you left Perseus? And. We'll talk about the formation of sterling, basically.

Moiz Doriwala 00:34:09  Yeah. So, well, I mean, sterling was an it was, you know, kind of in line with the entrepreneurial, you know, our belief in trying to be an entrepreneur.

Moiz Doriwala 00:34:22  we wanted to set up an organization. I had a former business partner that I worked with at Perseus that I, that we decided to go on our own. we wanted to continue, doing what we were doing in raising, JV equity and mezz for clients. I think we want it to be more national. we want to focus on not just the DC area. DC area was a hot growth area, and there were a lot of there was a lot of competition in this area. and so we started looking at some more projects out west. We did some stuff in Arizona, stuff in California stuff.

John Coe 00:34:57  And how did.

Moiz Doriwala 00:34:57  You find Denver.

John Coe 00:34:58  Brokers.

Moiz Doriwala 00:34:58  Or, relationships. You go to conferences usually, go to national conferences, meet people. a lot of cold calling. A lot of picking up the phone and calling developers and areas. reading different, newspapers and online articles of people buying deals and calling them up and saying, I'd love to come and meet you and talk about how to capitalize your next project.

Moiz Doriwala 00:35:24  so lots and lots of cold calling. but and emails. And that's how we that's how we met investors, new investors, and that's how we met clients too. So you had a part. So I, I had a business partner. Yeah. And so, you know, I think that that's really what kind of allowed us to be more than just DC focused. and so.

John Coe 00:35:47  That's when you and I met.

Moiz Doriwala 00:35:48  That's what. Yeah. That's when we met. Correct. That's when I was in, you know very active in you ally. and you know that was the start of Sterling. And then, you know, I think over time, my business partner left and wanted to go go work for, go back into kind of the investment banking space. And so he moved back to New York and, you know, found a job in that space. And so I just I continued on kind of as a sole entrepreneur and kind of from that time, you know, I've had different kind of, I've had Sterling and we, I've done a number of placements in that space.

Moiz Doriwala 00:36:25  But then the same token got involved and met different partners along the way and got involved in other businesses.

John Coe 00:36:30  Talk about the evolution of those businesses. So the senior living business, the, you know, the private equity, private debt, private, you know, talk about how those evolved and how that started.

Moiz Doriwala 00:36:40  Oh yeah. That's that's great. so when we when we had Sterling, we met some partners. who were we did a couple of health care deals, with some partners at a, at a health care REIT, raising capital for specifically in the healthcare space for the senior housing space. So we did a couple deals where we helped raise equity and debt financing Seeing with our partnership with a couple of my other partners. and we were very, very successful in doing that. So they had started those partners of mine on the capital raising side had started, a. Started kind of a new co senior housing business, as operators. So owners and operators of senior housing projects really mostly assisted living and memory care.

Moiz Doriwala 00:37:29  and they asked me, you know, hey, you can continue to do we'll continue to do these capital raising assignments on the senior housing side. But it'd be great if you can help us kind of with some of the infrastructure, of of our new senior housing company. So, you know, become the treasurer if you can be the treasurer. We trust you. We know, you know, you're going to you're going to make sure the money's there and, help us kind of, you know, build this infrastructure and the senior housing company. And so that's how I got involved with Meridian Senior Living. So,

John Coe 00:38:01  So that was.

Moiz Doriwala 00:38:02  That was that was it was it was a it was they had taken they had a third partner, Meredith Senior Living. had originally had three partners. one of them was in North Carolina and was probably the largest, Medicaid operator of assisted living buildings in North Carolina. and so they had taken that portfolio with another portfolio and created a national platform that had both private pay and Medicaid, in both assisted living and memory care and some a little bit independent as well.

Moiz Doriwala 00:38:33  and so I came aboard as the treasurer. and that was supposed to be a part time job and just, you know, a few hours a week so I can continue to do the stuff I was doing in Sterling. And the reality is the size of the company that they built, it really was, you know, more than it was like a two person job. but it was great because I learned a lot about I learned a lot of organizational skills in terms of corporate organization because we, you know, it was, you know, the health care business, it's it's less it's less of a operate. It's less of a real estate business as it is operations business. Right. We're taking care of people. We want to provide good care. We are open 24 over seven 365 we have, you know, employees around the country.

John Coe 00:39:18  how was the company financed?

Moiz Doriwala 00:39:19  The company was financed. It had a the the real estate was all financed by, you know, traditional either opportunity funds, rights.

Moiz Doriwala 00:39:30  And they were leases. the they.

John Coe 00:39:34  Were mostly syndicated.

Moiz Doriwala 00:39:35  Mostly the the operations side of the company was really financed by the three partners. and a lot of that was through fees and, you know, management fees, etc. but all the real estate was generally owned in either a joint venture or was a lease. and so one of one of my tasks is given my, you know, experience raising capital was to help raise capital. which I did a little.

John Coe 00:39:59  Bit to organize all the banking relationships and everything to.

Moiz Doriwala 00:40:03  I think, you know, all of the partners, all the partners, and the three partners already had a lot of banking relationships in the health care space. you know, there were former bankers who were who were, you know, their experience had been in banking and health care banking. So, you know, did I bring some new relationships to the table? Yeah. But I think they had a lot of existing relationships as well. and obviously brought new capital to the table.

Moiz Doriwala 00:40:27  But you know, the good part about this, this relationship was, you know, it was it was people who had experience with operations, but people who also had experience with the capital side of things. and so when we went to go present to new, investors or lenders, you know, we always did a really good job because we sat in those seats. and so, you know, it was everybody had a really good skill set and a good set of relationships that they brought to the table. and so again, you know, I started as a treasurer and then, you know, I kind of outgrew that role because we were doing so many other businesses out of there, that we then hired, a marine. They hired a, a full time treasurer and assistant treasurer and some other people. because then at Meridian, we started a we created an ancillary business line and we started we we started two pharmacies, that we sold, we started a therapy business. and we've done all sorts of other different ventures outside of the senior housing business.

Moiz Doriwala 00:41:36  So it's been a great opportunity to, you know, learn about really the backbone of a real operating business and, you know, the challenges and the difficulties of doing that, but also seeing so many successes. And, you know, I think we look at is also giving back to the community because we are hopefully Providing very good care to our residents. That's our that's our goal. And I think we do a good job.

John Coe 00:42:02  So then the private lending business the Park Park.

Moiz Doriwala 00:42:07  The Book Hill Park. Yeah. And I think we talked about that, you know, and so some of the things that when we started with Hill Park, but some of the things that we.

John Coe 00:42:14  Did after you had done them already started.

Moiz Doriwala 00:42:16  That was parallel.

John Coe 00:42:17  The same time.

Moiz Doriwala 00:42:17  That was parallel to it. and, but but what the senior housing business allowed us to do is we had relationships with other operators or other brokers in the space who then brought us other deals. And so out of Book Hill Park, we've done a number of health care deals, a number of senior housing first mortgages, because our view to that was if we underwrite it like we underwrite an acquisition and we like the deal, and if the deal for some reason goes sideways, we have the ability with the operating company to take over management, which a lot of lenders don't have the ability, So we don't have to necessarily be scared of what if we get the keys back? Now again, we're we're not trying to.

Moiz Doriwala 00:43:01  We're not in the loan to own program. We want repayment of our debt. That's what we learned. We want to follow that business plan. But should we have to foreclose on something or take back an asset? We think we have the operational expertise to do so.

John Coe 00:43:17  That's unique.

Moiz Doriwala 00:43:17  That's unique. And we actually at Book Hill, what we did was we teamed up with a couple, regional banks to do basically an AB structure where we could do much larger loans. We can do a $20 million loan where we team up with a bank, where we take we we provide, let's just say a $20 million mortgage. And the bank was going to take the A piece and maybe take, you know, 15 or 18 million of it at a lower rate. And we we engineer taking, taking down, you know, let's call it 10% of the loan at a much higher rate. with fees and everything, it works out to our advantage. So we can. Originally we were we had the ability with two regional banks to basically originate loans.

John Coe 00:44:00  So you're syndicating loans as well?

Moiz Doriwala 00:44:02  We were syndicating. Yeah, we were originating. And you know, at the end of the day it's like a syndication. Yes. Where we we would lay off the a piece. Yeah. and so, you know.

John Coe 00:44:13  Your own CMBS basically.

Moiz Doriwala 00:44:16  Kind of but what we were able to do though was great because those, those banks, it gave them access to senior housing deals too. And it also they had they knew that if something did go sideways that we could step in. We underwrote the deal as if we were an acquisition. So we felt comfortable stepping in as operators. fortunately, we never have stepped in as an operator. That was that was never the game plan. But you have but but we have the ability.

John Coe 00:44:43  To do that.

Moiz Doriwala 00:44:44  Yeah, we had the ability and we and we think we also have to know how to work out work through challenging situations because nothing ever goes as planned. And so with every loan. Some loans have been fantastic, never had an issue and some loans have been.

Moiz Doriwala 00:44:59  There have been challenges. Covid was a challenge for most people in the senior housing space, and those loans were challenging as well. But we worked through them. And, you know, we we I think sometimes we can bring a different view or different angle to the problem than a traditional bank can because.

John Coe 00:45:15  You understand the.

Moiz Doriwala 00:45:16  Because we because we are involved in the business. And so, you know, sometimes we can be more understanding and sometimes we can be less understanding, you know, because we know the business.

John Coe 00:45:24  Yeah. So the other business you started was the mobile home park business to talk about that a little bit.

Moiz Doriwala 00:45:30  So

John Coe 00:45:31  BHP.

Moiz Doriwala 00:45:32  Yes. So totally, parallel to all of this.

John Coe 00:45:37  parallel to that to.

Moiz Doriwala 00:45:38  Yes. So, totally different set of group of, partners. we we got involved in some capital raising assignments that then evolved into our first purchase of a mobile home park. we met a partner out in Augusta, Georgia, and, you know, he was a broker, and he started buying mobile home parks.

Moiz Doriwala 00:46:05  And so we got interested in the space. We did a lot of kind of analysis of the space and decided that it was a it was a place we want to be. You know, the reality is, you know, there are very few, new mobile home communities in this country. It's a Nimby issue. Nobody wants one in their backyard. So the supply is pretty limited. it's affordable housing. It is your. It is your true, true, definition. It falls in the true definition of affordable housing. It truly is affordable to people. and it's it was very highly fragmented. And institutional investors were not when we when we start investing in the space. The investors were not interested in the space. It was ugly. People didn't want to do it. People didn't want to have to deal with collections. projects were too small and it was so fragmented, you know, individual owners that just owned these parks. And so we spent a number of years buying parks, putting together portfolios of them.

Moiz Doriwala 00:47:09  and over time, how big.

John Coe 00:47:10  Was your portfolio at the largest point.

Moiz Doriwala 00:47:13  The largest point maybe. We owned close to a thousand units. Yeah, probably over five parks or so. Six parks. but we were also we've always been opportunistic investors in everything that we've I've invested. It has always been opportunistic investors. So when the time is right to sell or there's a buyer that is willing to pay what we think is a fair price that, you know, financially incentivizes us, we are always ready to exit. And so, you know, over time we have exited projects at different times. Some projects we thought we would keep forever. We owned a project in Maryland here in, right outside the Beltway. Shocking enough. Fantastic project. We thought we would own it for decades because it's irreplaceable real estate. and we sold it like a little bit more than a year of ownership because it was a great acquisition. I think we bought it. Right. We made a bunch of improvements to the property, we cleaned it up, and we had a, very well capitalized by us by by the very capitalized, well capitalized by or by the project and what we've seen, the mobile home space.

John Coe 00:48:22  I mean, off market.

Moiz Doriwala 00:48:23  It was off market. Yeah. what we've seen in this space is that in the last, you know, I've been investing in mobile home parks for close to 15 years, and it's now become institutional. There is a lot of capital raised in the space. There are a lot more lenders in this space. I mean, Capital One does HUD financing in this space. I mean, sorry, they do, Freddie Freddy financing in this space. so there's there are a lot of investors in the space now. So it's become crowded. It's become a lot it's it's a lot more expensive to buy today.

John Coe 00:48:54  More mortgage structure for the for the units.

Moiz Doriwala 00:48:56  On some of them. Yeah. Some of them. Yeah. But it's just it's become very crowded. So the returns we were getting we're just we're we it's very hard to find today. And so I don't know if I'd invest in the space today at the returns that, you know, institutional investors are willing to buy it.

Moiz Doriwala 00:49:12  And the the other the other issue is, you know, we used to be able to knock on doors and talk to owners, but there are now a lot of brokers in the space and the brokers are doing the same thing. So these owners are now also educated on what the markets look like. And everyone, you know, when broker goes in to talk to to, it's more efficient. Yes. When a broker talks to owner and starts quoting you know, the highest values, right. Not realistic values but the highest values. Now owners in their head That's their flaw. So when you talk to them, you're like, there's no way you could we would buy this for that price. But that's in their mind the flaw now. And so it just it just is a very hard space. I think eventually some of the institutional capital will leave the market because this this is not like traditional multifamily where you have an apartment building, you collect rent on the first people have bank accounts and they all pay.

Moiz Doriwala 00:50:04  It's affordable. It's true affordable housing.

John Coe 00:50:07  You don't have the subsidy programs that you have.

Moiz Doriwala 00:50:09  You don't.

John Coe 00:50:09  Know.

Moiz Doriwala 00:50:10  Well, in some counties you do have voucher programs and you do have some things, but not all the time. You know, you don't have section eight. Oh no actually, sorry. You do have section eight in mobile. Yes. There was yeah, there was one project because if you, if it if it's, if it's just a rental community, you have a mobile home rental community.

John Coe 00:50:27  Right. Well that's.

Moiz Doriwala 00:50:28  True. Yeah. So again I think capital will come back. I mean, sorry, I think that's true. Capital will eventually some of it will exit because it's not as easy of a space to be in. And so when that happens I think it'll be another opportunity. So we're always looking to to re-enter. and I have some other partners that I, we have a good we have a great operator. Now that, is has great infrastructure, great reporting.

Moiz Doriwala 00:50:54  and.

John Coe 00:50:55  But you have none in your portfolio?

Moiz Doriwala 00:50:56  No, I don't own any mobile home parks today.

John Coe 00:51:00  But you would if the price was. I would love to go after it. Yeah I.

Moiz Doriwala 00:51:04  Would.

John Coe 00:51:04  Love to. Yeah. So let's shift back to the senior housing business because you recently. Well in 2017 you formed a you know a 501 C3 talk. Elaborate on that, why you set it up and how the business evolved, you know, to where it is today because you had a recent big closing that you want. Yeah.

Moiz Doriwala 00:51:23  So so I didn't originally set up this the, the, the 513 501 C3 is called Superior Living Foundation Inc.. And I originally did not set it up. the the principles of Meridian Senior living set up the foundation in order to, grow our presence in senior housing and health care. And the idea was there are a number of opportunities that we can we can work with tax exempt, investors. We can do taxes and bond financing in order to grow a portfolio of health care assets, where Meridian's senior living can be the manager or actively involved in those assets.

Moiz Doriwala 00:52:09  And then we can, grow a portfolio from there, from a capital base there to continue to develop, acquire in the senior housing.

John Coe 00:52:19  How do you avoid the conflict? I mean, IRS is going to look very carefully at situations where you have both public, you know, nonprofit and for profit enterprise is kind of doing business with each other, whether the ownership is similar or well sold.

Moiz Doriwala 00:52:34  So in a non so in the nonprofit, it has a a board that's completely independent of the company. So the, the, the officers don't make all the decisions, the board makes the decisions, and the board is independent. And so everything that we can provide in the nonprofit, would be at, you know, market rates, market performance. And so, you know, no matter what you do there, you will have their scrutiny of the investors, the market and the board, the board of directors, obviously, the board wants to do what's best for the foundation. And so, you know, we think that, you know, we're we're Meridian is a is a manager for for facilities that the foundation owns.

Moiz Doriwala 00:53:20  We think we can do a very good job at market rates. and provide market level services. the foundation does not only have one operator, we have multiple operators. So we're able to compare what different operators do performance wise, but also from a rate. So I think, you know, to, you know, we started the foundation with one idea, but knowing that it has to be independent and continuing to make sure that there is independence is very important. So we want to make sure there is no conflict. because we want to make sure, I know our board wants to make sure for sure that everything we do in the foundation, we continue to evaluate the performance of the partners and the operators, and make sure we're we're doing everything on a market basis.

John Coe 00:54:16  Pivoting away from your career trajectory, perhaps share some of your most interesting investments or financing assignments over the years.

Moiz Doriwala 00:54:29  You know, I mean, God, I'll talk about two. Two interesting kind of financing assignments. one of them we just settled on.

Moiz Doriwala 00:54:42  So a number of years, it's been about two years or three years. I was working with the maritime attorney out of Annapolis on a, he represented us. We had a we had made a loan to an architect who. Whose collateral? The collateral to us was his boat.

John Coe 00:55:02  Just Park.

Moiz Doriwala 00:55:02  Hill. Brooke Hill. Yeah. And all these relationships there anyway. But this is a book Hill. This is a book Hill. opportunity investment. And so I got to know this Annapolis attorney from that, and he called me and said, hey, I'm working with the client who, who was a partner in a, in, in a, maritime business. And the vessel was damaged and the damage from it with the insurance company, created all sorts of basically, snowballed into shutting down the business. And, you know, there's a lawsuit that the receiver has now, for this claim. And is that something you would be interested in continuing to pursue, purchase the claim and pursue? And so I really don't know anything about this.

Moiz Doriwala 00:55:56  And so it was a huge learning curve to learn about how does how do you how does buying insurance claims work? How does maritime law work. Because it's very different. and we did our due diligence and we got involved in this claim. And, you know, we just, you know, we work through the claim and we just settled, you know, I think all parties are happy. And, you know, it was just a totally outside. I always think the most interesting projects are the things that I don't do every day, where I can learn something new, where I can, you know, where I can apply all the different skills that I've learned, on on something new and, you know, something that's really just kind of mentally challenging.

John Coe 00:56:49  How much time did it take you to put that together to get that deal structured?

Moiz Doriwala 00:56:53  it took a while. I mean, it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy.

John Coe 00:56:59  but it was financially rewarding.

Moiz Doriwala 00:57:00  It was definitely financially rewarding. Yeah.

John Coe 00:57:04  Interesting.

John Coe 00:57:05  And you said another deal.

Moiz Doriwala 00:57:06  Another deal. I'll just talk about, yesterday we closed on, Superior Living Foundation and the president of Superior Living Foundation as an officer of the of the foundation. And we just closed on a 14 properties, acquisition of a 14 property, skilled nursing, portfolio, with some great operators. and it was it was a it was a tax exempt bond deal. So, you know, about just under $250 million of tax exempt bonds. very, very John, you said you have experienced in the taxes, land extremely complicated. Yeah. we have lots of different, lawyers involved, different advisors involved. it took probably six months and we had lots of stops and goes.

John Coe 00:57:55  Heavily regulated industry.

Moiz Doriwala 00:57:57  You have you regulated it's a public it's a there's a public offering for it. we have a number of institutional buyers, brand name institutional buyers. and it's exciting for the foundation because it continues to help us grow the foundation in order to provide different health care services, to people, you know, this is a medicaid, mostly Medicaid portfolio.

Moiz Doriwala 00:58:18  So we'll be able to provide, continue providing, the skilled nursing services to the populations that we're going to serve in Texas. So it's pretty exciting for us. And it's, you know, it's just transformative for the foundation because hopefully we'll be able to use this as a track record, continued track record of successes and be able to find other portfolios to to continue to grow our to grow the foundation and the mission.

John Coe 00:58:45  That's great. So going back to when we first met, which has been about 20 years now, not quite, but almost 20 years, I sensed you were destined to be very successful as either an investor or intermediary, and it's clear that I was right. Together we have transacted several times. Yeah. I introduced you to an equity investor for one of Meridian's senior facilities, living facilities in Florida. Separately, I introduced you to a multifamily investor owner who you've now invested in at least three of his projects, if I'm not mistaken. talk about these investments and how our relationship has helped you over the years.

John Coe 00:59:25  Be honest and build gush, please.

Speaker 3 00:59:28  Well, I mean, John, you and I met.

Moiz Doriwala 00:59:31  when I was in the, young mentorship. Yeah, it was Young Leaders. you like program? Yes. I guess when we were under 30, we were. I guess that's what we qualified for. Young members and the mentorship program that we had established. You were my first. No, I think you were my second mentor in that program and.

John Coe 00:59:49  Were the coordinator.

Moiz Doriwala 00:59:50  Of the group. That was the point of the group. Right. And, you were I think you were a fantastic mentor because you really engage the responsibility. and you were you wanted to set up meetings. And I think you also enjoyed meeting young future real estate stars or whatever you want to call them, because you've had you've had a number of great mentees that have gone on to do really fantastic things. and so, you know, I think we hit it off when we met, I think over the course of years, you know, lost touch then kind of, you know, connected again.

Moiz Doriwala 01:00:29  I think that's the beauty of just relationships is, you know, you don't have to talk to somebody every day, every week, every month, every year. But, you know, if you have respect for each other, I think it, it means a lot. And so, you know, when interesting opportunities come, come, come around, it made just in the back of your mind say, hey, this would be great for this person or this person. And I think we've talked over the years about things and just in kind of spitballing, ideas have come up. So I know on the senior housing deal, you know, we were just chatting away and you said, oh, hey, I had a conversation with so-and-so. They may be interested in a new senior housing project. And I go, perfect, let's connect them with our senior housing company. And that worked out into, a joint venture transaction. and the same token goes with one of your former mentees who was looking to raise capital for some of their, you know, a new co company that he had or fairly new co company that started raising, you know, passing the hat, dollars to capitalize his first set of acquisitions.

Moiz Doriwala 01:01:32  And then, you know, I, I loved meeting him. And, you know, I subsequently I probably invested in five of his projects, I think. you know, all well-located assets, not necessarily institutional, but really good for kind of friends and family money. And I think, you know, I love to see kind of the, the next generation of real estate guys on their own doing, doing things because that that's a lot of opportunity. And, you know, happy to be an investor because I think, you know, those individuals really they have they have a lot of desire to do well. And, you know, they're finding unique opportunities because they're hungry and they're out there knocking on doors. And, you know, we're so far that relationship has been great. So, you know, thank you for for all those introductions.

John Coe 01:02:18  So broaden that talk a little bit for the listeners because a lot of them are young listening group. If you were to invest in future deals, what criteria would you set forth with regard to what you're looking for from an equity standpoint and, and even your private debt business, you know, what, you know, kind of set forth what you're what you'd be looking for and also the type of sponsors you'd want to invest with as well.

Moiz Doriwala 01:02:47  I think I think number one for us would be who the sponsor is, right. because that's our partner, not everything. As I said before, not everything goes as planned. And so you want to make sure you are partnered with the right people who are going to do the right things and who are going to communicate. because that's that's the important thing is things may think the deal may just go backwards and sideways and may just be a zero or worse. But if you if you have the right partner who all along has been trying to do the right thing and have been communicative and wants to to talk about things, we can help work through issues. And so I think having the right sponsor is important. I think number two for, for kind of a person starting a new business. If I was if I was going to look at investing in their project, I think location is going to be important because, you know, the the alternative use, if it doesn't work out, there's, there's a, there's a potentially a good alternative use for recovery.

Moiz Doriwala 01:03:45  I think if you were, if the location was less than ideal or something that was kind of on the on the cuff of whether it works or not with the new sponsor may be more difficult because, you know, should it not work, I don't know what the recovery could be or the alternative use. So location is really important. and I think the ability for that, for that, that partner, to be able to have some sort of financial resources, because you can't have a partner who, if something goes sideways, says, oh my God, I need to go get a job because I can't pay my bills. You need to have somebody who has some, not a lot, but has some capital and some material skin in the game, to be your partner. So they, they need to follow through and make sure it works. Otherwise it's really detrimental to them. if you're unwilling to do that, you know, I have some partners. I own some real estate in Richmond, in Boulder, Colorado, and my partner there, I've been doing business with her for ten years.

Moiz Doriwala 01:04:51  And, you know, she always laughs when people talk about, you know, I will only sign non-recourse loans. She's like, I've been developer for 35 years. There was only a small period of time in those 35 years that I actually signed non-recourse loans. I'm used to signing recourse like that's that's part of the development game. Right. And so that mentality, she knows that every deal she's putting her neck on the line. And so that's important to us, you know, and the important it's important for that person to be able to do to do that. You know, I remember when I was raising capital for real estate operators and developers in the D.C. area, no one would want to sign. Everybody was anti recourse. And I get it because the market also didn't require recourse. But when the market started turning, you got harder and harder to finance projects and have clients because all those clients mentality was, oh, I'm only going to do a non-recourse deal. So they just didn't do deals.

John Coe 01:05:48  So would you ever go in on a let's say a co, co op basis with somebody just to provide a guarantee because of your financial statement and just do that and be involved in a deal for me. No. You wouldn't do.

Moiz Doriwala 01:06:05  No for me. No.

John Coe 01:06:06  Have you helped people find people to do that. Wouldn't be willing to. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So have you been in a deal where that's happened? Yes. Where you're an investor. Okay. All right. Because that's a common thing out there.

Moiz Doriwala 01:06:19  Yeah. No. And that is I wouldn't do it personally. But I know people who do it.

John Coe 01:06:23  Right. Right. So you could bring actually on a deal. You could bring equity and you could bring somebody like that on a construction deal. Perhaps if it's a good enough real estate deal, they sure you could. We could.

Moiz Doriwala 01:06:37  Do that. Yes.

John Coe 01:06:38  So the the ability here, of course, is that you not only are a principal, but you have you can raise money too.

Moiz Doriwala 01:06:45  Right. But that's what we've always talked about is you know, that's kind of where I started. Was raising capital right. As a, as an intermediary. So you building all of those relationships over time is is something we have. And, you know, when I bring capital to the table, I have a number of partners of mine that invest alongside me with me. So it's not just my capital, it's a group of capital that we bring to. We kind of invest as a larger group. Now.

John Coe 01:07:11  What makes you.

Moiz Doriwala 01:07:12  Unique when we do deals?

John Coe 01:07:13  So very few people like you.

Moiz Doriwala 01:07:15  Yeah. So we're fortunate to have developed relationships with people who honestly just will trust us. And, you know, we worked hard to build that trust. And we continue to work harder to keep that trust. And so, you know, the important thing is, you know, that group of investors, I've, you know, I've known since forever. And, you know, we would never ask them to invest in something that we wouldn't invest our own money in.

John Coe 01:07:40  Okay. Well, that that leads to my next question. Investing in real estate takes intelligence, understanding, perspective, and courage. Talk about your philosophy and what you what do you look for in opportunities that sets you apart from other investors?

Moiz Doriwala 01:07:58  I think number one, we're able to be creative. We don't have a box. and this is even in our lending side is we don't have a box. We want to talk about the story. We want to talk about the opportunity. We want to talk about the exit, and then we want to try to craft a solution that accomplishes the goals of everybody around the table. And it may not be perfect and it may not accomplish everything, but we think that by not having a box and, you know, working through complicated situations, we can find we can figure something out. you know, not everything we we know, not everything can be perfect. And so I think that's the number one thing that has, you know, that that is our differential.

Moiz Doriwala 01:08:47  And I'd say on the lending side, we get calls from people who have failed other financing routes because those were more traditional and their their need required something that was unique, different. so I think that's one. And number two, honestly, our other competitors, we say what we're going to we we do what we say we're going to do. We don't retrain people. We will be a quick. No we don't. We don't like, say, you know, give us a deposit so we can underwrite and figure it out. We we are truly committed. If we if we underwrite the deal and we say we're going to do something almost always not all sometimes it just there's a there's some reason why can't happen. But almost always we are we will do what we say we're going to do. So we we can we have certainty of execution. we can do things quickly. We don't need we don't have a huge committee. There's three of us that just talk about it. and we're able to be nimble.

Moiz Doriwala 01:09:49  We can be quick. we we think, you know, we're not burdened with tons of lawyers and lots and lots of legal costs. We do have good attorneys who who document, who get who do the documentation. so I think those are that's really our competitive advantage is, you know, okay.

John Coe 01:10:06  So that that leads to my next question. Other than Meridian, all your other business ventures are sole practices, if I'm not mistaken.

Moiz Doriwala 01:10:14  No, that's not correct. No. So in almost every. So Sterling is my sole business. But outside of that, everything that I do, I have different partnerships. I do very little even when I invest. Yeah, even when I or investment partners, when I invest in deals, I'm generally one of others, whether I bring the investor group or I'm just a passive investor. But I'd say they're almost everything I do, I do in partnership with with people.

John Coe 01:10:42  So you have people that you can bounce ideas off of on operating decisions.

Moiz Doriwala 01:10:46  Of course.

John Coe 01:10:47  Yeah.

John Coe 01:10:48  On every, every one of your deal.

Moiz Doriwala 01:10:50  I rarely do things in a complete silo, and if I do, I usually still bounce the idea of if it's a material decision, we'll have someone I can, like call up and say, what do you think?

John Coe 01:11:01  That's good. elaborate on how you track your investments and manage your time with the idea that you are sharing this. With other entrepreneurs and investors who are listening.

Moiz Doriwala 01:11:14  so it's time management. I, you know, I was talking to John earlier was, you know, just your your skill sets. What what sets you apart, what makes you different. And I think I'm really good at time management and making lists, prioritizing things and managing multiple, multiple transactions, multiple things at one time. So I think that kind of what sets me apart. How do you physically do ability to do it? A lot of it's just in my head, you know, it's really crazy is I, I, I keep my head and I keep a calendar and whenever I, I wake up in the middle of night, I think something I put in my calendar.

Moiz Doriwala 01:11:56  So my calendar from the time I started the day to the end, I go through it. When I wake up, I wake up very early. So. So say five in the morning. The first thing I do is grab my phone and I look at my calendar for the day. I think about all the things that I have to do today and I mentally organize. How am I going to do all those things? And then I'm adding a bunch of things along the way and throughout the day I check my calendar to say, oh, did I do this? Do I do that? And if I didn't, I maybe move it to the next day, maybe move it down to different time. But I feel like I'm pretty scheduled. and I think that helps me manage manage all these things.

John Coe 01:12:32  What about financial management? How do you how are you managing that? So you're in I don't know how many different partnerships. Let's say you're in 50 partnerships. How are all those? Do you have an accountant that you work?

Moiz Doriwala 01:12:42  I have an accountant that I work with.

Moiz Doriwala 01:12:44  And, you know, we use QuickBooks. You know, pretty basic, simple, cost effective to manage the accounting for a lot of these.

John Coe 01:12:52  Offshore people that help you with administrative assistance or.

Moiz Doriwala 01:12:55  Anything like that. We're very, very lean. Okay. Yeah. A lot of it's just me.

John Coe 01:13:01  So you do your own books and everything.

Moiz Doriwala 01:13:03  So not for all of this stuff, Obviously, each one of these companies has, you know, real accounting team in the back office, right. So I would get maybe a K-1 or get financials from them. So a lot of the entities have like real infrastructure.

John Coe 01:13:18  You mentioned earlier payout quarterly until your investors. So how do you manage.

Moiz Doriwala 01:13:22  So like in like in Book Hill I manage it I do it I do it personally.

John Coe 01:13:26  Okay. So how many investors do you do.

Moiz Doriwala 01:13:28  About 15 investors.

John Coe 01:13:29  Okay. So you send out checks every quarter.

Moiz Doriwala 01:13:31  We do it. It's very it's not it's it's okay. You know what? I like to not do that.

Moiz Doriwala 01:13:36  Yes, but I'm also on this. I'm a control freak about it. And it's not that hard. It doesn't take that much time that I can do it eventually.

John Coe 01:13:45  So even your private investments, let's say with Colin, you're my. You have what, five investments with him. So you stay on top of all those things and what you always real estate. You kind of. Yeah.

Moiz Doriwala 01:13:57  You know what's great is for, for for people who want to start new companies. Technology is fantastic. And embrace technology because like, for example, Colin has great. He has gone to a technology. He uses a company where he can track all his, investments and all his investors can log in and track their investments in his different projects, get real time. All the reporting is there, all the financial information is there. So it's at your fingertips. So that's very important. And I recommend anybody kind of starting a new business is invest in that kind of technology. I did not invest in that technology and I wish I had but for me, having, having being an being an investor, having the ability to, to see that technology, I love it because it helps me manage everything on my end better.

John Coe 01:14:47  That's great. So speaking of technology, have you explored AI and have you used it at all?

Moiz Doriwala 01:14:53  no. but I, I would like to. Yes, I want to I have not done it personally. I've used it for very little, very small tests. But I would like to become, you know.

John Coe 01:15:05  Well, with your financial wherewithal, it seems to me you could sit down with somebody and hire them to set me up and put it all on, you know, such that you can then have immediate access to everything that you have right at your fingertips like that, you know, and have it all reporting up to you in a certain way. And it's amazing what I've seen from what can be done.

Moiz Doriwala 01:15:26  Yeah. You know, I would say one of the things I do is like, the invest manager that we use to manage our personal financials, they have great technology. Well, there you go. And so everything that I do, I tell them.

John Coe 01:15:40  This is your family.

Moiz Doriwala 01:15:41  This is our family, right? And I tell them, hey, we made sterling an investment.

Moiz Doriwala 01:15:46  And so and so book it. So they book in their technology portal. And then whenever I get financial updates or stuff, I just send it to them and they keep it updated. you know, so in a way.

John Coe 01:15:59  So you have your own family basically.

Moiz Doriwala 01:16:00  They manage, they're able technology wise. They keep track of a lot of things. So, you know, when we have to create a net worth statement or do things like that. Yeah, we spent a lot of time feeding their system information. And so now it's much easier for for me to do that than the old days. I would have to go and actually get the Excel file and update it and put everything in now real time. As long as I stay on top of giving them updates, they're able to track things real time and be able to provide. I, you.

John Coe 01:16:29  Know.

Moiz Doriwala 01:16:30  I can log in to this portal and be able to see everything. Yeah, mostly everything there.

John Coe 01:16:35  They're like a family office investor land to some extent.

Moiz Doriwala 01:16:38  Yeah. They track everything for us.

John Coe 01:16:40  Yeah. There you are. That probably is your that's your go to for that.

Moiz Doriwala 01:16:45  Yeah. So that's what I use. Like you know it took us a while to get it set up.

John Coe 01:16:48  Now I get it.

Moiz Doriwala 01:16:49  Yeah. That helps us keep track of things.

John Coe 01:16:51  Yeah.

Moiz Doriwala 01:16:52  And I always say something happened to me. My wife knows where everything is, right.

John Coe 01:16:56  And you've got an advisor and you can explain it to her if she doesn't quite understand. What? Oh, she's.

Moiz Doriwala 01:17:02  She's very smart. She'll. She knows a lot of this stuff, so that's good.

John Coe 01:17:06  So shifting away from that, what what trends do you see to in in investments and in the capital markets that are challenging and at the same time offer unique opportunities today?

Moiz Doriwala 01:17:18  I mean, today on an investment standpoint, I don't know, because it's so right now with the change in government and what's going on, you know, here in DC with the administration. you know, every day seems to be a little different.

Moiz Doriwala 01:17:32  And we, you know, you, you see new tariffs that you see tariffs getting rolled back. You see you know the financial markets are are you know, we're seeing the kind of the, the negative impact on the financial markets. you know in terms of credit I don't know. you know I think lending is still getting getting financing is still tough. you know, with with Unemployment, you know, probably going up a little bit here. You know, that's going to have an impact on real estate prices. you know, maybe if you're an office owner, it's a good thing because people going back to work. More and more people I talked to, even outside of government, are are now having to go back to the office. so that's a good thing. I own an office building in Richmond. I would love for that to happen there because we've, you know, we've had a lot of vacancy over the last several years. you know, so, it's hard to have a crystal ball.

Moiz Doriwala 01:18:28  And so I don't really know. I don't have a great answer for that question, because I feel like every day in the morning, I may think one thing in the afternoon, my opinion may change based on, you know, more information that comes out.

John Coe 01:18:41  Well, let's look at the businesses you invest in. So thinking about the senior housing business, for instance, you know, looking demography demographically is nothing but upside.

Moiz Doriwala 01:18:55  But they say there's a tsunami right. The silver tsunami. And I we do see we do see that. Absolutely. The challenges in the senior housing business is one the cost of labor is is just it's insane what what happened over Covid is here to stay. Just the huge increase in cost of labor, the huge increase in food costs, huge increase in supplies. So all of those inputs have skyrocketed. The only thing that has not caught up with it is the rents. The rents have not caught up with the, the the increases in all the inputs. And so the there's still that imbalance and has to be there's some recalibration that needs to happen.

Moiz Doriwala 01:19:36  and so from that perspective, you know, the stock market's swinging and, and and having any sort of negative impact in the stock market affects our potential clients or potential residents, because, you know, the affordability, the affordability of, you know, being able to come and stay with us, The ability for them to sell their house. Interest rates obviously has an impact on the ability and value of their homes. and so, you know, all of these things we talk about impact our, our residents, right, and our, our revenue stream. And then on the flip side, all the inputs into our, you know, our business are much, much more expensive. So the demand is there, but you still have to figure out how to get the demand to work with the supply. And from a new supply perspective, you know, the starts aren't as great as they used to be because financing is very, very challenging. building materials are a lot more expensive.

John Coe 01:20:34  It forces rents up, you know.

Moiz Doriwala 01:20:35  But forces rents up. But then there's the affordability factor. So that's the, you know, in our in our space, affordability is huge. Now, you know, if you look at the skilled nursing space or even some of the behavioral health space that takes Medicaid, you know, so, you know, there there's a pair source there. But on the flip side, that pair source is capped in terms of what they pay you. You can't raise the rates every year to match your expenses. You get you know, you get whatever the CPI or Medicaid allows in terms of an annual rate increase. And then now there's talk of Medicaid cuts, right. And so with those potential Medicaid cuts in the unknown, you know, everyone is nervous. We think that, you know, senior housing and skilled nursing won't won't have much of a cut just because they're, you know, they there's a huge population that benefits from Medicare and Medicaid, and needs it. and but you never know. And so I would say, you know, it's hard to tell because, you know, the affordability is a huge, huge issue in what we do.

John Coe 01:21:37  I mentioned I earlier and what drives I data centers. And so there is some segments of the economy that are just almost unlimited growth. It seems like the health care center business in general, not just in housing, is growing.

Moiz Doriwala 01:21:52  Oh, yeah. And health care. Yeah. Health care is going to be huge. It's going to be huge. And you know how you start your call centers, how you staff, staffing even how you know how residents interact.

John Coe 01:22:03  Oh yeah. And then, you know as I said the growth of data. Yeah. The growth of I mean it just there's and I think the energy business is going to grow too. Not necessarily. Well obviously the Trump administration wants to dig, you know, drill baby drill. But I think the the passive energy business continues to grow and become more and more profitable over time. It seems to me the more efficiencies in the industry, etc.. So it's interesting. so a lot of people are concerned, obviously in the office sector, you know, are people coming back to the office? You said they are, they are starting to.

John Coe 01:22:43  But how many days a week? Is it efficient? Does it make sense to operate building seven days a week when people are only there? three because the numbers. How do you make the numbers pencil when that happens? And what days of the week do people work and when do they not there? And so how does that how do you operate a building for that retail? What's the demand there?

Moiz Doriwala 01:23:03  There's a lot of things to be answered. Yeah, yeah a lot of things to be figured out I guess. Yeah, yeah. Time will tell.

John Coe 01:23:09  It's interesting. So where do you see yourself investing the most time and capital going forward?

Moiz Doriwala 01:23:18  you know, I say be opportunistic. I don't I don't want to be. I mean, that's everything I've done has been opportunistic, and that's why I'm all over the place. I feel like I'm all over the place, and. But it's been because I like to be opportunistic. Right. If I, if I had a box or was in a silo, I probably would have never done mobile home parks.

Moiz Doriwala 01:23:38  but, you know, I really enjoyed we first started busing business. I enjoyed going to these kind of rural communities, mostly in the South, knocking on doors, spending 2 or 3 days there going to the community that we bought and try to figure out what the competition is like, right. that was fun. but if I had a box, I would have never, ever in my wildest dreams invested in that space. but it was great. And so, you know, I don't, I, you know, we'll continue to make, high quality loans. We'll continue to look for good operators to partner with, continue to look for good real estate. I think real estate, you know, it's not going anywhere. and in, well, in, you know, prime locations, there's always going to be a demand. so, I mean, I guess, you know, we just, you know, so.

John Coe 01:24:28  It's open minded curiosity, basically. That's what I'm hearing.

Speaker 4 01:24:31  Back to my point.

Moiz Doriwala 01:24:32  Is, you know, be curious.

Speaker 4 01:24:34  You know?

John Coe 01:24:35  Right. That's great because there are very few people like you out there that have the depth of experience you have institutionally, as well as your mindset of being in a small, you know, group and then have both the agency experience as well as the principal experience are very few people that have that capability. So you are unique and that's great.

Moiz Doriwala 01:24:59  And sometimes things work great and sometimes things don't work at all. And you learn a lesson. And so, you know, you have to be ready to also, you know, you win some, you lose some. And, you know, my view is as long as you can learn a lesson from that and it's I guess it's okay, you can't win everything.

Speaker 4 01:25:18  So what?

John Coe 01:25:19  But on that point, what was perhaps the the most surprising lesson you've learned in your career so far? Is it about people or is it about a deal? Is it.

Speaker 4 01:25:32  About it's.

Moiz Doriwala 01:25:33  Not necessarily a surprise. It's well, there's two lessons.

Moiz Doriwala 01:25:37  One, there are no guarantees, right? If someone tells you there is a guarantee that this is a guaranteed return or guaranteed, this thing is going to happen, guaranteed, that.

Speaker 4 01:25:49  That.

Moiz Doriwala 01:25:50  There's no guarantees in life. We've learned that the hard way, even with diligence. And we thought we did, but we learned that there's no guarantees in life. And number two is within reason, meaning, you know, the trust of your team and the people you work with, you know, on the most critical matters of a deal or of a, of a business or operations, whatever you need to take ownership and agency of making sure you have checked the information is correct, or if talked to the right experts to make sure the information is correct. Just because someone in your team or you know one of your partners tells you something, doesn't necessarily mean it's actually correct. So we've learned the hard way that too.

John Coe 01:26:43  So sometimes it's not intentional to us.

Moiz Doriwala 01:26:45  It's sometimes absolutely not intentional. It could be an experience that someone's talking from, and that may just not be the way it really is.

Moiz Doriwala 01:26:53  But again, a lot of the things are not intentional. I don't think. I would never say these are intentional by people, but I from a lessons I've learned, you know, the hard way is, you know, important things. You need to make sure you've heard from the horse's mouth.

John Coe 01:27:10  So that segue to the next question. What advice would you give your 25 year old self?

Moiz Doriwala 01:27:14  So I made a I made actually made a list for this is I said this before and over and over again. Be curious. Be patient. Be a hustler. Slow down. Don't do everything in her. So that's.

John Coe 01:27:32  It's hustler and slow.

Moiz Doriwala 01:27:34  Slow. They're they're they're they're contrary, but they aren't. Because I look at them in different ways. You know, being a hustler means being opportunistic. Being in my mind, being a hustlers, being opportunistic. Be out there, be talking to people. Don't just sit there and wait for things to come to you because they probably won't. And when I look at slow down meaning with my with my, you know, my second thing was to be patient is, you know, you you can't you can't do everything at one time.

Moiz Doriwala 01:28:04  You can't take on deal after deal after deal. You've got to actually work it and make sure it works. And then you can move on to your next thing. Right. So I look at them a little differently. and I think you have to be passionate in the things that you do. And if you're not passionate, you get bored. And if you get bored, you just a less involved. And then it just becomes, you know, a chore which is not fun. And then you avoid doing it.

John Coe 01:28:28  So if you want it to be fun.

Moiz Doriwala 01:28:30  If you do things that you're passionate about, you generally I think the outcome will be a lot better.

John Coe 01:28:36  That's great. That's great. So talk about your priorities of family, work and giving back.

Moiz Doriwala 01:28:44  I think, you know, obviously, family is really important. I mean, one of the major career shift that I did was, you know, thinking about family. you know, I have two great kids. I have a 16 year old and a 14 year old.

Moiz Doriwala 01:28:57  I love spending time with them. You know, I see the on the horizon here that they'll be going off to college soon. And so I want to spend as much time with our family. We love to travel. we're we're heavy travelers. Heavy skiers. you very involved. They both are athletic, so very involved in their athletic schedules and, like, school life and and trying to be there. and then from, you know, giving back, I mean, for our family and my wife and I, education is a big deal. And, you know, we spend a lot of time and resources in giving back in the education space because we do want to make sure not just, here in the US, but kind of, you know, internationally as well and organizations that we participated, you know, we think, you know, educating people who don't have access or making sure people have access, to, you know, some sort of education is important. So that's, that's like from a philanthropy standpoint, that's where we, you know.

John Coe 01:30:00  This organization that you support that you want to talk about or.

Moiz Doriwala 01:30:05  I mean, we we support a number of organizations. so but I just think, you know, I, I, I look at it and everybody has something that they are really passionate about. And for us it's, you know, the access to education.

John Coe 01:30:20  That's great. So final question. If you could place a billboard on the Capitol Beltway for millions to see, what would it say?

Moiz Doriwala 01:30:28  Please trust your gut.

John Coe 01:30:31  Trust your gut for your business. That's critical.

Moiz Doriwala 01:30:35  I think in life, if your gut telling you something. there's probably a reason why it's telling you something. And that's another lesson I learned. And I think to that question,

John Coe 01:30:49  Where is that lesson? That exact lesson paid off for you the most, would you say?

Moiz Doriwala 01:30:58  You know, I don't know about paid off for me the most, but I have learned a lot of lessons by my gut, told me not to do something, and I did it anyways.

Moiz Doriwala 01:31:08  Yeah. And I learned the hard way that I, you know, if my gut first told me this.

John Coe 01:31:14  What about the other way around where you said, no, I'm not going to do that. And all of a sudden, oh my God, I wish I.

Moiz Doriwala 01:31:20  I'm sure there I guarantee, I guarantee there have been lots of missed opportunities, I guarantee it. And but I'm okay with it, like, I don't I don't look back. I don't really follow things that I pass on or I'm not, I don't I don't Follow those things. I mean maybe bitcoin not I own like very little bit of bitcoin. Maybe I should have bought a lot of bitcoin or something. Right? Right. But whatever I don't regret it. I don't do anything. But you know there I can't I can't regret all the things. I mean if I did I would spend you know, I spend more of my, all my time regretting then. So for me, my perspective is I know the hardest lessons I've learned is if I my gut told me not to do something, but external forces somehow convinced me to do it otherwise, and I did it.

Moiz Doriwala 01:32:10  I wish I had not done it. I learned many lessons that way.

John Coe 01:32:14  That's interesting. Well, thank you, Ramis, very much. This is very informative. And, I'm glad I asked you to do this.

Moiz Doriwala 01:32:21  Yeah. No, this was fun. I know, you had asked me a while back ago, and we just got, busy with a couple things, but I'm glad we got to sit down. It was fun to kind of think about, you know, life and all the things I've been doing.

John Coe 01:32:33  Yeah. It's great. Thank you. Thanks, John.