From 1 Duplex to a Billion Dollar Portfolio -Local NJ Guys Makes It Big
| | Wednesday, April 25, 2007 @ 03:19 PM EDT
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Contributed by: George Landi
George Landi Properties
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This has to be one of the best success stories I ever read, it shows us how anyone can get started investing in real estate.
With great sites like this to learn from and help us anyone can became a success..
This article was in my local paper the Asbury Park Press.
I have just copied some of the story.
The Lightstone Group, a real estate company that began nearly 20 years ago with the purchase of a duplex in Lakewood, has agreed to acquire Extended Stay Hotels for $8 billion in cash and debt, officials said Wednesday. In purchasing Extended Stay Hotels for $1 billion in cash and $7 billion in loans, Lightstone will take control
of 683 hotels in the United States and Canada, including one Extended Stay America in Middletown.
The company's real estate portfolio includes 30 million square feet of shopping centers and office buildings in 25 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Its holdings range from the Matawan Mall on Route 34 to IBM Plaza, a prominent office building in Chicago.
For Lichtenstein, the 45-year-old chief executive officer of the company, the deal marks a turning point. Raised in Brooklyn, he said he was attracted to Lakewood by the quiet, suburban community and reasonably priced housing.
Lichtenstein still has a home in Lakewood, but he said he spends most of his time in suburban New York and works at the company's New York office.
He said he started his company knowing little about business and gravitated to real estate because it was a business that was easy to wrap his mind around: You get a loan, buy the property, rent it out, use the income to pay off the loan, and sell it for more than you bought it for.
"Real estate is something that is fairly easy to understand," he said. "You don't have to be technical. You don't have to know about gigawatts or nanos."
To get started, Lichtenstein said he opened a savings account at a local bank with $3,000 he received from his wedding. It was enough to convince the bank to give him a credit card, which he used to buy his first property — a duplex on the corner of Squankum Road and Eighth Street, he said.
He eventually sold the property to a developer. Since then, Lightstone — the English translation for the German word Lichtenstein — has snapped up property quickly, becoming the largest private owner of outlet malls. And it has done so by searching for assets that might be off competitors' radar screens. Among them: The Shawnee Mall near Oklahoma City and the Dakota Mall in Minot, N.D.
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