Retail Real Estate Investing Explained (Why Apartments Aren’t Always Best)

Evan Polaski (00:00)

But I saw a lot of groups in the heyday that, you know, I’m a

I’m an attorney, I’m a residential agent, I’m gonna syndicate this 100 unit apartment complex. And I don’t know how to underwrite the deal, so I’m gonna bid it up, and then the sophisticated guys have to pay more to get it if they’re gonna be competitive on it. And you just kinda get this escalation.

Q Edmonds (01:58)

Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. am your host, Q Edmonds. Excited to be here today. Got another fantastic guest. We’ve been talking and I just know you’re going to get a ton of nuggets from him. ⁓ watch out for his humor. Like I, hopefully he won’t have me, you know, I’m not going to try to put pressure on him. Let me just stop. Let me not even put that out there, but I’ve been talking to this guy. I’ve been enjoying talking to him. And again, I know he’s just going to bring some nuggets. His perspective is really going to be.

enlightening and give you just something just to take away and think about. And so I am excited to introduce you guys to Mr. Evan.

How are feeling today,

Evan Polaski (02:36)

No good, how are you?

Q Edmonds (02:38)

Oh man, man, doing good, doing great. So glad you’re here. And I’ll be honest, I just want to dive in. I would love for you to tell people what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story, how you got into where you are, know, we’d love to know that. And then tell us what part of the world you win, what markets you’re representing. So I’ll appreciate that as well.

Evan Polaski (03:00)

Yeah, well, again, thanks for having me. Looking forward to the conversation. A little bit about me. So Evan Pulaski, I’m the director of capital raising and investor relations for Blackgate Partners, which is a retail owner operator of unanchored strip centers, primarily in the Midwest, upper Midwest. ⁓ My specific background, I always tell people I’ve loved real estate construction since like I was six years old, living in suburban Atlanta.

watching the Publix anchored and Home Depot anchored shopping centers get built outside my subdivision. And just being in awe of it, obviously not knowing the financial component to it, but just whether it’s the retail centers, which we all interact with day in and day out, home building, office buildings, just the physical world around us ⁓ has always been.

just something that I’ve loved and wanted to be a part of. So fast forward, actually studied business administration with a focus in finance and real estate at the University of Cincinnati and started my career in that space. And here we are, know, 17, 18, going on 18 years out of graduating from the University of Cincinnati focused on exactly what I love to do, which is talk to investors primarily about investing in real estate.

Um, so as we, you know, into my specific current role or backtrack to touch, you know, and I use this as, as the call to action at the end, like, just love being a resource for people, whether you’re looking to buy your first rental property, um, as a listener, whether you’re looking to be an LP in, uh, in larger deals, I’m an LP, I’m an active investor with some flips with my wife, single family rentals, uh,

you know, so kind of do a lot of it on my on my own and have a diverse background. But Blackgate specifically, I’ll say my career came full circle, starting a retail operator, went to multifamily groups for a little while and came back to retail. And, you know, I love it from the investment perspective.

I love it because the cap rates are there. I love it because even though I have a specific role in it, you

You just find more sophisticated owner operators. It’s not the next level up for a bunch of novice people. I’ve talked to a lot of people and it’s one thing to go buy four single family homes, sell those, buy an eight plex with your own money. Okay, roll that into a 20 plex and kind of grow that way, 100 % behind it.

But I saw a lot of groups in the heyday that, you know, I’m a

I’m an attorney, I’m a residential agent, I’m gonna syndicate this 100 unit apartment complex. And I don’t know how to underwrite the deal, so I’m gonna bid it up, and then the sophisticated guys have to pay more to get it if they’re gonna be competitive on it. And you just kinda get this escalation.

Not to say it doesn’t happen in retail. But from an investment perspective, I think a lot of people are afraid. Like, how do I fill an empty retail center?

Well, you need to know the tenants. Well, I don’t know the tenants. Good. You shouldn’t buy it. And so everybody’s playing on a slightly more level playing field from the investment side. Back to what Blackgate does. Necessity based unanchored retail centers. own in, we’re based, so offices in Columbus, Ohio. I sit in Cincinnati, Ohio. We own centers in both of those markets. A good portfolio and a growing portfolio in the Chicagoland market. We bought our first center a month ago as of when we

recording this ⁓ in Minneapolis. So that’s been a market that’s been on our list for a while, but we’ve not just found the right deal yet until a month ago, and Kansas City. kind of those, I’ll call major secondary markets around the Midwest is where we know our acquisition guy would love for us to buy more nationally. And we’re looking at deals here and there, but obviously the juice has,

Gweeze has to be worth the juice to get us outside of where we’re all based. And the primary value driver is not only our sourcing of deals, but we, the founders of the company come from a leasing background. So they were brokers filling up as a third party leasing representative for other owners. So they cut their teeth, basically watching, I got a great commission on filling this 30,000 square foot box, but took me a year and a half.

And I might have made 50K in commission, not a bad payday by any means, but the owner just made $2 million in value because they filled that box and the you the increase in that. ⁓ So about eight years ago, they took those experiences and started moving to the principal side until they have been at it since. ⁓ know, so we.

do all of our own in-house leasing and property management, is where, or I’m sorry, asset management, which is with leasing being the primary driver of value, and we want to control that in-house. ⁓ And then of course, sourcing the deals and sourcing the equity.

Q Edmonds (09:22)

Love it. Thank you so much, man, for your explanation. Thank you for explaining it in a very, very succinct way. I do want to talk to you and ask you about strategies, right? What is, and I would love for you to answer this two ways if possible. What are some business strategies that you use? But I’d also love to know some personal strategies that you use to keep you motivated, keep you on target. You know, some people cold plunge, some people go hiking. So

What are some business strategies and personal strategies that you will find that has been beneficial for you?

Evan Polaski (10:32)

Yeah, so I think we all struggle with this and the kind of habits of what are them. One that I’ve taken up, I’ll say relatively recently, I’ve dabbled with it. It’s like it worked and this is both personal and professional. Since they are, know, my motive, my day job is a lot of my time. And while I don’t even own the company, and I know entrepreneurs, it’s a whole other level for those who have all the risk on their plate.

⁓ but you know, journaling has become a new habit of mine and, and if I’m looking at my, you closed journal underneath my desk shelf here, it does it, it’s both. mean, even it’s the issues and stresses I’m feeling with my life. It is, and those are very intertwined as I think most

whether you’re an entrepreneur or a W2 employee, ⁓ they’re intertwined with business. ⁓ How can I ⁓ succeed and achieve my goals there? And I’ve just found that’s, like I said, would go through some hard times, as we all do years ago, I’d kind of get into it, I’d do it consistently for three or four weeks, and then things would kind of start to pass, and all of sudden becomes less of a priority.

And a year goes by until the next hard time. so grateful that you can pick it up and put it down. But I have been trying to be, I’m still working on it, really, be more consistent. It was like every day, 15 minutes, write it down. I like pen and paper. I know actually a former boss of mine would do the journal every day and he’d do it on his laptop. like, can’t, that just doesn’t process the same way for me personally.

You know, so I’d say that’s it because like I said, it’s equal parts being a better father and being a better husband and personal financial goals and all of, you know, the things, what vacations do we want to go on and how much do I need to save for those over to how do I raise more money? How do we find better deals? How do I tweak the marketing strategy to help raise more money? You know, got to talk to my bosses about this.

tough conversation, know, whatever that looks like.

Q Edmonds (13:04)

Yeah, no, thank you so much for sharing a lot of parallels. Definitely journaling is one of the things I’m with you. I’ve did it sporadically over the years. I’ve learned now to be more consistent. And the only reason I think why the consistency is there is to be able to look back at some of the stuff I wrote down and be like, oh, wow, like, yeah, actually, okay, like, oh, man. And

One of the big things that have helped me is the book Atomic Habits. Have you ever heard of that book before?

Evan Polaski (13:39)

No.

I some good ones, but I haven’t heard of that one.

Q Edmonds (13:46)

Yeah, it’s a book. One of my favorite. I probably read it like three times now. It’s a book by James Clear. And ⁓ as it sounds, it talks about like building, you know, good habits or whatever. love the approach that he has because he just talks about just being 1 % better every single day. You know, like, don’t try to put too much pressure on yourself. Because like you said, we got so many different things going on. And so that book has helped me tremendously.

But I feel you with the journaling and I also feel you with, you know, the consistency aspect. But I love asking that question because I’ve definitely found that, and I’m glad you know the two are intertwined, like business people, W-2, no matter where you go, you are who you are with yourself. You know what saying? Like you are where your is planted, right? And most of the time, you know, if we have something that can ground us, kind of bring us…

back to reality when we’re dealing with stress and being overwhelmed. I found it to a great thing. so that’s why I asked that question. I always love to hear people’s perspective on that. So thank you for sharing. really appreciate it.

Evan Polaski (14:55)

Yeah, my pleasure.

Q Edmonds (14:56)

Absolutely. So listen, I want to talk about goals and I want to know, you know, what’s your goal for Blackgate? And I would love to know, you know, if you have any personal goals as well that you’re trying to hit that you’re targeted on.

Evan Polaski (15:50)

Yeah, so at Blackgate, kind of easy. feel like the business goals are.

always easier, especially when you are the W2 employee, because you’re communicating with your boss. And it becomes such a big part of your life. my personal goal is to raise $10 million of equity to help support about $27 million of acquisitions in 2026. I’d say that’s the primary business driver goal.

there are definitely more that come down to like the marketing and the referrals from existing investors, know, all those, you know, kind of sub goals. use EOS ⁓ at, at a Blackgate consistently, you know, that’s our weekly check-in meetings are ⁓ run. And so having those, you know, those rocks, those to-dos ⁓ down to the issues always help with that as well. ⁓

But again, the big overarching goal, as most real estate people are, is my size to make sure that equity is always there when our acquisition guy ⁓ lines up deals. so that for very personal reasons, it’s like, so I’m not the one who’s slowing down the ship. And then it just becomes the function of we need to find good deals because we’re not going to keep raising money if we’re buying bad deals. ⁓

You can kind of get to a point and then once those bad deals actually truly show their true colors, it grinds the whole system to a halt. ⁓ But that’s the big one on the personal side. My wife is an interior designer. We’ve flipped houses together on the side. She runs a lot of that. I’m trying to get her to jointly jump in and do just a new construction home.

The house I’m sitting in is was a full gut remodel down to the studs, new electric, new layout, you know, move some walls, also the whole kit and caboodle, but we haven’t done the official like pour the foundation, do the framing, you know, start from scratch and pick the design that you want to build. So hopefully that’ll be something that’s starting very early in 26. I think that’s something we both want. ⁓

you know, to kind of learn the ropes, hopefully make a lot of money, obviously, but we’re both taking the approach of we kind of know this is a route we want to go. We have other income. this is sort of the like, you know, let’s buy it and make sure we’re not going to lose money first and foremost and kind of go into it like, yeah, we might only make a little bit of money. Something another builder would never touch, but we learned the ropes and hopefully made a little bit.

Just like when we started flipping, it’s like, we made 15 grand. Now we would never touch a deal if we were only going to make 15 grand, but we learned and we improved and iterated over the last almost decade now, ⁓ periodically doing the flips.

Q Edmonds (19:04)

Yeah, yeah, I absolutely love it. I absolutely love it. And I love, man, I love how you mentioned your wife. You know, I got one that that’s my ride or die that got my back in. You know, and I just love what you bring up because it just makes me think about mine and just how supportive they are, just how brilliant they are. And so, yeah, and every time you say it, I’m gonna be a goo-goo-eyed thinking about, soon as I get off the phone with you, I’m gonna text her, baby, I love you. ⁓

So yeah, I appreciate you bringing your wife up. I really do.

Evan Polaski (19:38)

And they’re good because it’s I see this in a lot of in my day job when I’m talking with investors 99 % of time talking to men. ⁓ So it’s, it’s a fun when you talk to a female. In fact, there was one years ago who like, talked around the phone, actually did a happy hour in her market, she showed up like, you must be Rachel. Like, how do you know it’s like

Because you’re the only woman I’ve ever talked to in Houston, like as an investor side. And then there were, was she and I and 10 other guys. to that point, we fit the very standard protocol where it seemed like the guys have like, no risk is too big. Just like, go, we got $200,000 saved.

plunk it all down and roll for red, like, let’s go and see what happens. And she definitely dials us back. It’s like, there’s a lot we’re looking at. And I’m like, why aren’t we offering on it? She’s like, we haven’t even driven past this. Like, but we kind of know the market. Like, what if there’s a terrible house right there, like right next door? was like, but the one across the street sold for, you know, $850,000. Like, there’s buffer in this. And she’s like, we…

I want to do it too. You know, that’s why it’s nice because like she wants to do it, but she’s definitely the like, let’s not lose. And I’m like, but how much can we make? Like, what’s the upside? And so again, it’s, I pushed her into entrepreneurship as a, know, cause she really ran the flipping business when my son was born and she left her corporate job. She only did that because of my pushing. Cause I started buying rentals back in 2010 and 11. So I was kind of used to the renovation prod process.

a little bit more than she had seen and she wanted nothing to do with those. But like now she’s got this thriving design business that does well for our family and she gets to kind of name her own hours. So it’s a great balance there. And I think she would say if she watches this that a lot of that would have never happened if it weren’t some of my pushing along and hey, you can do this. You’re good at this. We’ve we can buffer these losses, you know, looking at the risk. Like if this all goes bad,

we can buffer these losses, like we’re fine. ⁓ So let’s see what’s out there versus let the fear hold us back.

Q Edmonds (22:05)

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Listen, I absolutely love what you’re doing. I love the way you think. Again, I love you talking about your family. You you point out, you know, trying to be a better dad, better husband. But also, you know, you seem to be doing a phenomenal job as a director of capital raising. And so this has been a very, very great, great conversation. If someone wanted to reach out to you.

Learn more about what you’re doing, collaborate. What’s the best way for them to reach out to you, sir?

Evan Polaski (22:39)

At this stage, because I’m not a great, I don’t have my own website and everything else, LinkedIn is a great place. I have a fairly unique name that you can probably see on the bottom of the screen here. I’m one of the only, Evan Polaski’s. And I think it gets linked in the show notes. So like, please just track me down on LinkedIn. You’ll see Blackgate. If you see Blackgate, you know you got the right one. And message me there. I even think if you.

click on it and you can find all my contact information. But I’d say that’s the most easy way to get to me and then always happy to move that into phone calls, Zoom calls. If you’re in the Cincinnati or Columbus area, let’s grab coffee or lunch and chat and get to know each other. Because like I said, the thing I love most about my day job is just that I get to help people.

navigate all this. Most of my calls with potential investors are, you know, understanding their goals. And I’m probably a pretty bad salesman or I’m a very good salesman in that regard. But it’s like, you know, these are my day job is long term relationship. So I always view it as I’m going to be crystal clear, like, are the risks and opportunities. And like, if it fits, great. If it doesn’t fit, I’d rather not.

have you be a pain in my neck for the next five years while we’re working through this deal and I pushed you into something that didn’t fit for you. ⁓ But the same is true with really anything real estate related. Like I said, I’m active investor and single families up, limited partner investor. There’s probably some things, there’s a lot of things I don’t know, ⁓ but I think from a broad level of background, it’s happy to be a resource in any way I can.

Q Edmonds (24:29)

So, there he is, Mr. Evans. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your story. I think you are an incredible storyteller. And I say that because I think everything, nothing in this world moves without story. And so just love the way you deliver, the way you take your time, your thoughtful with your answers, thoughtful with your replies. And so I appreciate your storytelling. I also appreciate your perspective, the way you think. And I think, know, just time, just giving us a little nuggets can help.

viewers just sometimes have that slight little mind shift that say, you know, I never really thought about it that way. And I think we have added value where people may just be like, you know, maybe I have a little bit different perspective around this. And so I really appreciate you.

Evan Polaski (25:14)

Yeah, no, my pleasure, Q, and it’s great talking with you.

Q Edmonds (25:17)

Absolutely. So listen, y’all have y’all got the value. You can’t tell me you didn’t. You heard him. You know, we’re to continue to bring people up that just have amazing stories. And here I’m going to ask again, say you need to be subscribed that way you do not miss out on this incredible content. So Mr. Evan, I thank you again. It’s everyone else. We will see you on the next time.