Today we’d like to introduce you to John Alden.
Thanks for sharing your story with us John. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started Alden Pacific Investments as a full-service real estate brokerage to assist real estate investors in Southern California after recognizing a dearth of investor support in the local market. When a new client begins working with our team, we first focus on first understanding and helping them define their goals, and second help them learn and understand the intricacies and unique opportunities for investors within Southern California.
Developing a long term relationship with my clients was important to me. Unlike a typical real estate brokerage, we are not volume-based and instead focus on helping our clients execute on their long term vision. This allows us to offer continued support to our client base over the long term.
Real estate investing in Southern California has its own unique set of challenges, and understanding how to evaluate a deal is critical for any client. With newer investors we spend quite a bit of time with any client helping them understand how to underwrite and evaluate opportunities so they’re able to view a deal like a real estate professional would!
We’ve grown our team to seven, and work out of Santa Monica – we pride ourselves on service, and are always happy to help answer any questions about investing someone has!
Has it been a smooth road?
The biggest challenge we’ve faced so far is COVID-19 wreaking havoc globally and the uncertainty that has caused. We pride ourselves on being proactive – as this crisis has evolved we’ve found ourselves in a situation where it has been easy to slip into reactivity. I was really proud of our team and clients, the benefit of understanding and defining the client’s long term goals means we’ve all been able to stay proactive in our actions while we help them respond to this crisis.
In any investment a client makes we try to hedge as much as possible against any unforeseen volatility in the market – we had been paying attention to some trends that were emerging in the economy over the last year prior to COVID that had given us pause and had adjusted our underwriting accordingly.
What makes COVID-19 so interesting is how fast this situation has evolved, to help stay on top of it we’ve been hosting webinars and other online events with different professionals who can offer insight into what’s happening, and help forecast what the world may look like once we’re able to reopen after the pandemic.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Alden Pacific Investments story. Tell us more about the business.
At API, we specialize in helping our clients buy, sell and exchange multifamily and commercial real estate locally in Southern California. Much like a financial advisor would help a client manage their equity portfolio, we work with clients to help them start and manage their real estate investment portfolio. Real estate investing can get complicated, and we excel in helping our clients understand how to think strategically about investing. We’re in such a unique market there are a ton of opportunities!
As a company, I am most proud of our clients and the team we’re able to create around them. Client success is the best part of this job; I’ve been able to help a lot of people gain more time to spend time with their families and loved ones, travel or start a new career. The fact that we’re able to help them do that is an incredibly rewarding experience.
It surprised me when I started, but asking someone to define their goals can be very difficult for them. I asked one of my mentors if he had experienced the same thing (he had) and I learned a valuable lesson that set the course for all of my future client engagements, the question isn’t how much money an investor can make, but how would they want to spend the time that they would gain from a successful investment – by taking the time to know someone at that level allows us to provide a higher quality of service.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
What a great question! I think technology is going to play a huge role moving forward for investors, we’ve already seen Zillow and Redfin play a huge role in helping homebuyers, and I’m starting to see some really interesting tech platforms being developed for investors. With so much information available it’s going to be extremely important to filter out the bad and to keep the pertinent and relevant information front and center.
Statewide in California, we have to do something about the affordable housing crisis – building more affordable housing will be critical over the next 5-10 years. Real estate professionals can play a significant role in influencing policy decisions at the local and state level.
For investors, it will be interesting to see what happens to real estate after the federal and state economic emergency measures implemented in response to COVID-19. Understanding and evaluating what the potential impacts are will be essential.
Contact Info:
- Address: 3304 Pico Boulevard, Suite K
Santa Monica, CA 90405 - Website: www.aldenpacificinvestments.com
- Phone: 3103990039
- Email: info@aldenpacificinvestments.com
- Instagram: alden_pacific_investments
- Facebook: @aldenpacificinvestments
- Other: LinkedIn @Alden Pacific Investments
Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
