You Don't Find a Deal, You Make a Deal: Dr. Jordan Romano's Zoning Playbook

Most investors say there are no deals. Dr. Jordan Romano says you are looking in the wrong place.

Jordan is a physician in the Boston area who has spent about a decade investing in one small New Hampshire town, the town where he did his medical residency. He is hyperlocal on purpose. He uses his own capital only. And his edge is not a list, a lead source, or a dialer. It is curiosity applied to public records, specifically planning and zoning board minutes that almost nobody reads.

That is how the subdivision deal happened. A 0.9-acre parcel had been sitting on Zillow for six months, a block from a hospital, on town water and sewer, with the house pushed to one edge of the lot line. Jordan asked whether the town would allow a split, paid for a survey, presented to the planning board, and walked out with three lots where there had been one. A nurse at that hospital is going to build on one of them. The developer who owns 200 units nearby, and drove past that property roughly a thousand times a year, is buying the other.

Jordan is also candid about the loss. He needed a zoning variance on a downtown building that should have been four units. A neighbor organized twenty households, the room was the fullest the board had seen in years, and Jordan walked away from the deal. Then he stayed until 11 PM to talk with everyone who had spoken against him.

We also get into his B-class thesis, why he passed on a hundred units and does not regret it as much as you would think, how a busy physician finds deals in what he calls the interstitium, and the rule his grandfather gave him: always know where the exit is.

Connect with Dr. Jordan Romano:
medicalexpertwitness.com

Chapters

00:00 Always know where the exit is
00:45 Welcome to Real Estate Underground
01:00 Meet Dr. Jordan Romano
01:20 A physician, a mother in real estate, and a house bought at the 2006 peak
03:00 Invest in what you know
04:00 Put all your eggs in one basket and watch the basket
05:00 Why hyperlocal beats long distance
06:00 Diners, broker opens, and off-market deal flow
07:30 Curiosity as a sourcing engine: planning and zoning boards
08:30 Reading the signal when a big developer expands
09:00 The 0.9-acre lot nobody else questioned
10:30 You don't find a deal, you make a deal
12:50 Ed's 58-acre farm and the land he almost missed
13:30 Zillow forensics: empty cabinets, oil heat, and a fall price cut
14:40 Finding the time: deals in the interstitium
16:20 Virtuous capitalism and the small-town ripple effect
17:30 Knocking on doors before you need the vote
18:00 The strikeout: a full room, a lost variance, a dead deal
20:00 Staying until 11 PM to talk to everyone who opposed him
23:00 The Final Five
23:20 Purpose: impact you can actually see
26:00 Best advice: his grandfather's rule
27:00 Sam Zell on markets versus deals
28:00 The one he'd take back: a hundred units passed on
29:00 The B-class thesis
30:00 Five brothers, one highway parcel, and a deal that got away
33:20 What's on the nightstand
36:50 Defining success: optionality and flexibility
39:00 Life outside real estate
42:30 Two grandfathers, two swimmers, one T-shirt
43:50 How to reach Jordan

This week's book: The Almanac of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson
Get it on Amazon

Also mentioned: Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, and Am I Being Too Subtle? by Sam Zell.

Real Estate Underground with Ed Mathews. Find us wherever you get your podcasts, at clarkst.com/podcast or elevista.com/podcast

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