Many people who buy a home experience the power of equity and appreciation. For some, the experience ignites an interest in real estate for profit, turning them into lifelong investors. It doesn’t take long before they’re eyeing real estate.
Others learn about investing in real estate through other routes. Some learn about real estate deals through their career path.
That’s how Josh Joseph, founder and CEO of Big Plan Holdings, came to value the opportunities in commercial real estate (CRE) — both personally and financially. “Bank of America hired me to liquidate a restaurant credit they had, which was based here in Nashville,” he says. “And Nashville was really cool and gritty back then. I loved it.”
Joseph bought his own family a property to enjoy in Nashville and began assessing the city’s unique real estate opportunities.
“Bank of America hired me to liquidate a restaurant credit they had, which was based here in Nashville, and Nashville was really cool and gritty back then. I loved it.”
Josh Joseph,
Founder and CEO of Big Plan Holdings
Josh and his family office Big Plan Holdings (BPH) now sponsor real estate deals that give individual investors access to the benefits above as well as the unique advantage potential of each special property they acquire and project they develop.
The Joseph family began as entrepreneurs. They grew to become successful investors. Today, through BPH, they extend their family’s personal and professional values to other individual investors who want to join them. Industries they’ve found success in include cannabis, music and entertainment, sports, fashion, hospitality, and of course, real estate.
The range of the family’s coverage is embodied by each member’s role in the office’s operations. Co-Founder and CFO Tara Joseph is a key leader in BPH’s business development strategy alongside Josh, in addition to being a serial entrepreneur and advocate for women’s empowerment in local communities. Sydni Joseph leads creative direction on new business ventures for BPH in addition to playing a key role in events and investor relations, while Sophie serves as President of The Joseph Family Foundation.
As they fine-tune their reputation among institutional investors and intermediaries, BPH is reworking and innovating the investment decisions conventionally seen from family office groups. Traditionally, the moves made by family offices are narrow and safe, and their leaders often stick with investments where they’re familiar or successful. Josh and his team are more willing to try brave new investment concepts across regions, industries, and products. For example, they’ll be flexible with prospective Limited Partners on agreement terms based on capital commitments and future plans together. This open-mindedness lends itself to long-term relationship building that only incubates their growth potential.
The BPH team is part of an emerging trend: family offices creatively deploying their raised funds in real estate. They show that individual investors aren’t the only ones who should pursue portfolio diversification.
“There are 10 or 15 types of CRE, which include office space, industrial, manufacturing, retail, raw land, mega-multifamily (large apartment buildings), warehouse, and more. Folks gravitate toward one type of asset class, but I take a diversification and mutual-fund-style approach, and invest into multiple categories.”
Josh Joseph,
Founder and CEO of Big Plan Holdings
"There are 10 or 15 types of CRE, which include office space, industrial, manufacturing, retail, raw land, mega-multifamily (large apartment buildings), warehouse, and more,” says Josh. “Folks gravitate toward one type of asset class, but I take a diversification and mutual-fund-style approach, and invest into multiple categories.”
The family office even diversifies allocation within a single fund. For example, BPH’s most recent sponsorship offering includes equity in the property and in the occupying operating company (Prop-Co / Op-co). Financing options from certain intermediaries allow most funds to diversify like this but — it’s rare to see a General Partner offer this type of built-in diversification to LPs.
Let’s take a closer look.
The brand new, 5-story, Jon Bon Jovi-themed entertainment and nightlife venue at 405 Broadway, Nashville, Tennessee, is a culmination of the Joseph family’s collective characteristics and experiences — in real estate form.
“I’ve been in commercial real estate for 28 years and doing deals around the country, and I've owned commercial real estate in between 15 to 20 states,” says Josh. “After acquiring between 75 to 100 different assets across the country in different asset classes, I can say that the 405 Broadway project is — without question, by far and away — the most trophy iconic piece of real estate that I've ever had the opportunity to own.”
“After acquiring between 75 to 100 different assets across the country in different asset classes, I can say that the 405 Broadway project is — without question, by far and away — the most trophy iconic piece of real estate that I've ever had the opportunity to own.”
Josh Joseph,
Founder and CEO of Big Plan Holdings
The project to bring Nashville’s latest honky tonk to its iconic Lower Broadway entertainment district in collaboration with a living legend of rock music, Bon Jovi, is a labor of love by the team at BPH years in the making. Josh’s commitment to the city and constant re-investment into the growing ecosystem of real estate development, entertainment innovation, and entrepreneurship came full circle as the developer of what may likely be one of the last development projects in Music City’s famed nightlife scene.
And the best part? He graciously decided to open his venture to the masses, inviting the public into his private business' success story through an SPV on Alto Marketplace.
Using special-purpose-vehicles, or SPVs for short, Alto is able to offer lower investment minimums and a streamlined, digitized investment process to individual investors, while connecting issuers of alternative assets, like Big Plan Holdings, with eligible investors hungry to tap into the potential opportunities in the private markets.
The Joseph family recognized the opportunity to work together with Alto, another firm local to Nashville, to open the JBJ’s Nashville venture to individual investors, without the additional overhead typically associated with raising capital from new sources, and the Edgehill 405 Broadway SPV was quickly born.
For individual investors using Alto to diversify for retirement with alternatives, the Edgehill 405 Broadway SPV offered an especially interesting and appealing entry point into real estate. Of all the “food groups'' you could sample, an entertainment venue offers mixed use like food service, live entertainment, special tourism events, and even some ancillary retail opportunities. Plus, it enabled investment into a community’s lifestyle and culture, with stewardship by a family office entrenched in that very community for decades.
More seasoned and experienced investors appreciated the Edgehill 405 Broadway SPV as a great entry into real estate for different reasons. The deal’s valuations and terms against other private capital markets transactions demonstrated the commitment to value-additive investing that BPH prides itself on.
The team is transparent with their work and offers prospective investors on Alto Marketplace excellent valuation breakdowns, ratios, budget scenarios, development timeline, cash flow and capitalization analysis, and lease terms to truly understand a holistic picture of what the investment could mean for them.
Brian Fraioli, Chief Compliance Officer for Alto Securities, says this transparency and capital commitment is one of the first ways the team recognizes good-fit issuers for Marketplace, given that “we want to make sure that the issuer is involved, they have skin in the game, they're contributing, they're actually part of that project.”
Real estate deals have been associated with a variety of benefits that — depending on your personal investment thesis — have the potential to outshine other options.
Those benefits help, but perhaps the most stand-out reason a private real estate deal like those offered by Big Plan Holdings differentiates itself from other diversification options is because they offer streamlined avenues to access the investment opportunity compared to historical methods of investing in the sector. For a long time, individual investors have had limited options to access real estate.
One well-worn path: buy shares of a publicly traded real estate investment trust (REIT). These were accessed through brokers or workplace retirement plans. Historically, returns on these investments were mostly on par with general equities.
Another way has been to join the army of bootstrappers who make up “passive income” communities. These real estate enthusiasts pursue rental income via real estate purchases and improvements, then share their lessons learned in discussion forums like BiggerPockets, Mashvisor, and Reddit. Typically, the ladder they climb requires a series of complex, manual steps that carry risks themselves.
While an adventure to be sure, investing this way poses a number of drawbacks. Investors encounter a variety of unforeseen stoppers that can hinder the process and hurt returns. The investor must do everything on their own. They must learn the industry, compliance, construction and rehab, tenant relations, how to exit, and more. Once the first deal is a success, scaling up becomes unclear. Growth options are limited and it’s hard to know the best option. Common advice is to dabble in storage units, mobile home parks, or distressed retail, assets that more profitable fund managers tend to overlook or avoid. And finally, the returns are highly individual and based on your input. So if you get sick or hurt — or disillusioned, as is common, the potential returns are at higher risk of fizzling out along with your involvement.
“I come back to just the fundamentals of real estate being an industry in a category,” says Josh. “When you look at diversification, CRE has continuously shown over the years that it can amass wealth for an individual, family, or a group. So I am just a big, big believer in real estate overall. That said, you have to vet your partners and strategize your target properties.”
Instead of learning everything yourself, and “working your way up” to merely having a shot at high-caliber commercial real estate deals, what if you partnered with someone already succeeding in real estate transactions?
When you partner with BPH, you leverage the experience and risk tolerance of someone who has done it already. “Nothing was ever given to me or my brothers, and I have always been a big believer of betting on myself,” says Josh. “And our successes have not come without failure before, without question. But we’ve learned a lot from both our failures and our successes.”
“Nothing was ever given to me or my brothers, and I have always been a big believer of betting on myself. And our successes have not come without failure before, without question. But we’ve learned a lot from both our failures and our successes.”
Josh Joseph,
Founder and CEO of Big Plan Holdings
JBJ’s Nashville and the Edgehill 405 Broadway SPV’s $1M raise was a chance for BPH, Alto, and individual accredited investors to watch, learn and assess how private real estate investment opportunities with a reputable family office, retirement funds directed on an industry-leading SDIRA platform, and a growing public appetite for alternatives have the potential to come together to produce an outstanding outcome for everyone involved.
Looking forward, investors can continue to learn, engage, and assess opportunities on Alto Marketplace. And when you’re ready to diversify — whether for the first time or as a repeat investor — look for Big Plan Holdings’ future offerings on Alto’s Marketplace.
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