Hosts: Ronn Ruiz and Martin Canchola, Co-Founders of ApartmentSEO.com

Guest: Nate Helbach, CEO of https://www.neutral.us/

Martin: Welcome to The Multifamily Podcast with Ronn and Martin, powered by Apartment SEO. Today’s episode is going to have you thinking differently about the way you look at construction sustainability and the future of multifamily real estate. We are joined by Nate Helbach, the CEO visionary behind Neutral, a Midwest based real estate development firm, that’s redefining Multifamily through the use of mass timber construction. Nate and his team are currently building the Edison, a 31-story tower in Milwaukee that will be the tallest mass timber building in North America. And then what’s coming next, the Market Center, at 55 stories will become the tallest timber building in the world. Nate’s raised over $100 million before turning 30, and his work has been featured in CNN Newsweek and the Milt Larkey Journal Sentinel. Nate Helbach, welcome to The Multifamily Podcast.

Nate: Thanks for having me, guys.

Ronn: That’s amazing. So, let’s definitely, I’m really excited about this episode, because, again, we’re going to be teaching our audience something a little bit new on The Multifamily Podcast. So, welcome to the show, Nate. Let’s start with the big picture. Why mass timber and what inspired you to focus on this material for Multifamily high rises biz?

Nate: Yeah, we really use mass timber because right now we believe it’s the only sustainable material to use. So, the whole kind of thesis around the firm and ethos is, how do we reduce carbon emissions in the built environment and create spaces that are really promoting healthy living? And so, when we look at kind of our set of materials that we can use for structure, you have steel, concrete or mass timber. And if you look at the carbon quality of steel and concrete and the kind of interior esthetic, we call biophilic of steel and concrete, you don’t get the same properties as you do with mass timber. And so, the reason why we’ve chose this very unique material is because you’re able to kind of, one, sequester carbon. Because when trees, they grow in the forest, and bearing their lifespan in the forest through photosynthesis, they sequester carbon. And then when you take that tree and you put it into a building, you in essence, create a carbon sink. And so first and foremost, it has a great kind of carbon story for our neutrality mission. But then also from a health and wellbeing standpoint, we really are excited about it, because when tenants go into the building, they see this beautiful, exposed wood ceiling, wood columns, wood beams, which really adds kind of this nice, biophilic interior design. And so those are really the kind of two fundamental reasons why we’ve chosen mass timber as our primary structural elements.

Ronn: That’s awesome is that where Neutral came from, like where it’s like a zero

impact? 

Nate: Yeah, that’s the kind of emphasis behind the name.

Ronn: And that’s awesome. So, it’s very intentional. So, for everything you’re doing.

Nate: Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah. 

Martin: I love the idea of being surrounded by wood feels like the Earth, right? And just being connected to all that. I’m sure a lot of people would find that very appealing, especially the ones that love lock happens like I do all right. Now, the Edison and Marcus Center aren’t just bold. They’re setting global records. What were some of the biggest hurdles or learning moments you faced developing these mass timber structures overall?

Nate: Yeah, I mean, the Edison, we’re pushing a lot of boundaries. It is the tallest mass timber building in the world, and Marcus Center will be the catalyst for the next tallest mass timber building in the world. And so, it’s been a lot of engineering and scientific and fire engineering kind of difficulties that we’ve had to overcome. I actually just got back from San Antonio, Texas, where we flew a bunch of wood down to the Southwest Research Institute, which is actually where the army does a bunch of munitions training. So, when I got dropped off of the facility, there was like this huge security protocol that you had to go through. And like half the facility is just literally people testing munitions. And so, the other half the facility where we were, they do fire testing. So, they have a huge, really large, ventilated warehouse where you actually get a burn mass timber. You can burn anything. But we were burning wood, obviously. And I was actually talking to one of the program managers and scientists on staff, and he’s like, it’s really nice that you guys are burning wood because it smells like a campfire. You should have to do my job when we have to burn all these other toxic materials. And he’s like it just smells terrible in here. So really on that aspect, what we’re trying to really understand is what is the fire rating of these common bean and floor assemblies that we’re putting together for Edison, and what the city wants us to achieve is a three-hour rating. So, if you build a concrete tower or a steel tower in any big city, and it’s under the high-rise code, which is type one construction, you would have to meet three hours. And so what the City of Milwaukee has told us for the Edison is that we’re fine with you building mass timber, which is actually a huge kind of step in the right direction, because some local jurisdictions won’t let you do that, but we want to make sure that you reach that three hour fire rating, so that it does meet the same equivalency of steel and concrete. And so, this test had never been done before. And so, it was a really big moment for us that we had to kind of overcome, which was how do we achieve three hours, and what are the fire engineering calculations and the structural engineering calculations? So, we flew a bunch of mass timber down to Texas. We built, actually a full common beam assembly. So, we actually built like a little mini portion of the building, and then we loaded it with the actual load of the building. So, we had to put 14 kips of pressure, which would be equivalent to about 20 elephants. If you think about an elephant load, you’re putting about 20 elephants down on pressure. And then we had to burn it. And it’s a certain test protocol that you have to follow, which it has to burn for three hours at 2900 degrees Celsius, or Fahrenheit, 1400 degrees Celsius, which is like it would be burned in an instant if you walk into that room. And so fortunately, we passed all three tests last week and the week before, and yeah, so I would say that’s been a really big hurdle that we’ve had overcome, of everything that goes into that, all the testing, all the engineering calculations, all the coordination with the facility. But fortunately, we’re now through that hurdle

Ronn: That’s insane. Did you, did it go past the three hours, or did you just have to do it at the three-hour mark?

Nate: Well, yeah, we only had to do three hours. We actually have gotten a lot of really good feedback from the industry, and now it looks like we might be getting a grant to actually retest and go past the three hours to what they call a failure test. And essentially what that is, is you just burn until the system breaks, and so until failure. We think, based on the calculations that we’ve done with our fire engineers and structural engineers, it’s going to be around five hours, but we’ll see. It’s really interesting, because we took the whole assembly apart and cut up the wood, and the interior of the wood is completely structurally sound, and there’s still moisture in it, which is like crazy to think about. There’s still water in the wood, even though the wood has been burnt for three hours at 1400 degrees Celsius.

Ronn: Yeah, and under that pressure too, right? Or it’s fully compromised. I asked that latter question because Martin and I are both born and raised in California. So, we recently had those crazy wildfires, you know, in Los Angeles County and I too, just personally, have been thinking like, what is next for, you know, what structures in and around, not just fire prone areas, but, you know, globally?

Nate: Yeah, I mean, fire really has this nice and not to get too far down this rabbit hole, but this nice ability to char. And so, like you see up in Northern California, that’s where my parents live, you’ll have these huge redwood trees that go through a big, really heavy forest fire, very, very hot, that are still standing and typically actually grow back. And the reason for that is they basically insulate themselves. And so, it’s called charring, and you can actually measure the amount of char per hour of burn. And so, that’s what we were doing. That’s ultimately the science that we have to figure out, is like how many inches of wood do we have to add to a common beam to be able to calculate for the char ratio.

Ronn: That’s amazing engineering. So, switching gears a little bit about wellness. You mentioned that Neutrals development prioritize resident wellness in both design and amenities. Can you share how that shows up in your projects and why it really matters today in Multifamily?

Nate: Yeah, I’ll answer the latter question first. Why it matters? I think we really see kind of resident wellbeing, Multi family living, and just your home as your place to be well. And so, we think that every aspect of your health should be inclusive in your home amenity. And so, we think that fitness, your clinical experience with your doctor, your nutritional experience with food and your access to personal trainers and nutritionists should all be under one roof. And if it’s all under one roof, it really promotes this idea of wellness and health and wellbeing that you’re kind of seeing. Be a little bit more prominent these days, and I think our society and it really allows ease up access. So, instead of having to drive to the gym to do your workout, to drive to the doctor to understand some of maybe blood testing or your different VO2 Max tests, instead of having to drive to the co-op to buy your groceries, everything’s in one spot. So, we have a clinic on site where you can actually go down and do just some kind of emergency medicine or pediatrics. We have a DEXA scan there that kind of shows you your body composition. We have a VO2 max test. We have an RMR, which show you your cardiovascular health and the amount of calories you burn per day. We have several other testing items that we do on site, and then we have a full, kind of really holistic gym experience, way better than just the like 500 square foot room where they throw equipment in both most buildings, we actually have a full fitness facility, kind of akin to like lifetime or Equinox, where we actually have personal trainers on site for people to access. And then we actually have a mini–Co Op where we partner with 90 different local farmers, and they deliver fresh fruits and vegetables to site twice a week for tents to be able to access local, regenerative, organic food. And so, we really kind of see this as it’s not actually that harder to be healthy if you could have everything in one spot. The difficulty is really figuring out, who do I go to? What do I see? What type of food do I pick out? In behavioral economics, we call it the paradox of choice, and everyone has to deal with this kind of paradox throughout their whole life, right? Of where do I go to work out? How many different vegetables do I have to eat at dinner? And really, what we’re trying to offer is one holistic experience that you make one decision to live at a neutral building, and from that decision leads to all these other really good decisions.

Ronn: That’s amazing. I mean, zero excuses, right? I mean, you guys are very intentional by about it. That’s beautiful.

Nate: Yeah. 

Martin: And I love the idea of having an apartment market right there on site too. 

Nate: Yeah. 

Martin: So, are there any specific materials, layouts, or even tech integrations that support health and wellness in ways we might expect, we might not expect in the typical apartment building?

Nate: Yeah. So, we have a fully integrated app that the tenants will download when they sign a lease with us and move in. That gives them access to kind of the traditional Multifamily stuff, like you can unlock your door, lock your door, let friends in the building, pick up a package. Request a maintenance request, request a cleaner view, the event schedule, all that type of stuff, you know, stuff you guys deal with probably all the time for marketing. But then on top of that, we actually have another layer that we integrate our whole wellness program. And so you actually, when you sign a lease and you get into our fitness plan and a clinical plan, you actually get daily workouts every day on a six-week rotation that are customized for you, that are in the app. So, every day, you can go in the app anytime, go down to the gym and do the workout. It also gives you a whole bunch of data about what your VO2 Max scores have been over the last several months, what your DEXA scan has been and how it’s changed. A whole bunch of data around your blood panels that we do on a quarterly or yearly basis. And so, everything’s kind of in one spot for you to be able to access all your different health and wellbeing stats. And then we also have an integration with the Co Op, who’s a third-party operator that does that for us, it’s called Vitruvian farms, and their whole shop experience for ordering all the different food and delivering it is in our app. And so, it’s kind of, it’s really nice. It’s a whole bunch of different integrations that we have in one spot. So again, the tenant is in jumping around from place to place, trying to make all these decisions. It’s just in one app. They can do it all in one spot and have a little bit easier access to it. 

Martin: Now, did neutral build out the app experience, or is that something you worked with a vendor partner to provide?

Nate: Yeah, we built out a portion of it that is more the customized portion. The other portion is a white label experience that we’re using for like unlocking, locking doors, picking up packages, stuff like that.

Martin: Able to connect it all together. And is this included in the full resident experience, or is this like an additional revenue stream for Neutral? 

Nate: Yeah, it’s the base model is included in the kind of overall tenant experience. But we also have kind of upgrades that you can do. So, you can get one on one personal training, you can get more access to the doctor, you can do more testing, different things like that. The other thing we actually have in the app, which I’m really excited about, is we have 1000 book library that we custom curated. And you can check out a book in the app from our library on site, and then you have to check it back in in four weeks, but the app is where you track it.

Ronn: That’s awesome. So, you’re creating a lot of like-minded individuals,

right? 

Nate: Yeah, that’s the goal. Is it kind of becomes this quasi community. 

Ronn: And obviously, in the Midwest, because of inclement weather, I’m sure a lot of this is very favored, right? Where you don’t have to go anywhere, you don’t have to get in your car driving the snow, you know, getting into the cold. Speaking of Midwest, obviously, it isn’t always the first place that comes to mind for groundbreaking development, but obviously that’s changing fast, and with the likes of Neutral what makes the region for you so attractive for Multifamily investments right now? 

Nate: Yeah, I think this is a big kind of LinkedIn post…

Ronn: Yeah.

Nate: Phenomenon, if you haven’t seen it, but there’s a lot of data around the Midwest, and I think part of it is we’re seeing a lot of supply that has been delivered the last three to four years down in the Sun Belt and kind of the East, South. And I think some of that supply isn’t absorbing very fast, especially in cities like Atlanta and Austin and Phoenix. And so, I think there’s this kind of flock to the Midwest from an investment standpoint, particularly because we haven’t had this gut of supply be delivered, you know, the last three to four years, when we’ve had relatively low interest rates. And so that’s one of the, I think the big attractors is, I call this the slow turtle, and the South and the Sun Belt is more of the hair in this analogy. And really, we’ve just been at a turtle pace of having supply be delivered on somewhat of a consistent basis. Rent growth isn’t crazy, right? We’re not seeing 9%,10%, 15% per year, but we’re also not seeing negative rent growth like we’re seeing right now in Austin, right? We’re kind of the steady Eddie right at around 3% 4% 5% per year, depending on what market you’re in the Midwest. So, I think, I think that’s the reason why is we’re able to kind of more accurately to predict returns for investors by having this really key stability. I think the other reason is we’re in the region, overall, we’re starting to see a lot more employment growth and GDP growth. And so, I know one of the markets we’re in is Arkansas. Arkansas was just ranked number two for GDP growth in 2024 at 4.2%. And so, I think overall, in the Midwest, we’re seeing just a little bit more growth than we are maybe in other locations, and that’s why we’re seeing more investment in this region.

Martin: Love that. So, you talk about climate resilience as a differentiator. Can you expand on how the Midwest is positioned for long term success and a rapidly shifting environmentally and economic landscape?

Nate: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s a lot of different ways we could touch on this. I was just speaking at a conference in New Zealand, and the one of the other speakers was talking about the need for fresh water for AI, which I found really interesting, because if you need a bunch of fresh water, then you’re going to have to be by big lakes. And so, of course, Midwest has some of the biggest lakes in the world, and so it might be an interesting play for a lot of bigger tech companies. And we’re kind of already seeing it. Microsoft is doing a huge data center just south of Milwaukee that they started building about a year ago. But I think we’ll start to see more of that investment throughout the Midwest. He actually threw out a stat. He said, for every gallon of water that a data center consumes for AI, only 33% of that water that goes in actually leaves as water. The rest of it goes into the facility to cool it down, and then goes into vapor, which obviously, from the sustainability, climate resilience standpoint, is not great, but I found it really interesting that you have to have so much water. I don’t think a lot of people think about that, but yeah, other than that, I think there’s a lot of other reasons for the Midwest. I mean, I think you’d have relatively stable climate here in the Midwest compared to the South, where we’re seeing rapid heat increases, and then we don’t have all the natural disasters like you guys were just talking about in LA, with natural, with the fires, with down in Florida, with all the hurricanes, we’re again kind of the steady Eddie. We’re very stable from that perspective.

Ronn: Yeah, that’s totally huge. We actually have a growing team also in Chicago, Illinois overall, but mostly Chicago. So, speaking of Midwest, and, you know, they all work remote, so I think that’s maybe that also contributes to, you know, the in demand, right for the area. They live anywhere and work anywhere nowadays,

Nate: And they choose to live in Illinois?

Ronn: Yeah.

Nate: Terrible. There’s like a feud run going on between Illinois and Wisconsin. 

Ronn: Wisconsin. Yeah, I know, yeah, no.

Nate: We don’t love that. We actually have a lot of investors for Illinois, so I’m sure I just offended a bunch of people.

Ronn: Well, hey and for our employees there listening there, you know, there’s about seven that are there in that state, they could easily move over to Edison. 

Nate: Yeah, they should. It’s a quick commute, an hour train ride from Chicago. 

Ronn: So one of the most impressive things outside of everything you’ve talked about was the fact that you’ve raised over $100 million, obviously, and under 30, like that should be the 30, under 30 right kind of segment. But obviously, for projects outside the traditional coastal clubs, it’s pretty impressive. How have you approached capital raising differently for alternative projects in the secondary markets?

Nate: Yeah, so we actually created our own kind of syndication platform that you can find it on our website. If you just go to neutral.us, and click, invest with us, you’ll be able to see kind of what we built out. But it’s our whole back-end software that we built out. And really what it is, it’s a way to democratize real estate investing. And so, we initially, when we started, I was like, wouldn’t it be nice to have one guy write us $100 million check and be able to build what we want to build? And of course, that unit corn never came, and we really had to go kind of the more local route and be able to have local investors and some not local investors. But it started out mostly local invest 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 at a time. And so, in 2019 when we launched, we started raising it in 2020 for our first project through 2021, of course, everyone knows what happened there. And we just started to go out. And we had basically hand to hand combat with all these local investors, and we started just syndicating the deal one at a time. And so, we had a lot of great success. We were able to raise a good amount of money. We had one partner come into new control, whose name was Matt, and he had recently sold his firm for a good amount of money. And so, he was able to bring in a large sum for us to be able to get going with our first project. And then since then, we’ve had a lot of success just raising capital from both local but now even throughout the United States and Canada, and a little bit in Europe investors. And so, what we decided to do is we said, okay, let’s double down on this strategy. Let’s build a software that actually allows us to do this online, so that if you’re sitting in Berlin, or a few investors in Spain, you would be able to just invest and track your investment right here. And so, we’ve basically built kind of the equivalents to, if you guys are familiar with yield street, a software like that to allow anyone to invest. Our minimum is 10,000, you have to be an accredited investor, which you can look at the SEC guidelines for what that means, and it’s been really great. So now we’re up to 306 total investors. We’ve raised a little over 100 million of equity. We’ve raised about 200 million of debt. Those are more from traditional lenders. And it’s, yeah, it’s been great. So, I think for maybe developers that are listening, it’s definitely something to investigate. Is more syndication route than institutional route. 

Ronn: That’s amazing. Yeah, I’m personally in three funds as well, and I definitely see the value and the love for multi-company and this, this speaks a lot to me. So, thanks for sharing that. 

Nate: You should check it out. Ronn.

Martin: 10,000 not too shabby either.

Nate: Yeah, the 10,000 has been a great strategy, especially from the marketing side, because basically my idea there is, it’s no secret is, if you’re an accredited investor, you have obviously more than 10,000 because that’s what it means to be accredited. And so, you’re gonna try us out. Maybe you don’t know us. Maybe you just found us online. You like what we’re doing, and you’re gonna try us out on our first project. And we do, well, return, 15%, 16%, 17% IOR. And then you’re like okay, I trust these guys. They did well, I’ll do 50,000 or 100,000 or 200,000, right? Because they have the balance sheet to do it. But what we need to grow is the trust. And so, the reason why we’ve done 10, which I think will keep 10, is really to just grow that base of investors and start building trust with a lot of people.

Ronn: Yeah, definitely, easy to get your feet wet in that. But yeah, I just, I always give it back. I’m like, I don’t need it. Just keep going. 

Martin: Double down. Double down. Cool. So, what kind of investors are actually resonating with your vision? How do you pitch something as ambitious and unconventional as like a 55-story timber tower? I mean what, I mean that’s quite the investment and quite the project.

Nate: Yeah, so how we structure our deals is everything set up as a special purpose entity vehicle, so it’s one LLC for that specific project. It’s not co-mingled. You’re investing directly in that project, and we don’t actually have investors come in until we have all the entitlements done. We have all the debt facilities lined up with the construction lenders, and we have all the construction pricing in place, and we’re ready to start construction. Because really what investors can understand is construction risk and lease up risk. They really can’t understand the nuances, not because they’re dumb or anything, but just because they’re not in the business of what it means for entitlements, what it means for pre-construction, what type of design risk we have. And so, we really make sure that the deal is kind of packaged up and the risks are very transparent. So, it’s not that this is a risk-free proposition, right? If you want risk-free returns, go invest in treasuries, but if you want a good real estate alternative in development. And this is a great proposition, but it does come with risks. And so, the risks that we kind of tell our investors is there’s construction risk. So, we could have cost overruns, we could have something go wrong on site. We could find a dead body right and or an old burial ground, and something would be terrible, even though we do geo technical reports to make sure that doesn’t happen. Or we could just have, you know, something go wrong, where the markets shift, or we have a ton of absorption, like we’re seeing right now in Austin, and maybe our lease up doesn’t go as planned. And so, then there’s a lease up risk of how many units can we lease per month? Can we lease at our original projection and are we able to get to stabilization within our projected timeline. So those are really the two risks that we have to tell investors about with the visionary, kind of ambitious vision of the 55-story tower. We’re not pitching that to investors right now, right, because we don’t have it in that position. Once we have it to a spot where we are ready to go out, we’ll have all those kinds of risks put aside, and then it will truly be here’s the project, here’s the development. We own the land, here’s all the debt that we have lined up. Here’s all the construction contracts. Shall we get going? And are you okay taking the construction risk and the lease up risk? And so, that’s what we found to be more successful than people kind of playing these skeptic games on development risk.

Ronn: Yeah, especially when you started to ask for the money, right? 2021, I mean, there was also some things out of your control, probably back then, like with the idea of, like getting just permits and things being open, right? To be able to get the project gets done underway.

Nate: Yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of investors, especially if you’re passive, you can really understand construction and lease up, the development risk is much more elusive to understand, and you really have to be in, day in and day out, to fully understand what the risks are. So, we just use our balance sheet capital to pay for pursuit costs and then get investors involved sort of have it all patches up.

Ronn: That’s amazing. So obviously, Nate, you are a part of a new wave of real estate leaders. What’s it been like founding Neutral and leading this charge in your twenties?

Nate: Yeah, it’s been fun. It’s been interesting. I will say I’m glad I’m in my late 20s, because I have the energy to do it. My wife and I also have one child and one child on the way, and so it’s like, definitely need a lot of energy for that as well. But it’s been a really interesting learning experience to kind of be understanding the holistic process from the CEO position. Because before neutral, I was working for a developer on the development management side and investor relations side. And so, really kind of understanding it from the perspective of development and then investor relations, but not really understanding the full picture from the CEO seat. And so, it’s been, the first three years we’re a big learning crew. The last two years, it’s been a lot more exciting, I’ll say, because we have a bigger team now, we’re able to kind of direct people. And yeah, it’s definitely been fun.

Martin: And Nate, do you by chance do you have a background in economics?

Nate: Finance.

Martin: Finance, okay, okay, beautiful. Now I’m definitely interested to learn more about this. What mindset our practices help you stay grounded and focus while managing so much at such a young age? I’m sure there’s some good feedback and tips you can give our audience.

Nate: Yeah, I feel like a lot. I think exercise is really important. I actually just got over a meeting with our doctor that leads up our clinic, and he gives me a lot of great mindful practices that I can follow, but nutrition exercise are the two big kinds of cornerstones. I think eating well and working out are really good for your brain and let you be high functioning. And then every morning I have meditation with God, and I think that has been really grounding, to be able to just have like, 30 minutes to an hour, to be able to just sit and kind of rest and rejuvenate and be able to understand, hey, this is what I want to do for today and moving forward. So, I think those three kinds of key elements of life are really important. And then I think early on in in the career, I was really grinding, maybe a little too much, and when I got married, my wife kind of was able to settle me down, and now it is a little bit better, work life balance that allows me to sustain the long hours.

Ronn: Yeah, meanwhile, while you’re building the tallest buildings, I could find that balance. that’s good, though, I’m happier about that, and I love that its faith based as well, you know, for your, you know, the neutrality of you, you give a better version of yourself, I’m sure. So, one of the funnest things I like lately that we’ve been doing on our podcast is our rapid-fire round. We’d like to just do a couple of questions, or a handful of questions, and just give us your first gut response. Kind of little fun around here. But what is your favorite building in the world?

Nate: In the world, not just America. Wow, that’s like such a hard question, because I have so many favorites. 

Ronn: Top of mind.

Nate: Top of mind, I would say probably, lately I’ve been a big fan of Mies, but I know Daniel’s gonna be like, don’t say Mies, but I will say Mies, probably one of Mies buildings in Chicago.

Ronn: Nice. Okay, book or podcast that inspired you as a developer.

Nate: Like inspired me to do development, or inspired me?

Ronn: Development, yeah.

Nate: Interesting. You know, I actually have one right behind me that I’d love to be able to find, but it’s in this big stack. I think right now, the biggest book that inspired me, especially from an investment standpoint, is how the market works by Howard Marks, who I would contend is probably the best investor of our time. But it just goes into a very rational thinking of like, basically, pick a few things to invest in and understand your thesis, be able to argue your thesis from both an economics perspective and a finance perspective, and then stick with your thesis for the long term. And I think that’s really served us well, to be able to really understand, hey, we’re doing real estate, we’re not doing other things. We’re sticking to these certain markets. We understand the market. And we’re going to own this building for a longer term of time, because real estate is 5, 6, 10 years long, right? You’re not just day trading in and out of stocks. So, you really got to be convicted to your thesis and stay with it for a long period.

Ronn: That’s great. I wrote that down. Thank you. All right, most surprising benefit of mass timber?

Nate: Whoa, there’s so many benefits. Probably the most surprising one is, I mean, I think for just everyone out there, is probably carbon sequestration. I think a lot of people don’t think about that. For me, I think the most surprising benefit of mass timber is being able to have this really beautiful biophilic feeling. Because I think a lot of people don’t think about like, oh, you’re exposing the mass timber. And so, being able to have that biophilic feeling is really, really nice. 

Ronn: That’s amazing. Okay, I know we talked about a few earlier, but what one Midwest City you think is about to boom?

Nate: Oh, I’ll totally be biased on this one, Madison. Madison’s gonna, it’s been going crazy, but it’s projected to double in population by 2050. So, I think it’s got some Austin syndrome around it. 

Ronn: Okay, do you guys have some lead into that market. Are you jumping in there?

Nate: Yeah, we just are opening up, actually, this month, 206-unit building. And then in August, we opened up a 33-unit building. 

Ronn: That’s awesome. Okay, last question in the rapid-fire round. Dream project you haven’t served yet.

Nate: Oh, man, this is easy. My dream project is I have this beautiful Mass timber Passive House, designed house that I really want to build rights in the Redwoods of Northern California, on the ocean looking over…

Martin: That sounds like something I’d like.

Nate: Yeah, looking over the ocean and having the forest as your backdrop is my favorite project, which I will be building. 

Martin: Yes. Okay, beautiful. Oh, my God, keep us…

Nate: You can visit, Martin for sure.

Ronn: We’ll come up and visit. 

Nate: Perfect. 

Martin: Oh yeah, yeah, Northern California is definitely place I love to be. Actually, we go there all the time. We love it. So again, Nate, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your bold vision for the future of Multifamily housing. I mean, your story is such an inspiration to me, to I’m sure, to a lot of people in our audience, not just for young entrepreneurs, but for the entire industry ready for innovation and really just disrupting things as we know it. To our listeners, you can learn more about Nate’s work at Neutral.us. And if you’re ready to boost your communities’ digital presence, then of course you can head over to ApartmentSEO.com. And thank you for tuning in to The Multifamily Podcast. Until next time, bye, all. Bye Nate, bye Ronn. 

Nate: Thanks guys.