Creating Heavy Value-Add Development Opportunities Where People Can Flourish with Bobby Fijan – Ep. 57 - a podcast by Matthew Loos, P.E.

placemakingpodcast@gmail.comFacebook-fTwitterLinkedinInstagramCreating Heavy Value-Add Development OpportunitiesWhere People Can Flourish with Bobby Fijan – Ep. 57About the GuestCan’t wait to share this next conversation with all of you. Today on the show I have Bobby Fijan, Partner of Form Developers. Bobby has been involved in startup companies for nearly his entire career. He left graduate school to start his previous company, Cross Properties, with 3 other partners in the basement of a seminary in 2011. He's worn every hat in real estate from finance, capital markets, fundraising, leasing, late-night maintenance, and semi-professional architect. At Cross, he was the Partner in charge of the Development and Design team and was responsible for every project from an empty lot to the stabilized building. In 2019, he left day-to-day operations at Cross to co-found Tailorbird, a construction technology company, and Form Developers. Through Form, he has invested in half a dozen real estate deals and real estate technology startups and has advised many younger developers.Form’s core belief is that real estate investments are best made through patient capital with aligned interests. Their strategic focus is on multifamily and mixed-use development in two categories:1) Ground-up or heavy value-add development opportunities in urban core and high barrier to entry suburban markets.2) Holding, and re-developing, suburban retail shopping located near major arterial roads and transportation hubs.Historically, multifamily has been the least volatile asset class during downturns. Additionally, as technology advances, they believe that land located near major arterial roads will become the new “transit-oriented” parcels that are more in demand for residents and investors.In this episode, we look at the ways Bobby is able to balance the risk/reward ratio on tough projects, his definition of Placemaking and how it can be created through floor plan curation, and the keys to identifying a great floor plan mix on your next multifamily development. There is loads of great information in this episode and I greatly appreciated Bobby for taking the time out of his extremely busy schedule to discuss this topic of Creating Heavy Value-Add Development Opportunities with me.Show Notes
Matt (00:00:58):Hey, welcome to the show, Bobby!Bobby (00:01:11):Great to be here, Matt. Thank you so much for having me.Matt (00:01:15):I'm honored to have you on the show! I know you've been on a couple other shows. I know Chris powers, a friend of mine that has been on this show before, but I want to take a slightly different twist and if you're ready, I'd like to just jump right in.Bobby (00:01:30):That sounds great.Matt (00:01:31):So let's, let's get a little bit about your background starting out Bobby and then we'll kind of transition that into Form and we'll just keep going from there.Bobby (00:01:43):Okay. Perfect. Well okay. Where to begin? Well I was born in Boston and my dad was a mechanical engineering professor and we moved around the country every two to four years. So he was at MIT and then Michigan, and then I moved to the bay area, Phoenix for a bit south Jersey and, and, and a few other spots, but I grew up moving all around the country. I was actually homeschooled K through 12. Actually, that's not true. I went to kindergarten, went to public kindergarten. I was homeschooled from first grade through 12th grade. And initially, then I initially went to school at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where I studied history and film because I had the good fortune to get a scholarship. So I thought, yeah, I could study whatever I wanted.Bobby (00:02:34):And I went into an intro to film class and it sounded fun. So I thought, great.

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