Meet Dave Potter

I BUILD ASSETS

With over 4 decades of experience in valuation, construction, acquisitions, and deal structuring, Dave supports property owners and investors through complex transitions with clarity and confidence.

Text Dave

About me

I fell in love with real estate when I was 14 years old.

When I was 14, I watched my parents buy a worn out three family house in Lynn and spend weeks painting, installing panelling and dropped ceilings (it WAS the 1970's). My dad explained his whole business plan to me while we were cleaning paint brushes. He had a simple math formula, one apartment would pay the mortgage, one apartment would pay the expenses, and one apartment rent would be cash flow for us. It sounded like a sound business plan. He also explained how he bought that three family house. He bought it with the seller "taking back the paper", which simply meant that the seller took back the mortgage for a short time to allow my father to fix it up and remortgage it with a bank.

I acquired my father's love for real estate. I went to the library and read every book on real estate, most notably "How I turned $1000 into a million in real estate" by William Nickerson.

Born and raised in Lynn, Mass., an industrial city on the North Shore, 10 miles or so north of Boston, I grew up in the 70's. That was the decade of shortages: fuel, jobs, and opportunities all were tough to come by.

College was not the automatic choice for us in Lynn in the 70's, and I was too impatient for college anyways. I wanted to start on my plan right away. I went to a vocational high school, studying electrical. I got a job, studied for the journeyman electrician's license, and passed the electrician's test at the tender age of 18. I was the youngest licensed electrician in Massachusetts.

Before I turned 19 years old, I got my Massachusetts Real Estate Sales License and I bought my first three family house. It was a tough triple-decker in a tough neighborhood, but to me, there was not a more beautiful piece of property in the world.

I worked relentlessly on that house for a year on nights and weekends. It was huge, with 6 rooms in each apartment. I learned how to be a landlord. I learned how to add massive value to properties. I bought another property each year for the next 5 years.

But life happens. I made a few bad decisions and had a few financial setbacks, even though my plan seemed solid. Fast forward to 1995. I was divorced, depressed, and desperate to have a better life.

I started buying property again, this time at a frantic pace. At one point, I was buying a property per month. My real estate empire was growing. I bought some apartment complexes, then started building and developing my own apartment buildings and condominium projects.

I started businesses: a property management business, a laundromat, a construction company.

I was unstoppable.

Until I wasn't.

I over-reached. I over-leveraged. I did two much, I should have just done one much. In 2010, the banking crisis caught up with me. I had several hundred rental units that I owned and several hundred under development. I was a heavy user of borrowed money. I lost it all: the investment properties; a $2 million dollar lake house that I built; a 5000 square foot ocean front house that I built; even my beloved 1967 corvette.

I lost it all, but every single lender and investor got paid back in full.

I rebuilt though, with the encouragement and help of my wife, who I met during my darkest days while I was losing everything. Today, I am much more humble, much wiser, and a lot happier. I started flipping houses with my wife working right by my side. We did $15 million in flip houses over the last 15 years, I became a landlord again, and I developed many wonderful condo projects, winning 2 historic renovation acknowledgements. I started a few businesses and am in the process of scaling them.

I learned more from my failures than my successes, and there are so many things that I may have done differently, but the past has made me who I am today. Today, I am someone with a ridiculous amount of knowledge and wisdom in real estate and business development. I am not being boastful, because I paid a lot to have that knowledge and wisdom.

Let me know if I can help you in your own mission to fulfill your own real estate or business dreams.

Dave Potter