Investing in Retail Properties, 3rd Edition: A Guide to Structuring Partnerships for Sharing Capital Appreciation and Cash Flow

2024 Axiom Award Bronze Medalist in Real Estate

Growing up in a modest house located in a small lot on New York’s Long Island didn’t exactly make author Gary D. Rappaport a likely candidate to become a successful entrepreneurial owner of multimillion dollar shopping centers and mixed-use properties. But this self-made man attributes his success to a handful of qualities he picked up from his father, among which were his entrepreneurial spirit, optimism, problem-solving, integrity, people skills, and in no small way, to his numbers skills.

From delivering newspapers door-to-door as a boy to building single-family homes to sell to baby boomers while right out of college to just a few years later starting his own company to purchase shopping centers and redevelop them, Mr. Rappaport’s career has been extremely financially rewarding for him as well as for the investors he handpicked along the way, mostly friends and family members.

Using images, tables, and figures, the third edition of Investing in Retail Properties explains in great detail and with frank transparency how Mr. Rappaport did it, and suggests that anyone can learn to do the same while building exceptional wealth in the process. He lays out a roadmap that is not available in any other book for would-be entrepreneurs to follow in his footsteps. He even shares stories of his students who have evolved and adapted his model to achieve incredible success.

However, Mr. Rappaport says that being an acquirer and developer of commercial real estate properties is not for the faint of heart. It comes with stress in personally guaranteeing loans and dealing with the ups and downs of commercial real estate that inevitably fluctuates with macroeconomic cycles. According to Mr. Rappaport, anyone can do what he did, but the individual must have the stomach for high risks, the thirst for exceptional rewards, and the patience to withstand the time horizon that is inherent in the direct ownership of commercial real estate.

In this book, full of real-life case studies, you’ll learn how to:

• Acquire undervalued commercial real estate
• Raise equity capital from friends and family and place the debt
• Identify properties that have upside potential to increase the value
• Prepare your investor package and make effective presentations
• Benefit from tax advantages for owners of commercial real estate
• Set up legal entities for the properties and management company
• Redevelop and reposition the property
• Structure the sharing of cash flow and appreciation for your investors and yourself
• Refinance or sell the investment property to lock-in huge profits

In his entrepreneur’s playbook, Mr. Rappaport talks about structuring partnerships and building an operating real estate business, but more importantly, he talks about his life and experiences. He talks about the great risks he has taken over the past 40 years as an entrepreneurial developer. He says that readers of the previous editions of this book want to learn more than the technical aspects of the business. They want to know how it will affect their lives, and this book lays it out for the reader to easily grasp in an honest and straightforward manner.

Investing in Retail Properties is not only a true rags-to-riches story of Gary Rappaport but it’s also inspirational and provides a step-by-step guide for budding entrepreneurs hoping to achieve similar success in developing commercial real estate.

GARY D. RAPPAPORT, CRRP, CRX, CMD, CSM, CLS, CDP is chief executive officer of RAPPAPORT, a retail real estate company he founded in 1984. RAPPAPORT stands among the shopping center industry’s preeminent private owners and operators of open-air shopping centers providing leasing, tenant representation, management and development services for more than 15 million square feet of retail space throughout the mid-Atlantic region.

Mr. Rappaport is a former trustee and chairman of the board of trustees for the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC). He authored the first, second, and third editions of Investing in Retail Properties, which explain how to structure real estate partnerships for sharing capital appreciation and cash flow that has been used since 2011 as a guide by other commercial real estate entrepreneurs. Mr. Rappaport is a guest lecturer and regularly teaches classes at several universities, such as the University of Michigan, Syracuse, Johns Hopkins, and Georgetown.