Eric Rice
Eric Rice has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Turning Historic Properties Into HUGE Profits With Eric Rice
Eric Rice of Rice Pegher Capital explains how he and two partners buy and restore historic mixed-use buildings in small towns north of Pittsburgh, keeping original details like milled baseboards and tin ceilings while leasing ground-floor retail and upper-level apartments. He walks through the numbers on his first 39-unit portfolio deal, a $375K building he put $1.1M into, and a small four-unit he just put under contract using a seller-held second lien. He also covers building an in-house property management team and setting a three-year target of $100M in assets.
Key takeaways
- Buildings that are historic in character but not in a registered historic district carry far less regulation — Eric's team restores them to original style by choice, limited mainly by zoning on tenant type.
- Introducing yourself to the borough council, borough manager and police chief before you start is what gets projects approved in small towns; being a person rather than a faceless development company matters.
- First deal math: a 39-unit estate portfolio bought for $1,223,000 with a $400K rehab rolled into construction financing, three partners in for about $140K each, refinanced in month 11 and 85% of principal back out.
- Paying full value can still be a good deal — Eric paid $375K for a building nobody thought was worth it, put in about $1.1M, then tied two or three buildings together on a refi and got nearly all the cash back.