Executive Voice: Former Carolina Hurricane now a leader in real estate

“I came from a very blue-collar family in Canada and didn’t have a lot of stock market knowledge. Real estate was tangible, I could see it, touch it, walk on it,” Brent said. “And so I invested in it throughout my hockey career and fell in love with it as an investment vehicle and overall interest in real estate.”

Brent started as a broker with NAI Carolantic, working for four years before a former hockey teammate introduced him to Oppidan Investment Company of Minnesota. After meeting with the president of Oppidan, he became its executive vice president for the Southeast as it broke into the Triangle.

That was four years ago, and Brent doesn’t see himself leaving the real estate industry any time soon.

What’s on tap for Oppidan in this year? We've got a big project in Wendell, which is a 257-acre assemblage of land that will be a mix of uses. Heavily weighted and industrial asset class but has a multifamily component, has some retail and some townhome, residential so it should be an exciting project and I know Wendell’s excited about it. ... That'll be a big focus for 2024. We will continue to build out the Apex Commerce Center, which is four industrial buildings in Apex for our partner’s Rockpoint Group. We also have a site in Efland, which is Orange County. Again, industrial asset class, four buildings, right around 800,000 square feet laid out. Hopefully that gets kicked off here in 2024 as well.

Are there any new markets the company is expanding into? We don't have anything real specific. I think we're looking at several other Southeastern markets that we'd like to invest in. We have a great project in Hendersonville. We've got two buildings already standing and have another two buildings laid out that will hopefully kick off in 2024 as well. ...

Affordable housing is a fairly new venture for Oppidan. We hired a young guy, Noah Wagner, who used to work for one of the largest affordable housing developers in the country. It is his baby to run with and he has done an incredible job here locally. Our office has helped him find the right sites to pursue but there are a lot of hoops to jump through as it relates to affordable housing — specifically, tax credit affordable housing through NCFHA (North Carolina Housing Finance Agency) and Noah knows that like the back of his hand and is super passionate about it. We as a company are very committed to it. We certainly know it's a need for most everywhere, but certainly here in the Triangle where we're growing so fast and real estate’s becoming more and more expensive. …

We've already broken ground on our first project, Pines at Peach Road, which is in South Raleigh. We've got another project called Birch and Branch, which is in Southeast Raleigh, and that should kick off here end of spring 2024. We've got another great site that we're working on a rezoning in North Raleigh, which is a really difficult area to find any affordable opportunities. While it's still in the rezoning stages, we’re excited about providing an opportunity for affordable housing in North Raleigh.

Closer Look

Title: Executive Vice President of Southeast

Age: 39

Hometown: Cambridge, Ontario

Family: Wife, two children

Education: Became a professional hockey player at 19

First job: Cutting grass for neighbors at 8 years old

Portfolio: 580 projects valued at more than $4.9 billion

What's the strategy for creating successful, affordable housing? There's a lot of different factors to that. One of the most important is having good municipal partners. The city of Raleigh and Wake County have been fantastic with gap financing and different funding sources to help make these projects work. With where 10-year Treasury has been and interest rates, these projects are really hard to make pencil. Construction costs through Covid skyrocketed and haven't really come back down. You have to get real creative and I would say that that's been a big difference-maker in getting these projects approved and started.

And then understanding the process. There are a lot of investors involved in these sorts of projects, a lot of paperwork to file, deadlines to hit.

What is Oppidan seeing in the market for multifamily development? It's slowed down. Interest rates climbing as fast as they did and as much as they did really put the brakes on multifamily development. You basically had an inverted yield as far as making numbers work, because rates were so high. I can see as rates are hopefully starting to come down and everything's pointing in the direction that they'll continue to trend downwards over the year that you probably see some projects start picking back up maybe third or fourth quarter of 2024. That's a big part of keeping housing affordable is making sure that there enough units for everybody and when I say units, I mean through affordable housing, multifamily projects, single-family homes.

What do you do in your spare time? I have a 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, so spending a lot of time with them. We love the outdoors, so hunting, fishing, golfing and anything outdoors is where you’ll find our family most of the time.

How do you take your coffee? Black and a lot of it.

What advice would you give your younger self? Continue to follow what you’re passionate about. There’s nothing that substitutes enjoying what you do and loving what you do. Dollars and cents don’t mean a lot if you’re not enjoying what you do.