Aaron Gorin is the founder and chief investment officer at Cedar Grove Partners, LLC. He was born and raised in Suffolk County in New York and obtained all of his education in this region. For his bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, he went to Cornell University and majored in Economics and Health Administration.
Soon after, however, his career morphed into the area of finance and real estate. Prior to starting his own venture, Aaron Gorin also worked as an equity analyst for some of the larger banks. This enabled him to learn the ins and outs of the New York market and prepare for establishing his own LLC.
What made you get into the real estate market?
I started my career by getting a degree in economics. Although I thought this would be the direction in which the rest of my professional ventures would go, it turned to be nothing more than a starting point. After that, I slowly switched to venture capital and began learning about finance. This stage of my life was extremely exciting, and it taught me a lot about the way that one should build a start-up venture. So, it made sense for me to eventually give it a shot and try to run my own business. This is where Cedar Grove Partners, LLC came from.
The reason why I decided to focus on real estate was two-fold. First, I wanted to dedicate myself to building an organization where I can earn multiple streams of income. With real estate, I can enjoy residual payments from tenants as well as capital gains made on final sales of properties. And second, this industry is perfect for someone who wants to be very independent. For instance, I get to make all of my decisions based on things that I personally value as relevant factors. Such a high level of autonomy is definitely one of the main selling points to property transactions.
What are some of the trends in this industry that you are noticing right now?
It depends on what particular sub-sector you are focused on. For instance, some of the trends that are slowly showing up in the area of home design are smart devices. Similarly, you can also see a lot of people turning to micro-building where the houses are getting smaller in sizes to promote sufficiency.
If, however, you are looking at the overall trends in the market, I think that the reduction in the number of affordable housing options is the most obvious one. Over the past few years, the number of property owners that have slowly parted ways with affordable options and replaced them with luxurious offerings has grown exponentially. Doing so allowed them to potentially get higher profit margins while luring in high-income clients.
Do you think that there is a way to overcome the shortage of affordable housing in urban areas?
I think that figuring out ways to improve the government’s involvement and make federal funding more available would be a good start. Looking at this from the landlord’s perspective, you have to recognize that people cannot just drop their prices to accommodate individuals who may not be earning enough at the moment. Nevertheless, it is important to situate families in homes and find ways to cater to their earning levels. Well, when the discrepancy between people’s earnings and what the landlords are asking for grows too much, it may be time for the government to step in and mitigate.
Why do you think property owners should make their offering more affordable?
I believe that the demand for affordable properties will almost always trump the demand for luxuries options. The reason why is that the vast majority of the population falls under the earning threshold where they are able to pay excessive amounts for their housing. So, finding tenants for one’s property building would be much easier if the price was not high enough to repel potential applicants.
More importantly, offering affordable housing helps families as it guarantees them a place to live. Once they are situated, they can go and seek jobs that will help them move up through the classes of society. Eventually, they may be able to get out of the affordable housing and achieve their own success that can help the entire community prosper.