At the Heart of Veterinary Real Estate

My father is a veterinarian. He is also my best friend. I worked at his clinic as a kennel tech my entire childhood but, for whatever reason, never wanted to be a veterinarian. Maybe it was too many tech baths? Maybe I had to shovel too much “you know what”? Whatever the reason, for as long as I can remember I always wanted to work in real estate and not veterinary medicine. Life has a funny way of working out…

I started working for a real estate acquisitions company after grad school, focused on acquiring multifamily apartment buildings in Chicago. The entrepreneur in me started buying some of the smaller apartment buildings that my employer was not interested in.

Once I had a few of my own properties under my belt, I left to start my own real estate company. It was then that my father asked me to manage his practice while I grew my real estate company alongside. Long story short – I did both for about four years, sharing a closet with my father as our office, until we sold his practice at the end of 2020. Not a week went by where we weren’t laughing or screaming at one another.

It was about a year after I was doing both practice management and multifamily real estate investing when it hit me that I should start looking at veterinary real estate. I figured that I knew how the operations worked and I liked the tenants. It also made me feel like I was working in the “family business”. Sure, I wasn’t a veterinarian, but I was investing in properties and communities where veterinarians like my father got to practice medicine each day. “My father is a veterinarian” I typically say to a practice manager, beaming with pride when I show up on site with my handyman to inspect a leak or fix a pothole.

When I met David, my business partner, and realized that we not only shared the same vision, but also that he provided extraordinarily patient and long term capital, I knew it was time to focus my efforts full time on growing the real estate business. 

We now own and operate over 50 veterinary properties, ranging in purchase price from $750k to $6.75M, and are under contract on a few more currently. I don’t think I’ve acquired that many by low balling anyone. I understand it has to be fair and equitable for both sides or there simply won’t be a deal. I’m not looking to flip deals or institutionalize anything. I love the veterinary business. I have been around the business my whole life. I also love real estate and, now that I have transitioned away from practice management to focus full time on my real estate business, I want to build a very large diversified portfolio of veterinary properties that I intend to hold and manage over the course of the next 30 years.

Maybe it’s simply because we all need to do something and I convinced myself early on that I love being a Landlord. Maybe it’s because acquiring these assets make me think about my dad. The truth is, it’s probably a little bit of both. Either way, I look forward to continuing to build the portfolio.