Ep. 66: The Best Deal is Sometimes the One You Don’t Do, with Ken Gee

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Lance is the Founder and Managing Partner of Verivest, an end-to-end real estate investment platform designed to bring transparency and trust to middle-market investing, and a Principal in Fairway America, a real estate private equity firm in Portland, Oregon.

Ken Gee is a former Deloitte & Touche CPA turned real estate investor at Tampa-based KRI Properties. His background in accounting has instilled in him an analytical, principled approach to deals, and a high aversion to losing someone else’s money. He and Lance discuss underwriting from the ground up—not using a back-of-the-napkin approach. Ken talks about his 90-plan for taking over a property, occupancy as a key risk mitigation strategy, and never losing sight of the most important aspect of a transaction: people.

This Week’s Guest


Ken is the founder and President of KRI Properties. He has more than 23 years of significant real estate, banking, private equity transaction and principal investing experience. Throughout his career, he has been involved in transactions valued in excess of $1.5 billion, much of which has included the acquisition, management and financing of various multi-family real estate projects as well as playing a significant role as a member of due diligence and transaction structure planning teams for several private equity firms specializing in the small and middle markets.

Prior to forming KRI Properties, Ken was a tax manager with Deloitte & Touche LLP where he focused his practice on state and local tax planning, merger and acquisition due diligence and transaction structure planning for private equity and middle market companies. Some of his major clients included The Riverside Company, Key Equity Capital Partners, Blue Point Capital, Linsalata Capital Partners, The Zaremba Group, Charter One Bank and Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc.

Prior to his career at Deloitte & Touche, Ken spent several years at National City Bank where he served as commercial loan officer, credit analyst, branch manager, and mortgage loan originator during his career with the bank.

Unrelated to his real estate experience, Ken also owned and operated several certified Cessna Pilot Centers in the Northern Ohio area. These Cessna Pilot Centers operated an FAA approved professional pilot school and specialized in the sale of new and pre-owned aircraft.

Ken is a licensed Ohio Certified Public Accountant (inactive) as well as a licensed Real Estate Broker in the states of Florida and Ohio. He received his master’s degree from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management and his B.B.A. from the University of Toledo. He is a member of the National Apartment Association, Florida Apartment Association, Bay Area Apartment Association (Tampa, FL), First Coast Apartment Association (Jacksonville, FL), Northeast Ohio Apartment Association, Shaker Square Area Development Corporation, Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants and American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

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Episode 66