Greg Sullivan was weaned on Quincy’s real estate market. His namesake company was started by his father, who was following in the footsteps of his own father, who dealt in investment properties.
Now, Sullivan has started another firm, Triad, as his own investment vehicle with two partners. Sullivan sat down with Banker & Tradesman recently to share some of his South Shore market secrets.
Greg Sullivan
Title: Owner, Sullivan Realty Co., Quincy; Senior Managing Partner, Triad, Quincy
Age: 53
Experience: 30+ years
You formed Triad in 2010 as an investment vehicle. What was the impetus for that?
It came together with a couple of friends who each had an interest in real estate and some background in it, but varying parts of it. Chris Notarangelo is a graduate of the North Bennett Street School in the North End, and can really do anything in construction. His background is in restoration carpentry, so he goes into houses built in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and does restoration work. Then he got into buying properties and renovating them. Dan Strout came in with a strong financial background. I thought he could add value by developing the business model for the company. Right now, there’s a lot of inventory and a need for investors like ourselves to try to renovate and reuse these properties and bring them back as productive properties. During these kinds of times … when the bottom falls out, investors need to come in and resell or hold them. I’m a firm believer that real estate really drives any local economy. We’re leaning to the residential market right now knowing that that’s really where the opportunities are. There will be opportunities in the commercial multifamily market down the road, but right now the price of entry in the residential market is so low that you’re able to go in and scoop up a few properties at a time and renovate them without spending huge amounts of money, somewhere in the $1 million to $2 million range. It’s a way to raise capital to position ourselves for what the next wave may be, and I’m guessing it most likely will be commercial as commercial notes come due, if in fact the same sort of scenario plays out where financing is difficult, we’re hoping to position ourselves to take advantage of that. If the banks would free up some money I think we, the collective we as investors, could really make a difference in this economy and really start to get it back on a better footing. But the banks have to participate and we have to work together.
Can you tell us a little about your company’s history?
The company was started by my dad, who himself grew up in the real estate business. His father was involved in real estate investment properties going back to the 1950s, commercial and residential properties. He was an investor in a funeral home. He actually had a livery service as well, and during the Great Depression he owned some limousines and he would take the wealthy women of Chestnut Hill shopping. From that he invested in real estate and owned six or seven multifamily homes. My dad got his start after finishing a Master’s from Boston College, when he started working for the Old Colony United Way here in Quincy. He met many of the local businessmen and politicians and got very involved in the civic aspects of Quincy. He got his real estate license in 1965 and then started the realty company. Myself, I have a short background in banking after college and then I took over the company in 1982. From there my dad moved on to banking and became chairman of the board of the old Quincy Co-operative Bank that was headquartered downstairs. He took that public and sold off the bank. I basically took the reins of the company, built it up when he left, and have been running it ever since. We were essentially an appraisal company and retail real estate, and since then we’ve done basically every aspect of the business from rentals to sales to appraising and consulting and management.
Do you have any particular specialty in your markets?
We go from starter homes to the higher-end range and everything in between. But our specialty is estate properties and working closely with local attorneys, doing appraisals and sometimes getting the properties and selling them. Now we basically handle the marketing and sales of estate type properties, that’s our niche. We’ve been doing that for many years. We take the properties and do renovation if it’s needed. We’ll advise them on how best to stage the property. There is a little bit of a knack to estate properties. You’re working with the attorney, but oftentimes you’re working with the family, the heirs of the property. Sometimes there are many heirs, in which case you have to be able to interact with many different personality types with many different expectations. In many cases these properties haven’t been re-decorated in 20 or 30 years. Sometimes there are liens on properties where people haven’t paid their property taxes in years. It’s sort of a specialty to work with these.
Greg Sullivan’s Top Five Favorite Scary Movies:
The original “Last House on the Left”
The “Halloween” series
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Carrie
Final Destination
