How A College Dropout Built A $2.9 Billion Real Estate Empire | Forbes

[Music] I was always intrigued and about real estate and invest in real estate and I'd read articles when I was 13 years old I bought multiscript in the Wall Street Journal and so it did interest me a possible career in real estate but you know I really didn't know which direction I wanted to go until really I was in in high school and first year of college my name is Roy Carroll and I'm the CEO president of the Carroll companies [Music] thank you growing up as a very lower middle class upbringing I both my parents worked my father was a meat cutter grocery store man I did a little bit of remodeling on the side so I'd go help him you know after school on weekends with remodel jobs so that's how I got my hands in construction a little bit we actually lived in rental homes we didn't even own our own homes I was in high school after my father bought his first house he decided to buy some more rental homes and get an opportunity to buy two homes up in Danville Virginia and I'd saved up money mowing loans doing odd jobs and such and so I'd saved a thousand dollars and so this is a very modest home and so he asked me if I wanted to buy the one home and so I I put a thousand dollars down and owner finance I think it's four thousand dollars or so this is five thousand dollar home and I rented it for a year and uh sold it for a profit uh to buy a car which is a bad investment because cars depreciate value right I should have kept that house so I was in college and my father got laid off from his grocery store business after 20 some years this early 80s terrible time to go to Real Estate interest rates are very high we had some friends that wanted a house built and so they knew my father done some Renovations on the side and so they asked my father if he wanted to build their house I was going to school here locally and so I would help after school and on weekends and and he and I did a lot of the work Hands-On when I say did the work we nailed the nails and swept the floors and did things like that and built the first house and by the time we'd finished that home actually had another set of friends that said hey you did a good job with that home why don't you would you be interested in building us a home and so after building a second house he and I kind of sat down and said you know we we may be able to make a career out of this and so we formed our little company and started doing custom homes on scattered Lots around the Greensboro area we kind of divvied up the worlds he would run the cruise on the job site more so and I would do more of the estimating and selections with the customers you know we still both got out there and drove nails at the end of the day so it was very rewarding and everything that those early years starting the business of my father [Music] real estate business has a lot of risk associated and from the first year that we started the business we decided that we would my father had a little bit of retirement savings that he lived I was a college student so it didn't take much for me to live on so we decided we'd pay our sales once a year at the end of the year so we basically put a third of the profits back into the business to grow it and we'll each take a third and so as long as he was in the business up until the early 90s that's that's the way we paid ourselves and so I think that was one of the things that kind of was a catalyst for us to be as successful as we were is just that very conservative approach which I carry on today we've got a Hyatt Place Hotel right downtown we'll have 300 Apartments associated with it we're getting ready to start an AC hotel across the street from it rooftop restaurant another 300 apartment Associated we've got I don't know how many Bee safes we have in town here and whenever we start a new Venture a new project new idea we always like to try it out in our backyard where we can kind of tweak it a little bit get the formula just right before we take it on the road we're always looking for markets that are emerging in areas where there's new growth and opportunity and we're also looking for Value we're not going to go out there and be the the guys that bid and pay top dollar for a real estate asset we really beat the bushes hard so to speak and try to find Value and then try to add to that value by executing and the vertical construction or if it's an existing building we will go in and renovate and invest dollars into you know reposition it to to a nice place well remodeling a building is a lot more brain damage Associated because you don't know what you're going to get into and the building we're sitting in here was 17-story buildings old Wachovia Bank building it was built between 63 and 64 and then it was basically abandoned in the early 80s and so it gone through bankruptcy a couple times and insurance company Next Door Lincoln Financial had purchased the building and they really purchased to protect their assets because they owned several buildings downtown and several other properties and this is kind of sitting in the middle of them and so I met with the CEO of the company and convinced him that you know we could execute this project could turn into something that Greensboro will be proud of and so we we lined up that we want to do condos as you know this is a mid mid to 2005 2006 we're doing the planning people lined up to buy condos from us and and so we started construction we had about half the condos pre-sold and then 2008 hit in 2009 you're hearing just about every day about a developer who did a condo project and and they got sideways and they were turning it back over to the bank and I told people I said I will not give this building back to the bank by speaking to the CFO one morning and I said you know I think I think it would help us sell more condos and just take that cloud from Over the Carroll companies if we just paid off this building and hindsight is one of the smartest things we could have done because word got on the street that you know that's how we conduct business we're not going to walk away from one of our obligations and you know we never reduced the price of one condo in this building and uh you know we're we're close to sold out and everything so and I live here so all my neighbors are happy with me because I didn't reduce the price or give it back to the bank so it turned out well for everyone here [Music] foreign [Music] storage kind of like a close cousin to multi-family anyways the way I see it and a lot of our communities we already had garages we had storage units outside so I studied the business and I said let's let's come up with something that's a little bit unique there's a lot of good self storage operators out there today and so we came up with the be safe brand and where we tried to position be safe is that it is top end of the market our lighting's a little brighter we temper the temperatures inside a little bit more than most cell storage operators and we put a lot of money in the exterior facade all of our exteriors and to be safe or or stone and brick and they really look like an office building so they fit in well in the upscale communities that we're trying to be and so that's been a good business model for us and and you know we're spread out pretty much everywhere where we're already with the multi-family we're also looking to put be safe self storage facilities [Music] thank you car storage is something that we've studied there's a number of different variations of car storage across the country where we're a little bit different and we're doing it instead of doing like a condo or one big open space where we're placing cars and and a big open room these are individual uh two-story units that we lease we give you an upfit allowance where you can personalize It Whatever theme you want to come up with I'm into cars a little bit some collecting and I thought it was a would go well with some of the other car events that I attend and be able to promote it with some of our be safe racing I guess about five years ago I bought a Fray challenge car and would take it up there's a there's a race track about an hour north of here in Virginia and uh was running around one day in the race team uh was looking to form down in Charlotte and asked me if I'd be interested in joining them on the Ferrari Challenge Series and so I said sure and so uh one thing led to another and joined the team and met a lot of great people being involved with that it's great to be involved with Ferrari it's helping us brand it's also helped with Employee Engagement and Carol companies uh several employees like to follow the our racing program and it's great that it's kind of pulled a lot of our Carroll companies employees together and everything around the racing program we had a car in Le Mans this year partnered with Ferrari for a racing program built a Ferrari 488 GTE for us to run in Le Mans and we we had a good experience with that came in fifth in our class so we'll be back at some point in the future and be on the podium one day well this community Greensboro has been very good to me and my family over the years obviously and so you know we're very blessed to be able to give back to the community and it is rewarding to look out the window of our home here and and see various projects we we have ongoing some sometimes I look out the window to see something though that hey that needs to be changed Greensboro is a beautiful place it's a great place to live great place to grow up and real blessed to be here [Music]

Channel: Forbes

Views: 139,329

Keywords: Forbes, Forbes Media, Forbes Magazine, Forbes Digital, Business, Finance, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Investing, Personal Finance, the carroll companies, real estate, billionaire, north carolina, bee safe, le mans, car caves, ferrari, roy carroll, billion dollar fortune, net worth, billionaire news, money, wealth

Id: lPae0k6VeZc

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2023