By Rankin Blair
Fall is a season for holidays, with the excitement of Halloween leading into the traditions of Thanksgiving and the advent of the Christmas season. But during this special season, we should not forget to commemorate Veterans Day on November 11.
Veterans Day is, of course, a day to remember and thank those who choose to serve our country and protect the freedoms it offers. It’s a national holiday and company holiday at our company, Lima One Capital! Even more, it is an opportunity to imagine ways we can better support veterans, active-duty service members, and reserves.
This is a challenge we’re excited to take on at Lima One Capital. As a company founded by Marines, and one that takes our name from the Marine company our founders led when serving in Iraq in 2006, we’re especially cognizant of the importance of supporting veterans and the men and women currently serving in the military or the reserves. We also have reserves-friendly HR policies so that employees who continue to serve can do so with our full support. These are things every company can do.
It’s even better when companies can find ways to align their missions with support for veterans. At Lima One, we embrace our mission to create opportunities for our customers and employees by financing real estate investors who are building, improving, and stabilizing neighborhoods. This mission places importance on the opportunities our investors use to scale their real estate investment businesses and to improve the neighborhoods where they build, flip, rehab, or rent residential homes.
This emphasis on neighborhoods opens the door for us to serve military families in a way unique to Lima One’s mission. We can fund investors who purchase rental homes or multifamily complexes in cities near military bases. This allows military families who are stationed at a base for a short period of time to have quality housing options off-base as well as on-base and truly improves their quality of life.
We’ve seen this happen as we have funded investments in areas like Jacksonville, North Carolina, near Camp Lejeune. Not every private lender in the country will lend in a smaller market like this, but Lima One has designed our processes and trained our people to underwrite loans for properties in secondary and tertiary markets, not just in major markets. This allows us to serve investors who want to improve military-centric neighborhoods through profitable investments.
We’ve seen the same thing happen around the Air Force base in Colorado Springs and around Naval bases in San Diego and Jacksonville, Florida, to give a few examples. Our experience tells us this model can be replicated nationwide with workforce-friendly housing in military-centric neighborhoods.
It’s a win/win for everyone. Military families have a wider variety of affordable and attractive housing options. Real estate investments can scale their businesses by growing their portfolios and completing successful fix and flips. Communities get upgraded neighborhoods that help them grow and thrive. And Lima One gets to accomplish our mission as our company grows.
And of course, we’re excited about finding this mission-centric way of serving military veterans!
Your company’s unique way of honoring military families by serving them will undoubtedly be different than the one we’ve found. But I’m certain that you can find a way to serve that fits your company’s mission, impact and DNA as we have at Lima One.
So this year, amidst all the holidays that make fall a joyous season, remember Veterans Day by finding your unique way to serve those who have served or are serving our country. You’ll find what the Lima One team has found—that this is an incredibly rewarding way to live your company mission.
Rankin Blair is the Managing Director—Head of Operations at Lima One Capital and a former signal officer in the U.S. Army Reserve. For more information, visit limaone.com.