Who owns pangea real estate

Founded in , our mission is to be the most respected and diversified real estate company through unparalleled dedication and results for our residents, partners, and ourselves.

The founding entrepreneurs saw an opportunity in the Chicago rental market to create a business that would provide superior service and quality to its residents. In order to achieve these aims, Pangea has taken a novel approach to real estate, serving as the property owner and manager while utilizing a call center to support their high bar for service and scalability.

Today, we have over 13, apartments and townhomes in Chicago, Indianapolis and Baltimore, with the goal of continuing to expand into new markets and adding units in current markets. Motus has established best practices in the industry and has streamlined the rehabilitation process, encompassing the full scope of apartment building construction services. For more information, email leads motusconstruction. For more information on Pangea Mortgage Capital, email inquiries pangeamortgage.

There is little time for rest when your company is buying over 1, new apartments in six months. Even though the housing market has recovered from its days, Joung and Goldstein still see plenty of opportunities. They now own 6, apartments in Chicago, 2, in Indianapolis and another in Baltimore.

Plans are to expand eastward to places like Columbus, Louisville and New Jersey. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Apr 28, , am EDT. Apr 14, , am EDT. Apr 3, , am EDT. Mar 27, , am EDT. Mar 3, , am EST. Dec 20, , am EST. Nov 13, , pm EST. Nov 7, , am EST. But much more research remains to be done on these dynamics in Chicago, where the study of evictions is still in its infancy. Studies are now finding that crime rates, employment, mental health, and other markers of neighborhood well-being are affected as tenants churn through buildings and their children churn through schools.

Indeed, the areas of Chicago where the most evictions occur—Black neighborhoods on the south and west sides—also have the highest rates of joblessness and violent crime.

These are neighborhoods that have the most city ticket debt and the most bankruptcy filings , where homeowners and small businesses are burdened with unfairly high property tax assessments , and where Chicago police officers conduct the most stops and are most accused of misconduct.

These are the neighborhoods where one company saw a golden business opportunity. Amid a disastrous recession, Pangea offered hope for a return of investment in Black neighborhoods hit hardest by foreclosures and the folding of community banks that had once financed an ecosystem of mom-and-pop landlords. The company fixed up dilapidated apartment buildings by the block, restoring the architectural character of historic neighborhoods.

Led by a team of young, mostly white men with backgrounds in finance and tech, Pangea—known variably as Pangea Real Estate, Pangea Ventures, Pangea Properties, and Pangea Equity Partners—presented itself as a modern real estate player that stuck to old-school business principles.

The company would buy, rehab, and directly operate apartment buildings without involving middle-men property managers. Goldstein is 38 years old, but he looks younger.

He dresses casually and though he appears to like talking he always seems slightly shy in the spotlight, whole words nearly disappearing from his quick-clipped speech. He closed deals with visual aids. Pangea grew quickly. In the company began with a handful of employees and acquired nearly 1, apartments in Chicago. The next year its portfolio doubled. By the end of the company owned more than 4, units in Chicago and more in the south and west suburbs. By the time he took a step back from running Pangea to launch a new company in , an efficient system for acquisition, rehab, and tenant relations was in place.

The investments paid off. That year, Pangea also broke onto Inc. Soon it would launch a separate property management business to provide services to other apartment building owners and a financial services spin-off company, Pangea Mortgage Capital, to provide loans to real estate investors across the country.

And the company has been giving back too, as Goldstein and Martay told the Reader in interviews and e-mail exchanges. CPD and U. Pangea even collaborated with The Steve Harvey Show to offer a furnished apartment rent-free for a year to a family that was homeless after an eviction.

A Reader analysis of Cook County eviction court data from through —which includes , cases filed against Chicago tenants—shows that since its founding Pangea has taken as many people to court as the next four landlords combined.

The company owns and operates 7, units in Chicago. In it filed 1, eviction cases. This investigation predates these relationships. Over the last year and a half, the Reader has interviewed three dozen current and former Pangea tenants and nearly a dozen current and former employees.

We observed hearings for more than eviction cases filed by Pangea and examined records from more than lawsuits filed against the company. Two conflicting images of the company emerged from these records, observations, and interviews.

On the one hand, Pangea is reviving apartment buildings in neighborhoods reeling from the recession. This is the image the company promotes, and a positive impact on the neighborhoods is discernible. On the other hand, Pangea appears to be subverting its own stated mission of neighborhood stabilization by taking a tremendous number of tenants to court, undermining their housing security both immediately and for years into the future.

To date, the company has filed more than 9, cases against tenants across the city. They cited the nonprofit Better Housing Foundation and EquityBuild, both of which were mired in scandal last summer—the former for keeping a large number of properties in disrepair while board members enriched themselves, the latter for being an alleged real estate Ponzi scheme. Between these two groups they amassed a portfolio of over 2, units in Chicago. The company often transfers buildings between these shell LLCs too.

Some observers are concerned about the outsized presence of the company in low-income neighborhoods. In South Shore, for example, Pangea owns approximately 8 percent of the apartment buildings with five or more units, according to data analyzed by Geoff Smith, the director of the DePaul Institute for Housing Studies. The Metropolitan Tenants Organization—a nonprofit that educates and organizes renters and runs an advice hotline—now receives more calls about Pangea than any other landlord.

While the complaints about mold, rodents, bedbugs, and disrepair are the same as for many other landlords in the low-income apartment market, the organization said no company has as many tenants complain about unexpected fees—for routine maintenance requests and heat repair, and, most notably, for water.

We figured out then we could actually build something really interesting if we used the technology and analytics and operational capability we had used at Enova. His longtime mentor, options trader David Shorr, even agreed to be his first investor.

They got a deal on a seven-unit building in Rogers Park. But Shorr convinced him to quit Wall Street. They launched a second location in Racine and let customers apply online through CashNetUSA, which supplanted the brick-and-mortar operation within a year.

Cash America eventually spun off CashNetUSA into a new company, Enova International, which operates nearly a dozen online subprime lending businesses across four continents and has reported record profits in recent years. Though its lending model is generally seen as a step above the predatory approach of payday lenders, this year the Federal Trade Commission filed a suit alleging Avant had overcharged and misled hundreds of borrowers and made unauthorized withdrawals from their bank accounts.

Pangea recently relocated to a loft in the West Loop. Visitors are required to sign nondisclosure agreements at the front desk.

He came alone and only brought some water in a well-worn plastic cup with his initials scrawled on it in black marker. Pangea never responded. The parallels between Pangea and payday lending are hard to ignore upon closer examination of what happens when the company takes its tenants to eviction court.

While Pangea has been sued dozens of times by tenants claiming unsafe living conditions or negligent management, those lawsuits—the vast majority of which have been dismissed—are not the main arena in which the company flexes its legal muscle. The building in Austin where Eyevie McHenry lived had a lot of problems. Department of Buildings records indicate tenants complained about leaky ceilings, mice, roaches, and bedbugs once Pangea took over in Squeals from inside the walls periodically interrupted our interview.

For three months Pangea took the partial payments. McHenry showed the Reader the receipts they got from the company and said they were never told making partial payments put them at risk of eviction. But in February she was two days late on each payment. Though she said the company took her money, it still moved to evict her for violating the pay-and-stay agreement.

She looked over the sheet of paper, tears welling up in her eyes. Raleigh declined to be interviewed. Once a tenant agrees to a pay-and-stay deal, the landlord has dibs on their wallets—whatever money they have is more likely to go toward rent first. In contrast to Pangea, most Chicago landlords view eviction court as the last possible resort. Then it could take weeks or months for a case to be resolved. On the tenant side of the bar, Raleigh—and Pangea—have for years been seen as more benign adversaries precisely because of their preference for payment plans over immediate eviction.

Despite the pay-and-stay deals, 60 to 70 percent of the cases Pangea files every year end with eviction orders—about average for cases countywide. A quarter of those orders are issued without the tenant present in court this is what happened to Krystal Horton.

Deputies will come in a group of four, wearing black uniforms and flak jackets. The zip code, which has more evictions than any other in Cook County, tends to make for their busiest days. Seven of the 76 scheduled evictions that day were at Pangea buildings. The first Pangea eviction was at a squat, mid-century building with empty storefronts on 75th Street, just east of Jeffrey. One of them knocked loudly. No answer.

But even after four, five, six echoing blows it refused to give. Finally, someone inside opened the door. The sergeant emerged with a black 9 mm Glock in one hand and a round extender clip in the other. The bullets rang as he emptied the clip into a metal pan on the disheveled kitchen counter.