Philip Michael Is a Real Estate Entrepreneur on a Mission The young developer is building an app, an empire, and a following BY CHAVA GOURARIE DECEMBER 15, 2020 6:27 AM PHILIP MICHAEL'S FIRST REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT IN THE U.S. WAS A THREE-UNIT BUILDING IN JERSEY CITY THAT HE SOLD FOR $1 MILLION-PLUS. PHOTO: SASHA MASLOV It was a panel like thousands of others held across New York City, back before COVID put an end to all of it. On a December night, in the neon-lit event space of a Bushwick hotel, with a row of blinking arcade games along one wall, three panelists sat under a large screen. They were discussing entrepreneurship. The audience — a diverse and young mix of would-be entrepreneurs, sat on red bistro chairs amid strewn winter gear — listening closely. SEE ALSO: Real Estate Investment Firm FCP Adds Two Partners to Maryland Ofce The panelists included Nooklyn CEO Moiz Malik and real estate entrepreneur Philip Michael, in his trademark beanie and dreads, who had helped organize the event. “After the panel, we’re all there answering questions from the people in the audience,” Malik said. “Philip was there alongside, teaching people for two to three hours.” Born and raised in Denmark, the 30-something Michael arrived in New York in 2014 with $79 to his name. Within six years, he has parlayed that into a real estate portfolio worth $250 million, a substantial social media following, and a mission to make real estate investing accessible to communities of color. As a self-described “crazy Danish kid with dreadlocks,” Michael is aware that he doesn’t look or behave like the typical real estate mogul. “There’s this illusory misconception in people’s minds that wealth and money is only for those that don’t look like me. Which is nonsense.” Michael said. “But, if you feel it, then it becomes a reality.” To counter that, he’s anointed himself educator and sage. He runs a media site called WealthLAB, with content to “empower creators, hustlers and doers.” He also dispenses real estate wisdom on Instagram and hosts regular Zoom lectures and weekly Facebook Live Q&A sessions — all of it branded in Silicon Valley turquoise and bold black font. But spreading the word is not enough; Michael wants to spread the wealth. More specically, he wants to mint 100,000 millionaires of color by 2030. To reach that goal, he’s developing a crowdfunding platform called REIFY, where investors can invest in commercial real estate. He has already completed two crowdfunding campaigns on existing platforms, one for his company NYCE Companies (pronounced “nice”), and one for a ground-up development, a student housing project near Temple University in Philadelphia. Investors needed just $79 to invest in the Temple property — “the price point of curiosity,” Michael called it — and a callback to his early New York days. And, he quickly confesses, a gimmick designed to draw investor interest. His origin story and mission require a little more explanation than a one-line sales pitch. Philly Stake Michael was born to a Danish father and a South African mother in Denmark, and was raised by his maternal grandmother for most of his childhood. His grandmother, who had been cast out of South Africa because of the family’s involvement with Nelson Mandela’s political party during apartheid, tried to impart her worldview to Michael. “[My grandmother] would say to me, ‘You have to work extra hard because you’re Black.’ She said, ‘This is your box, you got to maximize your box.’” But, as a teenager, Michael lived with his father, a successful interior designer, and the contrast between the two worlds helped shape his own worldview. “Once I got with my father, there was no such box.” Michael moved to the United States when he was 16, and cycled through several colleges and programs while guring out his next move. After arriving in New York in 2014—with the aforementioned $79—Michael began the years-long process of securing a green card, and as a foreigner without authorization to work, scraped together a living from a variety of gigs, including writing, hosting a radio show, and later, a stint in marketing at the real estate publication Bisnow. In 2016, Michael bought his rst piece of real estate: a newly renovated, three-unit property in Jersey City for $750,000, nanced primarily through a Federal Housing Administration loan and with the help of a partner. By the time the deal closed, the property value had risen to $800,000, and Michael later sold it for more than $1 million. At this point, Michael reached out to his family. He and his father, Frede Christensen, had not been on good terms since Michael left home, and, in fact, were no longer speaking. But the budding real estate entrepreneur needed money to close on a deal in Baltimore. At rst, his father said no, though he did offer to allow Michael to sell his shares in a property that the family owned in Denmark. However, once the two reconnected and Christensen learned more about his son’s work, he agreed to invest. In 2017, Michael, his father and his nephew, Martin Braithwaite, a professional soccer player who now plays for the Barcelona club (yes, alongside Lionel Messi) but was unknown at the time, joined forces with $850,000 in seed money. Michael did all the groundwork, and the nancial boost gave him some runway to keep investing while building up his skills and network. And that is denitely something that Michael excels at. Eager to learn, eager to teach, and overowing with energy, Michael tends to expect others to be as generous with their expertise as he is with his own. “Philip’s more of a visionary and innovative thinker, but more than anything, he’s a connector,” said Matt Shapson, president of design and building studio PB+DC, and Michael’s construction partner on the Temple development. “He does have these big visions, but he does really well at connecting the right people.” Michael met Shapson on an online forum about real estate investing, and went out to Philadelphia to meet him and his partner Michael Hallett shortly after. The two Philly residents, both Temple graduates, were just growing their own edgling development rm, and gave Michael a tour of their properties and of the Temple University neighborhood where Michael was interested in investing. Before the day ended, they got a round of beers that cemented their friendship. After their meetup in Philadelphia, Michael and Shapson stayed in touch, and eventually, they teamed to acquire land near Temple and develop housing for students. Michael was responsible for the acquisition and nancing, and PB+DC took on the construction and development, including the permitting process, since they knew the Philadelphia market. In March 2018, the partnership acquired a vacant lot at 2200 North 11th Street for $112,000, and, in January of this year, broke ground on a four-story, student-housing complex set to open this coming spring. The project, a 17-room dorm, has a total capitalization cost of $1.5 million, according to the term sheet on the offering for the deal. The project will have coliving-like shared amenities, as well as all of the technological bells and whistles, and Michael brought in Malik’s Nooklyn to manage the leasing. Not Like the Others The common denominator between Malik, Shapson, Michael, and many others in Michael’s circle is that they’re not part of the established real estate industry. The Pakistani-born Malik lived in poverty in Queens throughout his childhood, and said it’s rare to nd people in the industry who didn’t enter by way of nepotism. “Both for myself and for Philip, the idea is that we don’t have that, so bringing something new to the table is the only way in,” Malik said. And he’s in it because of passion, and not just prot. Malik helped build up Nooklyn because he saw that the real estate establishment essentially ignored lower-income renters, including roommate renters, because there isn’t enough money in it. He only got the job to begin with because Nooklyn’s founders lived in the Bushwick building where he shared a studio with four roommates when he moved badk to New York after college— and still couldn’t make rent. Michael’s approach, with its focus on outreach and inclusivity in addition to the bottom line, is refreshing, Malik said. “It’s rare to nd a developer or someone thinking about [real estate] like him.” For Shapson, too, the work is important for its own sake. “We take a lot of pride in what we do,” he said. “Working with Philip, most of our conversations are, ‘How do we get this deal done? How do we get from point A to point B?’ Not, ‘How much money are we going to make when we do this?’” Everyone Into the Pool Michael launched NYCE in January of this year, as the umbrella entity for the variety of projects he had underway. That included an expansion of the Temple project, which had grown to include a plot of land just across the street from the rst student-housing site The land, consisting of several vacant residential lots and an abandoned church, became Temple II, a second student-housing project with 80 bedrooms, that is set to start construction in 2021. Michael is also working with the City of Philadelphia to upgrade a nearby basketball court and park, and potentially integrate his development with youth programs offered through the park’s recreation center.