Winning the Commercial Real Estate Game in Nashville with Tyler Cauble

Tyler Cauble is a commercial real estate broker in Nashville, Tennessee who is helping to improve the city through the use of mixed-use development. On this episode of ConnectTheKnox, Tyler shares how Nashville has changed over the course of his lifetime and why he feels that mixed-use development is the future. Tyler describes his involvement in the zoning requirements in Nashville, and how that impacts local businesses, real estate, and residents. Tyler also explains his views on Tennessee’s transportation infrastructure, and why he feels people need to stop viewing commercial real estate as separate from residential.

Highlights:

00:00 Intro

01:00 Tyler introduces his Nashville roots and describes how he got into commercial real estate

06:02 How Tyler partnered with residential agents to build his brokerage

06:53 Tyler describes his most recent commercial project where he converted an old car wash into multiple profitable businesses

09:17 Tyler and Julia discuss the value and appeal of mixed-use development

10:27 Ad - Dr. Joe Chiro https://www.goseedrjoe.com

10:58 How zoning affects real estate development and Tyler’s involvement in the zoning efforts in Nashville

15:17 Tyler gives his predictions for the future of city planning & development 

18:40 Ad - Just Homes Group

19:14 Julia asks Tyler what he thinks the future of Tennessee infrastructure looks like and how it impacts the future of all Tennesseeans

27:25 Why Tyler feels that people need to stop viewing commercial real estate as separate from residential

28:56 How Tyler coaches people on how to get into commercial real estate

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

• tylercauble.com/course: https://tylercauble.com/course

• Tyler’s YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/tylercauble

• *Bonus Content* Exploring the Intersection of Residential and Commercial Real Estate with Julia Hurley & Tyler Cauble: https://www.youtube.com/live/C4zRxW1zWEc?feature=share

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Transcript:

Julia: Hey everybody and welcome to another episode of Connect the Knox. I’m your host, Julia Hurley, connecting Knoxville to the nation. Today’s guest is Tyler Cauble, huge real estate developer, real estate commercial mogul and personal friend of mine, located currently in Nashville, Tennessee, and taking over Nashville by storm. Tyler, thank you for coming on the show today.

Tyler: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Julia. I don’t know about that intro, but I do appreciate kind words [laugh].

Julia: [laugh]. You know, never a dull moment around Julia Hurley. And I never lie on an intro, so all of those things are true. I’m going to pat you on the back even if you don’t want to.

Tyler: That’s right.

Julia: So listen, Tyler, tell the audience today how you ended up in Nashville, Tennessee.

Tyler: Yeah. I was actually born and raised here, which is pretty great. I mean, you know, Nashville was a very small sleepy town when I was growing up. And it’s night and day compared to what it was back then, which… which is a lot of fun, you know? I like to tell people, I got a different city without having to move away, which is pretty nice.

Julia: [laugh]. That’s funny. That’s actually [laugh] so true.

Tyler: [laugh].

Julia: That’s the best way to describe Nashville right there. I’m going to steal that and use it in the rest of my conversations.

Tyler: Yeah, do it.

Julia: Yeah, that’s awesome. So, tell us a little bit about commercial real estate. I mean, there’s nothing little about commercial real estate. There’s never an easy deal. I do very little commercial real estate, but what I have done, I have had one deal that took a whole year and I thought that was a long time until I started talking to real, real commercial developers like yourself all over the country. They’ve had deals last ten years. Tell us a little bit about what the biggest difference and change you’ve seen in commercial real estate and how you even got into that sector.

Tyler: Oh, yeah. So, I went to college in Knoxville for about a year, dropped out after I completed my freshman semester, or I guess two semesters and moved back here and got into, I was actually working for my grandfather as a project manager for his construction company for a little bit. I grew up doing that every summer and figured that was my path, you know? I’d take over his construction company and grow that. And about four months into it, I got a job offer from a local developer—this was back in 2013—to come work for him as his in-house leasing agent.

And so, they paid for me to get my commercial real estate license, which is the same as residential and gave me a 500,000 square foot shopping center, a 60,000 square foot office building, and a couple 100,000 square feet of industrial to go lease. And I said, “Okay, how do I do this?” And they said, “Go find somebody that wants some space, and we’ll show you.” So, I spent six months knocking on doors, trying to get deals done, before I closed my first deal. And that’s about how long it takes, you know?

I mean, everybody talks about how—like, the biggest differences between commercial and residential, it takes a long time to close a commercial deal. You know, even on the shorter time, if you’re buying a commercial property, it’ll take 45 to 60 days. But that’s quick, you know? We’ve had development deals to go 12 to 18 months before they close. I’ve got one that’s been under contract for about three years now. Just because the buyer is an affordable developer and they’ve got a bunch of boxes that they have to check before that’ll ever close. So yeah, that’s a little overview on commercial real estate.

Julia: It’s more than a little bit. I tell you, my first commercial deal took 30 days. It was a piece of land.

Tyler: That’s not bad.

Julia: Yeah, it was cash, though. It was an all-cash deal. And it was actually my second deal. So, my very first deal was like a $65,000 house. It closed in 30 days. I was like, “Okay, whatever. Residential, this isn’t hard.” And then I got a commercial buyer, one-and-a-half million dollars cash. It was a utility company looking for land.

And apparently, when I first started in real estate eight years ago, I had a less aggressive voice and I was much more mouthy, I guess it’s a good word. And the gentleman on the other line, he was a full-time commercial agent and much more experienced, hung up on me because he thought I was joking. And so, I would call him and he would say, “Listen little kid, little girl, I have no idea what you want from me but I only do real business.” So, I ended up having to go around him and call his broker. And I brokered this deal on my own around this guy.

I found the seller and I actually stalked this guy down at a church and, like, “Hey, listen, you got this lane for sale. Your broker will take me seriously.” [high-pitched voice] I’m sure it sounded like this, “Please help me. I’m so scared.” And, you know, “This only my second contract and it’s a million-and-a-half dollars. I’m freaking out.” In 2014.

And we got there. We got the deal done in 30 days or less. But the company that purchased the land already knew all the information about it ahead of time. Now, fast forward eight years. I’ve got one five-acre piece of land currently, open zoning, so we’ve had to push it through zoning commissions, we had to push it through the city, we had to make a plan, we had to do a site plan, we had to do, you know, all of the core drilling and make sure all of the things that go along with it, making sure that everything got tested properly.

And if you want to do a gas station, good God. So, I understand commercial real estate better than most residential agents. I surround myself with it to understand what’s coming for the residential side of it because rooftops follow retail or retail follows rooftops, and those two things come together as a package. Without one, you don’t have the other. But your specialty is commercial, and you have experience that goes back decades, if not an entire family two or three generations.

But what you’ve accomplished in Nashville just recently, tell us about that project because being able to, one, find affordable real estate in Nashville is mind-blowing, and two, what you were able to do to change not only this one particular project, but the landscape of what surrounds it. Talk about that a little bit.

Tyler: Yeah. I mean, you know, your experience is not unlike a lot of residential agents' experience in commercial real estate, right? I mean, when I first started my brokerage back in 2018, you know, I kind of built my business off of referrals from residential agents because they’re out there, you know, there’s hundreds, there’s thousands—literally, I think there’s over 12,000 residential agents in Nashville—so I figured, hey, you know, that’s 12,000 potential salespeople that can send me leads. Why should I go knock on doors when I could just have them to do that for me? And a lot of commercial brokers just won’t return the phone calls from residential agents and so we built some pretty good business off of that, and it helped us really get off the ground running fast.

But it makes no sense to me as to why people do that. It’s like, look, at the end of the day, we’re all here to get deals done, so let’s find a way to make that happen. Yeah, I mean, when it comes to, you know, changing up properties and building neighborhoods, I mean, retail is a great way to do that. You know, we took an old car wash here in East Nashville—it was a six-bay car wash—and converted it into five micro restaurants and a bar. You know, it used to be this rundown building that nobody would go to, there was kind of nothing on that corner, it was a little empty.

And you know, we’ve got 80 seats outside, the place is regularly packed, and it’s really cool to see these small businesses just thriving there and now everybody that’s in the neighborhood behind it can walk to all these restaurants. And so, not only were the residential rooftops a driver for the restaurants, well, now the restaurants are a driver for higher home sales in that area because you actually have something that you could walk to, spend time at, and enjoy as a resident in the area.

Julia: Yeah, I think that’s something that you know, being in Knoxville—and you experienced Knoxville for a year, you know, any left [laugh]—

Tyler: [laugh].

Julia: Like a lot of people do, like a lot of people do. You left for a bigger city; even though Nashville has changed a lot in the last decade, Nashville is much, much larger and has always been much, much more advanced than Knoxville. We’re starting to meld that a little bit in Knoxville with the new mayor, Glenn Jacobs. In his last four-year term, so he’s turned limited two terms, what he’s done is actually recreate a plan for Knox County to have what we would call micro-subdivisions, like, little micro-pockets. Like North Shore town center that has a Target and a grocery store and a nail salon and four restaurants and a bank and it’s got this condo-slash-apartment complex. Some are residential to purchase, some are lease. And then you’ve got a little, like, an outdoor play section, and all the things that you would need in a community you can walk to. And it’s its own entity.

And I know that there are some places in Nashville that were already pre-built like that, but there are places in East Nashville, like your building out, like your vision that don’t have anything like that. So, being able to bring that absolutely a hundred percent increases the value of the properties around it because if you can save, one, traffic, you don’t have to sit in traffic for 20 minutes to get to a grocery store or get to a restaurant, and you can walk there, you are more likely to purchase that property, even if it’s not in a Class A state, what, Class A commercial or Class A residential, you’re willing to sacrifice convenience, for luxury.

Tyler: Yeah, you see that all over the place, now. You know, back after the—in the post-war boom of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, you saw a lot of people moving out into the suburbs and we became very car-dependent. And the problem with that is you get a lot of these neighborhoods where you have no sidewalks, you can’t walk to anything, you’re relatively isolated, unless you, you know, make a conscientious effort to be around your neighbors. And you know, you kind of lose that sense of community that people need, right? And so, when you’re looking at these urban neighborhoods, you know, it’s pretty nice to be able to just walk to a couple of restaurants or walk to the neighborhood bar or walk to the grocery store.

You know, it really makes a difference on your lifestyle and your health, too. So, there are a lot of you know, major pros that come out of these more urban developments where you have mixed uses. You know, I don’t like looking at projects that have a single use anymore, right? So, like even a subdivision. Why does that need to be all houses? Why can you have a little neighborhood restaurant or bar? Or why can’t you have a neighborhood convenience store? Because it’ll pull traffic from the nearby neighborhoods as well. It’s not just going to come from that neighborhood, but it makes living in that neighborhood so much more convenient and more appealing.

Julia: Right. And the reason that they can’t where I live, and in most of the smaller towns—Knoxville is not necessarily a small town; it’s the second largest town in the state of Tennessee at this time; Knoxville is growing, obviously—but one of the biggest reasons in smaller towns that you can’t do that zoning. I know that you know a lot about zoning, I don’t know how many people actually pay attention especially and unfortunately, real estate agents, even commercial real estate agents who aren’t plugged in or selling a lot, leasing a lot, they are not plugged into zoning. There are reasons that subdivisions are so isolated and people are so isolated is your zoning boards. Are you—and I’m not—I’m going to ask this question like I don’t know it because I know my listeners don’t know it—are you involved in the zoning boards in Nashville? What are all the steps that you take to stay involved to be able to bring these things to your clients?

Tyler: Yeah. I mean, we get involved in more of the design, ideation side of things. So, I’m a member of ULI, the Urban Land Institute, a member of the National Civic Design Center, and these groups are pushing forward new ways of thinking about our zoning and the way that our neighborhoods are developed. And then of course, you know, we’re going through rezonings and things like that on our projects. I mean, we’re taking a one piece right now that’s about two-and-a-half acres that is currently zoned for, like, three houses, but it’s surrounded by commercial and neighborhoods, and we’re showing them hey, we need to rezone this for 34 units. It’s going to be a walkable neighborhood. There’s all these restaurants over here, it’s kind of become this completely new hub of activity that people want within their neighborhoods, right? I mean, you know, you look at 12th Avenue South in Nashville. You know, a lot of people are familiar with that because it’s a big destination. Well, you know, I don’t know—

Julia: I remember when it was nothing except Mafiosos. That was it [laugh].

Tyler: Yeah, Mafiosos. I—that’s a great, great pizza spot.

Julia: That was the only place up there.

Tyler: Go down there for Two for Tuesdays. But you know, back then, I think it was probably ten years ago, they made a decision to take the street from a thoroughfare down to a destination, right? So, instead of expanding the roads to allow more traffic to go through it, they actually condensed the roads. It’s only one lane each way. Now, you’ve got bike paths, larger sidewalks.

And when they made that decision, 12 Avenue South exploded, right, because all these people wanted to live over there and all these restaurants wanted to be there to be in the neighborhood. And now it’s one of the—

Julia: Your farmer’s market. Huge there now.

Tyler: The farmer’s market. Yeah, you’ve got coffee shops, bars, restaurants, shopping. You know, Reese Witherspoon has a retail spot on that strip now. And it’s this amazing destination that’s so un-car-friendly, that for a lot of people, it sounds counterintuitive, right? Like if you make a destination tough to get to, or you know, not very parkable, you know, you would think that people wouldn’t go there, but it’s actually the opposite. People want to go there because they can walk around.

Julia: I don’t know why we haven’t [crosstalk 00:13:14]. The Birkin bag ring a bell? You have $2,000 in the store to get put on a waitlist for a bag that looks just like every other bag.

Tyler: Exactly. It’s crazy.

Julia: And everybody wants the bag.

Tyler: Yeah. Everybody wants the bag. You know, it’s just, it makes the area so much nicer because it’s designed around people and not around cars, you know? Whenever something’s designed around cars, you’re just trying to get from point A to point B, everything in between doesn’t matter to you.

Julia: We all know that real estate is location, location, location. Our team at Just Homes Group Realty Executives have the true expertise, pairing buyers and sellers with the right opportunities. Whether you’re looking to buy or sell a home right here in Knoxville, Lenoir City, Clinton, or Farragut, we have the expertise throughout every Knoxville surrounding area. Call just Homes Group Realty Executives today.

Julia: I agree with that one hundred percent. I think that Knoxville’s got a lot to go, a lot to grow, and a lot to know. And those are things that we can learn from Nashville, just two-and-a-half hours down the road. But we also see as I was in Nashville, what, two weekends ago, and I was driving to the coffee shop that you recommended, was it, um…

Tyler: Retrograde?

Julia: Retrograde. And it was interesting because it was very good, number one, like, extremely good coffee, and number two, I had mentioned it to the person I was meeting with before I met you and I told him where I was going and he was like, “Oh man, I wish you would have told me that too. I would have met you there, too.” Like, and he lives on the totally other side of Nashville. So, building these spaces and understanding that they offer value for locally owned, locally operated, these hole-in-the-wall that aren’t holes at all, places and these neighborhoods that are dilapidated, I mean, as you’re driving through to get to that place, you can see all of the progress that’s been made, but on the other side of that, you still see all of this potential progress that can be made. What is Nashville doing to move that forward? And how does that play into what you are doing?

Tyler: Yeah, I mean, you know, I think a lot of cities are kind of starting to rethink their zoning and urban design. And I think it’s good that we’re finally starting to see that. You know, there’s been a lot of groups, like Strong Towns, that have been out there really advocating for this for years about, you know, what actually makes a strong town, you know? You look at these towns that are designed around cars and people don’t want to live in them, you know? They live out in the suburbs because it’s not pleasant, you can’t walk around.

And you know, it’s kind of a chicken or the egg. A lot of people think that people—that, you know, residents don’t want to be in the urban core, and so they don’t deliver anything that would make living in the urban core desirable, which means people will never move there. You know, but Nashville about 20 years ago, redid its zoning so that you could start building residential properties downtown, and now it’s just booming. You know, you’ve got thousands and thousands of apartments down there, condos, people do want to be there. And I think that, you know, as, especially in the southeast, as our cities continue to grow, as they have the past few years, you know, we’re going to see more and more of that. And I think that we’ll start to see these little hubs develop within the city.

Look at Atlanta, right? You’ve got all these little neighborhoods that people like to live, work, and play within that neighborhood. And because traffic is so bad in the city, they try not to go to other parts of the city. And so, you almost get these little mini-cities, right, with their own downtowns where, you know, people can live, work, play in those areas, walked all the restaurants, bars, activities, you know, work that they want to do, without actually having to commute. And so, I think that that’s a huge trend that we’ll see continued to evolve over the next few decades.

Julia: So, devil’s advocate on that. I spent a lot of time in the larger cities like LA, New York, Tampa, Miami, Atlanta, a lot of time in Atlanta because it’s closer. A lot of problems with that is that you get to the point where you are so micro, you’re so micro that you literally meet no one else. So, it’s almost as damaging as the suburbs. So, where’s that limit?

Tyler: Yeah, I mean, you could definitely argue that, but if you look at the density, you still have more people living within a several-block radius than you do out in the suburbs, right? And so, just in your day-to-day activities, you’re going to encounter more people, which most people want that, right? I mean, they do want to be around friends and family and community. And the suburbs just isolate you, right? So—and that density allows for the design and development of all of these amenities that make it even more pleasant to live there, right?

I mean, there’s a reason that people love moving to New York City, right? I mean, I think it’s crazy. I love to visit New York, I could never live there, but the fact that you’ve got so many different modes of transportation, you can get anywhere in the city relatively easily. You can walk just about everywhere you want. And there’s restaurants, bars, unique things to do in all areas of town, that’s what makes it so desirable, right?

There’s just there’s so many people there, which means there’s so much to do. And so, when you move that residential into these commercial districts and you stop, you know, separating and isolating commercial from residential, you create a much more beneficial, mutually beneficial relationship between the two.

Julia: What do you think’s going to be the transportation outlook on all of this? Tennessee does not have easy, usable roadways. We never have. I don’t think we ever will. I’m not exactly sure that we are genuinely invested as a state yet, in transportation… options, I guess there’s a good word for that.

I think that we talk about it a lot and we’re still not quite there. I mean, we still don’t have a zoning requirement for sidewalks in subdivisions. I mean, we’re still at the baby steps at the bottom down here. And even though Nashville setting that standard, they’re still kind of getting off their feet with this new outlook on the way to live. Everybody says, “Don’t come here, don’t come here. We’ll just end up like Atlanta.” It took Atlanta 75 years to get where they’re at today. This didn’t happen overnight and we have a lot of opportunity to do the right things as they come along. What do you envision for transportation?

Tyler: Yeah, I mean, Nashville did actually implement a sidewalk mandate a few years back. It was somewhat controversial, but, you know, I think everybody agrees that sidewalks do make your project look better, they make it you know, more accessible, and so you know, we don’t actually even—you used to be able to pay in lieu of fees and avoid building sidewalks; we actually have just always built them because to us, it makes a project so much more appealing and more accessible, which is exactly what we want, right? You know, in terms of transportation, it’s come up multiple times in Nashville, but it keeps getting voted down. The problem that we have here in Nashville is that, you know, back 40, 50 years ago, Metro Nashville actually incorporated the entire county, right? And so, now you’ve got residents that do drive to every corner.

Nashville is one of the most spread out cities in the country, it’s actually really, really big in terms of landmass. And you know, those people get to have a vote on whether the downtown urban areas get transit. And the problem with that is they look at it and go, “I’m never going to use that. I’m going to vote no.” But that means that in ten years from now, when that would have been completed—because we all know that government does not move fast—it’s going to be so much worse and people are going to keep blaming, you know, people moving here.

Well, you know, we had a referendum back in 2017, 2016, or—you know, where we could have voted to have transit, at least some form of it, in Nashville and we said no. So, you know, it’s going to continue to be a problem. I think we’re going to have some sort of light rail system, at some point. You just look at cities that have that and it makes living there so much more pleasant. I mean, I went with my girlfriend about a month ago to Boston, and to just be able to jump on the train whenever we wanted to get anywhere we wanted in the city, it was unbelievable.

And there’s a lot of people that live in this, you know, high, dense urban area and there was almost no traffic, right, because a lot of people don’t take cars. They either walk or they get on the train, they take the bus. And when you have enough people doing that, it just makes your commutes and your lifestyle so much more pleasant, I think.

Julia: I agree. And that was the experience that we had, on the several occasions that I’ve visited Australia. And I’ve visited the entire continent, all over the continent, not just one or two cities. Every city. It’s nearly as big as the United States, 1/52 of the population, and barely enough space to live in it. So, you can get there, though, all by rail.

And I think that that’s something that a lot of people go, “Well, we’re not Australia, why are you referencing something that completely across the other side of the world?” Because the population is the same, their largest city, Sydney, is three times, four times bigger the population as Nashville and they have an entire roadless system, if that’s what you choose. And those systems will actually go the four or five hours to as small of a town as Knoxville and it connects and you could just go near little hometown train station, pop on and go work in the city for the week and come back home for the weekend. Never get in a car. I find that that is one of the biggest solutions that we could possibly have, considering the fact that we have one of the largest rail systems ever built in America, right here in the [South 00:22:39].

Tyler: Yeah, the problem is it’s privately owned, right? You know, I mean, you can argue all day about what government should and shouldn’t be involved in, but I think that transit is one of those things. I mean, you know, that, same with, you know, taking airplanes, right, like? It’s a necessity now. It’s not a luxury, right? A lot of businesses work across—

Julia: And shouldn’t charge luxury prices.

Tyler: The country. And so people—yeah, yeah. And, you know, I was talking to somebody when I was up in Boston and, you know, they said that, you know, every so often they’ll take a train down to Pittsburgh or down in DC because there are rail lines that connect almost the whole northeast. I was just thinking to myself, like, man, how amazing would it be if you could just take a train to Atlanta for the weekend? You know, we have the infrastructure there. The problem is, the lines are just privately owned.

And you know, that’s something that we’ve got to figure out because, you know, it’s very cost-prohibitive to go back and build new rail lines, right? You think about all the property that you would have to condemn to make that happen because you can’t take up the interstates, right? You could run lines down the interstates, but now we’re talking about spending billions of dollars when the infrastructure is already there. How do we work with private rail lines to also get passenger rail? You know, Nashville recently did that, a line running from downtown all the way out east to I think past Lebanon, just about 45-minute drive outside of town, and it’s called the Nashville Star, I think. And it’s packed.

I mean, I used to live down on Second Avenue. I would walk my dog super early in the morning and watch the train come in, and people just unloading off of that. They live 45 minutes outside of town. And that’s great, you know? We just need to figure out more of that.

Julia: I agree with that wholeheartedly. I think that transportation is going to be the biggest challenge that we have, in the larger cities. In cities like Knoxville, just getting a plan on paper is our biggest challenge, and getting elected officials to agree to it. I mean, this has been 20 years in the making and it’s, you know, now we’ve had a governor that came out of Knoxville that had that same process over 20 years ago when he was mayor and still couldn’t get it done then. So, you know, it’s just changing the mindset of comfort isn’t just being out in the suburbs and being left alone. Comfort can include commercial real estate—

Tyler: Right.

Julia: —which we need.

Tyler: Yeah. You need tons of it. You need tons of it. And you need mixed-use, you know? You need high density, which a lot of people are against higher density, which is crazy to me because their arguments actually make no sense.

I mean, you look at, like Green Hills, right? There’s this project in Green Hills called Vertis, which is a 16-story tower. Well, nothing else over there is taller than four stories, so when they came out, it was incredibly controversial. And one of the biggest issues that the neighborhood was fighting about was traffic. Well, Green Hills already didn’t have good traffic, right? It was already kind of packed because there’s only one street that runs through it.

But one thing that you see there more today—and I had a friend comment on this not too long ago, they’re like, “I never saw people walking around Green Hills. You would drive your car right up to the store you’re going to.” Now, since Vertis is open, people walk everywhere. And you think about how many car trips that actually takes off the road, right? If I can live in Vertis and I can walk across the street to Trader Joe’s, then I don’t have to worry about getting in my car—taking, you know, sitting in traffic, all that kind of stuff. It just makes the process so much more pleasant.

Julia: Is that where Char is?

Tyler: Uh, yeah, yeah. It is.

Julia: So, we actually stayed down there for Joe’s 40—39th birthday, and our daughter’s name is Charlotte and we took her to Char for her birthday—for his birthday to eat. And we were just down there having a meeting at Green Hills Grill the [laugh] last weekend.

Tyler: Yeah.

Julia: I was like—I said—we were driving through the interstate pass, you know, where you can go—the too many people go too many different ways, and I used to stay [in this little 00:26:27] apartment complex on the left when I used to work for Ed Bryant. And so, I was like, “This looks so familiar, but it doesn’t at the same time.” It still feels like Green Hills, but it looks… it was so much easier to get in and out of. And I think that—

Tyler: Oh yeah.

Julia: —what you just said helped. Yeah. A thousand percent.

Tyler: Night and day. Night and day. It makes a big difference, I think. You know, it’s time that we stop looking at commercial as this totally separate entity from residential; they need to be combined. It makes—I mean, one, it makes it a more desirable area to live in, but two, it also promotes affordability, right?

I mean, you cannot have affordable housing without higher density, right? I mean, if I’ve got to pay market rate for land, market rate for construction, and I can only build ten units on it. Well, I’ve got to sell it at the highest price I possibly can because I can’t—I have to make money, right? You’re taking a lot of risks as a developer.

Julia: Oh, yeah. Argument of a lifetime for me. Politically, I’m going argue for a decade. Oh, yeah.

Tyler: Exactly. But if I can go and get that site rezoned for 60 units then I’m buying the land for the price of ten units, then I can actually afford to build some affordable housing on that and make it so that a bunch of different income levels can [play there 00:27:41], you know, which makes a big difference. I mean, Nashville is having a lot of issues with that right now because it’s gotten so expensive to live here and there’s just nowhere for the people that help make the city run every day to live.

Julia: Yeah. That’s unfortunate and that happens. And agreeable, like, if you don’t offer different kinds of housing in the same complex, nobody can—nobody including this level, gets to stay for very long. It all falls apart. It takes all kinds.

Tyler: That’s exactly it.

Julia: [crosstalk 00:28:10] our work together. Commercial and residential. Everybody has to work together [laugh].

Tyler: Yeah.

Julia: Well, I have almost zero time left and we’ve talked about absolutely nothing and everything at the same time, which is exactly what [crosstalk 00:28:23] is, it’s nothing and everything to everybody. And I really appreciate all that you do for Nashville. I know that I wanted to touch a little bit—and I don’t have time, so we’ll have to come back another time—but to let everybody know that Tyler is a BiggerPockets speaker. He does training courses on how to invest in commercial real estate. He has an open book of information. He is not gatekeeping information on how to get money and how to be part of this and how to do things.

So, if you want to learn how to invest in commercial real estate, learn how to become a commercial real estate broker, Tyler is the person that I send all of my referrals to in the entire West—or I’m sorry, Middle Tennessee area. There’s nobody else to send your business to other than Tyler Cauble. I don’t even know what else to tell you guys. If you’re a residential real estate agent and you have somebody in Nashville, please let me know. I will make sure you get in touch with Tyler.

Hey, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the sponsors of this podcast. We appreciate you. If you would like to be a sponsor, let me know. Tyler, any last words for us in Knox Vegas, Tennessee?

Tyler: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know what, Knoxville has got a long way to go, but it’s doing a lot of the right things, right, and it’s exciting to see how far that city has come since I was there ten years ago. It’s exciting to see the neighborhoods develop. I’m excited to see what you’re doing. I mean, you’re making a huge impact on the neighborhoods out there, so kudos to you for doing that.

And yeah, thanks for the shout-out. You know, if y’all want to learn more about commercial real estate, the best way is on my YouTube channel @TylerCauble. And if you want to learn more on the course, just—

Julia: Oh, by the way, it’s not C-O-B-B-L-E. Spell it for them so they [crosstalk 00:29:55].

Tyler: That’s right. Yeah, it’s C-A-U-B-L-E. It’s a very funny spelling. And then, also if you want more on the course, tylercauble.com/course. And if you want to connect with me, @commercial_in_nashville on Instagram. But Julia, thank you so much for having me.

Julia: I have all of this. I’ll make sure to also add it to our interview as well. Thank you so much for being on the show, Tyler. Have an awesome day.

Julia: Thank you for tuning into the show. Make sure to like and subscribe, leave a five-star review on your podcast player of choice, and if you would like information on moving to Knoxville, send me a private message. As always, this is Julia Hurley connecting Knoxville to the nation.