John Azar

MACC Venture Partners

By Leah Etling on Dec 6, 2016 in People

For Yardi Matrix client John Azar, one of the most important aspects of any real estate transaction is rigorous due diligence. That means having the most comprehensive, up-to-date market information available to make a smart buying or selling decision.

In 2016, Azar’s firm MACC Venture Partners began using Yardi Matrix for apartment market data, switching from their previous data source, one of the industry’s best known providers.

“We kept looking at the disparity in cost and at the data being produced, and we really couldn’t find enough difference to justify the large cost difference between Yardi and our previous vendor,” Azar explained. “The integrity of the Yardi data is just as good and in some cases better, and Yardi offered much more competitive pricing. And Yardi is very responsive. Client services are always on point.”

Ten-year-old MACC Venture Partners, which is closing in on almost 5,000 apartment units in the Southeast United States, has also made customer service a vital part of its success. The family-owned private equity firm is currently branching out into fund management – its first ever $25-$30 million fund will launch this month.

“It is our first fund, a closed-end private equity fund. We are growing and making more products available to our investors. But we’re still a family owned company, so they are going to get the same service they would get from most real estate platforms, but with a family company touch to the relationship. We are very relationship driven,” Azar said.

It has been a unique journey for Azar, who was born and raised in Aleppo, Syria, and emigrated to the U.S. at age 16. When his family arrived in the states, Azar spoke limited English and was wide-eyed as he experienced American culture in real life, not on a TV screen.

As it is today, Syria was in the midst of a violent conflict when Azar’s father decided to move his family in the 1980s. They left Syria a year or two after a firefight left bullet holes in the room where two of their sons slept and left everything behind, from jobs to real estate to household goods.

Once settled in North Carolina, Azar quickly threw himself into studying English, finding a challenging high school where he fully immersed in the language without translation help. He made American friends, listened to rock music, and started dating.  He also tried to read as much western literature as he can get his hands on to catch up on lost time.

“I told my parents I was going to be all-American, 100 percent in, and I am not going to be Syrian for awhile. I probably exceeded myself in my efforts to so fully assimilate so quickly,” Azar noted. Today, his voice sounds like he could be from Boston and he said he is often mistaken for Italian.

Over the years, he has closely followed the tumultuous fortunes of his native country. He and his family assist relatives and friends still living in Aleppo, which has been devastated in recent months. To assist with humanitarian assistance, Azar recommends the International Rescue Committee and the White Helmets, a boots on the ground organization that calls Syria today “the most dangerous place in the world.”

“It’s a human travesty, what’s been going on over there,” Azar said, adding that he wishes the media would pay more attention to the civil war. “The bigger travesty is that there are no easy answers and no short-term solutions about what’s going to resolve that. I think it’s going to take a global effort.”

 

Editor’s note: John Azar recently participated in two real estate podcasts that are worth a listen for multifamily market insight and more of his personal story. Find them here: http://jakeandgino.com/from-0-to-5000-units-and-counting-with-john-azar/ and here: http://robertingalls.com/15-john-azar/

You can also find more about MACC Venture Partners at www.maccvp.com

John Azar can be reached at [email protected]