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August 19, 2024

Nurse-turned-real estate investor, developer builds a growing CT apartment portfolio

HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Developer and real estate investor Alex Opuszynski inside a former plumbing warehouse in New Britain that he plans to convert into 30 apartments.
By Michael Puffer

Alex Opuszynski quit his steady and well-paying nursing job at Yale New Haven Health nearly six years ago to focus full-time on his passion for real estate investing.

At the time, Opuszynski’s practical experience was limited to a $100,000 purchase of a single rental property — a two-bedroom, 1900-vintage West Haven row house that dates back to 1900.

His wife, Berna Sahin-Opuszynski, also a nurse, carried the household bills at the outset.

In the intervening years, Opuszynski, now 34, has built a portfolio of about 200 rental units in buildings ranging from single-family houses to an 84-unit New Britain multifamily complex purchased in late July. He’s also a developer and established a real estate brokerage firm — New Haven-based Vanguard Private Client Group — along with property management and construction companies.

The companies are separate from his personal real estate investments, but share common offices and staff. The brokerage arm helps Opuszynski, who has also begun to attract outside investors, sniff out potential deals, and staff are compensated for their work on his personal portfolio.

Vanguard has brokered more than $300 million in sales, including about $50 million attributable to Opuszynski’s investments.

Rental properties that Opuszynski owns net more than $500,000 a year. In addition to variable profits from the brokerage business, his wife Berna is now able to be a stay-at-home mom to their 3-year-old son, Atlas. The couple also has a daughter on the way.

A growing venture

July was an important month for Opuszynski. A limited liability company he controls paid $8 million for the 17-building, 84-unit Park Gardens apartment complex on Ellis Street in New Britain. It was his first deal with outside equity investors.

“We grew the portfolio by 35% overnight,” Opuszynski said of the purchase.

Vanguard, in July, also moved its offices from a two-bedroom apartment on State Street in New Haven to the ground floor of a neighboring 21,000-square-foot, mixed-use apartment building.

Opuszynski developed that multifamily property — known as “Vanguard on State” — on a $4.65 million budget. It hosts 17 apartments above first-floor commercial space, with a brick-and-stone façade meant to blend with the antique buildings around it.

Before the move, Vanguard operated out of an 800-square-foot apartment. Opuszynski and Vanguard Vice President Andrew Stein used bedrooms as offices. Other staff were packed into the dining and common rooms.

Vanguard’s new 3,000-square-foot headquarters has several empty desks ready for new hires.

“It’s not huge, but it’s a real office now,” Opuszynski said. “We have corner offices now.”

Humble start

While studying nursing at the now-defunct Bridgeport Hospital School of Nursing, Opuszynski supplemented his science and anatomy lessons with books covering real estate, finance, tax law and other business topics.

Opuszynski said he was always drawn to business, but pursued nursing as a stable career. In college, he imagined buying a handful of rental properties to supplement his nursing income.

Opuszynski saved $100,000 working overtime and night shifts, using the funds to buy and renovate the West Haven row house. He was 26 and two years into his nursing career.

In 2018, Opuszynski quit his nursing job to focus on lining up deals. The following year, he purchased seven single-family properties, spending between $80,000 and $120,000 per dwelling. Each required an extensive rehab, averaging about $80,000, he said.

Today, those properties are worth $300,000 to $400,000, Opuszynski said.

He raised capital by refinancing his row house and tapping equity to fund his next purchase. He kept repeating the cycle to grow his portfolio. He would buy, renovate, refinance and reinvest.

One single-family property became two, then four, then eight, Opuszynski said. That eventually led to investments in larger multifamily properties. In 2020, he opened the brokerage firm with five agents. They sought out properties and opportunities using systems Opuszynski developed for his own investments.

Through mailed letters and telephone calls, Vanguard solicits potential single-family, multifamily and commercial property sellers. The strategy produces a lot of hangups, but also leads gained by no other investors.

“When I quit my job to work out of my basement to do this in 2018, and picked up seven properties in 2019, I didn’t know where this was going,” said Opuszynski. “I just knew that I felt compelled, and I had a calling, and I had the support of my family and the resources and knowhow to execute on what I had modeled up.”

HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER
Alex Opuszynski (left) and Andrew Stein lead New Haven-based brokerage firm Vanguard Private Client Group.

Opuszynski said he focuses on properties that can quickly gain value through improvements. He also looks for cities and towns with promising outlooks.

It’s one reason he’s investing in New Britain, including the recent purchase of the 17-building Park Gardens apartment complex at 700 Ellis St.

The buildings date to 1969 and 1970. Opuszynski said he has performed extensive repairs to three roofs already. He also plans to rehab each unit as tenants turn over, a process that will take up to three years. Rents will rise, but remain accessible through Section 8 vouchers, he said.

“It was a tremendous value-add play,” Stein said of the Park Gardens purchase. “The rents were substantially low, which I think deterred other buyers. But we saw the sizable upside to it.”

Stein, a former paramedic, became friends with Opuszynski through their wives — who also worked in nursing together. He’s vice president of the brokerage firm, but is also paid separately to help grow and manage Opuszynski’s portfolio.

Opuszynski and Stein said they plan to continue expanding the real estate portfolio using a newly launched private equity fund.

“We are definitely growing,” Stein said. “We were using a lot of our own capital for a long time. Now, we are looking at larger capital assets and have been going to capital partners.”

Opuszynski is about to launch a $4.5 million redevelopment of a 32,886-square-foot former New Britain plumbing warehouse, at 189 Chestnut St., into 30 apartments. Ten percent of the units will rent at affordable rates.

The city of New Britain contributed to the project with a $662,392 grant from federal COVID-19 relief funds, and a 13-year tax break the developer says will save up to $900,000.

These apartments are expected to begin renting around the middle of next year.

“I like New Britain because good things are happening there,” Opuszynski said. “I think they have good leadership. I think they have good incentives for people who want to economically expand. And there’s support there. Some other places, you either don’t get support, you are not wanted, or they are neutral to it.”

Opuszynski may be tackling bigger deals these days, but he isn’t shying away from smaller-scale investments. He had five single-family “flips” in the works in early August.

He and his team are always on the hunt for a bargain, including foreclosed or abandoned properties.

“We have gotten properties for almost nothing — many, many times,” Opuszynski said. “Nobody brings those to you. You have to go out and get those.”

What's coming

With interest rates falling, Opuszynski predicts a busy year ahead. He hopes to hire up to three new agents. He’s told his staff to reexamine deals that didn’t quite pencil out earlier in the year.

“If the rates continue to drop, more fruit will shake loose,” Opuszynski said.

With new staff and hungry investors, Opuszynski and Stein said they want to broaden their portfolio and business deeper into Fairfield County, including Stamford, as well as New London and Groton.

“Ultimately, our goal is to expand into western Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” Stein said. “Our five-year plan is, we want market share as far as Westerly, Rhode Island, up to the Springfield, Westfield area, and maybe a little beyond to Hadley as well.”

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