Paul Gabrail
About this Executive:
Name:
Paul Gabrail
Company:
Select Investment Group
Interview Topics:
Finance
Region:
Region 8 - Northeast Ohio
Paul Gabrail, director of investments and principal at Select Investment Group (SIG) in Cleveland, Ohio, knows a good real estate investment when he sees one. That’s why he calls Ohio home to the majority of his investments. Paul is in the business of identifying real estate assets that have the potential to provide returns to the company’s private and institutional investors. Currently, SIG owns and manages over 700 multi-family units, over 50,000 square feet of office space, and is involved in two single family residential developments totaling 131 homes. All this, and Paul is not even 30 years old!
Early in his life Paul showed great acumen for investing. Handling investments for his family as early as high school gave Paul a head start understanding the business. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2003, he came back to Ohio and founded SIG. Throughout his life, Paul has lived in eight separate cities. He can live – and run a business – anywhere he wants, and he chooses Ohio. Paul said, “[In Ohio] We don’t have to spend our time or our money trying to figure out how we are going to pay for overpriced living expenses.” Recently, I had an opportunity to talk with Paul about why he chooses to do business in Ohio.
Q. What factors do you believe Ohio uniquely offers that have helped make Select Investment Group successful?
A. There are three things that I feel Ohio offers that have helped to make my business a success. First, the reasonable cost of living. With Ohio’s low cost of living, we, as a company, don’t have to worry about where our money is going. We don’t have to spend our time or our money trying to figure out how we are going to pay for overpriced living expenses. Instead, we can appropriately allocate our capital into investments that make sense for us and our investors. Just today, a list of the top 100 “Best Bang for the Buck Cities” was published on Yahoo! and of the top 100 cities in the country, Ohio was home to several of them.
Another Ohio factor that has helped make my business a success are the consistent real estate prices. In fact, Cleveland is one of two cities in the country with the most consistent real estate appreciation rates, according to Robert Shiller of the famous Case-Shiller Index, in his book “Irrational Exuberance.” While we will never grow at 10% per year, we are less likely to collapse at the rates that California, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida are collapsing at now. This helps us provide more consistent returns for our investors.
Finally, Ohio’s white collared workforce is quite impressive and has provided my business with a consistent base of investors. Ohio is home to many wealthy doctors, lawyers, and businesspeople that have established solid corporations here and are not spending frivolously. We have a very financially conservative group of people here at SIG who are not looking for tomorrow’s next big “get rich quick” scheme. The investors of our firm are well educated and are looking for the most logical way to grow their money.
Q. The Ohio Promise is that you can achieve professional success within the context of a fulfilling life. Based on your experience, how authentic is the promise?
A. My business partner, Andrew Strigle, and I believe we can work and run a very successful business while still growing with friends and family. This has been a very fulfilling experience for us. Many of our friends have moved away from family and have to save a lot in order to be able to travel back home to visit. In addition, they are now married to their jobs and cannot take the risk of starting a new business like we have done. We do what we love and spend time with people that we love and that is pretty fulfilling to us.
Additionally, between Andrew and I, we have lived in 15 different major cities in the U.S. since we were born. These cities range from Seattle, Washington to Atlanta, Georgia. I, personally, have lived in over 26 homes in my life in eight separate cities. We can live anywhere we want and run our business from anywhere we want, and we chose Ohio. We are a three-hour flight from 90% of this country and we still get to be close to our friends and family. We find all of that very fulfilling!
Q. Thinking of people you know, share a story of somebody in Ohio who, in your opinion, has excelled in achieving both their professional and personal aspirations.
A. My business partner and I were discussing this and we realized we were probably the answer to this question. We always tell people we have a glorified hobby, not a “job.” Andrew has started a family near his in-laws and I live within 40 minutes of my parents and siblings and I am able to see them on a weekly basis. We run several successful companies that continue to grow in this down economy and we feel they have provided us with the ability to provide our families with the same opportunities that we had growing up in Ohio.
Q. What business benefits do you feel Select Investment Group realizes from having employees who achieve a positive work:life balance?
A. With the high goals we have set for our company, we need to find more and more people we can trust to help us grow. With that, we are very aware we don’t want anyone to get burned out. Ohio’s quick commute times and low cost of living helping our team achieve a positive work:life balance. So far, we have experienced low turnover rate within our businesses. We believe this is partly due to the positive balance that is achieved by working in Ohio. Andrew and I see the benefits of being close to our family and we can appreciate our employees and their personal lives outside of the office. With that said, we are big believers in the “work hard, play hard” philosophy. When our employees are not working, we want them to enjoy their families and personal lives, but when they come to work, we want that same focus on the task at hand. I have noticed that several other Ohio company’s live by this same philosophy.
Q. The quality of an academic system is an important consideration in selecting a location for capital investment. What is your opinion of Ohio’s academic system?
A. Ohio has the fifth most colleges and universities in the country. That is a phenomenal asset for innovation and industry growth within a state. Some of these higher education institutions (The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve, Miami University, etc.) are some of the better-known universities, not only around the country, but also around the world. We also have good school systems throughout Ohio that are feeders into the universities and colleges that are helping establish Ohio as a great state for education.
Q. If an executive from your industry was evaluating Ohio as a location for capital investment, what are the top three industry-specific assets you recommend exposure to?
A. Real estate, real estate, real estate. In the investment world, Ohio’s real estate has historically provided one of the top markets in terms of consistency. As a conservative, long-term investor we have the ability to acquire property with a strong sense of security in the investment’s long-term value. Ohio is less subject to the perils involved in the extreme rises and falls that many other state’s real estate markets have experienced within the last 10 years. Investments within Ohio are bought and sold based on their current and historical performance rather than an assumed ‘potential’ value. We are then able to provide our investors with more accurate and consistent returns.