A few months ago, a California woman went viral on TikTok for an unconventional triumph: turning a bobby pin into a Clarksville, Tennessee, house.
She started with the hair clip, traded it for a pair of earrings, then kept going, with every item worth more than the last.
Wyatt Woeltje, 25, and Ben Hamd, 30, are doing the same thing — except with shopping centers.
At the end of last month, they paid $13.77 million cash for The Shoppes at Rivergate, a 17-acre retail complex in Madison that houses tenants like Gabe’s, Bed Bath & Beyond and Dollar General. The deal closed in a speedy three weeks, a product of the site's imminent foreclosure, Woeltje said.
The 172,000-square-foot complex is about 70% leased and brings in around $1.4 million in annual revenue, Woeltje said. Both Nashville-based businessmen have brokerage backgrounds and hope to pack it out with businesses within six months.
To do this, Woeltje and Hamd have cooked up a surprising pitch. They’re offering up to one year of free rent for local businesses that need a storefront.
“If you have an idea, start it,” Woeltje said. “If it’s retail, you could probably do it in one of our centers.”
On tap for the property are upgrades like new LED lights to rope in drivers. Woeltje and Hamd are currently scouting tenants, and they’ve nearly finalized a deal with a national fitness chain, as well as with Nashville-based Red Bicycle Coffee, which plans to install its first drive-thru there.
Even with the improvements, Woeltje says he and Hamd plan to hold the asset for a while rather than selling it immediately, like they would other centers.
“It’s what we do: We buy stuff, fill it and sometimes resell it for more, which is how we buy more stuff.”
Humble beginnings on the Plains
As foot traffic picks up in the aftermath of 2020, shopping centers are selling quickly in Greater Nashville, often to well-established clients with institutional capital. But Hamd’s investment dollars can be traced back to a rinky-dink building in Kansas.
He spent $40,000 on that property six years ago, using money he'd saved up from a commercial brokerage gig. He opened a store, Hometown Wholesale, in the building and sold it months later for $500,000.
The deals kept snowballing until finally, after joining forces with Woeltje, he had millions to spend.
“This is just a culmination of six, seven, eight years of work as we ratcheted up the ladder buying bigger and bigger and bigger things — always being able to buy in cash because we’re always buying and selling other deals,” he said.
The two men met in 2018, when Hamd, who grew up in Lebanon and came to the U.S. for college, was trying to recruit a tenant that Woeltje — who grew up in Jackson, located between Nashville and Memphis — was representing.
Later that year, they reconnected over dinner in Nashville, bonding over investment strategies. One day later, they were business partners.
Now, under Hamd’s company, Brookwood Capital Advisors, the two own around 20 retail centers scattered all over the U.S. The farthest north sits in North Dakota; the farthest south lies in Florida.
“If we think we can buy something and add value and bring businesses there, we’ll buy it really no matter where it is,” Woeltje said.
Advice for younger entrepreneurs
The idea of having $14 million cash to drop on real estate is likely inconceivable to many 20- and 30-somethings, even in a bustling, relatively affluent city like Nashville. But Woeltje and Hamd are leading a pretty normal life — Woeltje drives a Toyota Camry, and both men live in the Gulch, one of the city's youngest and trendiest neighborhoods.
“[The money] doesn’t feel real because we don’t use it on anything other than buildings. We don't have, like, a private island in The Bahamas or anything,” Woeltje said.
The two say their success is largely a product of thinking outside of the 9-to-5 paradigm.
“Side hustling and starting something on your own is probably the way to get out of the traditional rat race,” Hamd said. “If you have an itch, have a dream, have something you want to try, in your 20s is a great time to try it because we have literally zero risk.”
“What’s the worst that could happen?” he asks himself.
This story has been updated to reflect that Hamd purchased a building in Kansas for $40,000 six years ago.
