April Update with Justin Ford and Bob Irish

Apr 28, 2026

Bob Irish: Bob Irish here with our monthly call with Justin Ford Pax Properties. Today we'll update you on all the standalone investments uh in Florida and also keep you a breast of the underlying investments in the cap plus diversified income fund. I say it every month. Here it goes again. Throughout real estate booms and busts, Pax Properties has never failed to produce a positive result for investors or missed a mortgage payment. With that said, Justin, how are you?

Justin Ford: I'm doing great, Bob. Thank you. A lot of things we've been working on, we've set them up and now we're ready to knock them

Bob Irish: Well, uh, I this is a very exciting month for PAX properties and I've heard through the grapevine that you're going to need
Justin Ford: down.

Bob Irish: to hire a Brinks armored car to handle all the money that is going to be flowing into PAX over the next four weeks. Let's get into the specifics.

 
Justin Ford: Okay. So to speak, that's kind of true. So, uh, next week, this week actually, you and I speak on a Tuesday. This will go out on a Wednesday, but Thursday, we're scheduled to close the Apex loan, which is our 91 units out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's going to be just a little over $5 million. It will return a little over a million dollars to the fund.

Bob Irish: Right.

Justin Ford: Um so that closes this Thursday or schedule 4. Um immediately the week after we are scheduled we should close the Ocala refi which should return close to $4 million to investors between three and three three and a half $4 million to investors. Uh the week after that, we're scheduled to close the uh little over $7 million sale of our Vero Beach Inn switch, which we bought for $2 million 12 and a half years ago. Um and then a little then the week after that

Bob Irish: Wow

Justin Ford: we should be set up to close the refi in the elevator apartments, which is going to need the million dollars from the Apex to close that uh to pay off the final bit of debt there.

 
Justin Ford: Then a week after that, we could be in position to close the sale of the Port St. John out parcel, but they can extend 30 days. Um, and then all of a sudden we're in June. And in June, we have a good chance of closing the HUD loan for $14 million, which returns basically around $13 million to investors on that loan alone. So the long and the short of it, Bob, is that we expect one transaction each week for the next four weeks, including this week. Um, and we'll do a total of about 55 million between now and and and July. Everything we've been working for, we're finally at the point we're at the dotted line and we're ready to deliver. And we have closing dates for two, basically four of those right now.

Bob Irish: Justin, what are you going to do when all this excitement fades? Are you guys going to Disneyland or what?

Justin Ford: That's a good question. I will tell you what we're going to do. We are going to uh we're going to invest again.

 
Justin Ford: We haven't bought in five years because we had to fix those two properties from COVID and we had those two major value ad renovations when interest rates and insurance doubled everything like that. So, we're looking at properties right now. There are some deals out there. But in the second or third uh quarter this year, I'm going to say I'm sorry, this the third or fourth quarter of this year, we expect to be buying some good properties um multifamily in uh in Florida. But first, we're focusing on what we got in front of us, which is closing these ref and the two sales.

Bob Irish: Wow. I can't believe the Vero Beach thing is actually going to happen.

 

Justin Ford: Yeah.

Bob Irish: We have walked down the aisle how many times in the last couple of years with

 

Justin Ford: Yeah. This is the third one. So, we're uh we're kind of excited about this.

Justin Ford: Yeah, we bought that 12 and a half years ago. That was our first property over 100 units.
 

Justin Ford: Probably the first year I owned it. I probably slept there half the year. You know, we were there during all the renovations, changing everything. And uh it's a great property. We've won top awards there, I think, three of the last four years. And uh we'll be a little we'll be sorry to let it go, but we're also glad to enter a new chapter with newer we're going to be buying newer construction, more recent vintage uh properties. So looking forward to that as well.

Bob Irish: Well, this is great news.

Bob Irish: We could end the call right here as far as I'm concerned, but I'm sure I'm sure you've got some updates. Uh if you want to go over them quickly in terms of occupancy

Justin Ford: Sure. Yeah, I'll just go through the normal sequence real quick and just give you the highlights. So, Vero had a good season. Again, season was February and March. April was a little bit slower, but again, we outperform our competitive set.

Justin Ford: I think the latest one we did, we beat our competitive set by 65%. Which is insane.
Bob Irish: Yes.
Justin Ford: every dollar we make 65 cents. But again, the market is still down there. Um,

Bob Irish: Right.

Justin Ford: so we're we're still down versus last year. But we're but we overall we had a very good first quarter and and and a good uh decent April compared to the previous uh well, not compared to the previous year, but compared to we were late last year when the market was really really down. And um so Vero's performing well and soon it should be uh it should be in new ownership's hands and

 

Bob Irish: Right.

Justin Ford: we should have very good final returns on that property. you know, we've received we've paid out over double digit returns for for well over a decade in that property. Um, plus we returned, I think 75% of investor capital through refies years ago as well. So, that's been a good investment. Uh, going up to Ocala, still the number one rated property in its market, again, beating its concept by about 15%.

 
Justin Ford: But again, it market is down, but that market is now picking up. You'll remember that that market had what I called horse covid, you know, the equine flu or something like that.

 

Bob Irish: Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Ford: Uh so they seem to be getting over that and um and so now that we're booking actually more equestrian events, things like that. So we like our long-term prospects there. We again beating our comp set but down below our peak performance of a year and two years ago. Um but again on the comeback there.

Bob Irish: Right.

Justin Ford: So that's very encouraging. Um so those are our hotels. We go up north. The Swan is now at 81% leased, 83% pre-leased.
Bob Irish: Wow.
Justin Ford: We got 129 people in house right now, I believe it is or or units rented. And um and uh so that's doing well. And then across town at the Monarch, we're actually at uh we're about 9 and a half% leased and around 11 or 12%
 
Bob Irish: Right.

Justin Ford: pre-leased at Monarch. Even though we're just finishing our construction in about two weeks, we should get our we could get our final inspection there next week, our actual final inspection, which is the absolute last one before safety.

 

Bob Irish: Uh-huh.

 

Justin Ford: Um, and then directly across the street, you know, the the Governor's Square Apartments, former Governor Square, which we call the Renaissance, you know, that's at 96% accuracy, I believe. And um, it's performing its NOI is at a record over $1.63 million. Um, so that'll put us in a position for another small supplemental refi in the second half of this year. Um, we're still on the hunt. We should know by the end of June whether we get a $100,000 tax abatement there as well. But operationally, the property's performing just beautifully. Um, then we go into the fund and uh at Tulsa we're since we hired that part-time leasing agent, you know, it cost us another $20,000 to have someone there part-time and, you know, plus leasing stuff, maybe 25, but more than worth it because now we're consistently averaging, you know, 97 98% occupancy and we're even a little bit more selective on our tenants.

 Justin Ford: We can be. So, that one's performing very well and again, we're going to close on that loan two days from now.

Bob Irish: Yeah.

Justin Ford: Um, uh, Elevate is also a 98% occupancy. Uh, we have to address one small environmental issue to close that loan. There's a dry cleaners next door and some of our buildings that are near the, the dry cleaner were outfitted with a certain ventilation system to make sure they're not uh getting any toxicity from that operation. That's how we bought it. It's operating. So, it's really just a formality. Everything's there's no uh nothing a miss there as far as that goes, but it has to be signed off on. Uh but that will set us up for the refi there in about four weeks. so Elevates at 98% and and 

Ascend which is in more Oklahoma is at uh 95% last I checked um which I believe is yesterday. Um and uh we have now no units out of order.
 

Justin Ford: We had a couple units out of order. There's some plumbing we had to address. We just had brand new ACS put in those units. So, we're 100% available. We're 95% leased. I believe we're 97% pre-leased. Um and we're we're lining up for that HUD loan to take place in June uh for about $14 million. Um the uh and that leaves Port St. John. Port St. John all we only have 5880 square feet

Bob Irish: right?

Justin Ford: available out of 78,540. So you do the math. It's something like 93 94% occupied. Um Aldi is going to bring in their new Dollar General uh subtenant soon. We just authorized the new sign on the marquee out front. And uh they're going to authorize for us in exchange this sale of the out parcel to to to uh Murphy's Oil for a million dollars,

Bob Irish: Sure.

Justin Ford: which is kind of found money. Um, we're working hard at leasing up that 5880 square feet because we'd love to just have a 100% leased shopping center.
 

Justin Ford: That last piece would boost our NOI from about 630 640

Bob Irish: Sure.

Justin Ford: to about 730 740. So, it would be a really big move for us. Um, we're working hard on getting that uh getting that leased up. But all in all, we're at high accuracy. We have really good operations. Uh we're finally these refiles which have been going on forever. We've run into many hurdles which I'll spare you, but just so folks can have some ideas. You remember we had to buy out a Canadian investor on an SBA loan. Then there were three other we had there were three other things we had to do connected with that SBA loan that were sort of investor

Bob Irish: right?

Justin Ford: specific and those things never come up with other loans. I didn't know that the SBA would pop up. But long story short, all that's been resolved. So, we're executing our refires and we're executing on those two sales. Um, certainly the vero sale already has a closing date and um and I'm looking forward to getting these things done and lowering our cost of capital.
 

Justin Ford: Now, very important. People always ask what does that mean about distributions for the fund? Well, for the fund, the first million we get back is going to go help close Elevate because Elevate refi will be a million short. So, that's going to be cash neutral. um when we refi Monarch and that Oh, did I leave that out? I might have left Monarch out. Monarch, we should close in about two weeks as well. So, we might have five loans over the next five weeks to tell the truth. Um so, because Monarch, we have an $ 8.6 million loan. That's going to return you about um that's going to return over a million dollars to the fund. Um the sale of the out parcel is going to return about $900,000 to the fund. The sale of Vero actually is going to turn $600,000 to the fund. So the firm will have two and a half $2 and half million dollars as all these things close but all the money will not be available until about as I've always said the end of the second quarter.
 

Justin Ford: So probably around June towards the very end of June maybe even into July but but end of June. So then yes we expect to get caught up on half of deferred distributions thereabout and then continue quarterly distributions thereafter and catch up a little bit on the other stuff that we've deferred. We've deferred distributions on the funds for I think a little over two years now. I think it's been nine quarters. So, we'll probably catch up on four to five quarters of that, then resume quarterly. And we'll we'll pay more than the quarterly 7% annualized uh in order to catch up on on the

Bob Irish: Okay.

Justin Ford: deferred prep. But our interest uh costs are going to go down $2 million when we're done with all this. And our cash flow is going to go up over $1.2 million. So, we should be in a very good shape to really catch up there and to and and in a great position to to judiciously grow again um buying light value ad uh more recent vintage thinking a long experience and and and and the the deals that are out there
 

Bob Irish: Right.

Justin Ford: right now in this market. So, we're very happy to have gone to this spot after a lot of hard work by a lot of our members of the team.

Bob Irish: Yeah. Great. Great stuff. Hey, Justin, I have a tip for you in terms of renting out that last space at Port St. John. Have you thought about an arcade?

Justin Ford: I knew you're gonna say that, Bob. Yes, I have. In my nightmares and uh and it's the answer is never never again.

Bob Irish: All right,

Justin Ford: Yeah.

Bob Irish: Justin, thank you so much for the update. Anything you want to add before we sign

Justin Ford: No, no.

Bob Irish: off

Justin Ford: I just appreciate all our investors and the patience you folks have had and uh we're finally executing what's been a challenging plan and uh we look forward to getting this done and and uh going forward from there.

Bob Irish: Great. I look forward to talking to you next month, Justin. Take
Justin Ford: Thank you, Bob.

Bob Irish: care.

Justin Ford: Take care.