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For Sabot Development’s Jim Young, success is all about relationship

Jim Young seems to have a knack for site selection.

His commercial real estate firm, Sabot Development Ltd., is developing projects adjacent to the Lakeline MetroRail Station in North Austin, in the redeveloped Pearl Brewery district in San Antonio, and across the street from Springdale General in thriving East Austin. The company also controls 100 acres near the Tesla gigafactory.

While those sites are prominent now, a long-term lens was once needed to identify them as diamonds in the rough.

“When I started, because we didn’t have a lot of money, we absolutely had to work the fringes of other successful areas,” Young said. “We were always at the edge where half of the world thought we were in the wrong place.”

So how does Young find his sites? It’s all about relationships.

“I’ve always gone out of my way to let any broker, engineer, lawyer know how much I appreciate what they’re doing … as a result, I get a lot of leads, a lot of off-market phone calls, a lot of people who call me for advice,” Young said.”

For instance, Sabot is currently building 370-plus apartments at 3706 Goodwin Ave. — which Young, serving as a broker, had years ago helped another man acquire. The rapid development of East Austin brought an appreciation of the site, along with interest from developers. But rather than take one of those offers, the man invited Young, at that point a burgeoning developer, in for a meeting. Within a 20-minute conversation, the deal was in Young’s hands.

In other example, Young recalls taking a coffee meeting with a man from San Antonio who, unbeknownst to Young, was scouting him as a potential buyer for the Lakeline Station site at the behest of a mutual acquaintance.

To Young, those sorts of breaks are the result of “good, old-fashioned relationship building.”

He started Sabot in 2007, after about six years as a residential developer.

He and an Army buddy got into residential development in their late 20s, in what Young described as “trial by fire.” Before that, Young was enlisted in the U.S. Army, eventually serving as an officer.

“We bungled through how to get a construction loan, how to buy lots, how to design a home, how to get it sold — everything,” Young said.

Young always had ambitions to get involved with bigger projects, but the 2008 recession tempered those plans, leading him to instead become a certified commercial investment member. It was an opportunity to cut his teeth and learn about the commercial real estate process.

“I felt a little bit like a kid in a candy store, getting to see how they make it,” Young said.

Taking the leap into commercial real estate development scared Young but it wasn’t his first time facing fear.

He likened that leap of faith to experiences in his military career: the first time he jumped out of an airplane in the dark, or the first time he rappelled out of a helicopter from 90 feet up.

“Everything in you says, ‘Don’t do this,'” Young said. “And yet you know that it can be done. At the end of the day, you just have to make a decision of where you want to be, and then do it.”

What made you believe real estate was an avenue you could succeed in? Well, when I was in the military, you would often see a retiring colonel driving a minivan, or a retiring colonel driving a Corvette. And without fail, it seemed like when you talked to some of the retiring colonels who were driving the Corvette, so to speak, they had always kept a house at each place that they moved, and then rented it out after they left. … I recognized there was a high correlation between people who owned real estate or were in the real estate business, and who had done well financially.