Help Me Fund a Better Neighborhood

Hi! I’m Austin, Founder of Building Culture. I’m building a holistic real estate development company from the ground up, with a mission to create a more beautiful, resilient, and thriving world through the built environment.

I Need Your Help

If you follow this newsletter, it probably means you support our mission at Building Culture – to craft a more beautiful, resilient, and thriving world through the built environment.

The next evolution of that mission is to fund the development of our own projects and neighborhoods – and eventually, raise a full-scale fund. Not just to build our own projects, but to invest in other small developers across the country doing great work with a proven framework and investment thesis.

This all requires capital. Lots of it.

Beyond all the other obstacles to creating walkable, human-scale neighborhoods – zoning, building codes, fire regulations, etc. – the biggest current obstacle, by far, is capital.

Real estate is expensive – and the typical avenues for raising capital for “investment-grade” projects like multifamily apartments, self-storage, strip-malls or monolithic suburban subdivisions aren’t available for the kinds of projects we aim to build.

Why?

Because the very complexities that make these projects wonderful also make them non-commoditized. The primary funders of real estate today – institutional capital and banks – explicitly want commodities. They want predictability. They want sameness. They want the physical manifestation of their spreadsheets. Right or wrong, that’s just how it works.

Why does so much of what’s been built in the last 50 years look the same, from Phoenix and LA to Dallas and Atlanta? Because it’s the same faceless money building it, with the same values.

I believe we can do things differently. I know we can. We’ve already been doing it for eight years. But now, it means increasingly attracting a different kind of capital.

And this is where I genuinely need your help.

The Ask

I want to get this investment deck for Townsend in front of as many people as possible. We’ve raised $3.65 million out of our $5 million goal. Approvals and permits are in hand – I just need to raise the final tranche of aligned capital.

Potential investor or not, you’re welcome to read through the deck – especially if you’re curious about how values-driven development works. If you are interested in investing, please reach out directly.

Not in a position to invest? Here’s how you can still help:

1. Forward this deck to three people who would resonate with our work and might be interested in investing in a game-changing real estate project.

2. You can use the short blurb at the bottom of this email to make it easy.

3. If you do, just hit reply and let me know. I’d love to thank you personally.

You don’t have to know “real estate people” to make a difference here. Most of our investors are doctors, engineers, lawyers, business owners – everyday people who may have never invested in a private real estate deal before. It’s an industry that has historically been closed off to all but a small circle.  

Our Townsend project isn’t about chasing quick flips.  It’s about building something worth keeping, and inviting the right partners to help make it happen.

Here, you’re not buying into a faceless REIT. You’re investing in a specific deal with me and my team – building and co-owning this project together. You’re partners. It’s relational. And values are front and center. I have a personal call with all my investors.

And together, we’ll build and own some of the most badass real estate in the country – and we’ll put your name in stone. Literally.

My Commitment

This project is about more than one neighborhood. It’s a signal to people across the country that better ways of building are possible – and worth pursuing. It may be smaller in scale than a typical institutional deal ($28 million), but the ideas behind it have the power to reshape how we think about development.

My commitment is simple: build something worth keeping, share how we did it, and help others bring the same approach to their own hometowns.

The best part? I can share this investment deck with you openly – something that, until recently, wasn’t even allowed.

I created this investment deck for “normal folks” – non-professional real estate investors. The more industry-standard materials that experienced investors expect are in the appendices. Our deal has all the sophistication of a standard real estate offering, but it’s been simplified and made easy to understand.

Why Couldn’t I Share This Deck With You Historically?

The SEC, in short. While I can publicly announce my raise thanks to the 2012 JOBS Act and the SEC’s Reg D 506(c) exemption (otherwise I couldn’t email you about it), the caveat is I can only take money from accredited investors.

Accredited, as defined by the SEC, is:

• Net worth over $1 million, excluding primary residence (individually or with spouse/partner)

• Income over $200,000 (individually) or $300,000 (with spouse/partner) in each of the prior two years, and reasonably expecting the same for the current year

So yes, people need to be well-off to invest with us on this project. The good news is that an estimated 14.8% of U.S. households – about 19.4 million – are accredited. That’s still a lot of people to raise capital from who probably haven’t ever invested in a private real estate syndication. When you’re sharing this, try to think of who might be accredited – and invite them to forward it along as well.

Will Non-Accredited Investors Have an Opportunity to Invest in the Future?

Good news: legislation that just passed the House directs the SEC to change the “accredited” rules and open up private markets to more people – not just wealthy individuals deemed “worthy” based on net worth. The rule was intended to protect people, but measuring investment sophistication by income alone is flawed. There are doctors making twice the income threshold who know almost nothing about investing, and recent graduates making $70k as financial analysts who understand more about real estate than 95% of so-called accredited investors. And of course: anyone is free to lose money on penny stocks or sports gambling. The legislation tells the SEC to create a test people can take to become accredited.

It still needs to pass the Senate, but I’m hopeful that in the near future, maybe even for our next deal, we can open these opportunities to everyone. My goal is to be a trusted steward of an increasing amount of investor capital – operating with transparency and wisdom – while making the world more beautiful, strengthening communities, and shifting development culture one project at a time. And, I want Building Culture to be an incredibly exciting place to invest.

Conclusion

I know I’ve been on a newsletter hiatus since March! Between work (Townsend in particular), family (we have a 1- and 5-year-old), and moving (we relocated to the TND Wheeler District), I just haven’t had time. But I’m looking forward to communicating more with you soon.

Once we get going on Townsend, I’ll share updates as the project unfolds. We have all approvals, permits in hand, and 73% of capital raised – so we’re very close. We plan to break ground this Fall.

Thank you for your help. Shoot me a note if you share this with three people so I can thank you personally.

Thank you!

Austin

PS: the NDA embedded in the investment deck link is just to keep the deck from being posted publicly on social media. Every person that clicks the link is prompted to enter their email and sign. So please, share away!

Draft Email

Feel free to customize this! But I’ve inserted all the links, including to book a call.

Hi [Name],

I wanted to share a project from a developer I follow, Austin Tunnell of Building Culture. They focus on creating beautiful, walkable neighborhoods that are built to last – and they share their process openly.

His latest project, Townsend, is a mixed-use neighborhood in a fast-growing district of the Oklahoma City metro (the 20th largest city in the U.S.). It’s an opportunity to help build and co-own income-producing real estate alongside a team that truly cares about what they create. Austin also happens to be a recovering CPA from a past life.

Here’s the investment deck: View the Deck
You can also book a call with Austin here: Book a Call

You can learn more about Building Culture and follow their work here:
Website: Link
Instagram: Link
Austin’s LinkedIn: Link
Great podcast episode with Austin discussing investing: Link 

Thought you’d appreciate seeing what they’re doing.