#78 - The Economics of Co-Living Development with Alex Zikmund

At just $5 a unit per month, it's worth checking out shukrentals.com or booking a live demo in the show notes. https://calendly.com/oliver-theshuk/shuk-demo — Use discount code TCREI20 for 20% off. 🎙️ About the TCREI Hosts Adam Tafel – Investor, Realtor, and host of Twin Cities Real Estate Investing. Adam has helped hundreds of clients buy, sell, and analyze investment properties across the metro. He works daily with local investors and is passionate about building wealth through smart real estate strategies. 📩 adam@UpsidePropertySales.com Tim Swierczek – Mortgage lender and experienced investor who helps clients structure financing to maximize returns and long-term wealth. Tim brings a practical, numbers-first approach that makes deals work in the real world. 📩 tim@timswierczek.com 💡 We’d love to meet with you and hear about your investing goals. Book a time with us here: TwinCitiesRealEstateInvesting.com/schedule Alex Zikmund’s path into real estate started the way a lot of great investor stories do—by solving his own housing problem. After finishing undergrad, he bought a house for himself and his buddies to live in, and once those first rent checks started coming in, he was hooked. That early success led him to build a small portfolio of single-family rentals in his college town, learning the fundamentals of landlording and cash flow along the way. When Alex moved back to the Twin Cities, he set his sights on something bigger: development. He identified a lot in the West 7th neighborhood and took on his first ground-up project—one that came with major challenges and a steep learning curve. But by pushing through, he delivered a unique and forward-thinking concept: a co-living duplex with six individual suites per unit, each featuring private bathrooms and shared common spaces. The project was a success and became a launching point for Alex to deepen his expertise in affordable housing, including leveraging grants and tax credits to make deals work. Today, he’s actively working on another large-scale project in West 7th and is focused on scaling his development business to the next level.