How a Real Estate Firm Ends Up Building Companies

We set out to buy buildings and ended up building companies

Most real estate firms grow by adding buildings. Leverage Companies did that too, and along the way it started adding companies.

Picture a restaurant that can’t find good bread, so it starts baking its own. The bread turns out so good that other restaurants start ordering it. Now the bakery is a business of its own, with customers who’ve never eaten at the restaurant.

That’s how most of this firm came together. Each division started because something was slowing down our own deals, and each one grew once people outside the firm wanted it too.

Brick City Capital started because small investors couldn’t get loans

When Leverage Companies started buying houses in 2019, financing was the hard part. Getting a loan as a small investor was slow, and the answer often changed late in the process. A purchase can fall apart over a loan that shows up two weeks late.

So the firm started its own lender, Brick City Capital. It makes long-term rental loans, known as DSCR loans, that qualify on whether the property’s rent covers its payment. The investor’s tax returns stay out of the file.

Here’s how we know it worked. Brick City Capital has closed more than $800 million in loans and lends in 46 states, mostly to investors and mortgage brokers who have nothing to do with our own acquisitions. The National Private Lenders Association named it 2025 Innovator of the Year.

Leverage Homes started because we needed to reach homeowners directly

Buying houses through listings means competing with every other buyer for the same properties. Many homeowners who want to sell never list at all, especially when the house needs work or the situation is complicated.

So the firm built a direct way to reach them. Leverage Homes buys houses from New Jersey homeowners for cash, in any condition, on a closing date the seller picks.

Many of those sellers are dealing with something hard: an inherited house, a property with too many repairs, a move on short notice, or tenants they can’t manage. A direct buyer that pays cash and works on the seller’s timeline fits those situations.

The divisions run as separate businesses

The divisions share an office and they stay separate businesses:

• If you get a loan from Brick City Capital, nobody is trying to buy your property.
• If you sell your house to Leverage Homes, nobody is pushing you into a loan.

Each business has its own customers, its own team and its own numbers to hit. When an opportunity does involve more than one of them, they can work on it right away, because the people involved sit a few desks apart.

Each business makes the others better at their jobs

Sitting together also makes each business better at its own work.

Brick City Capital lends to investors who renovate and rent houses. A few desks away, the firm’s own teams are doing the same thing, so the lending team hears every week what renovations cost, how long permits take and what houses actually rent for. That helps it read a borrower’s numbers.

Leverage Homes buys houses that need work. Because the firm also owns and operates rentals, the acquisitions team knows what a house will need after closing and what it can earn once it’s fixed. That helps it make offers it can actually close on.

The teams running the firm’s own properties see the lending side up close too. They know what a lender looks for, which keeps the firm’s own deals financeable.

Five divisions in one Newark office

Leverage Companies has five divisions today, all working from 50 Park Place in Newark, New Jersey:

1. Brick City Capital, DSCR lending to investors in 46 states.
2. Leverage Homes, direct home buying from New Jersey homeowners.
3. Leverage Holdings, which manages the real estate the firm owns.
4. Leverage Media, which produces the Deals & Dollars podcast.
5. Leverage Cares, the firm’s nonprofit, which works with Newark charities.

Together they’ve been part of more than 2,000 transactions since 2019.

A test for any company that says it does it all

Plenty of firms describe themselves as full-service. When you hear that, ask one question: could each part of the company survive on outside customers alone?

If the lending arm only lends on the parent’s own deals, it’s a department. If it has borrowers across the country who’ve never worked with the parent, it’s a business, and someone outside the firm has decided it’s good at what it does.

Brick City Capital and Leverage Homes both pass that test. That’s the standard we hold every new division to.