About Jeffrey Forster and RealtyAQ, LLC
My wife Laura and I have been in the real estate business over 20 years. We specialize in buying distressed real estate – both commercial and residential. We began flipping houses in the St. Louis suburbs of Webster Groves and Kirkwood back in the day before anyone knew what flipping was. Over the years, we expanded to Kansas City and officially relocated here in 2001. At the height of the real estate boom in 2006 our company had grown into an ugly, high-overhead monster with tentacles. While we had impressive sales numbers and was profitable the overhead of the ‘corporate approach’ was unsustainable in a market downturn. On average, we were buying three properties a week. Most of these properties were resold to other investors or renovated and resold by our company.
Towards the end of 2006 it began apparent to us the market was starting to hiccup. It had been 65 days since we sold a property our inventory of real estate was still growing due to continuing acquisitions. Seeing the freight train in the distance and racing toward us, we made a bold move that many questioned at the time. In the spring of 2007 we rented a Marriott Hotel ballroom and held a public action where we dumped just about everything we owned in a period of two hours. Robert Mayo over at Mayo Auctions conducted the ‘blow out’ sale producing a gross sales amount over 16% higher then our projections.
Once the properties were gone we sat back and waited on the sidelines as the market tanked. Things started getting ugly in the summer of 2007 – about four months after our auction. In late 2008 we began getting back into the business. It was a great time to buy since almost all of our competitors sank with their ship. This coupled with the abundance of foreclosures made 2008 and 2009 two of the most successful years in the business.
We have also created two other entities in the past few years. Boswachter, LLC, engages in commercial lending and acquisition of ‘scratch and dent’ loans from banks and other financial institutions and Fontienstad, LLC which acts as a holding company for over 100 rental homes and several commercial parcels.
