Car Washes, Flex Industrial, and the Alpha Strategy with John Azar

Jon Azar runs Peak 15 Capital out of Charlotte. Peak 15 is his third firm. Before this one, he and his brother transacted a few thousand multifamily units across the Southeast between 2013 and 2020. They started sunsetting that portfolio mid-pandemic, and Jon launched Peak 15 the same year. The new firm is built around something Jon calls an alpha-driven fund: results first, asset class second.

That mandate puts Peak 15 in places most multifamily private equity shops will not go. Carwashes (with the land). Build-to-rent and build-to-sell communities. Ground-up development. Flex industrial. The next fund expands the box further into student housing, senior living, storage, and commercial office.

What landed in this conversation:

1. Why carwashes are in the portfolio. Peak 15 only owns the dirt underneath. Standalones, not strip-mall plays. Carwashes generate more current cash flow than any multifamily holding in the portfolio. The thesis is simple: a real estate fund delivering quarterly distributions needs assets that throw off cash today, paired with assets that throw off liquidity events tomorrow.
2. Why flex industrial looks like multifamily. Take a 50,000 to 100,000 square foot building with 10 to 30 small tenants (plumbers, electricians, GCs, contractors needing office plus storage). You diversify the same way an apartment building diversifies. Lose one tenant, you absorb it. Compare that to a 200,000 square foot big-box industrial leased to an Amazon-scale tenant: that tenant sets the price, and if they leave, replacing 200,000 feet of demand in one shot is a different problem. The flex bucket runs cleaner.
3. The cash flow versus liquidity event balance. Jon is direct: "Six to ten percent is not going to make anybody rich. That is nice mailbox money. Generational wealth comes from liquidity events." A well-run alpha fund stages assets so cash flow keeps the LPs comfortable while the development and value-add deals build toward the exits where the real money lives.
4. The two mentor lines that shape Peak 15. First, an early mentor in trading and investment banking: "Don't worry what the market is doing. The market is going to do whatever it is going to do. As long as you are in the market and putting your reputation forward every single day, the deals will find you." Second, from his older brother: "Always underwrite for the worst. Then maybe underwrite even lower. When the market turns against you, you are already there. When it does not, you are pleasantly surprised." Both are written into how Peak 15 sizes deals.

The mistake Jon owns: he did not listen to his gut on one specific deal. The numbers worked, the property worked, but something was off about the sponsor he would be partnering with for three to five years. He went in anyway. The seller did not disclose certain value-impairing facts, the sponsor handled the resulting blow-up badly, the deal went sideways, and Peak 15 lost its deposit. The fix is now company culture: no deal closes until one of the Peak 15 principals has met the other side's principals in person.

Books Jon is rereading right now: Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Start-up of You by Reid Hoffman.

Reach Jon at peak15cap.com, email azar@peak15cap.com, or LinkedIn (the only social he checks). His soup-to-nuts multifamily course and three-day bootcamp launch this fall.

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