Mitch McGuire, Kapstone Investment Group

“I’ve seen others who don’t look like me and had less experience than me walk into well-known institutions and walk out with whatever they needed,” said Mitch McGuire, the founder of Kapstone Investment Group.

We know that not only do our people have vivid dreams, but they have the talent, drive and tenacity to realize those dreams. What they lack is funds. Today, McGuire owns 26 homes in Montgomery, with the goal of renting high-quality housing to low-income residents in the area. Having attended law school after retiring from AT&T in 2006, McGuire also founded a civil rights law firm that represents underserved individuals. “My clients don’t have the resources or ability to fight back when they’ve been harmed,” McGuire said. He owns the building that houses his law practice and real estate company.

In 2021, McGuire closed a $1.575 million loan with HOPE that enabled him to consolidate previous loans from other financial institutions at a much lower interest rate. “They put me through the paces, but then welcomed my business with open arms. It was an experience I had not had before,” McGuire said.

McGuire bought his first single-family home in 2007, with the goal of renting it to a low-income family. “There is very poor housing that people typically offer to low-income individuals. The housing that is better constructed, better maintained, those opportunities are few and far between for persons of lower income,” McGuire said, because the rent is out of reach or the owners reject them as tenants.

McGuire created a business plan to align his idealism with the need to be profitable by stringently screening prospective tenants. Word spread quickly in the community as Kapstone purchased additional properties, intentionally buying well-made homes as a path to stability for low-income Montgomery residents. “They are hard-working individuals who maintain employment, working very hard to raise families. They want to do the right thing, they want to pay their rent, they want a nice place to live,” McGuire said. Kapstone’s tenants live in their rentals for an average of three years.

As Kapstone grew, McGuire sought a loan to capitalize the business, but found that banks were hesitant to lend to a Black business owner. After having purchased and rented out several properties, McGuire was finally able to obtain a loan from a small credit union. However, with the financial crisis of 2008, the credit union shut down its commercial financing operations, leaving McGuire without an option to leverage his property equity for additional capital for maintenance and upkeep. Larger banks turned him down, despite the abundant information he presented about Kapstone’s operations. “These traditional lending institutions would not offer opportunities for me to continue to grow the business,” McGuire said. “I went for years looking for an institution that would look at my metrics with blinders on and base whether they would engage with my business purely on a financial basis.”

McGuire started banking with HOPE on a limited basis in 2015 when he found out it was Black owned and led. “I was glad to see a lot of African-Americans running an institution,” McGuire said. “HOPE’s mission of providing opportunities to people and companies who may not have traditionally been able to find good opportunities was very exciting to me.”

“Once they took a look at my metrics and recognized what my mission was, and that the cards are stacked against minority-owned businesses, they were willing to say ‘You’re worth the risk,’” McGuire said. He now has the ongoing relationship that he sought with an institution that knows his goals, has a mission aligned with his, and is willing to support his continued growth.

McGuire has now moved most of his banking and financing to HOPE while continuing to provide quality, affordable housing to residents of his hometown. Kapstone is committed to fixing up properties before renting them out and to being a responsive landlord. “We do not want any of our tenants to live in a home that we would not want to live in ourselves,” McGuire said. He hopes to partner with HOPE in the future to identify additional property development opportunities for underserved communities in the region.