Friends Launch Investment Group to Build Wealth in Black Community

After watching a viral video of the owner of a Pasadena laundromat caught on camera berating a woman for having a Black Lives Matter sign on her car, a group of friends decided to come together and build generational wealth. 

Buy The Block, is an investment group focused on buying homes throughout the San Gabriel Valley.

Realtor Jacqueline Kuykendall, who founded the group with her friends, told SpectrumNews1 she believes more people in the Black community need to invest in property. Kuykendall said she sees the disparity first hand because she works in the real estate industry.

Kuykendall saw Black real estate ownership first hand as she was growing up. Her grandparents had rental properties which inspired her to enter the real estate business.

“We hope that it will give people that sense of ownership, even if it’s a small investment that you can say, see that building right there? I own a piece of that. “We want to be able to be in the community and impact the community in both ways, by being business owners and then have other people they can join in on it. And I feel like that inspires people to want to go bigger for themselves.”

“We started our Facebook group. We had people ask questions and how they could be involved. We got an LLC. So we got that started. We opened up a business account and we really wanted to use the crowdfunding sites, you know, raise money and be able to purchase a property. What we found was those crowdfunding sites take 25 to 20 percent off the top.

“We didn’t like that model, but we began looking into efforts into having our own crowdfunding site to be able to, you know, we really want to own something. We want to own it. We don’t want to give it away to another business. We want to make sure we’re in compliance with any FCC rules and things like that when we’re collecting crowdfunding money. Right now that’s where we are. We have to put up the money ourselves and hopefully be able to bring other people that in as equity crowdfunded.”

The group wants to first purchase a multi-unit property by the end of the year for about $1.5 million.

“We really want it to be a community effort,” said Tai Samuels. “We really want people to have an equity share of the business. “That’s why it’s taking us a little longer than we initially anticipated because we want to do it right.”

Samuels said the group is committed to making sure that people are given what the group says they are going to give them.

“People actually get a paycheck every quarter of their shareholder earnings is really what we want to be able to do. And the way it’s marketed is really, it’s a little bit higher yield than you would get if you put your money in a savings account,” she said.

“Because of the experience that we have with the real estate market, we’re making sure the purchases that we make are going to be profitable.”