Diarmaid McGregor
Founder, N6 Properties
Age: 42
Industry experience: 25 years
Housing production in Boston relies heavily on builders like Diarmaid McGregor who specialize in finding overlooked sites through word-of-mouth and pushing them through permitting and construction. In his native Ireland, the teenaged McGregor worked as an apprentice on construction sites for four years. Moving to Boston in 2002, he joined a family friend’s general contracting company before founding his own construction company and branching out into fix-and-flip and eventually new multifamily and mixed-use construction. N6 Properties’ latest project at 375 Cummins Highway in Roslindale is scheduled for completion in fall 2025 and will include 49 apartments.
Q: What were the key milestones in your company’s growth and your transition from the trades to development?
A: It’s hard to believe it’s been so long. I started working on the construction side as a teenager and after qualifying as a carpenter, I moved to Boston in June 2002 and was working for a cousin of a neighbor from Ireland who was a general contractor. I built McGregor Carpentry up through the years to 40-plus employees, and did some work for a company in Boston that had some residential rental properties in Florida. The first acquisition was a 2-family apartment building in Roxbury that we bought at a distressed sale. I fixed it up and resold it. That’s where the primary focus was for the next few years, buying two- and three-family renovations and flipping and then moving into bigger stuff. Today, a lot of our focus is on mid-rise residential construction and mixed-use projects from 20,000 to 50,000 square feet.
Q: In evaluating acquisitions, what are the main characteristics of a property that you’re looking for?
A: In the last couple of years, our focus has definitely changed toward development sites. In Boston, you can find your fair share of vacant lots. We’re looking for locations where we can have scale and [proximity to] transit. We like to stay in Boston proper, and the same goes for any existing multifamily properties. We look in Boston at properties well-serviced by transport. Some of the neighborhoods we really like are Mattapan, Hyde Park and Roslindale. Mattapan is always overlooked. It has a well-serviced bus route, it’s got commuter rail, and wide thoroughfares with two parking lanes. The Fairmont Line[commuter rail] has improved the transit.
Q: How do projects get financed in the higher interest rate environment while complying with the city’s affordability requirements?
A: For my first investment property, I think I paid 8 percent, so we’ve seen these rates before. They won’t be here forever. We’re comfortable in this rate environment and we stick to our fundamentals. If you’re competing with [just] several buyers, it gives you an opportunity to slow down and make some investment decisions. You’re not competing with 10 different offers on the property, which has been the case for the last few years.
Q: What are your most recently completed projects?
A: We recently completed 39 residential units with three storefronts at 1301 Blue Hill Ave., including 45,000 square feet of storefronts. We have a local restaurant, Blue Mountain Jamaican restaurant, and a salon and general office space. The market-rate units rented for approximately $3 per square foot. In Roslindale, 375 Cummings Highway was approved by the BPDA in 2019 and I bought it a few years ago and brought it back through BPDA. The environment really changed with construction pricing, so we made some value engineering changes and tried to compress the footprint and add some green space, and just make it more functional.
Q: How do you find leads for building sites?
A: It’s either word-of-mouth in the construction agency, hearing from a broker, an appraiser or someone at a bank. Typically, most of them go on the MLS and you might be able to see some value-add than somebody else might be able to see in the project. The market has definitely shifted and we’re seeing several shelved projects being shopped. Our investment approach is we always take a 15- to 20-year outlook and if we can find an opportunity today that pencils at the 8 or 9 percent interest rates, in a few years we’ll be in a great position. At the end of the day, the buildings are about the people and the community and the neighborhoods and we try not to lose sight of that.
McGregor’s Five Favorite Podcasts:
- “No Laying Up”
- “Deconstruct”
- “Good Dirt”
- “Mass Construction Show”
- “Breneman BluePrint”
