Unlocking housing innovation
Black Oak Group provides strategic advice and creative cost-saving solutions to a diverse array of clients, from real estate developers to construction tech startups to global companies like Google or Airbnb. Our strength comes from seeing the forest and the trees. Together, we offer decades of experience in development, technology, entitlements, financial analysis, and policy.
Who we are
Founded by Michael Yarne, Black Oak Group is a collective of visionaries and problem solvers committed to crafting solutions to your unique housing challenge. We tailor-fit our team to meet your needs.
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Make your projects pencil. We vet, recommend, and help integrate 3rd party construction innovation offerings to reduce cost & compress schedule. We also provide fee-based development management services, with a speciality in creative entitlements.
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Strengthen your team, story, and product-market fit. We coach founders & CEOs in the rapidly evolving construction technology space.
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Generate risk-based returns while creating new infill housing opportunities in high-barrier-to-entry cities in the Bay Area. Black Oak Ventures uses its own in-house software to find undervalued surface parking lots and then applies the latest YIMBY law to rapidly entitle them into small-lot single-family attached townhomes.
Services
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“Michael is remarkably creative in the face of constraints: he grasps the complexity of multifamily development, without being weighed down by it.”
-Alexa Arena, Global Head of Real Estate Development, Google
Description of Services
Black Oak assembled a vertical development team and prepared a series of multifamily product feasibility analyses to help Google develop a new business plan and entitlement strategy for multifamily development in four mixed-use residential districts in Silicon Valley. Our scope includes analyzing the risk and rewards of deploying new construction technologies.
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“Michael provided us the right balance of pragmatism and innovation. He helped us weigh the trade-offs of different corporate policy responses to the affordability crisis.”
-Mike Signer, Head of Policy, North America, Airbnb
Description of Services
Michael researched and produced an internal White Paper on the roots of the U.S. housing affordability crisis. Building on this, he designed several pilot programs unique to Airbnb’s platform and collaborated with the Airbnb Data Sciences team to develop scalable ‘Housing Affordability Reports’ for major US metros that will be released over time to help the public and policy makers better understand how Airbnb interacts with housing markets.
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“Michael helps us think two steps ahead."
-Tim Thimmaiah, CEO & Co-Founder, Type Five
Description of Services
Michael is advising the co-founders of Type Five, a software-enabled ADU design-build-deliver startup. This includes drafting state legislation that will allow HCD to develop a testing methodology for Type Five’s parametric design software, Formwork. If successful, Formwork will be able to produce ‘pre-approved’ plan sets, radically educing the time and cost required to build ADUs.
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“Michael helps me stay focused on achieving strategic goals while also finding practical solutions to tactical challenges.”
-Chad Bowker, CEO & Co-Founder, Capsule
Description of Services
Michael is providing ongoing executive coaching to Chad Bowker, the CEO of Capsule, a leading componentized construction company. To this end, Michael has drawn upon his past experience as a founder to help Chad navigate Capsule’s recent capital raise, as well as helping him develop a long-term customer pipeline through better story-telling.
Creativity Within Constraints
In an era of high construction costs and interest rates, we help make housing pencil. Applying the right mix of technology, product innovation, and YIMBY legal tools can reduce risk, schedule and cost.
Building a Better Housing Future
The U.S. is facing an affordability crisis and the root cause is chronic under-supply of new housing. The impacts of this shortage include unsustainable work commutes, growing income inequality, and homelessness. At Black Oak Group, we are on a mission to increase supply.
Work with us
Whether you are a real estate developer, startup founder, investor, or a global company seeking to play a part in solving the housing supply crisis, we have the expertise, insights, and passion to help.