Mark Sutherland
Owner
Wicker Park Apartments

Sutherland went to college for a year but dropped out and decided to become an entrepreneur. He started buying houses to fix up and flip part-time while he worked an inside sales job during the day. After about 5 years of doing small house flips, he quit his day job and took a job working for a smaller GC while he continued to buy, renovate and flip houses and small apartment buildings part-time while learning how to do remodeling and build new construction.

He has developed over $350M in developments including high-rise, mid-rise and low-rise apartments, condos, townhomes and single family homes in north side neighborhoods such as Old Town, River North, Streeterville, and Wicker Park and south side neighborhoods as well including Hyde Park, North Kenwood Oakland, and Woodlawn.

When the market tanked in 2008 he lost millions. But now he says the market collapse was the best thing that ever happened to him because he was able to grow his business significantly by buying, renovating and owning small apartment buildings and developing smaller mid-rise TOD’s.

He now owns about 300 apartments in the Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and Noble Square neighborhoods and attributes his success to his ability and discipline to find and only do deals that make sense and also to his small firm’s vertical integration. He GC’s his own projects, self-leases them and self-manages them as well.