Invest with Confidence

Born, raised and educated in New England.  Our Partners have been involved both as investors and contractors in the New England real-estate market since 2001.  

We start by identifying up and coming markets.  We do this the old-fashioned way: when our friends and colleagues (especially young professionals and newly-weds) start moving out of Boston, then begin telling everyone how smart they are - our ears perk-up.  We go to these markets and look for the nicest properties we can acquire.  

Our target properties have two consistent attributes: beauty and history.  We then use a value investing approach to determine which properties to acquire.  Our primary rule of engagement is simple: if the replacement cost of the property is equal to, or less than, 50% of the acquisition cost - we'll start to dig in.  

Our team is comprised of people with different kinds of experience, but we all have this in common--a commitment to ethics and integrity. We’re all fully licensed and credentialed. And you can count on unbiased recommendations and impartial guidance.  We're investing our own money in these deals.  Bringing in outside investors gives us the chance to do more projects.

Ben Marshall began his career in September 2001 working in Brownfields Development for Action Environmental.  He later acquired the company and spun off others. In 2003 he became a licensed General Contractor (in Mass and Florida) and started both working on and developing properties throughout the area.  His project experience includes: the first Passiv Haus in Massachusetts, deep energy retrofits of numerous New England university buildings (including Harvard Univ, Williams, LaSalle, Endicott and many others), as well as hundreds of (less-exciting) ground up new developments.  

Frank Shirley is the team architect.   

He began his career as a designer at Moshe Safdie & Associates, working on large-scale civic and institutional projects. From there Frank became a project manager at Design Associates, Inc., where he led the restoration of the Corbin-Norton residence on Martha’s Vineyard, which received the Boston Society of Architects’ award for “Excellence in Architecture.” He was also the project architect for homes featured on the PBS television series, This Old House. In 2000, he launched Frank Shirley Architects in Cambridge, MA. In 2007, Frank won the Traditional Building Challenge–a competition among architects nationwide to design a home in the spirit of its Cape Cod setting. Among many other recognitions, Frank Shirley Architects received the prestigious Bulfinch Award in 2012, 2014, and 2017, a Dream Home Award in 2010, and was named Best of Boston® Home in 2008 and 2011, for Restoration Architect and Historic Renovation Architect, respectfully. Frank is also a serious architectural photographer. Fifteen of his photographs have been chosen for the calendars published by the American Institute of Architects.

In 2007, Frank’s book, New Rooms for Old Houses: Beautiful Additions for the Traditional Home, was published under the imprimatur of the National Trust for Historic Preservation by Taunton Press and distributed by Random House. This beautiful volume systematically presents Frank’s approach to the issues owners encounter when adding to their historical homes.

Mathew Arruda.   

Always service-centric, Mathew J. Arruda worked in the hospitality industry before turning his sights on the entrepreneurial career of real estate. He is licensed in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island, holds his Graduate Realtor Institute (GRI) designation from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors® and is also a graduate of the MAR Leadership Academy. 

A first-generation Portuguese American, Mathew considers himself a New Bedford-Dartmouth native, having grown up there and returning to the region after some time in both Boston and Providence.