Whether Snoop Dogg's "Murder Was The Case" or Biggie's "Juicy," one of rap music's status symbols has long been buying mama a house of her own. Putting a roof over your own head, or at least finding a good mortgage or line of credit to do so is hard enough these days. Luckily, the Hip Hop Generation has resources like Leonard Person, Jr. and his book Hood Estate.

Person and his book have a greater purpose than a few bills for a paperback. As this tri-state real estate investor and true Brooklyn success story tells HipHopDX, the books fights the advantages of race, education and predatory loans that banks and lenders might not want you to know. The author is unabashed about his social views and the true climate of 2008's market, but this interview alone unwraps a few steps towards writing your own "Juicy" in years to come.

HipHopDX: As a real estate expert, what makes you so accessible to the Hip Hop Community?
Leonard Person, Jr.: First of all, I’m from the urban community. That’s where Hip Hop is from; it’s from the depressed, poverty areas. So we had to be creative to even create Hip Hop. I’m from Bushwick Brooklyn, New York, born and raised. By me doing real estate, coming from havin’ nothin’ to havin’ to somethin’, it’s similar to certain rappers. Same situation. If anybody can relate to Hip Hop and the urban community and see the situation that Jay-Z or LL Cool J went through, coming from that state, then they could relate to me as well, and hear me out for what I have to say.

DX: What are the sacrifices and dues you’ve paid to get to this point?
LP: For people that really don’t understand the business, a lot of the sacrifices is, you have to be consistent. As far as prioritizing with your money, you have to sacrifice. Managing your money, you have to make the right decisions in just the game of life. It’s very to hard to get to a certain level, but in due time, you’ll get there with hard work. You’ll prosper and get the fruits of your labor through that. Everything is not just gonna come to you. In Hip Hop, they look at the videos and see the money, the chain, the girls, the cars and they think they’re just gonna write a rhyme and people are gonna get this. It’s not gonna happen that way. You have to have a business-plan and market your product, which is your music. You gotta do co-op marketing, etc. everything needs to be strategized and still business-orientated at the end of the day, so it’s the same way with real estate.

You still have to buy houses and go through the process of getting financed. You’ve got to build up your credit, that takes time. Those are some of the things you’ll need to do to even get yourself in position to buy a house.

DX: Do you find that there is still a lot of racism and classism in the real estate market?
LP: Yeah, of course there is. It’s still there. For us being African Americans trying to acquire property period, and have an asset, we wasn’t really qualified [on the basis] of our color not too long ago. We had the 40 acres and the mule and we’re still trying to get that back to this day. We’re just becoming to be a race of having our first black president. Sometimes, it’s actually harder. They’ll come up with more questions. Even FICO score could be a 720, 750, you’ll have the income, they’ll still come with miscellaneous questions and conditions that they’ll need to fulfill. For example, they’ll [require] a motivation letter explaining why you’re moving from here to there. If you’re accepted and you qualify for the loan, you shouldn’t have to explain it. It’s not [overt], but you could read between the lines.

DX: Whether in Bushwick or South Philadelphia, there is a great deal of gentrification going on in neighborhoods today. In addition to show people how to make money, are you doing anything to help people take ownership of their neighborhoods?
LP: I’m trying to really show them. My objective is to financially empower young, motivated people that have faith in our economy. It’s up to them to take over their own neighborhoods. They have to take it into their own hands. Somebody can lead you to the water, but they can’t make [you] drink. You can give them the tools they need to fix the problem, and that’s kinda like what I’m doing. It can be done now, with all the blacks with money. Look at powerful black people like Russell [Simmons] and Jay-Z and people that listen to Hip Hop, they could buy all the foreclosures and take over damn near half of their area. But do they do that? No.

DX: A lot of experts are saying with the apprehension in the market after the housing crisis, that we are living in a buyer’s market today. Would you agree?
LP: I agree with that. It’s a good time to buy – an excellent time to buy. It’s actually almost like it was 10 years ago. There’s definite advantages to buying now. The key is and the problem is, it’s hard to get the financing now because of the mortgage crisis. So even though there’s a buyer’s market with houses worth $700,000 available for $350,000 right now, it’s hard to get the financing. They made it difficult. Now they want you to put 20% down on payment. The average family isn’t gonna have 20% to put down. They might have the good credit, but they might not get [approved]. Continued on page 2 »