Podcast appearances and mentions of joseph gozlan

In Episode 54 of the Inspired Money Live Stream Podcast, we focus on real estate as a pathway to wealth-building. Our expert panel, including Kathy Fettke, a rental property strategist, Joseph Gozlan, a multifamily investment specialist, Dana Dunford, a property management innovator, and Rob Abasolo, a short-term rental expert, shares valuable strategies for success. This episode covers essential aspects like financing, market research, and legal considerations, offering practical advice for both novice and experienced investors. Understanding Real Estate as a Wealth-Building Tool Real estate is increasingly recognized as a reliable asset class for income generation and wealth growth. Unlike stocks, it provides tangible, income-producing assets and acts as a hedge against inflation. The episode offers perspectives on diverse real estate investment types, including long-term rentals, short-term properties, and REITs, making it relevant to a broad range of investment goals.

Learn about investing with Taylor at www.investwithtaylor.com   Summary Joseph Gozlan, a commercial real estate investor and broker, discusses his investment strategies in retail and industrial properties. He focuses on triple net properties, where the landlord passes on expenses to the tenant. In the retail space, he looks for neighborhood retail strips that cater to service-based businesses. He explains that while Amazon has disrupted retail, there is still a need for physical stores. In the industrial space, he prefers flex buildings that cater to blue-collar businesses, e-commerce startups, and individuals with storage needs. He also compares the lease terms and market dynamics of retail/industrial to multifamily/residential properties. Takeaways Triple net properties allow landlords to pass on expenses to tenants, making them a favorable investment option. Neighborhood retail strips that cater to service-based businesses are still in demand despite the rise of e-commerce. Flex industrial buildings are versatile and cater to blue-collar businesses, e-commerce startups, and individuals with storage needs. Lease terms and market dynamics differ between retail/industrial and multifamily/residential properties, making each asset class suitable for different market conditions.

To access a FREE collection of resources, go to www.TheMaverickVault.com   Understanding how to navigate market cycles can lead to significant investment success. That's why we invited Joseph Gozlan to shed light on how investors can seize opportunities during these periods of change. Tune in to learn more!   Key Takeaways From This Episode Reasons why it's best to invest in high-quality properties  Significant lessons you should learn from a seasoned investor How to navigate the evolving lending and borrowing landscape  Factors to consider when choosing a real estate operator and market to invest in Techniques to identify the level of risks in a real estate market    References/Links Mentioned Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz | Kindle and Hardcover   About Joseph Gozlan Joseph Gozlan brings unparalleled expertise to the commercial real estate market. He is renowned for his astute leadership in group acquisitions exceeding $30MM, predominantly in multifamily and industrial real estate sectors. His capabilities extend to providing superior asset and commercial property management services to an impressive portfolio of over 500 units. Joseph's influential role in commercial investment assets has significantly contributed to the success of EBG Acquisitions and its sister company, Eureka Business Group.    Connect with Joseph Website: Eureka Business Group LinkedIn: Joseph Gozlan Facebook: Joseph Gozlan Instagram: @ebgtx   Are you a passive real estate investor seeking financial freedom? Almost daily, new headlines break on the latest financial market upset. Now is the time to get educated on how to strategically invest in commercial real estate for long-term financial freedom. Grab your copy of “How to Passively Invest in a Changing Economic Environment” Go to…www.MavericksInvest.com  Want to keep up to date on the commercial real estate market, trends, investing tips and know what Neil is buying right now? Connect with him at Legacy Impact Investors and be sure to register for his newsletter. Connect with Neil Timmins on LinkedIn. If there is a topic you want to know more about or a guest that you would like to see on the show, shoot Neil a message on LinkedIn.    About Neil Timmins Having completed hundreds of Fix & Flips, Wholesales, Wholetails, Novations, and Owner-Financed deals, Neil longed to quit forfeiting time for dollars. After building a portfolio of single-family rentals to produce passive income, he found the strategy to be anything but passive. Neil didn't go looking for his first commercial deal—he stumbled into it. Since then, he has refined the process of analyzing and buying commercial properties that produce stellar cash flow.  Neil has been involved in over $300,000,000 in real estate transactions. While his holdings in commercial assets include apartments, offices, mobile home parks, and self-storage units, his passion is industrial property. Neil now has verticals in residential real estate, multiple commercial asset classes, brokerage, publishing, and a successful podcast.    Click here to see video of the podcast. 

To access a FREE collection of resources, go to www.TheMaverickVault.com   Understanding how to navigate market cycles can lead to significant investment success. That's why we invited Joseph Gozlan to shed light on how investors can seize opportunities during these periods of change. Tune in to learn more!    Key Takeaways From This Episode Reasons why it's best to invest in high-quality properties  Significant lessons you should learn from a seasoned investor How to navigate the evolving lending and borrowing landscape  Factors to consider when choosing a real estate operator and market to invest in Techniques to identify the level of risks in a real estate market    References/Links Mentioned Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz | Kindle and Hardcover   About Joseph Gozlan Joseph Gozlan brings unparalleled expertise to the commercial real estate market. He is renowned for his astute leadership in group acquisitions exceeding $30MM, predominantly in multifamily and industrial real estate sectors. His capabilities extend to providing superior asset and commercial property management services to an impressive portfolio of over 500 units. Joseph's influential role in commercial investment assets has significantly contributed to the success of EBG Acquisitions and its sister company, Eureka Business Group.    Connect with Joseph Website: Eureka Business Group LinkedIn: Joseph Gozlan  Facebook: Joseph Gozlan  Instagram: @ebgtx    Are you a passive real estate investor seeking financial freedom? Almost daily, new headlines break on the latest financial market upset. Now is the time to get educated on how to strategically invest in commercial real estate for long-term financial freedom. Grab your copy of “How to Passively Invest in a Changing Economic Environment” Go to…www.MavericksInvest.com  Want to keep up to date on the commercial real estate market, trends, investing tips and know what Neil is buying right now? Connect with him at Legacy Impact Investors and be sure to register for his newsletter.  Connect with Neil Timmins on LinkedIn. If there is a topic you want to know more about or a guest that you would like to see on the show, shoot Neil a message on LinkedIn.    About Neil Timmins Having completed hundreds of Fix & Flips, Wholesales, Wholetails, Novations, and Owner-Financed deals, Neil longed to quit forfeiting time for dollars. After building a portfolio of single-family rentals to produce passive income, he found the strategy to be anything but passive. Neil didn't go looking for his first commercial deal—he stumbled into it. Since then, he has refined the process of analyzing and buying commercial properties that produce stellar cash flow.  Neil has been involved in over $300,000,000 in real estate transactions. While his holdings in commercial assets include apartments, offices, mobile home parks, and self-storage units, his passion is industrial property. Neil now has verticals in residential real estate, multiple commercial asset classes, brokerage, publishing, and a successful podcast.    Click here to see video of the podcast. 

Joseph Gozlan of Eureka Business Group is a multifamily broker, investor, and operator. Today, he shares his insights on how to navigate the current market for success and protect yourself from interest rate risk. He stresses the importance of having a good headaches to returns ratio when buying or selling real estate and explains why they are focusing on commercial and industrial assets. He also talks about a new trend in the restaurant industry and the opportunities in the space to look out for.     [00:01 - 10:14] Owning and Operating Over $30MM in Real Estate Joseph talks about starting from single-family and realizing it's not sustainable Going to the big leagues and helping residential investors to transition as well How to find opportunities? Stop looking for the unicorn deal. Make your own deal. Offsetting risk in the market Getting the right terms is important Commercial clients get better interest rates than residential clients   [10:15 - 13:24] What is the Headaches to Returns Ratio? Why Joseph and his team are investing in industrial, retail, and self-storage No more assets that people can sleep in When the headaches to returns ratio exceeds the acceptable ratio, you sell   [13:25 - 18:27] The Rise of Cloud Kitchens This is for people who want to run a restaurant but don't want the risk and the headache and the cost of the big retail side of a restaurant Leveraging online platforms and different delivery apps  Young chefs entrepreneurs have the option to build a name first before opening a storefront   [18:28 - 20:37] Closing Segment Words of advice from Joseph Reach out to Joseph!  Links Below Final Words Tweetable Quotes   “We learned that it's the residential investors, that if we teach them and we work with them and we help them find good deals, then they graduate into the commercial side.”  - Joseph Gozlan “Don't go and try to hunt for unicorns. They just don't exist. Instead of working really, really hard to find a deal, let's go make a deal. Find a property that fits all your other criteria except the price.” - Joseph Gozlan “The main resolution that we've come to is no more things people can sleep in. And that just comes from the most important benchmark an investor can have, is that headaches to returns ratio.” - Joseph Gozlan -----------------------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Joseph at ebgtexas.com, and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok!   Connect with me:   I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook   LinkedIn   Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on.  Thank you for tuning in!   Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:   [00:00:00] Joseph Gozlan: The thing that I tell my investors is to have a PFS, right, have a personal financial statement and fill it up. And make sure you update it at least once a month. And when you do that, and you have residential properties, you realize that your property grows $200, $300 a month into the principal, which adds on to your net worth. [00:00:33] Sam Wilson: Joseph Gozlan, welcome to the show.  [00:00:35] Joseph Gozlan: Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.  [00:00:37] Sam Wilson: The pleasure is absolutely mine. Joseph, in 90 seconds or less: can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?  [00:00:44] Joseph Gozlan: Good, great question. We started back in 2005, invested in single-family, grew to, you know, duplexes, read the Rich Dad Poor Dad. That's how we got started. And then somewhere along 2015, kind of realized that it's not sustainable and I want to graduate to the big league. So I started looking at the commercial assets. Yeah. And that's when we got our first multifamily property, it was a 20-something unit. And today we own and operate about 300 units close to 30 million in assets that we own with investors for the most part. And we got licensed in Texas back in 2008, 2009, and we've been working with investors mainly since then on residential and commercial transactions. [00:01:31] Sam Wilson: Got it. So you're a broker, also an investor. And you found a way to kind of silo a couple of different lines of business there, the single-family residential investment side, but also the commercial brokerage side.  [00:01:44] Joseph Gozlan: Great. We learned that it's the residential investors, that if we teach them and we work with them and we help them find good deals, then they grow into the commercial side. They kind of graduate into the commercial side. So we like to hold their hands throughout the entire process. And not just, you know, a lot of commercial brokers will snub at the smaller investors. We want to be there for the journey for them.  [00:02:08] Sam Wilson: Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, I mean, it's common, I guess, a common path for a lot of us. It's the path I was on. It's like, okay, I'm a single-family investor. I do fix and flip, I own rental property, blah, blah, blah. And then eventually you're like, okay, maybe I need to find something bigger 'cause like you said, it's just, it's not scalable, which is the title of this show, which is yeah, more, more zeros in, in the same amount of work. Tell me this. What are you guys really interested in right now, personally in investing in?  [00:02:37] Joseph Gozlan: So we're very bullish on industrial these days. The whole COVID situation kind of impacted all real estate in different ways, but what it really did, one of the good things that came out of the whole COVID situation was econ got accelerated about a decade forward in two years period. So all the econ that has developed and grew all the people outgrew the garage, they need a 3000 square foot warehouse. So these guys outgrew the 3000 square foot, they need the 10,000 square foot all the way up to the million square foot warehouses of the Amazons, right? So industrial has been very hard in the market. We also see an interesting shift of institutional money flowing from multifamily over to industrial. So that's really where we are these days is we're focusing on the industrial side of things.  [00:03:28] Sam Wilson: How are you finding opportunity in industrial? I mean,  not that anything's not competitive, but I feel like industrial's a pretty darn competitive space, and cap rates there just keeps shrinking. So what are you guys doing that says, man, here's how we're separating and finding value in this space?  [00:03:47] Joseph Gozlan: So it's no secret that the market's been hot for the last few years, right? Whether it's multifamily, industrial, a lot of the real assets classes have been hot. What I've been telling all my clients is that, look, we don't go and out and try to hunt for unicorns. They just don't exist, right? So instead of working really, really hard to find a deal, let's go make a deal. Find a property that fits all your other criteria except the price. And then let's go make a deal. You know, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes we get creative with the financing or we get creative with the terms. But we've secured 6, 7, 8, even 11% cap rate deals just in the last six months so for our clients. They're out there, you just got to find them.  [00:04:31] Sam Wilson: That's awesome. I love that. Find the property and make a deal. Yeah. Finding the unicorn can be particularly challenging. Joseph, here's a question for you: when it comes to interest rates, and buying industrial property. A lot of these are sold on a triple-net lease, right? Or they're not sold, but they're bought and they put a triple net lease in 'em that might, it might not get renewed for five, seven, even ten years sometimes. How are you guys protecting yourself with that interest rate risk? I mean, let's assume interest rates just keep climbing. I mean, and then you got, and you got something that's maybe paying 4% or 5% on annual basis. Like how, how does, how does that work out for you guys and how do you protect yourself?  [00:05:08] Joseph Gozlan: So the way I look at real estate is rule number one in real estate, everybody thinks it's location. It's not. Rule number one in real estate is you make your money when you buy. Getting to the right deal, put the right terms in place, right? Even if you know, you're up for a refi in three years, five years, and the market is a disaster, a bank will give you a loan. You might not be happy about it. You might not like it. You might not make money for a year or two until things recover. But you're not going to lose the asset if you bought right. That's one thing. I could counter-argue that the same risk that we take on the refi and interest rates in the market, everybody else on residential and multifamily are taking that risk in property taxes. But I don't know how it is in Tennessee, but in Texas we've been slaughtered in the last few years. Probably taxes just going up and up and up and up 20%, 30% is like they have no mercy and that's a risk that residential and multifamily carry. But when you have a triple net lease, that entire risk is being transferred over to the tenant because the tenant pays the cams or the triple net and covers that risk for. So we might have a risk there, but we don't have a risk there. And unfortunately, the property taxes risk is guaranteed versus the interest rate, which is an unknown right now. [00:06:30] Sam Wilson: Oh, absolutely. And as governments and even local governments continue to spend well beyond what it is that they're bringing in, then they're just going to have to keep circling back to the only source of income they have, which is, you know, largely property tax and taxes in general. And those are just going to continue to climb. So that's a really interesting point. I've never really thought about that. Yeah. On a triple net property, you go, you know, they're assuming all this other risk. Yeah. We might have some, we may have a fixed rate of return on this, but, but we've also got some, some downside that we're protecting against as well. Would you say that same thing as it pertains to inflation? When you look at inflation, you go, okay. Inflation, you know, could be skyrocketing, but even if we're not keeping pace it's okay. 'cause we're offsetting risk. Is that kind of the thinking there?  [00:07:15] Joseph Gozlan: So in the last 10 years, right, we've seen residential and multifamily really benefit from the fact that their leases are 12 months, right? So as rent go up and up and up every year when you renew the lease, you could get 5%, 10%, some percent, some places, 20% increases in rent year over year. So when you have a market that goes like this, having a retail or an industrial that have a fixed 3, 5, 10-year lease with 2% to 3% increase built in, it's not very attractive, right, cause you, you can't catch up to where the market is. But when you have a shift in direction, when the market is plateauing or maybe going down, then having those guaranteed increases and guarantee corporate level tenant that reduces the risk and ironically, or surprisingly, whichever you want to look at it, we've seen our commercial clients get better interest rates than our residential clients. So I have a residential client that is buying like a duplex or, or a single family, and they get 6% interest rate these days, six and a quarter, even while we just closed on a $3.7 million warehouse at a 4.99% interest rates. So you see, it's kinda like even the banks realize that the risk is a lot lower on these right now than it is on the residential side and they give preference and better interest rates.  [00:08:42] Sam Wilson: Wow. That's really shocking, but you know, obviously, it just shows you where the, I mean, the lenders are where they see risk in the market. And clearly it's on the single-family side of things. What do you tell your investors who are investing in single-family? I mean, do you tell them that like, Hey, you're buying a riskier asset?  [00:09:00] Joseph Gozlan: No, because, look, we're still undersupplied data market, right? There's still a huge demand and not enough new construction going up. It's not the same situation like we had with 2008 where we had ghost neighborhoods, right, that were completed and nobody was leaving in them. We're not in the same world. The thing that I tell my investors is have a PFS, right, have a personal financial statement and fill it up and make sure you update it at least once a month. And when you do that and you have residential properties, you realize that your property grows $200, $300 a month into the principal, which adds on to your net worth, right? But you graduate to the big boys, right, you graduate to a million dollar, $2 million, $5 million property, all of a sudden it's a $10,000 mortgage or $15,000 mortgage. And then every month there's an excess zero in the amount that's adding to your net worth. So the principal piece, it's not 200 it's 2000 or 20,000, right, depends on the size of the mortgage. So I help them see that, you know, if you really want to build your net worth, the larger you go, the bigger you go, the more zeros are added to your net worth every single.  [00:10:14] Sam Wilson: Right. No, I absolutely love that. That's really, really cool. What are you personally, so you guys run a brokerage, you have lots of clients, I'm sure that you guys are bringing industrial properties to, what is your buy box right now and why?  [00:10:29] Joseph Gozlan: I'm actually against putting things in boxes. [00:10:33] Sam Wilson: I like it. Okay. Let's hear it.  [00:10:35] Joseph Gozlan: That's the thing.  So what I tell my clients is instead of looking at what I want to buy, right, tell me what you don't want to buy. And then we look at everything else, right? So, it's easier for me to say, I don't want to do war zones. I don't want to do student housing. I don't want to do voucher housing. And so on than to say, I'm looking for this, because if I'm looking for this, I could have a great opportunity over here that I'm not going to look at. So, for me specifically, right, in our personal investment portfolio right now, the main resolution that we've come to is no more things people can sleep in. And that just comes from the most important benchmark an investor can have. And unfortunately, this is a benchmark you learn to appreciate more with age and experience, is that headaches to returns ratio.  [00:11:27] Sam Wilson: Okay.  [00:11:28] Joseph Gozlan: It's that simple. The headaches to returns ratio and that is the only exception to the rule of never sell real estate, right, except when the headaches to returns ratio exceed the acceptable ratio, right? And that's really what it is. We manage over 250 apartment unit right now. And the amount of headache it generates. Because we also have the property management in-house is beyond what value and returns we get and the opportunity cost. So for us, the transition is to retail, to industrial, to those self storage, all those other assets people can't sleep in, in, in a short way to say that. We also kind of like retail, but not any retail, mostly the small service centers because Amazon still can't figure out how to do your nails, cut your hair, get you a cup of coffee in the morning, right? So we still strongly believe in those small retail strips neighborhood service centers. We think those are great opportunity as well.  [00:12:32] Sam Wilson: Oh, neighborhood service centers, man. I think those are those, those are here to stay. I mean, and the people that specialize in that, it's it, yeah, there. There's, just like you said, you're getting your hair done,  well, I, I'm not getting my hair done but somebody's getting their hair, getting their nails done, they're getting, I mean, there's just things, there's things that you just can't Amazon Prime to your door and yeah, I see those having certainly a long, useful life there. That's really cool. Joseph, we've talked a lot here about real estate. We've talked about, you know, brokerage, we've talked about, you know, think risk you're seeing in the market, how you guys are shifting gears. You've moved into industrial. I love your headaches to return ratio if you haven't trademarked that you should 'cause that's a pretty cool thing there. And then what, what was it there that, that you, you own, you buy things that, that no one can sleep in, as long as, as long as they can't sleep in it, then, then it's inside your buy box. Are there things outside of real estate or other businesses that you guys look at, you say, Hey, man, I see, I see opportunity here that, that you're currently looking into. [00:13:36] Joseph Gozlan: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that kind of trains that we've noticed in the market recently is. What we call cloud kitchens. So in the world of restaurants and food, it's very expensive to get a, like a restaurant like BJ's or, Razzy's or a steakhouse or something like that. Because it's prime real estate, right? And you pay a lot of dollars per square foot to have that location. You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up this thing and you don't know if it's going to work or not. So it's a high risk, unless you're a chain of restaurant, it's a high-risk move for chefs, for a small investors, people that want to get into that business. And the funny part is you pay the same price per square foot where you seat your clients and where the kitchen in is, the back end stuff. So it's very expensive. And what we've seen is the move to cloud kitchens. If you watch shark tank, they talk about that too, as well. It's basically people that want to run a restaurant but don't want the risk and the headache and the cost of the big retail side of restaurant. So they get a place in an industrial area or industrial building, and they built a kitchen in there and they reduced the cost of entry and they leverage DoorDash and Uber Eats and GrubHub and all those apps that came out and do the delivery for them to build their name, to build their brand. So when you go on DoorDash and you see a name of a restaurant, there might not be a restaurant behind it. It might be just a warehouse in the middle of somewhere where they cook the food and they send it out with delivery 'cause I don't know if you've ever talked to a pizza place owner ever in the history, one of their biggest headaches is the deliveries. You got to have a driver, you got to have the reliable car, you got to do all that. And the cost of gas impacts everything. But today, Uber, DoorDash, GrubHub. You got rid of the headache. All you have to do, if you're a chef or if you're an entrepreneur in the space, is focus on doing good food, great pictures, and promote it.  [00:15:41] Sam Wilson: That's really cool. Yes. I have heard of this and this is something even at one point I saw 'em turning these into like underutilized parking garages. They said, okay, we're going to put a quick service restaurant in there. Are you guys in, I guess, this is a, a perspective or prospective investment for you guys that you're looking at, say, man, I might see opportunity there?  [00:16:01] Joseph Gozlan: Well, yeah, absolutely 'cause again, it all falls into industrial buildings, right? So if industrial is, is where we're going to look at, then it's definitely a tenant that we're happy to have.  [00:16:12] Sam Wilson: Are they building these like unique brands where it's not just, you know, this is just, Hey Sam west to open a restaurant and I'm going to just put it in an industrial building and nobody knows about me yet and their doing it completely with digital marketing and DoorDash means that, is that the way that's going down? Is that what I understand?  [00:16:30] Joseph Gozlan: Yeah, pretty much. This is an opportunity for a young chef or a young entrepreneur to build a name, build a brand, right, until he is enough following, enough income first, he can decide that he never wants to open a storefront, right? This is basically the e-commerce of food. I don't want to brick and mortar store for shoes 'cause Amazon is going to destroy me. But if I have an e-com store for shoes, I can compete with Amazon, right? Same thing with the food. I don't want to storefront or retail place where I have to pay a lot of rent and I'm depending on foot traffic. That is gone, the days of that are gone now. So now I can use DoorDash and, and everything. And all I need is to compete on-screen space.  [00:17:12] Sam Wilson: Right. And you could dedicate an entire floor of a warehouse or of an industrial building or something to specifically being set up and even go with multiple kitchens, potentially, in the same exact space. [00:17:23] Joseph Gozlan: And that's the next level, right? So I haven't seen that done yet, but that's the next level. Somebody that buys a warehouse sets it up with, even, you know, lack of better term kitchen suites, right? Like the WeWork of kitchens, basically, right? It's definitely something that, you know, if I could, as a young chef, come in and get for, let's say $2,000 a month or $1,500 a month, I can get a whole kitchen set up for me. Why not?  [00:17:51] Sam Wilson: Yeah, that'd be hard to compete with, you know, as it comes to startup cost of an actual restaurant with walk-in traffic and seating and everything else, I think it's fascinating to see how the whole delivery model is just changing. It's changing everything and the unique ways we can add value to both the properties into even our tenants. I was talking to somebody else today that they're charging their tenants 25 bucks for valet trash service. So all they have to do is set their trash at their front door and I'm like, wait, so now you have somebody walking around, picking up all their trash and carrying it to the dumpster for 25 bucks? I mean, it's like, okay, that's brilliant. I guess. I mean, but people are paying for it and I think it's just amazing the number of places we can go. Joseph, I certainly appreciate you coming on today. This was a blast. I learned a lot about what it is that you guys are seeing in the marketplace and how you guys are taking and finding opportunity. I love, of course, again, your headache to return ratio, that you might get a show asset or something that goes along with that the headache to return ratio and your trademark on it, but certainly appreciate that. Are there any other closing thoughts you have here for our listeners before we sign off?  [00:18:50] Joseph Gozlan: Yeah, the market is shifting, but we don't see a big dip or a big crash coming up. I know a lot of people, there's some YouTube videos that basically predict the end of the world as we know it. It's not going to be like 2008 'cause we don't live in the same world as 2008. The technology, the gig economy, you can, you know, drive Uber or DoorDash or stuff like that, and still make income, even if you lost a job or something like that. So, I think the crash is not going to be as hard as people are saying. But I do say now it's a time to kind of look at the right opportunities and not be afraid to put offers that are not asking price or above asking price like we used to see recently. It's time to get ready because when the blood is in the water, that's where the sharks are going to have fun.  [00:19:36] Sam Wilson: Absolutely Joseph, thank you so much. If our listeners want to get in touch with you, learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?  [00:19:42] Joseph Gozlan: Our website is the easiest way to find us. ebgtexas.com. And that takes you to our main website where we do the commercial real estate. And I'm on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. You can find me everywhere, just reach out. I'm happy to discuss real estate anytime.  [00:19:57] Sam Wilson: Awesome. And can you give me that website one more time?  [00:20:00] Joseph Gozlan: Absolutely. It's ebgtexas.com.  [00:20:04] Sam Wilson: ebgtexas.com. Joseph, thank you again for your time today. I certainly appreciate it.  [00:20:10] Joseph Gozlan: Absolutely. 

We interviewed Joseph Gozlan. Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist leading group acquisitions of over $30MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 505 units and growing. Joseph is a former lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with over 17 years of leadership experience in the software industry, 12 of which working for publicly traded companies such as GameStop, Retalix (NCR) and JCPenney which enhanced his business acumen, analytical skills and “big picture” perspective, all skills that he leverages to maximize efficiency in the real estate business. In his last IT role as a Senior Software Development Manager, Joseph led five software engineering teams and was responsible for the on-time and on-budget delivery of multiple software products that contributed directly to the company's multi-million dollar bottom line. In this episode, we cover several key topics including: Why you should respond to emails brokers send you! How to get on a broker's short list What to know if you're in a multifamily group and looking for deals… And More… Connect with Joseph: Website - https://eurekabusinessgroup.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gozlan/overlay/contact-info/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/eureka-business-group/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ebgtx/ Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5683ctyNe6ShQVPjI45TfA Twitter - https://twitter.com/JGozlan https://twitter.com/ebgtexas Facebook - facebook.com/EBGTexas?_rdc=1&_rdr And if you want more tips and guidance, sign up to our weekly newsletter at www.donisinvestmentgroup.com/monopoly. Follow Us: @donisbrothers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook @Donis Investment Group on Linkedin Website --> www.donisinvestmentgroup.com

We interviewed Joseph Gozlan. Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist leading group acquisitions of over $30MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 505 units and growing. Joseph is a former lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with over 17 years of leadership experience in the software industry, 12 of which working for publicly traded companies such as GameStop, Retalix (NCR) and JCPenney which enhanced his business acumen, analytical skills and “big picture” perspective, all skills that he leverages to maximize efficiency in the real estate business. In his last IT role as a Senior Software Development Manager, Joseph led five software engineering teams and was responsible for the on-time and on-budget delivery of multiple software products that contributed directly to the company's multi-million dollar bottom line. In this episode, we cover several key topics including: Why you should respond to emails brokers send you! How to get on a broker's short list What to know if you're in a multifamily group and looking for deals… And More… Connect with Joseph: Website - https://eurekabusinessgroup.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/gozlan/overlay/contact-info/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/eureka-business-group/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ebgtx/ Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5683ctyNe6ShQVPjI45TfA Twitter - https://twitter.com/JGozlan https://twitter.com/ebgtexas Facebook - facebook.com/EBGTexas?_rdc=1&_rdr And if you want more tips and guidance, sign up to our weekly newsletter at www.donisinvestmentgroup.com/monopoly. Follow Us: @donisbrothers on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook @Donis Investment Group on Linkedin Website --> www.donisinvestmentgroup.com

Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist leading group acquisitions of over $30MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 505 units and growing. Learn More About Joseph Here: Website: Ebgacquisitions.com What do you want to hear/see more of and less of? What question do you always wish I would ask but I never do? Connect with the Global Investors Show, Charles Carillo, and Harborside Partners: ◾ Setup a FREE 30 Minute Strategy Call with Charles: schedulecharles.com/  ◾ Global Investors Web Page: charleskcarillo.com/global-investors-podcast/ .◾ Join Our Email Newsletter: http://bit.ly/32pehL0 ◾ Foreign Investing in US Real Estate Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ForeignInvestingInUSRealEstate/

Tune into to hear Joseph Gozlan discuss the ups and downs of working with third party property management and buying in tertiary areas

Joseph Gozlan is a Multifamily Investment Specialist and the founder of EBG Acquisition. He leads portfolio acquisitions, capital raising efforts, and deal underwriting as well as asset management services. Joseph is also the author of the book, "The Real Estate College Fund", which helps first-time investors recognize the advantages and risks of investing in real estate, and offers ways to mitigate those risks. In this episode, Joseph will be walking us through on how to win the journey to financial freedom and how to leverage high attention to details and focus on execution to drive for optimized operations efficiency and high profitability to our investors and customers.

Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist leading group acquisitions of over $30MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 505 units and growing. Joseph is a former lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with over 17 years of leadership experience in the software industry, 12 of which working for publicly traded companies such as GameStop, Retalix (NCR) and JCPenney which enhanced his business acumen, analytical skills and “big picture” perspective, all skills that he leverages to maximize efficiency in the real estate business. In his last IT role as a Senior Software Development Manager, Joseph led five software engineering teams and was responsible for the on-time and on-budget delivery of multiple software products that contributed directly to the company’s multi-million dollar bottom line. Joseph has a B.S. in Information Systems Engineering and is also currently enrolled with Texas A&M MBA program (part time program). On This Episode: Joseph talks about coming to the realization that single-family properties can easily lose YEARS of cash flow. Sam shares how he connected with Joseph as a coach. Learn about Joseph’s experience with his first multi-family deal - a 22 unit apartment complex. Learn when to pursue syndication - as well as the pros and cons. Tweetable Quote: “If you don’t want to be an operator, you’ll have to partner with an operator.” Joseph Gozlan https://ebgacquisitions.com/joseph-gozlan/ (https://ebgacquisitions.com/joseph-gozlan/)

This week in the hot seat I am chatting with a fellow expat, Joseph Gozlan. Joseph is originally from Israel and we dive deep into the conversation of how his international investing perspective gives him an edge over other US investors & syndicators when buying multifamily deals, given the low rate of returns he is getting back in his home country. The US is full of opportunity and a lot of international people are flocking to the US for a combination of yield and growth. A truly fascinating conversation with another expat about his journey, creating something from nothing, and ultimately crushing it here in the US. What are you waiting for? Be Bold, Be Brave and go give life a crack!

Title: Live in Dallas, Invest in Lubbock and When to fire your Property management Company with Joseph Gozlan James: Hi Audience. Welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast where we talk about value-add commercial real estate. Today I have Joseph Gozlan from Dallas, Texas. Joseph run's the record business group, which is a brokerage firm and also a sponsor of 500 units in Lubbock. And now let's welcome Joseph; and why not just have you tell about yourself?   Joseph: Awesome. Thank you. James. It's an honor to be on your podcast, I love everything you do. We're in the same mastermind, so it's an honor to be here.   James: Sure, absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, we like to talk details, right? There's no fluff here and there's no marketing as well. So let's go deep down into details about how you run your operation between being a broker, at the same time being a sponsor where you syndicate deal. So can you tell me how you split your roles there?   Joseph: Yeah, so it's actually very complimentary and it brings value to everybody in the transactions. So when we work with our acquisition groups, we have access to the tools that most sponsors don't have. We have access to Yardi matrix that gives us information about properties, comps, sales, rents and loans that are on the property that really give us access to information that is beyond what most sponsors have. And if a sponsor wants to get comps on the area, he either depends on whatever the broker provides him or they have to go out and shop those properties themselves.  So we have all that advantage of talking to other people in the industry, talking to other workers and really understanding the market better than most out there. So that's really the value that we can bring to our investors. On the other hand, we also bring a lot of value to our customers because unlike working with a 25-year-old kid for Marcus and Millichap or CVRE, we actually know what we're doing, we actually own those properties. We operate the properties so we can really get our clients through everything they need help with so if they need us to extend our lenders connections or insurance agents or so on, we can help that. We can help them calm down when Fanny Mae drives them crazy and tell them that's normal, that's just how Fannie Mae works. And that's not to say that there are no veteran agents at Marcus and Millichap or CVRE that don't know what they're doing, they definitely have some superior people over there that are more capable than most agents there.  But for the most part, if you're a new sponsor, you'll be working with the lower level agents in the agencies there. For sellers, what we can help with is because we have the operations experience, we can come in and take a look at the financials, take a look at the operations and offer tweaks here and there to their operations to help them really maximize their NOI, which as you know, maximizes the property value, the price we can sell. And I can give examples if you want.   James: Sure, sure. I mean, before we go there, I want to touch on one thing because you can see the seller's mind right? I mean, I've not sold one property yet so, I don't know how the mindset is going to be, but you work with a lot of sellers, right? So tell me why sellers sell?   Joseph: Oh, there's a lot of reasons. All the way from syndication groups that have completed the renovation plan, extracted the value that they were planning to and they're ready to sell just like they promised their investors two, three years later. And on the very far end of that spectrum, you have the older ownership that, and I see that and I cringe a little bit every time, but their kids want nothing to do with apartments. And that is just sad to see a 70 80-year-old person that worked so hard all his life to build a portfolio and now instead of being happy to build that generational wealth and to hand it over to the kids, they want nothing of it so they're forced to sell. So it's everywhere in between, but usually it's either a completion of a pre-planned execution plan or the kids don't want it. I got to get rid of it. Sometimes we come across distressed owners that went into something that was just not ready for and they want out. That happens too.   James: Okay. I mean, we had like nine years of expansion run right now, right? So the dynamic of buyers and sellers has changed. So, people who bought it in 2010, they have made a lot of money up to now, I mean, in terms of equity, they are brought up a lot of equity and they would have sold it somewhere 2013 or 2015. But there's a lot of people who are jumping in right now late in the game, as a buyer. And what do you think, they need to be watching here right now because we had one of the longest expansion markets right now.   Joseph: Yeah. So here's the thing, everybody that bought in 2010 and sold in 2015 regret it now because people that were in 2015 are selling now in 2019 and they still made a lot more money. So nobody has a crystal ball, we don't know where it's going. We don't know if it's going to end in six months so it's going to take another six years until we see a difference. Personally, I believe we are about 18 to 24 months away from seeing quite a few properties go on a distress sale but I don't think it has anything to do the way the market is going to behave. So we kind of reach to a place where the market is no longer steeping up and just a crazy incline, we're getting into a place where it's a plateau or maybe a little bit of a downturn in some of the markets in the country, but for the most part it just plateaus or creeping up a little bit in other markets.  But that's not going to be enough if people made a mistake buying. So I always say about multifamily, you make your money when you buy, but you lose your money on operations and who better than you know how critical operation efficiency is, right? Then I see a lot of sponsors out there that are not very good operators and I think that is going to cost them the property in the long run if they don't pay attention to the details and they don't really follow everything that happens on the property.    James: Got It. So I talk a lot about operators in my book, Passive Investing in Commercial Real Estate because I think they are the backbone of the success of a deal. Can you define an operator?   Joseph: Yes. Anybody that is involved in the day to day of the properties. If that person is not talking to the property managers, is not talking to the supervisor, is not talking to the owners of the property management or the VPs that are assigned to these accounts and just hands over the keys and forget about it, it's not gonna work. Because at the end of the day, and this is kind of like a little bit of a joke in this business where we buy 5 10 $20 million properties but we hand over the keys to people that have 50 $60,000 pay grade and they are phenomenal people at what they do but they still don't have the capacity or the business knowledge to make decisions for $20 million properties. So each level in the chain has their own decision rights and obviously, I don't make a decision of who is going to fix the faucet in J7 or is it more critical to do that faucet versus the plumbing in K9? This is a decision that happens on the property level. There are decision levels with the regional supervisor and then there are decision levels at the property management level company, the corporate office and there are certain decisions that we keep to ourselves like brand, right? If it has our name on it, it better run through us. It doesn't matter if it's a website or a flyer or advertising somewhere, we're going to make sure we control our brand so this is a decision that stays within our control. We also work with partnerships. We don't just come from all the way up top and we drop it down heel to the people on the property. We listened to our property managers, we get ideas from them, we work together to encourage them to be more than just order takers.   James: Got it. Yeah. Some asset manager, they want to be a sponsor, but actually, they tried to do more passive investor, where they give the keys to the third party property management and they hope that things will run well. I mean, market could have helped a lot of people in the past nine years, because market is booming even though you make mistakes, even though you did not do well as an operator or you have no clue of a multifamily operation, you would have still made like 100%, I don't know how many percent, but he could have made at least a minimum 50% right? If you bought it in 2015 and sell now a minimum of 50%  but I think that's a market, right? As an operator, you would have increased the value a lot more if you're a really good operator. So can you define why or can you let us know why did you go to Lubbock when you're living in Dallas, which is one of the hottest markets in the country?   Joseph: Well, we got priced out of the market, honestly. There's a lot of education groups that that push bids up. There is a lot of foreign money that came in. You've got to look at it from this perspective; everybody has their own strategy. Everybody has their own set of investors and those investors have their own expectations for returns. So, I'll give a few examples, right? The Japanese for investors, there's a tax law back home that if they buy anything in the states that is over 20 something years old, they get to accelerate depreciation and write it off in about three, four years. They don't need to make money, it's a write off for them. Their strategy is a tax write off so they can out beat us at any given point. If your strategy is working with foreign investors, we both know another syndicator that works with foreign German investors and he says that they're thrilled to get 5% returns. If that's the money he needs to pay his investors, if that's the returns he's got to achieve, he can overpay what we can afford because our investors expect more. So that's what I'm saying is you got to look at it. It's not just foreign investors, it's also family offices, it's also institutional money that came in and all these groups are looking for core markets. Dallas, Austin, Houston, LA in New York, Miami and Atlanta, Georgia. That's the kind of markets that they know. So we just got out priced from the market so we went out and went to the secondary markets in Texas.   James: Yeah. I think it's strange. Sometimes we see a deal is expensive but it could be just, it's expensive for you. Your investor base thinks that your returns are too low but there could be another investor base who is okay with that deal and they may get a benefit from other factors like tax benefits, which is for them is a great deal at this market. So yeah, there's no expensive deals, it's just who's your investment base, I guess. If you have Japanese as the investor base and maybe we can buy, the priciest deal in town and still make everybody happy. Joseph: I've seen them buy [12:18unintelligible] so yeah, you're absolutely right. If you're a 10 31 money and you're backed against the wall with the clock running down against you, you're looking at it and say, okay, all of that loss of potential taxes is my income now because I'm going to be able to recover that instead of paying that. So there's a lot of reasoning behind people's strategy and I learned not to judge somebody for [quote-unquote] over-paying without knowing what the background and where the funds are and what's the alternative they had.   James: Got It. Yeah. I think the biggest problem we see is over-beating when people over-beat on a deal, that's where you're paying the highest price whether you know or not, you may have won the deal, but you actually lost the war.   Joseph: Well, and that's where the smaller boutique shops like ours are a little bit better to work with as a sponsor because if you go to bid on a Marcus and Millichap deal or CVRE deal or JLLHFF, any one of the big brokers, they have hundreds of thousands of people in their distribution lists so you will be bidding against a lot of people.  Small brokers like us, we don't have a database that large; I wish I had, but we don't. So then the circulation of the properties that we have on our marketing is much smaller than the ones that the Marcus and Millichap guys have. And as part of that, we've learned to build a network of smaller brokers that we call broker with. So when you approach someone like me and there are quite a few small firms out there that are doing the same thing, not only that you get access to my less circulated listings, but I can also get you access to somebody else' less circulated listings that you wouldn't have been able to access because you don't know that small broker. James: Yeah. So let me ask you, I mean, you are a broker and we go to your role as an investor because it's interesting to talk to a broker, I've not talked to a broker on this podcast yet. So how does broker market deals in this hot market? Obviously, you're going to get a deal, we should think is a good deal; there are two types of deals, one is a deal that you think a lot of people will want to jump on it and there's another deal which you think is a bit pricey that are sellers testing the water right now, right? They want to check out how much they can get in terms of price. So let's say the first scenario where they are, it's a good deal and how would you go about marketing that deal?    Joseph: Yeah. So we try not to work with sellers that are completely delusional. If the property is worth $2 million and they're asking for 4, my chances of getting them a buyer is zero. I can't afford to spend all that time on a property I know I can't sell. So we have honest conversations with our sellers about what's realistic and what's optimistic and what's unreasonable. So we'll work with them on this and we will not take owners that are just unreasonable so that's just to address the types that you mentioned.  The way we get our listings out is when we get a listing, we first make a few phone calls and those few phone calls are to the buyers that have closed a deal with us, it's for the buyers that we know are capable of closing, the buyers that are, in our opinion, ready to pull the trigger and the most qualified buyers. And if we can get that property sold within those few phone calls, then that's great. If not, then we'll expand the phone call circle and then we'll send an email to a smaller group of investor, then a bigger email to a larger group of our investors and it's basically like a growing ripple in a lake. When you throw that stone first, there's a small circle, then there is a larger and larger all the way up until if we have no choice, we'll get it all the way out to those websites out there that are doing listings for apartments and so on. So we'll start small and we'll grow as we need.    James: Okay. Yeah, that's my theory in terms of off-market because usually, the brokers will try to sell within the people that they know because it's a multi-million dollar deal and brokers have the fiduciary responsibility to sell it as soon as possible to the seller, to the right qualified buyer.   Joseph: It depends on the seller. If you go to one of the big brokerages out there, then you are willingly putting the property into the blender. They will have 30 40 tours and they will have a lot of people interested and there is going to be a call for offers in maybe two of those and then there's going to be a best and final round so it'll take about four to six months of just a lot of disruption to the property. At the end of it, you might get a contract that will go through, you might fall for the first one and go to the second one, but eventually, they'll get it sold and they're probably going to get a top possible dollar for that property but in that time, that property went through the blender.  The way we operate and what we offer our sellers is a quiet, smoother transaction without disrupting the property with qualified buyer. Part of what we do, our responsibility to the seller is to qualify the buyer. And if it's not a qualified buyer, we're not going to get him on the property, we're not going to disrupt the property and we're not going to let him lock in on the contract.   James: Yeah, I mean, just to give a story, I had a guy who was a Newbie called me like two days ago. He said, "James, I found this 20 something plus unit deal and I'm evaluating with the broker." And I asked him, my first question is, "Why they need to sell to you?" And he cannot answer that question. So if they're now coming to you who are a Newbie, that means they cannot really sell it to a lot of experienced buyers. I mean 20 something units are the same across a hundred, 200 units; there are so many of qualified buyers out there where the brokers will have relationships with, where they want to sell to the qualified people rather than just go and give it to the Newbie.   Joseph: 10 to 20 unit is kind of like the first property so we're going to have to work with newbies anyway.    James: Yeah, that could be the reason.   Joseph:  But it's just a matter of is it a qualifying Newbie or is it a non-qualified Newbie. The question is that the broker should have probably asked him is where is the financing coming over from? Do you have a proof of funds and did you talk to the bank? This is a full recourse loan itself. There are ways for us to qualify even Newbies.   James: Okay. Okay. Got It. So let's go to your role as a sponsor. So let's go back to the market itself, why do you like Lubbock?   Joseph: Yeah. So Lubbock is, well, no longer, but it used to be a well-kept secret of a great economy market, it's in the middle of the panhandles, it's called the hub city, that's the nickname. And that's because it's one of the most important cities in over a hundred-mile radius. And it has Texas Tech University, it's the biggest engineering school in Texas, and they have over 37,000 students over there. And while we don't do student housing, there's a lot of student housing in the city, but we don't do student housing but the math is simple. For every four or five students the university adds, there's a new job in town. So today, Texas Tech supports over 13,000 jobs, on its own bring one point $2 billion to the city and just retail shopping alone, their students are doing more than $300 million a year.  So add that to a few other factors; economic factors in town that drive a really good economy, a lot of jobs, the unemployment rate in Lubbock is anywhere between 2.5 and 3.2. That's what I've been seeing in the last year and a half out there, which has a downside for a sponsor but we can talk about it later, but for the most part, having such a low unemployment rate in so much job opportunities really gives you more comfort in the B&C class environment because in the B and C class environment, if those tenants lose their job, they don't have a lot of financial depth. If they lose the job and they can't find a job within a week or two, they won't have money to pay the rent. So that's why picking a market that has strong jobs, strong economics was super critical for us.   James: So what is the downside? I don't get that.   Joseph: Oh, the downside is finding good employees.   James:  Oh, got it. Because everybody's being employed.   Joseph:  Because they always have options and they always move and we lost so many maintenance people just because they don't want to work hard. They can easily find a job where they don't have to work so hard so that's just has been a constant struggle out there. But that's just part of the pros and cons of every place.   James: So did you end up buying a deal in Lubbock because you got your first deal there or did you look in a few cities and you chose it or how was it?    Joseph: That's a good question. It's a combination of both. So, it wasn't our first deal, but it was our first big one and it just came through a relationship that we had with the property manager and a broker and we had a chance to take a deal off completely off-market and go for it.    James: Okay. Okay. So once you got a deal, you look at the market, then you think it's a really great market and you continue doing deals in the same market.   Joseph: Yeah, we operate a little bit different today, but that's just how we got to Lubbock back then. Today we are I analyzing markets with a big set of criteria that we're looking for and right now specifically because we try to get out of the way of our brokerage customers, we're looking at a few out of state markets.   James: Okay. Got It. Got It. So when you look at a deal, I mean, can you describe the type of things that you look forward to that describe to you that that is a good deal? Can you describe what are the things you look for in a deal that you would say, okay, I want to do this deal?   Joseph: Yeah. So, the market is the most important thing, it's that simple.  Jobs,  jobs economy, what do they do for a living, is that a one employer town kind of a situation, what's the risk with the market, what the market did back in 2010 when unemployment was high everywhere in the country, that's the things that we first take care of. I'm obviously making sure if we're talking about out of state, we'll always only go to landlord friendly states, that's another very important criteria for us.  But when you look at the actual deal, the actual property, we're looking for value add opportunities. Everything we've done was a heavy lift in value add and it's not easy and it's a lot of work, but it's the only way to really make money. So if I buy a stabilized property, I'm going to have to go find those German investors that are happy with 5% returns. So really, looking for the right value add opportunity when we know we can come in and make a difference and increased the rent and reduce expenses and basically a bump on the NOI that's what we're looking for.   James: Okay. So apart from increasing the rent and reducing expenses, is there any other value add that you think that you find it unique and you think that that's something that can share with the audience?   Joseph: Yeah, so there's a lot of strategies out there when you can leverage to either increase income or reduce expenses, but adding amenities is a good attraction that can help you increase rent. So if you have an on-site gym versus the property that doesn't have an on-site gym, people would be willing to pay a little bit more. A pool is a very big attraction in the C class environment. So we have one property that had a pool, years ago, way before we bought it, and they cemented it in so right now there's just an ugly area that has a fallen apart shed with a cemented pool. So what we're going to do is we're going to convert it to an outdoor kitchen with some picnic tables and shade, just to create a place where the residents can go and have an activity and have fun outdoors. So stuff like that really helps, obviously in-unit amenities is super critical. Upgrading the appliances, resurfacing the counters, replacing old carpets with vinyl planks, that's the kind of thing that people are willing to pay more for.   James: So what, what do you think, let's say, for example, increasing the rent. So let's say you had a million dollar budget to increase rent, but somehow after you buy it, you realize that you only have 500,000 so your budget has significantly reduced. So what's the most important value add that you would do?    Joseph: That's a great question, are we talking interior only?   James: Which one you think is the biggest bang for the buck? You have a reduced budget right now.   Joseph: Well, here's the reality of things, it really depends on the property. If the property looks like crap from the outside, it doesn't matter how nice you make the units look, nobody wants to live on a property that has no exterior light, a green pool and a laundry room that doesn't work. And if the property looks fine outside, I would put the money inside the units because the prettier the unit, the more they're willing to pay. So it depends on the property and what we have to do. Certain properties, if you gate them, it'll be great. Certain properties if you can fence the backyards and create small backyards for the first level unit, it can significantly increase your cost. In-unit washer/dryer connections, that is a big difference maker that people are willing to pay more for in our environment so if I can generate those, then maybe I'll do that.   James: Okay. So let's talk about fencing versus non-fencing property because that's something new for me. So can you elaborate a bit more? Which property makes sense to fence and which one doesn't make sense to fence?   Joseph: First, you got to have the fee the actual space to do that. So if they have sliding doors on the back and it just goes out to the street or just goes out to the green area, then you have the opportunity to just put two panels of fence and either close it or put it like the rod iron and now you created a small backyard for them. People love the opportunity of a private backyard. And I know that because we have two properties that are literally across the street from each other, one of them has larger layouts, the other one has smaller layouts but have fenced backyards and Patios and we constantly have to take people across the street based on the preferences. And you can clearly see that some people prefer to have fenced backyard over larger layouts, even at the same price point. And then some people prefer the larger layout so there's definitely a preference over there to some people.   James: So your fenced backyard, is that a single story unit or is there like a double story but you only fence the ground floor?    Joseph: Those mostly are a single story or townhomes.   James: Townhomes, yeah, I have a property, which is a townhome where it does very well with the backyard, people love the backyard.   Joseph: Yeah. We also have a property that is a two-story building. The first story has a fenced little patio, it's not a backyard, it's not big, but it's a fenced little patio. And then the second floor has a balcony right on top of it. So it obviously works for both the first floor and the second floor.   James: Okay. Okay. So you said this ground floor you put in a fenced backyard but the second floor's balcony, but don't the second-floor people can see the ground floor backyard?   Joseph: No, like I said to call it a back yard is a stretch, it's a small fenced patio.    James: Okay. Got It, got it, got it.    Joseph: It's about the size of the balcony from up top.   James: Oh, okay, maybe that's a good idea. Yeah, I have a deal right now, which we are trying to put a fenced backyard, but it's always like someone on the top will be looking at, so I'm just trying to figure that out and see where they are.   Joseph: You can go to linksupapts.com and see pictures of our property, you'll see what I'm talking about.   James: Ah, cool. Cool. And what about the inside? What do you think is the most valuable remodeling that you can do if you have a very strained budget? What do you think you have the biggest bang for the buck on the inside? Joseph: Okay. Painting floors.   James: Painting floors. Okay.  So that's what you would do, I guess, just to make it look nice inside and the flooring is more for turnover reduction, right?    Joseph: Yeah. People don't need a lot on the inside but seeing the vinyl planks that have, that wood-looking style and a fresh coat of paint on the walls, make a complete big difference versus the old run down carpet or even a new carpet. There's big research I read that talks about the first thing people are looking for, are pet-friendly communities. So obviously hard floors are a lot better with pets then carpets. If you look at any of our property websites, you'll see that the first list in the community amenity is pet-friendly and by the way, if you are not pet-friendly, that is the first thing I'm going to do to increase income.   James: Got It, got it. So you think thinking in terms of miscellaneous income, that's one of the easy value addition, right?   Joseph: Absolutely. Whether it's the pet deposit fee or is it pet rent or whatever you structure it at or just the fact that you allow pets is going to help you with occupancy so pets is definitely an easy one.   James: Got it, got it. So let's say you buy a deal now, it's a value add deal so what would be your first 30-day plan, 60 Day plan and 90-day plan or maybe one year plan on achieving your business plan?   Joseph: Yeah, so the 30-day plan is just to find our way around the property. Every property we picked up in the first 30 days, it's just a lot of dust and you've got to let the dust settle. There's going to be people that have not paid to the previous owner and you're going to have to evict them because they're not paying, period. You will have people that are going to just walk away because in their head it's new management so they're going to increase the rents tomorrow, even though we have contracts, we can't do that. There will be people that are going to try it, ah, new management, let's try not to pay and see what happens, right? So you'll have all that going on in the first 30 days. You've got to figure out who is the maintenance crew, what are they doing, take control over the employees what are they doing. Did you inherit the employees from the previous owner or not? Did some of them got up and moved with the previous ownership, that happens too. So first 30 days is just wrapping our heads around the property and trying to figure out what is where and who does what. After that, we better have our contractors out there and then we'll get started working. We have all that lined up during due diligence. We get bids during due diligence, we set starting work during due diligence and if there are any critical items then there'll be there day one. So our King David property, when we bought it, it was pitch black. There was not a single light on after hours and we had the electricians out there working on the lights the day we took the keys, we didn't wait 30 days or 60 days or anything else. The day we took the keys over, that's when that person was over there.   James: Yeah. The lighting at night it's just super critical. We focus a lot on lighting at night, make sure it's really, really bright. You know, it hinders a lot of crime, it just gives a lot more confidence to the current residents, they know there's a change coming, right? Because it's super easy to do that. Right? We just get the electrician to go and fix all the lights.   Joseph: Yeah. And then we have contractors come out to give us bids and they ask me questions like, well, do you want 3000 lumens or 5,000 lumens? It's like, guys, I don't care. Here's the definition; when you're done, I want it to look like a prison.   James: Fort Knox.    Joseph: If I don't get complaints from some of the residents that it's too bright, then you didn't do your job, that's our definition. So some of my contractors laugh and say, yeah, I know, prison.   James: So, going back to like one year,  within one year, your contractors is done and all that but when do you think you have to step in and what's the trigger point for you that you say, okay, we are not going in the right direction? What are the clues that you look for in the operation that, hey, I thought this is going this direction but we are not in that direction and what would you do in that case?   Joseph: Yeah, so I don't know how many of your properties were exactly on plan.   James: Of course, it's all 100% wrong.    Joseph: Life is what happens when you're busy making plans, right? So it's not about checkpoints, I'm going to check in at 30 days, check in at night, just checking out the year, that's not going to work. You've got to be constantly involved and you constantly have to adapt to whatever life throws at you and turn around. We had one property that when we bought it, it had three-year-old boilers in, so they were practically new that a year later, went up, $25,000 expense. That comes at you out of the blue, you're going to have to adapt, you're gonna have to work with that and figure it out.  The contractor tells you he'll be done by April and it's June and he's barely half-way through, you gotta roll with the punches, that's what it is. Just closer control, monitoring the numbers, working as a partner with the property management team, onsite and corporate, that's the critical things and you've got to work with it. If you made it in a year, that's great. If it takes a year and a half, takes two and a half, takes three, it takes three.   James: But what numbers would you be looking at in the P&L that you are thinking whether you're going the right direction or you're going in the wrong direction? Joseph: Yeah, so every month we take the actual numbers and we put them right next to our projections. So it's kind of like a constant check of where we are compared to the plant and did we spend the capitals that we were supposed to or not? Did we get the units upgraded or not? Did we make time or not? Do we see the increase in rente that we expected or is it below or you did we exceed that? We also have constant market surveys; just because I projected going from, I don't know, 800 to $900, it's great, but if the market went to $700, my projections are going to go flying out the window because that's what the market is. And the other way around, if I projected 900 and the market went to a thousand, I'm not going to stay at 900, I'm going to go to 1000. So, it's like a living organism, right? You got to adapt, you've got to follow, feel the polls, understand where the market is going, where your property's going, where you are and that's really what you got to focus on; it's everything, not just one. James: I think that's the job often operator, where you are looking on a day to day, month to month detail planning in terms of numbers and where you're going, whether you're going towards your business plan goals or you're going to divert from there. That's an important thing. That's what I see as an operator because if you look at nowadays, the GP ship I call it the general partnership, the ship. It's too many people when any investors come and invest in any deals but there'll be like one guy or maybe maximum two guys who are the operators. Joseph: Sometimes there is none. James: And probably you're right. Yeah. But I think if you look for the backbone of the deal, I mean, it may not be the guy who was raising money from you, it may be someone else who's going to be the operator and as I told in my book, just make sure that you look for who's behind the deal, who's the operator, who is the backbone of the deal, that person is the key person in that, going to make the deal whether it's successful or not.   Joseph: Yeah, and you really got to look at it from the perspective of everybody is focusing on getting the deal closed, but getting the deal close is just a little sprint run;  that sprint finish line is the starting line of a marathon and if that was a relay race, it doesn't matter what happened to the sprinter if he comes in two seconds behind or five seconds behind, because that marathon is going to take 24 hours and a lot can happen in that 24 hours. So the guy that runs the property that does the operation for three, five, seven, 10 years, the projection that the whole period is, it's a lot more critical than the 60 days that it took to put the deal together, raise the equity and secure the financing.   James: Yeah. Yeah, that's what has been happening. It's not bad, but I think as passive investors, they just need to know who is the person behind the whole deal. So coming back to some of your personal experience, I know you don't have your own property management company right now. You are using a third-party property management company and I know you did look at setting up your own property management company to take control and all that but can you describe what are the pros and cons that you see on both paradigm and why did you choose the current paradigm or are you planning to change in the future?   Joseph: Yeah, so for us, we had the transition property management last year and it wasn't fun; It was very painful, actually. So I was at the point where I said, okay, let's evaluate it, maybe I should just take on myself. And my conclusion, my personal conclusion, everybody's going to be different, was that, at this point, property management is its own business and you've got to operate it as a business. You've got to build the infrastructure of a company. So I knew that if I'm going to have to build my own property management company, I'm going to have to put aside my acquisition business and my brokerage business and put them away for about a year until I set up all the infrastructure and all the other things. So, for that purpose, I decided to just move on and get another third-party property management.  The advantages you get with third-party property management is you get decades worth of experience combined. If I would have opened my own property management, I would probably hire a regional supervisor and that person would probably have 10, 20 years of experience but when you go to a property management company, you have the owners, you have multiple regional supervisors, you have the back office people, and that's decades, if not centuries of combined experience that you're not going to get doing your own thing. So for us, the brain damage was just not worth it and not to pause to the other two businesses that we were running, maybe in the future, it will make sense. We'll reevaluate then, but at this point, we're not gonna do any of that. James: Okay. So yeah, that's important. I mean, it's a lot of work to set up property management and running it and whether you want to do it or not, it's your personal preference and all that. But I'm more interested in how did you get the signal? Hold on.  So my question to you is you change the property management but then halfway through one of your deal, in your property in Lubbock, what was the signal that you look for that triggered you that something's not doing right and I need to make this change now. I mean, how long did you wait to pull the trigger to change the property management? How did you change it because it's hard for a lot of asset manager to make that call, it's hard? Joseph: Yeah. It wasn't an easy decision to make because you have this relationship that you've built with the team in the property management, but there was just, let's take a step back. I think from my experience, the most important skill for a property management company is hiring skills, everything else is secondary to that because if they don't hire the right people, it's not going to work. And that's really what was the trigger on our transition is we just had a series of unfortunate hiring decisions, that we had to go through multiple supervisors and onsite managers that did not follow what we wanted to do and did not execute the way we wanted them to execute, did not treat our residents right. So that was really the last straw for us is kind of like we gave them a 'get better by this date' and it didn't so we just decided to move on and break the package.  There was no hard feeling, and I still talked to the previous property manager ownership, but we have accountability to our investors and we have accountability to our partners and we got to make sure that if things are not moving in the right direction, then we make a change.   James: But what was the signal? Because you are sitting in Dallas and this isn't Lubbock. And what is the signal that gives you that hint that something is not right?   Joseph: We had a property that we had a big surge of non-renewals; residents that didn't want to renew the lease. And that was really one of our big flags and since then we've already implemented a process where we bypassed the property management company and sent surveys directly to the residents to get a feel of what's going on in the property; how do they feel, how were they getting treated? So we just had a manager that when we were on site, she was all wonderful and great, but when we were not on site, she didn't treat the residents right and that was just really bad because retention is critical and when residents don't want to renew because the manager is not treating them with respect, that's a big problem. James: So, was the property management company with you sending survey direct to the residents?  Joseph: That was non-negotiable at that point.  James: Okay. Okay. So when you saw a lot of non-renewal then you said, okay, I'm going to just do a survey on our own, which is a very good thing because I think a lot of people struggle to identify that weakness, right? But you're right, non-renewal can be a good indication of how the management is treating them or whether the work orders are not being completed as to what the residents want. Because as you know, turnover is going to be the biggest expense in any market family operation, especially in Class B and C. And once you see that, that's a red flag there. So let me ask you a few other things that you want to give advice to Newbies, right? So can you name like three to five tips for Newbies who tried to start at this stage of the market in multifamily? Joseph: Yes. Start with, don't be optimistic. There's a lot of really optimistic underwriting out there that come across my desk and it's scary. Yes, the market might still go up, we don't have a crystal ball but if your exit strategy depends on you being better than the market today, then you've got a problem. If the entire market is at 90% occupancy and your exit strategy depends on you being 96% occupied, there is a problem there. If you plan on rents going up, but you don't plan on expenses going up, you've got a problem. So these are the little things in your underwriting that can really trip you because it's excels live, very easily. All you have to do is to tweak a number here and tweak a number there and you take a five cap transaction and make it an eight cap transaction. and that's just not something that you should risk. One thing I don't like in underwriting that you see a lot from big brokerages is a 1% loss to lease. I see you laugh; as an operator, I don't want a 1% loss to lease. If I have a unit that rents for $700 market rent, but I have a residence in it for 650, I'm not going to kick him out if it's time to renew; $50 a month, that's $600 a year; it's going to take me about $1,500 to renovate the unit, that means it's going to be more than a year and a half before I see my money back.   James: Yeah. And you have vacancies too and you have all the stress of turning around the property.   Joseph: That's what I said, it's like more than a year and a half at least so it's kind of like, why would I do that? And if you look at $50 out of 700 that's more than 1% so that's really where you see an underwriting like this, you need to scratch it off and put a more reasonable number in there. And don't ask me what is a reasonable number because it depends on the property. If your rents are $1,000 a month, you can take 2 or 3% but if your rents are 400 and you're not going to kick them out for $25, but $25 out of $400, that's 7- 8%, so that's really where you got to be realistic; you've got to look at the numbers. So when we have, for example, in the underwriting, we underwrite occupancy and we've projected occupancy for the next three, five, seven, 10 years, whatever the whole period is, I also have another table right next to it in the excel file that shows me what it looks in unit numbers because when you put 7% or 8%, it's easy to just think, oh, it's just 7% but if you have 7% out of a hundred units, that's seven units vacant but if it's 300 units, now it's 21 vacant units. So I always like to kind of put things back in perspective; percentages to dollars, dollars to percentages and so on just so people will kind of realize that, okay, it's not just a number that I throw on there. So that's what it's going to meet. James: Got It. Got It. So let's say for passive investors looking at a deal that's being presented to them, right? So we talked about the things that we want to watch out for even for newbies who are sponsors, but as a passive investor, how can they identify that this sponsor is being aggressive?  Joseph: So for a passive investor that looks at an offer, any offer, I say they have to focus on four different things. First, they got to look at the market. Just like we talked at the beginning, what is that market? What is the job worth? What is the economy? If you're going to have a property that has a 7% unemployment rate today in 2019 when the market is hot and there are more job openings than people that request unemployment, then that's not a great market to be in when the market shifts. So where's the market?  The second thing they need to look at is the opportunity, the actual deal itself. This is where you look at, how conservative is the underwriting, did they underwrite for vacancies, did they underwrite for economic vacancies, did they underwrite for capital that's going to have to be done capital reserves and so on? And the third thing they need to look for is the team, like you said earlier, who's the operator? What's their track record, what's their background? And then the fourth thing, which is something I just added recently, they need to look for one letter in 150 legal documents and that letter is, unfortunately, the letter F, just to make sure they don't get f'd. So my distribution is going to be considered the return on investment, return on capital, or is it going to be the return of capital with an 'F' because it's gonna make a huge difference between the two if you get a return on capital or return of capital. James: Yeah, I know what exactly you're talking about. Can you briefly explain the two scenarios so people can get it very clearly? What is the difference between the return on capital and return of capital? Joseph: Yeah, so if you give me $100,000 and I structure our returns as return on capital and I give you, let's say, a 10% preferred return, then in the first year, I'll give you $10,000 that's 10% of everything that has happened. The next year, if I want to give you 10%, I have to give you another $10,000 because your capital in the deal did not change, right? However, if I'm doing a return of capital, then the first year I gave you 10,000, your remaining of the capital in the deal is now 90,000. For me to satisfy the 10% preferred return, I'm going to just in a year a half to give you $9,000 this year and the next year it's going to be 8,100 and the year after, so on and so on so that's one thing.  The other thing is when we get to the sale part on the return on capital, if we had no capital event, like a refi' or something of that in the middle, then I first have to pay you back all your $100,000 and then whatever is left, we get to split whatever the split is between the sponsors and the and the passive investors. However, if I've depleted your remaining capital basis in the deal, so now you have let's say $50,000 remaining, all I have to do is give you your $50,000 and then we split. So by putting one letter in that document and there are usually 150 pages that you're going to get handed over as a passive investor and all they have to do is change one letter, just one. So I think that if a sponsor does that and they don't clearly explain that to you, then that's in my opinion, not so ethical. James: Got It. Got It. Yeah. A lot of times passive investors who jumping into investing passively in commercial real estate, know a lot about the deal two to three years after they started investing.  A lot of times they did not know all these types of details in the beginning because it's a fear of missing out, everybody wants to invest because they didn't want to miss out; that all their friends are making money in the same asset class and they didn't want to miss out. They forget about all the legal structures that they have in the PPM or the company agreement that's given to them.  Let me look at one last question; so tell us, where can the audience find you?    Joseph: Yeah, it's very easy. You can find us on our website, my email, my phone number, it's all there. It's Ebgtexas.com. That's our brokerage website, easy to find us.    James: Okay. Awesome. All right, audience, thanks for joining me on Achieve Wealth Podcast. And one thing to not miss out is make sure you guys go and look at Facebook; we have a new Facebook group called Multifamily Investors Group. We have grown up to like 680 members right now within two or three weeks. The first week, it's we have like 500 people. And that Facebook group we have created to show live operations from the ground up and talk just specifically about multifamily. We don't have a lot of promotions or spam there and hopefully, everybody's getting value. So I encourage you guys to go and check it out, Multifamily Investors Group on Facebook and join them. Thank you. Thank you.

Joseph Gozlan Links mentioned in this episode: RodsBootcamp.com (Use Promo Code ADAMADAMS for 25% off)

Dan Handford with PassiveInvesting.com interviews Joseph Gozlan with EBG Acquisitions about this 236-unit apartment complex was acquired in 2018 for $12.7mil. Listen in as Dan dissects the details surrounding this multifamily investing acquisition including how Joseph was able to achieve annualized returns up to 18% for the investors that contributed approx. $3.3mil for this apartment investment.

Dan Handford with PassiveInvesting.com interviews Joseph Gozlan with EBG Acquisitions about this 236-unit apartment complex was acquired in 2018 for $12.7mil. Listen in as Dan dissects the details surrounding this multifamily investing acquisition including how Joseph was able to achieve annualized returns up to 18% for the investors that contributed approx. $3.3mil for this apartment […]

Today we chat with Joseph Gozlan based out of Plano, TX. Joseph is a former IT professional who has turned full time investor. He got his start with single family rentals and kept working hard to save and pick them up one at a time. He did this for many years until he realized he could only go so far with SFHs and to scale his business he would have to look at larger properties. That's when he made the decision to get into multifamily investing. Today he talks about how he made the transition to commercial deals and how this eventually lead him to leave his IT job and become a full time investor. 

Joseph Gozlan is a Multifamily Investment Specialist with a portfolio of over 500 units in strong secondary markets in Texas.  He's also a former lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Force and has over 17 years of leadership experiences in the software industry, which helped him sharpen his business and analytical skills as well as his "big picture" perspective. Joseph is also a fascinating guy with a lot of great real estate wisdom to share.  In today's conversation Joseph takes us through his thought process comparing multifamily investing to other types of investing, and how this helped him go from zero to 500 units in less than three years.   We also discuss the massive generational shift in demographics that is having an enormous impact on rental housing, Joseph's three rules of investing that will see him through good and bad economic cycles, and how he's in the process of changing out his management team. Joseph also makes it clear that Multifamily investing is not as easy as some might say.  It takes a lot of work and perseverance, and Joseph discusses the many challenges that he's had to face. I know you're going to enjoy this highly enlightening conversation. Joseph is also a broker and uses his 360 degree perspective of multifamily investing and ownership to help his buyers and sellers.  You can learn more about Joseph through his brokerage website and his acquisition website: www.ebgtexas.com www.ebgtx.com

In this episode, Whitney interviews Joseph Gozlan, Managing Principal and Multifamily Investment Specialist, EBG Acquisitions. Joseph is also a public speaker and published author. In this show, Joseph reveals some expert Tips for overcoming the various challenges of real estate syndication. Is it better to opt for multifamily investment over other asset classes? We reveal why multifamily is one of the hardest classes to disrupt. Joseph shares how proactive capital raising, partnering with the right people and conservative underwriting can help mitigate risk and help you build a stable and successful syndication business. Tune in for some great insights!

  Real estate investor since 2005 and a licensed real estate agent in Texas since 2009 Relocated to Plano, TX in 2007 Made most of our investments during the big real estate crash of 2008-2009. We didn’t survive the crash we thrived in it! Own & Operate 269units in Celina, Plano & Lubbock Texas B.Sc. in Information Systems and an IT Leader with over 17 years of experience Former Logistics Operations Officer (lieutenant) in the IDF Married to Rita, a licensed RE Broker and a former lieutenant in the IDF A proud father of Sophie (age 9) and David (age 7) Published Author: The Real Estate College Fund (available on Amazon)     Contact Joseph http://ebgacquisitions.com   Content mentioned Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection by Jia Jiang https://www.amazon.com/Rejection-Proof-Became-Invincible-Through/dp/080414138X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546226013&sr=8-1&keywords=rejection+proof     Follow Ola www.instagram.com/oladantis @OlaDantis for all social media Send me a DM when you follow so I can say hi!   Learn more at: dwellynn.com/invest

Successful investors have a knack for finding the path of progress. Where the progress goes, the money follows. In today’s show, Joseph Gozlan, a multifamily investment specialist, shares how he gets ahead of the progress happening North of Dallas. He talks about his current market (Celina and Lubbock) and how he finds other investment opportunities in Dallas. Plus, he shares valuable tips in finding and closing off-market deals, avoiding bad neighborhoods, choosing an apartment opportunity, and how not to lose money through multifamily investing. Key Market Insights   Born and raised in Israel, where he served as a lieutenant for the Israeli Defense Forces Key Takeaways from Military Service: Discipline, Understand Chain of Commands, Leadership In 2001, studied engineering after his military service In 2004, became a software engineer, and was relocated to Dallas, Texas in 2007 Purchased single-family homes during the recession  Major Disadvantage of Single-family homes: No other unit can cover expenses or recurring cash flow when things go wrong Identified multifamily as the most opportunistic asset class, so he transitioned in 2015 First multifamily acquisition involved direct marketing (yellow cards, cold calling, meeting owners) - reasonable price, established a relationship with the owner, lower down payment, owner financing at reasonable terms Celina Market - far North Texas, a suburb of Dallas; Path of progress, emerging retails, and expanding road infrastructures, near job centers Dallas Market: North - more affluent suburbs, including Plano, Frisco, McKinney (which is included in Top 10 cities to Live); East - surrounded with lakes that’ll eventually stop growth; West - close to Fort Worth; South - rougher parts of Dallas Hot Dallas Market: North - job and population growth, close to job centers, transportation hubs Metrics in Choosing an Apartment - Class B & C properties, close to transportation and job centers, avoid war zones Identifiers of War Zones - a lot of unemployed individuals and occupied parking and streets Lubbock Market - secondary market in Texas, and a tertiary market nationwide; Great economic drivers, Texas Tech University, medical facilities, low unemployment rate, population and job growth, emerging retails and infrastructures Opportunities in Lubbock Market: East - industrial, low-end; North - close to the university; Southwest - blue collar, low crimes, safe and clean Advice for Investors: Understand the numbers, and get engaged with lenders as soon as possible Best deals are off-market Finding Off-Market Deals: Direct Marketing. Be consistent. Position yourself in the frontline Bull’s Eye Round   Winning Your Market: Work hard. Build relationships. Find off-market deals.   Tracking Market Changes: Keep an update on industry news.   Daily Habit: Block time for prospecting, and finding new deals, buyers and sellers.   Resources:   Yardi Matrix Book:   Profit First by Mike Michalowicz   Rejection Proof by Jia Jiang Digital Resources:   Social Media   Feedly   Tweet This:   “Direct marketing is about consistency.”   “Don’t get into a bidding war. Find deals before anyone else.” Places to Grab a Bite:   Estilo Gaucho   Grub Burger   Connect with Joseph:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gozlan Website: www.ebgtexas.com

Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist, leading group acquisitions of over $15MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 253 units and growing. Joseph is a former lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and over 17 years of leadership experience in the software industry, 12 of which working for publicly traded companies such as GameStop, Retalix (NCR) and JCPenney which enhanced his business acumen, analytical skills and “big picture” perspective, all skills that he leverages to maximize efficiency in the real estate business. In his last IT role as a Senior Software Development Manager, Joseph led five software engineering teams and was responsible for the on-time and on-budget delivery of a multiple software products that contributed directly to the company's multi-million dollar bottom line. Joseph is now dedicated 100% to real estate. Joseph has a B.S. in Information Systems Engineering and is also currently enrolled with Texas A&M MBA program (part time program). Joseph began his real estate investing back in 2005, when he purchased with his wife Rita their first investment property in Israel. In 2007 Joseph & Rita relocated to Plano, Texas and in early 2008 started their US real estate investment journey with the purchase of a duplex in Plano. Since then they grew their portfolio and strengthened their equity positions in multiple single family properties. In early 2015 Joseph began his multifamily journey and not long after led the successful acquisition of a 22 unit multifamily property in Celina Texas. In 2017 Joseph led the successful acquisition of a 130 units in two multifamily properties in Lubbock Texas and has been serving as the asset manager for all three communities since. Joseph's next steps are closing on a 97 apartments community, which is under contract at the moment which will strengthen EBG's presence in the city and will increase operations efficiency for all properties and to continue to lead the acquisitions of even more multifamily communities in the Texas secondary markets with the goal of acquiring and managing an asset base of 1500 units or more by the end of 2018. Recently multiple family offices have been reaching out to Joseph exploring collaboration opportunities in the markets they operate in. Key Points Assessing secondary and tertiary real estate markets Starting and scaling your real estate portfolio How to find off market multifamily deals Lightning Questions What was your biggest hurdle getting started in real estate investing, and how did you overcome it? Breaking into the multifamily space. Joseph was able to backdoor the process by getting pre-approved with lenders and having those lenders vouch to brokers. Do you have a personal habit that contributes to your success? Joseph doesn’t have an off switch Do you have an online resource that you find valuable? Audible for audio books What book would you recommend to the listeners and why? http://amzn.to/2oHmOrC (Rich Dad Poor Dad) by Robert Kiyosaki http://amzn.to/2Fsnawt (The One Thing) by Gary Keller ad Jay Papassan http://amzn.to/2Fw5nAB (Profit First) by Mike Michalowicz http://amzn.to/2Fppog6 (The Real Estate College Fund) by Joseph Gozlan If you were to give advice to your 20 year old self to get started in real estate investing, what would it be? Skip single family properties and go straight to multifamily. Resources Visit http://m/gp/product/B00NB86OYE/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jacob0ee-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B00NB86OYE&linkId=100a9d2905599266aa7088bba0a33d55 (Audible) for a free trail and free audio book download! http://amzn.to/2Fppog6 (The Real Estate College Fund) by Joseph Gozlan http://ebgacquisitions.com/ (www.EBGTX.com)  

Do you have children? Are you thinking about the future? Tune into the newest episode to hear how Joseph Gozlan has the only college saving plan that pays you!   Joseph is a multifamily investment specialist. Leading group acquisitions of over $30MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 505 units and growing.   Joseph is a former lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with over 17 years of leadership experience in the software industry, 12 of which working for publicly traded companies such as GameStop, Retalix (NCR) and JCPenney which enhanced his business acumen, analytical skills and “big picture” perspective, all skills that he leverages to maximize efficiency in the real estate business.   In his last IT role as a Senior Software Development Manager, Joseph led five software engineering teams and was responsible for the on-time and on-budget delivery of multiple software products that contributed directly to the company's multi-million dollar bottom line.   Joseph has a B.S. in Information Systems Engineering and is also currently enrolled with Texas A&M MBA program (part time program).   EBG Acquisitions Website: http://ebgacquisitions.com/ Book: https://amzn.to/2qrKLUh Listen: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-book-club-interview/id1370130445?mt=2 Opposite of Spoiled book: https://www.amazon.com/Opposite-Spoiled-Raising-Grounded-Generous/dp/0062247026  

Joseph Gozlan shares his inspiring story about how he transitioned into the real estate business after leaving Israel and the remarkable friendship he struck-up with a World War II-era property owner that resulted in Joseph’s first multifamily transaction.   Key Points  The road to success if forging your own path, is everyone else is going one way, go another.   Looking at different industries and endeavors to venture into, so many are easy to disrupt. For example, the oil and gas industry has billions of dollars invested against them every year. Investing in multifamily properties is a much safer industry to explore, since everyone needs a roof over their heads and it is difficult to unsettle.   A vast majority of Americans, Baby Boomers and Millennials, are not interested in home owning. Millennials were impacted by the last recession and Baby Boomers no longer feel like keeping up a property and want to be catered to. Both prefer renting and multifamily properties are a popular choice.  There will be times in investing you will hit walls and face rejection, however, there is always some kind of back door to find that will set you on your own unique track.  Build a strong portfolio, almost like a book, and then go out and sell yourself to brokers.   Using an incentive is a savvy way to push tenants to pay their rent on time.     Links Mentioned  http://ebgacquisitions.com/ 

Download This Awesome Podcast: http://bit.ly/2VTrexr Joseph Gozlan is a multifamily investments specialist. His leading group acquisitions of over $30MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 505 units and growing. In 2017 Joseph led the successful acquisition of 130 units in two multifamily units in Lubbock, Texas and an additional 97 units in 2018. Joseph has the goal of acquiring and managing an asset base of 1500 units or more by the end of 2018. Joseph explains that hard work and dedication is going to be what takes you from 1 rental property, to over 500 to profit from. His statistics are 200 to 1 deals will be successful. This industry is is like a snowball on a rollercoaster; the more you do the more you get, the more you come across and you could spend 2 months looking with no luck and all of a sudden you have 300 contracts. His best advice: Build relationships, with brokers and investors. Also don't look for unicorns be realistic in your market and in what you're looking for!   Thank you so much Joseph for all your value! To learn more about Joseph check out his website: ebgtx.com -- Thank you for listening and please give us a 5 star rating and review if you like what you here:  rate our podcast. You are welcome to join our REI Foundation podcast group here. To check out more of our podcasts, click here. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

‘It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.' --Tony Robbins In my experience, once you truly decide to pursue multifamily investing, it will take 3 to 18 months to do your first deal. In 3 to 5 years, you will have replaced your income and quit your job. And the entire process is set in motion via the Law of the First Deal. Today, I'm unpacking the powerful Law of the First Deal. I start with its basic principles, offering case studies of podcast guests who were able to replace their income within 3 years and quit their jobs via multifamily investing. I explain why the Law of the First Deal works, describing how investors become deal (and money!) magnets soon after their first closing. Finally, I walk you through the steps necessary to develop a concrete plan, calculating how long it will take to quit your job—based on your individual Rat Race Number. Listen in for insight on how to leverage the Law of the First Deal to replace your income with multifamily! Key Takeaways The principles of the Law of the First Deal First deal is smallest, most difficult Second and third follow in rapid succession Replace income within 2 to 3 years Case studies of the Law of the First Deal Drew Kniffin: 12 months to replace income Brad Tacia: 2 years to replace income Tyler Sheff: 12 months to replace income Joseph Gozlan: 2½ years to replace income Why the Law of the First Deal works Magnet for deals, brokers approach with pocket listings Magnet for money, investors who missed out want in Deals get bigger as comfort zone expands How long it takes to quit your job Determine average income per unit Establish how many units you need to cover living expenses Determine how long it will take Determine size of first deal The typical Law of the First Deal timeline First deal in 3 to 18 months Second deal within 6 months Third deal within 6 months Total of 1 to 3 years The value of establishing a concrete plan Focus on first deal, avoid overwhelm Resources ABI EP027 Drew Kniffin ABI EP 073 Brad Tacia ABI EP072 Tyler Sheff ABI EP078 Joseph Gozlan Michael's Products Syndicated Deal Analyzer Contact Michael Michael on LinkedIn Financial Freedom Summit Partner with Michael Invest with Michael Michael's Course Free eBook: The Secret to Raising Money to Buy Your First Apartment Building Review the Podcast on iTunes

  Jake, Gino and Joseph jump right into the importance of creating your own success and making the most of your situation, no matter where you come from. There is a powerful discussion of the benefits of multifamily vs. residential. Joseph details how he underwrites at a deal through the three different financing models and the three criteria he looks for when buying, and even touches on the amazing tax benefits of cost segregation and the process of syndication.   This show puts emphasis on persistency as a key factor to succeed in multifamily real estate. ​T​op 10 -Accidental landlord -No more residential -Building real estate in the background -Go Bro's -Scarcity mentality -401(k) downsides -economies of scale -Higher emotions leading to lower intelligence -The big boys club -And much more!   http://ebgacquisitions.com   ​Book Recommendations:  Double Double by Cameron Herold Profit First by Mike Michalowicz The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan Invest with Jake & Gino: Create an Account - Rand Partners ​www.propertyzar.com/gino​ Wheelbarrow Profits Academy 20% DISCOUNT with code:​ELITE     Check out the podcast for iTunes: iTunes Store Check out the podcast for Android: RSS FEED Thanks so much for joining us again. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post! Also, please leave an honest review for our Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely important to our show and help in our rankings. Please leave a review if you find value in our show!   Click here to learn more about our multifamily educational platform: Multifamily Mastery If you have any questions, please email me at gino@jakeandgino.com If you would like to partner or invest with Jake & Gino, please fill out this form: Investor Form

Is your home an asset or liability? Find out on today's show. We had the pleasure of interviewing multifamily investment specialist, Joseph Gozlan. In our conversation, we learn more about multifamily properties, the pitfalls of single family investing, and how individuals can participate in multifamily investments with their retirement dollars. Joseph, the founder of EBG Acquisitions. Leading group acquisitions of over $10MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 156 units and growing. Joseph has over 17 years of experience in the software industry, 12 of which working for publicly traded companies such as GameStop and JCPenney which enhanced his business acumen, analytical skills and “big picture” perspective, all skills that he leverages in his real estate business. We spend a good amount of our conversation explaining how and why you may want to view your primary home in a different light.. You don't want to miss this one!   Links mentioned in the show: EBG Acquisitions The One Thing Profit First 2 Free Books Today on Audible One on One Coaching with Daray   Access The Best Strategies, Tips & Advice! Every week, we send an email sharing my best advice, tips and strategies related to Real Estate Investing. Each of these weekly emails contain relevant and actionable information that can help you no matter where you are in your investing journey. Sign up to join our community

In Today’s GSD Mode Favorite Clip, Top Real Estate Investor Joseph Gozlan shares his expertise and experience when dealing with other investors and finding real estate investing deals that he knows are going to make him money. Find out what Joseph wishes he would have done when starting out, and then take that information and get your investing career off to an amazing start!     Joseph’s full GSD Mode Episode - http://www.gsdmode.com/josephgozlan/     Websites:   http://ebgacquisitions.com/   https://www.facebook.com/EBGTexas/   https://twitter.com/EBGTexas/       Join the Free Private GSD Mode Facebook Group - http://www.facebook.com/groups/gsdmode   Thanks for watching don’t forget to subscribe for daily content!  https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=joshuasmithaz   iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gsd-mode/id964583650?mt=2   Full Site - http://www.gsdmode.com     SUPPORTED BY   Perfect Storm (http://www.perfectstormnow.com)   90 Day Mastery (http://www.90daymastery.com)   GSD Apparel (http://www.gsdmode.com/product-category/tees/)   Hit Me Up!   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoshuaSmithGSD   Instagram: https://instagram.com/joshuasmithgsd/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoshuaSmithGSD

Gary Keller once said that the definition of a wealthy person is someone who has the passive income to fund their life's purpose.   Based on that definition, we have to do two things to live a wealthy life: find our purpose, and then build a business that can fund it passively.   Does building that kind of business sound far-fetched? Well, Joseph Gozlan joins us today to show you why it's not. This is an incredible case study of how someone just like you found clarity on their purpose and then boiled that down to the ONE thing he needed to achieve extraordinary results.   The ONE Thing to Implement From This Episode: Your purpose determines your priorities, your priorities determine your productivity, and your productivity determines your results.   So how can you get clear on the type of impact that you want to make, and what type of business will you have to build to fund that impact?   Based on your answers to those questions, go through the goal setting to now exercise. You can find this exercise in our FREE My Purpose Handbook at the1thing.com/mypurpose.   In this episode you will learn... [4:00] How you can get clarity on your purpose. [12:55] What you can do to protect your time (because, inevitably, life will try to get in the way). [21:00] The ONE thing you can do if you feel lost, stuck, or frustrated.   Links & Tools From This Episode Connect with Joseph at ebgacquisitions.com Need help finding clarity on your purpose? Go to the1thing.com/mypurpose and download the FREE My Purpose Handbook Want to make a plan so that you can achieve your goals? Go to the1thing.com/membership --   Were you told that if you worked hard and saved in your 401k that, one day, you would retire and secure your slice of the American Dream?   We were told that story, but if you look at the wealthy, that’s not how they got there. We’re excited to introduce you to Patrick Donohoe and his team at Paradigm Life because they specialize in an investment strategy that creates wealth, and they want to share it with listeners of The ONE Thing podcast.   If you go to PerpetualWealthStrategy.net, you can download the free report: The Entrepreneur's Hierarchy of Investment. --   Production & Development for The ONE Thing Podcast by Podcast Masters

Joseph is a former lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and has more than 17 years of leadership experience in the software industry, 12 of which were working for publicly traded companies such as GameStop, Retalix (NCR) and JCPenney. Joseph began his real estate investing back in 2005, when he purchased his first investment property in Israel. Fast forward to early 2015, which is when Joseph began his multifamily journey with the successful acquisition of a 22 unit multifamily property in Celina Texas. In 2017, Joseph led the successful acquisition of a 130 unit two property portfolio in Lubbock Texas and have been serving as the asset manager for all three communities ever since. Joseph’s long term goal is to reach a critical mass of 1,500 doors under ownership/management within the next few years, which it seems he is well on his way to hitting. Recommended Resources Check out our company and our investment opportunity by visiting www.SunriseCapitalInvestors.com Self Directed IRA Investment Opportunity – Click Here To Learn More About How You Can Invest With Us Through Your SDIRA Accredited Investors Click Here to learn more about partnering with me and my team on Mobile Home Park deals! Grab a free copy of my latest book “The 21 Biggest Mistakes Investors Make When Purchasing their First Mobile Home Park…and how to avoid them MobileHomeParkAcademy.com Schedule your free 30 minute "no obligation" call directly with Kevin by clicking this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/KV2D2  

Joseph came to the US in 2007 and started buying single family homes. He didn’t like the idea of scaling single family homes so he decided to start buying multifamily. Starting with a 22 unit, eventually buying a 102 unit property in Texas. According to Joseph, the 22 unit property was in great shape but had poor management. Now that they have fixed the management issues, the property’s valuation is worth over $600k more than it was with the previous management. In this episode we get to hear how to find your first bigger deal, and how to increase the valuation of large properties. If you enjoyed today’s episode remember to subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review!   Best Ever Tweet: “There is a higher probability that you can close a deal over a first time buyer” - Joseph Gozlan   Joseph Gozlan Real Estate Background: -Multifamily investments specialist, leading group acquisitions of over $11MM in real estate at EBG Acquisitions -Provides asset management services to a portfolio of 156 units and growing. -In 2017 he led the successful acquisition of a 102 units multifamily property in Lubbock Texas -Goal is more multifamily communities in Texas secondary markets and managing an asset base of 3000 units -Began real estate in 2005, when he purchased with his wife Rita their first investment property in Israel -Say hi to him at -Based in Plano, Texas -Best Ever Book: The One Thing by Gary Keller Made Possible Because of Our Best Ever Sponsors: Are you looking for a way to increase your overall profits by reducing your loan payments to the bank? offers a fix-and-flip loan program that ONLY charges interest on the funds that have been disbursed, which can result in thousands of dollars in savings.Before securing financing for your next fix-and-flip project, Best Ever Listeners you must download your free white paper at to find out how Patch of Land’s fix and flip program can positively impact your investment strategy and save you money.

With generational shifts pushing rental markets upward and outward, multifamily investors are thinking about how to continue scaling investments. Our guest this week, Joseph Gozlan talks about the investment potential of secondary markets and shares tips on building successful strategies.

In today's episode, we interview Joseph Gozlan from EBG Acquisitions.  Joseph is a multifamily investments specialist. Leading group acquisitions of over $11MM in real estate and providing asset management services to a portfolio of 156 units with 97 additional units currently under contract and growing. In our conversation, we learn more about multifamily properties, how syndication works, and how individuals can participate in these investments with their retirement dollars.   Joseph is also the author of the book, "The Real Estate College Fund", which helps first time investors recognize the advantages and risks of investing in real estate, and offers ways to mitigate those risks. Also in this episode, we cover some listener feedback that proves that Kevin is (occasionally) right!

Top Realtor & Real Estate Investor Joseph Gozlan built most of his real estate business during the major crash of 2008-2009! A real estate investor since 2005, Joseph has seen the ups and downs of the real estate industry, but he also saw the monetary potential so he decided to become a licensed real estate agent in 2009. Being both an agent and investor gave Joseph access to more investment deals than he could have had without his license, which lead him to build up his asset management business, EBG acquisitions. Listen to Joseph and Joshua chop it up about everything from multi-family home investing, what Joseph learned during the real estate crash and how he made adjustments to keep his business growing and thriving, the importance of finding a mentor and coach, and so much more!     0:01 - Introduction 6:15 - Interview Start 8:00 - Journey to Real Estate Industry 12:50 - How did you make the transition into investing in multi-family homes? 17:30 - Do you think investing on your own made your offers more appealing down the line to other investors? 21:00 - How do you find which deals are good for you and which aren’t? 24:50 - How do you make the correct hires? 30:30 - When identifying properties, do you look for instantaneous value? 36:20 - What did you learn from the latest market crash? 47:40 - Where do you see yourself taking your business? 54:00 - Do you find that finding a mentor closer to your peer instead of your superior? 55:40 - How do you stay focused and organized to not drop the ball in different areas of your business? 58:00 - If you could give your younger self 2 pieces of advice, what would it be? 59:40 - Where to learn more about Joseph 1:00:20 - Last words of advice and inspiration   Websites:   http://ebgacquisitions.com/   https://www.facebook.com/EBGTexas/   https://twitter.com/EBGTexas/     Thanks for watching don’t forget to subscribe for daily content!  https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=joshuasmithaz   iTunes - https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/gsd-mode/id964583650?mt=2   Full Site - http://www.gsdmode.com     SUPPORTED BY   Perfect Storm (http://www.perfectstormnow.com)   90 Day Mastery (http://www.90daymastery.com)   GSD Apparel (http://www.gsdmode.com/product-category/tees/)   REO Mastery University (https://reouniversity.wpengine.com/)   Hit Me Up!   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoshuaSmithGSD   Instagram: https://instagram.com/joshuasmithgsd/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoshuaSmithGSD

 Here's Some Of What You Will Learn  The benefits of building relationships with brokers. The benefits of multi-family over single-family. The importance of focusing on relationships with sellers, especially if they are older. The benefits of seller financing and how building a relationship can help. The importance of making your property a great place to live to attract tenants. Ways of increasing value of your property through increased rents and increased Net operating income. Ways to get started in order to be taken seriously and land more deals. The benefits of using property managers as a deal source. The benefits of self-managing and when it may be a good idea to do so. The difference between a 506b and 506c capital raising and the benefits of each. The importance of educating yourself and others that may be involved in your deals. The benefits of using a property management company as the experienced party to secure financing. The benefits of growing with smaller brokers over time. The importance of proper due diligence and how property managers can be useful in the process. Creative ways to document your property inspection to be able to carefully examine the property. How to overcome issues and problems that may arise on the property. The benefits of treating your residents right to maintain occupancy and promote your property. The importance of not allowing fear to prevent you from taking action. The importance of exit strategies and contingency plans for potential problems. About some books that may help you get started and focused on your goals. Our Guest You can learn more about Joseph Gozlan at: http://ebgacquisitions.com Want to build Lifetime Cash Flow from Multifamily Properties? If you’re committed to creating the life you deserve, we've created the best multifamily training and coaching program on the market. I personally coach you on your path to create the life of your dreams. I will help you CRUSH it in this business!  - if you'd like to receive information about our program, text CRUSH to 41411 now. Recommended Resource Looking to invest in a multi-family real estate project? Want to partner with me personally on a deal? To schedule a time for us to talk click on this link: http://www.meetme.so/RodKhleif2 Review and Subscribe acquisitions, Joseph Gozlan, apartment investing, apartments, appreciation, Assisted Living, broker, brokers, business, cash flow, cashflow, commercial, commercial real estate, CRE, CRE investing, Defaulted paper, Donald Trump, entrepreneur, equity, Eviction, expert, experts, Foreclosure, funding, Hedge fund, investing, investing in real estate, investments, Rod Khleif, Rod Khleif Florida, Rod Khleif Real Estate, Riyad Khleif , manager, mergers, millionaire, multi-family, multifamily, Office, passive income, podcast, private lending, private money, property management, raw land investing, real estate, real estate broker, real estate cashflow, real estate coaching, real estate investing, real estate investor. Investing, REIT, Retail, Robert Kiyosaki, sales, Sales Coach, sales expert, Sales Training, Self Storage, Selling, Senior Living, Shopping Center, Short Sale, Suburban Office, syndication, training, value add, Repositioning assets, multi-family expert, multifamily expert, multi family investing, multifamily training  

Liz Soria the host of Tax Advisor Biz Coach Success Podcast and her expert guest Joseph Gozlan (Real Estate Multi Family Investor - Texas). Gozlan shares with the audience to why be believes is RE the best and tangible investment. Great tax strategies with cost segregation and depreciation for tax benefits.Liz can be reached at www.etbsfl.com for a complimentary phone consultation - no obligation. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/liz-soria/support

Liz Soria the host of Tax Advisor Biz Coach Success Podcast and her expert guest Joseph Gozlan (Real Estate Multi Family Investor - Texas). Gozlan shares with the audience to why be believes is RE the best and tangible investment. Great tax strategies with cost segregation and depreciation for tax benefits.Liz can be reached at www.etbsfl.com for a complimentary phone consultation - no obligation. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/liz-soria/support

‘That's just the way I'm built: Nothing's going to stop me.' Joseph Gozlan's story defines the word GRIT. Once he decided that multi-family was the route he wanted to take, Joseph continued to drive through every challenge, getting creative and doing whatever it took to secure his first deal despite the roadblocks and frustrations. Three years later, he is the proud owner of two apartment buildings, and he has five properties in the pipeline. Joseph's living expenses are covered, and he is considering a transition into full-time real estate in the very near future. Joseph got his start in real estate back in 2005 when he and his new wife realized that their new five-bedroom home was too big for just the two of them, so they chose to stay in an apartment and rent the property. Two years later, they moved to the United States from Israel and recognized the opportunity provided by the market collapse. The Gozlans secured their real estate licenses and began actively hunting for deals, purchasing a duplex and several single-family homes. In 2015, Joseph realized there was much more value in apartments than could be gained in scaling single-family homes, and he started extensive research into multi-family investment. Unfortunately, Joseph faced a number of hurdles along the way, and it took a full two years to secure his first 22-unit apartment complex. When many would-be multi-family investors would have given up, Joseph persevered, and today he shares his long road to successful apartment building investing with us. Listen in and get inspired as Joseph discusses why he chose real estate in the first place, the circumstances around his shift to multi-family, and how he has maintained his full-time job in IT while developing a lucrative real estate portfolio. Key Takeaways  [1:59] Joseph's start in real estate Read Rich Dad, Poor Dad in college Got married, lived in small apartment Purchased house, too big for couple Chose to rent house, stay in apartment Moved to US in 2007 Joseph and wife got real estate licenses Actively hunted for deals after market collapse Bought duplex in Plano, TX (paid $180K, invested $30K in renovations) Purchased additional single-family homes until numbers changed in 2013 [4:34] Why Joseph chose real estate in the first place Wants to write giant cardboard check for $1M to children's hospital Early retirement, comfortable living, won't have to answer to boss Tangible assets like real estate trump stock market Realized could be wealth-building strategy, key to financial freedom [6:26] Joseph's definition of financial freedom Do what you want Work from anywhere No worry re: bills Kids won't experience struggle (like he did)  [7:22] The circumstances around Joseph's shift to multi-family Two and a half years ago, duplex had foundation issues Big ticket damage to another property at same time Spent $40K to fix, wiped out five years cashflow Recognized advantages of multi-family (single location, risk spread across multiple units) Began extensive research (books, podcasts, BiggerPockets) [11:11] The long road to Joseph's first deal Reached out to brokers, no response Decided to source deal himself, began marketing (postcards, letters, phone calls) Built rapport with owner/custom-builder of 22-unit apartment Owner agreed to seller financing Refinanced duplex and another property to afford [14:02] The results of Joseph's first deal 23 days from signed contract to keys Brought in property management company Added $600—$800K in value via operation efficiency Spends one hour with management company/week to assure accountability [15:58] How Joseph handled concurrently working full-time Sacrifice necessary Some sleepless nights Spent weekends looking at property, took occasional days off Difficult but doable [16:53] How Joseph secured a second deal within six months Brokers responsive now that ‘closer' Lead through property management company on 102-unit in Lubbock, TX Knew costs, rent and demographics (unfair advantage) Tight underwriting, made win-win offer [18:11] How Joseph financed his second deal ‘Ignorance' gave him the confidence to raise funds Elected syndication to raise $1.4M Had to adjust underwriting model Learning curve around how to talk to investors Learned to focus on benefits (no headache), returns, low risk Did all himself in 45 stressful days Once one investor signs, recommend friends [22:31] How Joseph's second deal is performing Only three months in Great so far, working on renovations Compliments from competition, positive feedback from residents Joseph's living expenses now covered on paper Anticipates feeling comfortable enough to quit job after second quarter [24:33] How Joseph stuck with the multi-family plan despite his initial frustration Went into contract on another property first Realized much-deferred maintenance Seller refused to negotiate Had to back out since numbers didn't work Not in Joseph's personality to give up [26:30] The snowball effect of multi-family deals Joseph already under contract on third deal for 28-unit Only took three days to get LOI signed (motivated seller) Five properties in pipeline now (off-market deals) [28:17] Joseph's plans for the future Recently renewed real estate license Sourcing deals himself (sent 1300 pieces of mail) Continue to work acquisitions Also transition to brokerage side Enjoys ‘coaching' property management company, contributing ideas to improve processes [30:08] What Joseph would tell his younger self Skip single-family, go straight to apartment buildings Could have thousands of units by now [30:51] Joseph's advice for hesitant multi-family investors Don't go it alone Partner or get mentor to establish realistic expectations Offer value to mentor (i.e.: underwriting, boots on the ground) Connect with Joseph Gozlan EBG Acquisitions Eureka Business Group on Twitter Multifamily Investing for Financial Freedom on Facebook Resources Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki BiggerPockets Michael's Products Free eBook: The Secret to Raising Money to Buy Your First Apartment Building Review the Podcast on iTunes