Podcasts about reonomy

Can AI give you a competitive edge in investing? Whether you're in real estate or the stock market, artificial intelligence is transforming how investors analyze data, make decisions, and manage risks. In this episode, Jeannette Friedrich, Director of Investor Relations at Blue Lake Capital, shares five powerful AI-driven strategies that can help you optimize your investments, gain deeper insights, and stay ahead of market trends. Key Takeaways: - Market Analysis & Predictions: AI can process vast amounts of data quickly, helping investors identify undervalued markets and emerging trends before they gain mainstream attention. Tools like Zillow AI, Bloomberg GPT, and Reuters ML are changing the game. - Automated Underwriting & Valuations: AI removes subjectivity and speeds up underwriting, making it easier to evaluate investment opportunities efficiently. Platforms like House Canary, MASHvisor, and Archer streamline this process. - Sentiment Analysis & Market Trends: AI can track investor sentiment and real-time market trends using tools like Bloomberg Sentiment Index, Reonomy, and Placer.ai, helping investors anticipate shifts before they happen. - Tenant Screening & Property Management: AI-powered tools like Rentberry and Smart Move automate background checks and risk assessments, improving tenant quality and streamlining property management. - Portfolio Optimization & Risk Management: AI helps balance risk and reward, stress-test portfolios, and optimize financing strategies. Tools like Betterment, Personal Capital, Rockport Val, and CredIQ support smart investment decision-making. AI is no longer just about tracking past performance—it's a proactive tool for making better investment decisions in real time. Tune in to learn how you can leverage AI to maximize your portfolio's potential. Are you REady2Scale Your Multifamily Investments? Learn more about growing your wealth, strengthening your portfolio, and scaling to the next level at www.bluelake-capital.com. To reach Ellie & the Blue Lake team, email them at info@bluelake-capital.com or complete our investor form at www.bluelake-capital.com/new-investor-form and they'll connect with you. Credits Producer: Blue Lake Capital Strategist: Syed Mahmood Editor: Emma Walker Opening music: Pomplamoose Timestamps 00:00 Introduction to AI Hacks for Investors 00:49 Hack #1: Market Analysis and Predictions 02:48 Hack #2: Automated Underwriting and Valuations 03:59 Hack #3: Sentiment Analysis 05:56 Hack #4: Tenant Screening and Management 07:18 Hack #5: Portfolio Optimization and Risk Management  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to The SaaS CFO Podcast! Get ready for a truly inspiring and eye-opening episode as we sit down with the dynamic Patrick Rafferty, CEO and founder of UserHub. From an unexpected start in commercial real estate appraisal to becoming a trailblazer in the SaaS world, Patrick's journey is nothing short of extraordinary. In this episode, Patrick unveils how a moment of serendipity led him to his first role in tech and catapulted him into the world of SaaS. Discover the story behind his meteoric rise at Reonomy, where he went from knowing nothing about product management to leading a team of 60 in just seven years. But that's not all—Patrick also gives us an inside look at the creation of UserHub, a groundbreaking user-based billing platform designed to revolutionize how SaaS companies manage billing. We'll explore what sets UserHub apart, its ideal customer profile, and their innovative solutions that blend user management and subscription management into a seamless experience. Plus, Patrick shares invaluable lessons about fundraising, the importance of practice pitches, and the all-crucial metric of time-to-value. Whether you're an aspiring SaaS entrepreneur, a seasoned CFO, or just someone passionate about tech innovation, this episode is brimming with actionable insights and fascinating stories. So, sit back, relax, and let's dive into this captivating conversation with Patrick Rafferty! Show Notes: 00:00 Transitioned from real estate to tech innovation. 05:44 Targeting early-stage SaaS companies for CRM. 08:58 Managing product and engineering, buying SaaS products. 11:41 Product development started in early 2023. Early design partners focused on adoption. 16:21 Seek fundraising advice, practice with lower-priority associates. 19:00 User hub enables fast implementation, optimizing developer experience. 20:23 User Hub to expand and target big companies. Links: SaaS Fundraising Stories: https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/userhub-secures-3-2m-in-pre-seed-funding Patrick Rafferty's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-rafferty-b927642b/ UserHub's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/userhubdev/ UserHub's Website: https://userhub.com/ To learn more about Ben check out the links below: Subscribe to Ben's daily metrics newsletter: https://saasmetricsschool.beehiiv.com/subscribe Subscribe to Ben's SaaS newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/df1db6bf8bca/the-saas-cfo-sign-up-landing-page SaaS Metrics courses here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/ Join Ben's SaaS community here: https://www.thesaasacademy.com/offers/ivNjwYDx/checkout Follow Ben on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrmurray

Christelle Rohaut is the Founder and CEO of Codi (backed by a16z), where she's building the walk-to-work revolution. Codi offers turnkey, private office spaces with the most flexible terms on the market. In a matter of days, any company can find a space for their team, with full and part-time options, outsourced office management, and flexible leases. Codi has also created a Relief Fund to help businesses impacted by WeWork's struggles. Christelle is an Urban Planner who aspires to achieve positive social and natural impacts for happier livelihoods. She seeks to innovatively rethink urban systems to help cities be a happier place for all.(2:11) - State of Office market(13:58) - Feature: Housing Trust Silicon Valley(15:10) - What's wrong with traditional Coworking(21:43) - Types of buildings partnering with Codi(23:56) - Codi's WeWon't marketing campaign(29:34) - Collaboration Superpower: Brian Chesky (Airbnb CEO & Co-founder) & Conchita Martinez (Spanish tennis champion & coach)

Katharine Lau is the CEO and Co-founder of Stuf, a self storage startup delivering modern, tech-enabled storage to consumers and businesses. Stuf partners with real estate owners to monetize basements, garages, and other spaces in commercial buildings as storage, creating new cash flow opportunities for landlords while providing neighborhoods with a new amenity. Stuf was recognized by Fast Company as one of The World's Most Innovative Companies in 2022. Previously, Kat led the supply-side business of Industrious, the nation's leading premium workplace and coworking provider, where she pioneered an industry shift to asset- and liability-light agreements with property owners.(1:42) - Stuf origin story(5:46) - Target markets and type of buildings suited for conversions(10:00) - Business model & scaling CRE conversions(11:32) - Stuf's tech stack(15:02) - Feature: Housing Trust Silicon Valley(16:14) - Industrious transition from asset-heavy to asset-light(20:44) - WeWork's tumultuous office lease renegotiations(22:34) - Future of office uses(25:44) - Office-to-art space conversion(27:22) - Collaboration Superpower: Marie Kondo

Ryan Simonetti is the CEO and co-founder of Convene, a global hospitality company that owns and manages premium Meeting, Event & Workplace locations around the world. His unique expertise in real estate acquisitions, development, and finance has helped catapult Convene to become a pioneer in the commercial real estate industry. Ryan is also the co-founder & Chairman of Ease Capital, a digital-first commercial lending platform that combines data, technology & world-class customer support to streamline the multifamily financing process from end-to-end. Ryan has been recognized for his transformative achievements on Commercial Observer's inaugural Power PropTech List, Real Estate Forum's 50 Under 40 list, Inc. Magazine's '30 Under 30', a list of America's Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs; was named 'Top Entrepreneur' by Crain's New York, and was a finalist in Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year® New York Awards. (3:00) - WeWork's bankruptcy impact on the Office industry(8:17) - Tech vs Real Estate valuations(11:13) - Feature: Housing Trust Silicon Valley (site)(12:26) - Office Markets comparison(16:44) - Convene's performance & KPI's(18:07) - Innovative experience management(25:11) - Office AR & VR adoption(29:07) - Ease Capital - tech-enabled Multifamily lender(31:52) - Collaboration Superpower: Michael Jordan

Today's episode features Andrew Keel, CEO of Keel Team LLC, who shares his experience in mobile home park investing.  He discusses his approach to finding off-market deals through cold calling and the efficiencies he brings to properties through sub-metering and other improvements. Sam asks Andrew about the market sentiment in mobile home park investing and his journey from flipping houses to owning over 2,000 lots across 33 mobile home parks and 11 self-storage facilities. Andrew also explains his company's approach to adding affordable housing units to markets in need while providing great returns and tax benefits for investors. Join Sam and Andrew in today's episode. -------------------------------------------------------------- Cold Calling and Timing [00:00:00] Andrew Keel's Journey [00:01:07] Efficiencies in Mobile Home Park Investing [00:04:20] Building a Cold Calling Team [00:07:48] Forced Sellers in Mobile Home Park Investing [00:10:10] Creating Affordable Housing in Mobile Home Parks [00:11:44] The need for affordable housing [00:12:33] Community engagement in mobile home parks [00:13:36] Connecting buyers with manufactured housing [00:17:09] Building a Team [00:18:45] Creating Win-Wins [00:23:09] Contact Information [00:24:15] -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Andrew: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keelteamrealestate/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/keelteam6/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/keel-team-real-estate/   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Andrew Keel (00:00:00) - they're not gonna wanna sell right when you call 'em, right? They're, you're kind of caught 'em off guard. But it's getting the details on the property, seeing how it's performing, and then following up with them because life happens. I, I, if, if this cold calling has taught me anything, it's that, hey, you know, people are one heart attack away from fire sailing their property. It's all timing and being there when you know something happens to help give them a solution, right? A, a fast exit, uh, because that's, that matters in today's world.   Intro (00:00:27) - Welcome to the How to Scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:40) - Andrew Keel is the c e o of Keel team llc and m h u Top 100 owner of manufactured housing communities with over 2000 lots under management. His team currently manages over 30 manufactured housing communities in 11 self storage facilities. Andrew, welcome to the show. Thanks   Andrew Keel (00:00:56) - For having me. Excited to be here, Sam.   Sam Wilson (00:00:58) - Absolutely. The pleasure is mine. Andrew, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes in the show in 90 seconds or last, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now, and how did you get there?   Andrew Keel (00:01:07) - Started flipping houses around central Florida, uh, through a yellow letter I mailed out. I found two mobile homes, uh, uh, that, that I ended up buying and selling on contract. Ended up meeting a, a park owner and he took me under his wing and, and said, Hey, this is how you syndicate deals and raise money from investors. So now I've been doing that for seven years, and we own, uh, over 2000 lots, across 33 mobile home parks and 11 self storage facilities.   Sam Wilson (00:01:37) - Wow, that's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. Tell me, I guess, what, uh, what's the market sentiment and what it is you're doing right now?   Andrew Keel (00:01:46) - The market sentiment? You know, I think it's, uh, I think there's some, some ups and downs. You know, there's some, there's some landlords out there that have kind of given mobile home park investing a black eye, I would say from, you know, raising rents too fast and, and, and kind of, you know, predatory landlording is, is kind of, you know, going around. So there's some of that out there. Uh, but then there's good operators that are doing it the right way, right? Like, you know, rent's gotta go up, but you gotta fix that deferred maintenance, you gotta improve the properties and make 'em better. And I think there's a win-win there for the tenants and for the investors. So, uh, it's just finding the right operators. Yeah,   Sam Wilson (00:02:23) - No, that, that's absolutely right. Uh, I want to hear, you know, what, what it is that you guys are doing right now. Uh, like who is your target seller? What, what's that, what's that look like for you?   Andrew Keel (00:02:36) - Target seller is, uh, we have a, an acronym, it's called goat and it stands for Gray, old and Tired . And in our c r m we don't pursue any deals unless the owner is a gray, old and tired, uh, owner of commercial real estate, specifically mobile home parks and self storage facilities. Uh, through our sales team, we make over a quarter of a million cold calls to mom and pop owners of, uh, self-storage and, uh, mobile home parks every year. And that's where we buy all of our deals or are off market, uh, direct to owner. And, you know, we've just found that, you know, when we're buying from mom and Pops, we're able to get, you know, uh, typically better deals, but mainly we're buying properties that are not being efficiently run. And when we take them over, you know, there's very easy to see things like, Hey, having your rent roll be digital and software instead of on a yellow pad of paper. Little things that we can do to tweak the operations to make it better. And hey, if that's how they're running the rent roll, imagine what else they're doing that we could tweak to more efficiently and and increase the No, I, so yeah, that's, that's our nutshell. Yeah.   Sam Wilson (00:03:46) - And, and I think anytime, and of course the, the manufacture to housing community space, even for the last decade has certainly been undergoing its fair share of sophisticated ownership groups. Uh, in fact, I would say it's probably more on that front than maybe less at this stage, cuz it's, it's been such a hot, uh, a hot, um, asset class to be buying in. But tell me some more other efficiencies maybe that you guys see some sophistication that you can bring to the table at scale, maybe that a mom and pop owner just can't afford to do with a single property.   Andrew Keel (00:04:20) - Yeah, I mean, the big one that comes to mind is sub metering the, uh, water and the water usage, right? The under each home, you know, now there's technology out there with internet connections. The sub meters actually have internet connection and will in real time notify you of high usage. So if they go over, uh, you know, high usage, we can stop it, right? You know, very early on, instead of waiting 30 days for us to get a, uh, uh, an invoice in the mail from the water company telling us that we have a water leak because our water bill is double right. You know, we're able to just react in real time where the mom and pops, they may not even be billing back for the water and sewer. They may just be including that in lot rent. So not only were we billing it back, but we're also catching leaks earlier to, you know, reduce that potential expense.   Sam Wilson (00:05:07) - Yeah. And it's small stuff like that. I mean, I don't know what, what do those meters cost you on a, on a per home basis?   Andrew Keel (00:05:14) - Let's say 500 bucks all in with installation.   Sam Wilson (00:05:17) - Okay. But, okay, so 500 bucks, let's assume it's a hundred pad, uh, a hundred, a hundred pad park, that's 50 grand, right? And so that's right to a mom and pop owner, that's a tough pill to swallow. Like, man, you know, I don't know. That's, we, we run this park and that's $50,000 and you know, he probably had a, had a new truck in 10 years, so, you know, he's looking at a new truck or backfilling water and goes, I think I'll just take the new truck. Uh, cuz you know, if you have to choose how to spend his money, where you look at that and say, how can we not put that amount of money into these parks? It just, it just makes financial sense.   Andrew Keel (00:05:52) - Like, for example, a park we bought it had water leaks and it was losing $2,000 a month on the water sewer recapture. Wow. So if you take 2000 a month, month, it times up by 12 months gives you 24 K a year in additional expense. If you're able to, you know, add 24 K in NOI to that property and then add a seven cap, you know, you just saved $342,000 over $342,000. So to spend 50 k to make 342,000, we're gonna do that every day of the week.   Sam Wilson (00:06:26) - For sure. For sure. You call me when you have that next, uh, next, uh, you know, uh, opportunity right there. If I can do that in a year, I'll, I'll, I'll be all, I'll be all about it. Thanks, Andrew. Um, no, that's fantastic. I love that. I love that. Let's get into the, the, the 250,000 cold calls comment. I mean, that's mind boggling. Are there 250,000 self-storage and or mobile home? Are there, are there that many combined in the United States   Andrew Keel (00:06:53) - That there there's not, yeah, there's about 50,000 or so of each asset class. Okay. And obviously, you know, for mobile home parks, that number's going down every year because it's really hard to get new ones developed and the existing ones are being torn down and turned into apartments or, or something else. Uh, you know, for it's self storage is obviously being built up, you know, uh, more and more. But, uh, you know, a lot of that is recurring calls. You know, they don't pick up, you know, you're leaving voicemails, you're doing different things. But, but yeah, I think that is our niche. And you know, for example, we have a $4 million property under contract right now that's supposed to close at the end of the month, a hundred percent owner financing. Wow. At 6% and a seven year term and 25 year amortization. Okay. So like a hundred percent l t v, you know, and, and do your return metrics on that when all of the capital you're raising is for improvements. Hmm.   Sam Wilson (00:07:48) - Mm-hmm. . That's amazing. That's amazing. Awesome. And people, people will tell you that those deals don't exist, but you're, you're living proof that that, that they do in fact still exist. What's it, what's it been like, give us some insight onto building a cold calling team and even getting the deal flow and data right? Such that that team can then continue to produce those phone calls. I mean, that's, that's a whole process all itself. Yeah.   Andrew Keel (00:08:13) - Oh, it a hundred percent is, yeah. We used a, a software called Reonomy to help identify property owners and get their contact information and then, you know, really identifying the team. You know, we found that it's better to get sales guys that can work part-time because do it eight hours straight of just cold calling. You're gonna lose energy and you're gonna, by the end of it, you're not gonna be as productive. So we have, uh, a team that works part-time, you know, four hours a day, right. In the mornings typically. And, you know, they're on a dialer, so they're hitting, you know, multiple numbers at once, you know, reaching out to people and, and it's been really productive for us, you know, building those relationships, you know, hey, they, they're not gonna wanna sell right when you call 'em right? They're, you're kind of caught 'em off guard, but it's getting the details on the property, seeing how it's performing, and then following up with them because life happens. I, i, if, if this cold calling has taught me anything, it's that, hey, you know, people are one heart attack away from fire sailing their property. It's all timing and being there when you know something happens to help give them a solution. Right. A a fast exit. Uh, because that's, that matters in today's world.   Sam Wilson (00:09:18) - It, it certainly does. And I was the unfortunate recipient of some news on some deals we'd been chasing a couple years ago. And, uh, you know, the seller at that point was just hard and fast. No, no, no, not gonna do it. And then, uh, I found out today that all the whole portfolio had traded hands. And I'm like,   Andrew Keel (00:09:34) - It's my own   Sam Wilson (00:09:34) - Fault for not staying in front of them. Right. I mean, it's my own fault. Those are lessons learned the hard way where you just go, okay, you've got to, like you said, it's one heart attack away from suddenly going, Hey, we're gonna fire sale this. You know, I got three months left to live maybe and I don't really care anymore, so somebody buy it so I can go do what I want for the next 90 days. Uh, yeah. And   Andrew Keel (00:09:52) - Right now, you know, with what's going on with all these, uh, interest rate caps that people are buying and, and what happened with these variable rate loans, you know, I think, I think there's more and more forced sellers than there are, uh, you know, people that, that would desire to sell, you know, at, at the right time. So there might be some opportunity there. Do   Sam Wilson (00:10:10) - You think it's happened because it's certainly, I've seen it happen in the, um, multi-family space. I hadn't really heard or thought much about it in the manufactured housing or community, uh, space. People taking on bridge debt, bridge debt is now coming due. They need to refi, but they can't, cuz it doesn't make sense. They're, they're doing cash in refis. I mean, are you guys seeing that in your, in your, uh, asset class as well?   Andrew Keel (00:10:35) - Not a ton of it. You know, I think it's still early even for multi-family. You know, I think it, it's still early, but there were some operators out there that took variable rate loans and now are negative cash flow. And I mean, I, I've seen it, right? These CMBS lenders are vicious. They will take your property back. They want to take your property back. Right. So it, it, it's really, you know, a matter of time before we see blood in the streets.   Sam Wilson (00:11:00) - Yeah. Yeah. That's unfortunate. Yeah. And that's, uh, and again, you know, I haven't seen it a lot in the multifamily space, but certainly have heard the rumblings and have, uh, you know, talked to some lenders and people that have indicated that they're, that they are seeing that, uh, indeed occur on the, especially on the cash and refi side, on, on multi-family properties, which has gotta be a painful situation Oh. Uh, for everyone. Uh, especially   Andrew Keel (00:11:21) - Everyone, especially   Sam Wilson (00:11:22) - Your investor base. Um, so yeah, that's, uh, let's talk about the affordable housing crisis. I mean, it's something, you know, we hear that those three words put together all the time, and you're in a space that is a, like you said, it's, it's a, it's not just a constrain, but it's a dwindling supply space. So what are you guys doing on that front to preserve and or create more affordable housing?   Andrew Keel (00:11:44) - Yeah, great question. I love talking about this because, you know, this is the win-win, right? You know, we're, we're buying these properties from mom and pops who have let things kind of dwindle, right? Like, we're buying properties that are 70% occupied, you know, so there's, there's more lots sitting there, but the mom and pops just don't have the effort. Or like you said, the, the funds to go and buy homes, bring them in and set 'em up on those lots, right? So when we're able to rejuvenate a property and come in with a lot of energy and a lot of new capital, it, it just, it, it is so awesome. That is why I love doing this business because I'm able to see lives change. I'm able to add affordable housing units to markets that desperately need it. And at the same time, I'm able to create a win for our investors because they're able to get great returns on their investment and also get great tax benefits because of these, these mobile home parks.   Andrew Keel (00:12:33) - But I think, you know, still the majority of mobile home parks, like over 60% are still owned by Mom and Pops mm-hmm. , and they've just kind of used these things as a retirement vehicle and haven't reinvested into them. So, uh, that vacant lot scenario is where we're adding affordable housing units. And, you know, the, the high level econ 1 0 1 is like, hey, the supply of mobile home parks are shrinking every year. That's like unknown. Just type in, you know, mobile home parks, uh, shutting down into Google and see what pops up. It's, it's all over the news because, uh, deferred maintenance, because redevelopment, you know, you name it. And we're able to buy these properties and keep them mobile home parks and increase the occupancy so that we're adding affordable housing. And, and that just matters that, that matters because we desperately need it. Manufactured housing can be built for around $50 a square foot where site built housing is over a hundred dollars a square foot. So it's like there's a huge win here, uh, to be had. And, uh, yeah, I'm excited to be able to add to that supply.   Sam Wilson (00:13:36) - Tell me about, tell me about, um, maybe community engagement inside of your, uh, communities. What's something you guys are doing on that front? Obviously retention of your, um, residence is probably a lot easier in your space, but are there things that you're doing to really improve the, um, just kinda the holistic experience of someone living in your communities?   Andrew Keel (00:14:00) - Yeah, I think the first thing is we always have an onsite manager that is, is a tenant that lives in our park. You know, and, and just giving them that point of contact really makes it feel, you know, more like a community because they connect everybody. They're talking with everybody. Uh, that has been huge. You know, we're, we're buying from mom and pops who have self-managed Yeah. And maybe they live a couple hours away and they don't make it to the property. Uh, you know, every month where an onsite manager that's working, even if they are part-time, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you know, you know, and whatever the, the hours are. But it's just good to have someone there that they can talk to and they can work through stuff and see the options. You know, we noticed that in, uh, during c o d, you know, there was a ton of rental assistance programs, but there was no one to like hold the, the hand of the tenants and help get them signed up for these.   Andrew Keel (00:14:49) - So our onsite managers really carried that load and, and sat down on the computers and helped, helped our tenants sign up for these rental assistance programs. And, you know, that is a huge burden off of their back. Now they can spend the money that they have on food and other resources instead of needing to worry, you know, they got thousands of dollars for their rental assistance and that was just a huge help. So having onsite managers and then obviously communicating well with our, with our resident base is, is huge for us. So those are two things, community engagement wise, uh, that we make sure to do every year.   Sam Wilson (00:15:19) - Yeah, no, I think that that's really, really cool. Thank thanks for sharing the insight on that. Yeah. And having that local, that person that's right there, living one of your neighbors. I mean, I think that would be just a huge, um, just a huge thing that would really, you know, again, not just resonant retention, but but from a, a, uh, feeling like you belong there sort of thing would, would make a big Yeah. A big difference on that front. You mentioned bringing homes in. So you buy a park, use the example, you said it's 70% occupied, that means, let's call it a hundred. I don't know how many units was there, but let's just make a number up and say it's a hundred. So you got 30 open slots, you're gonna bring houses in. Are you guys then selling those to your residents? Are you using those as park owned homes? What is that? What's your plan there?   Andrew Keel (00:16:02) - Our plan is, is we want tenant owned home communities. It's just more scalable and, and we're, we want to rent out the dirt, not the homes themselves. Right. You know, a lot of people don't, don't think about this, but manufactured homes are built differently. The drywall is not the same size that the windows are different sizes, the doors are different sizes. You can't just go down to the Home Depot and get some of these materials. So you're gonna have to special order them and, and ship them in. And, you know, with the logistics issues we've had the past couple of years, that can get expensive. So we don't want to own the homes. We want our tenants to own the homes and we will sell them, uh, sometimes via like a, a, a lease option or a, you know, a, a a rent credit program where they will make monthly installments towards purchasing the home. Uh, but mostly, uh, you know, there's financing companies out there as well, like Triad and PEP Lending that will finance our tenants and then we will just, you know, get law rent.   Sam Wilson (00:16:56) - Got it. Got it. So you guys aren't even directly buying the homes, you're just connecting the buyers with the, uh, manufactured housing, uh, manufacturers. Is that right? Or are you guys buying 'em, bringing 'em in and then connecting them? Some   Andrew Keel (00:17:09) - Sometimes. But, you know, everybody likes it with a bow on top and ready to go. So, we'll, we'll actually get the homes in and there's a program called Cash Program at 21st, uh, mortgage where we, we'll buy the homes or we won't even have to buy the homes. We'll get the homes moved in, get 'em set up on the lot, and then we'll market them and then, you know, funnel, uh, interested buyers to this 21st mortgage who's a part of Berkshire Hathaway and that whole, uh, you know, Clayton Homes, you know, Warren Buffet deal and they will finance our tenants.   Sam Wilson (00:17:38) - Got it. Oh, that's cool. I like that. I like the way you put that with, everybody wants it with a bow on top, cuz that's that's absolutely true. I know here, and again, I haven't had, uh, we haven't talked mobile home parks on this show probably, uh, maybe six, seven months. So I know the last time someone came on and really dove deep into the mobile home park space, even then they were experiencing just some supply chain constraints as it pertained to getting new homes, getting things on the lots. Has any of that lessened, or what's that look like now?   Andrew Keel (00:18:06) - Yes, it has lessened, you know, it was 18 months to order a home and it wasn't come in for 18 months. It was crazy. Wow. Back in Covid and all the, you know, the logistics issues. Uh, but now we're down to about four months. Okay. So we'll order it and four months it's coming in, which is amazing. I mean, I'm, you know, very grateful for that because 18 months was just so hard. And then they, they wouldn't tell you it was 18 months. Right. They'd tell you it was gonna be 12 months. Right. And then they'd push it back and then they push it back, and then it ended up being 18 months. So imagine your proforma when you're planning on income at, at month 13, and you're not getting until month 19. So there was a lot of operators hurting at that time, but things have improved on that front.   Sam Wilson (00:18:45) - Oh, that's great. That's great. I'm glad to, glad to hear that. Yeah. That's one of those things that, uh, like you said, if it's, if it's, you can't, you can't underwrite, you know, when, when timelines aren't kept from your manufacturers, you just can't, you can't stick to it. Tell me about this. You've built a team. You've, you've gone from, I think you started in fixing flip, is that right? If I'm remembering your story correctly in the beginning Yep. Picks and flipping. Yep. Now you've grown this, this huge mobile home park, uh, or mobile home community business. You've got team members, you've got cold callers working all day. You guys are selling homes, you're buying communities. I mean, you're going like gangbusters. What is one thing you feel like you've done really well that maybe somebody that's just starting out and or you know, has a little traction should emulate   Andrew Keel (00:19:28) - Hiring overseas? Hiring overseas and siloing off, you know, tasks and then documenting really well, if, if I was gonna, you know, do it all over again, I would've done that earlier. You know, you can hire more loyal and, uh, you know, less expensive help overseas that will be, will be just fully capable and then some to execute. And, you know, I, if you can do that, I, I really think every business owner should really explore hiring some overseas help. Mm-hmm.   Sam Wilson (00:20:02) -  mm-hmm. . Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. When it comes to things that maybe rewind the tape a little bit and, you know, you said, gosh, I could have done this better. What are, what are some of those things that come to mind?   Andrew Keel (00:20:15) - Yeah, man, I, uh, in my early days, you know, when we were just hiring people, uh, we didn't do like a personality assessment or anything like that to see if they would actually be good in their role, uh, long term. So we had a lot of turnover, uh, because it was, hey, we, we put someone that was not detail oriented in a role that required, you know, very detail oriented, uh, personality types. So now we use a system called the Predictive Index. Mm-hmm. . And it does a, a cognitive and a personality assessment. And it's just aligned our team with the roles and we're, we're fighting. They're staying longer, they're happier, you know, because we're playing to their strengths. So that's been huge for us.   Sam Wilson (00:20:59) - Yeah. Man, what a powerful thing that is. I can, I can just speak, uh, and completely agree with you on that front. Using a personality assessment and familiar with predictive predictive index, the disc test. A lot of those, uh, you know, maybe one, one, I don't know if one's necessarily better than the other, but I've used them both. And, uh, gosh, I was even having a conversation with a new hire yesterday when I was like, wait, I can refer back to your, um, personality test that you took. And I recognize that I need to speak to you and engage with you in a different way such that you understand what it is I'm trying to say. And, and give you what you need to go do your job.   Andrew Keel (00:21:38) - And Exactly.   Sam Wilson (00:21:39) - And I, that's so powerful. It's so powerful and I so powerful. And actually this, there was a team member that we just, this is the same team member we just brought on, but I had a role, I wanted to hire this particular, I wanted to fill this role and I already knew this person. I wanted to put her in that role. She did the personality test and I said, no, but there's another kind of blended role that we can put you in that will do a little bit of those things, but fill the gap over here much more meaningfully based on your skillset. She's way happier and she's crushing it. It's like she That's awesome. No, it is awesome. So I just thank, thanks for sharing that. Cause I think if people aren't utilizing those very, and they're not expensive.   Andrew Keel (00:22:17) - No, they're not. No.   Sam Wilson (00:22:19) - And it makes all the difference in the world. So I can just testify to what you've just said as a, as a leader, um, how powerful that is when we're building out, uh, our teams on that front. So very, very cool. You, you've shared with us so much here today, Andrew, on how to build a team, talking about, you know, making 250, which is an astounding number thousand cold calls, how you guys are buying, you're buying everything offline, buying from, from, uh, you know, mom and pops, how you're bringing sophistication to the industry in this space. We didn't even get a talk about self-storage. I mean, you guys are buying in, in, in that department too. Maybe you'll have to come back on show number two and tell us how you're, how you guys are finding opportunity on that front. Is there anything else really that comes to mind today that you'd say, man, Sam, these are some things that I really wanna share with your listeners that are relevant to what we're doing and that, uh, I think will make a difference?   Andrew Keel (00:23:09) - Yeah. I would say at, at the end of the day, uh, you know, being willing to, uh, give back and, and try to create win-wins, you know, in, in your business, right? Like, uh, our, our goal is not to make as much money as we humanly can, right? At the end of the day, it's creating a win-win for our residents. Mm-hmm. . So they're happy. And by doing that, they're gonna stay longer and it's gonna be a win for our investors because they're gonna have more reliable, uh, income and, and, you know, income and distributions off of their investments. So that's, that's something I can go to bed at night and lay my head down knowing, hey, I'm doing, I'm doing good in the world. I'm adding affordable housing and I'm, I am, you know, keeping these assets as mobile home parks in, in my case, uh, where otherwise they might have been redeveloped and, and turned into something else and these people would've lost, uh, lost their homes and lost their living arrangements. So, uh, yeah, I'll just spin that way.   Sam Wilson (00:24:06) - Awesome. Andrew, thank you for coming on the show today. I do appreciate it. Certainly learned a lot from you. If our listeners wanna get in touch with you and learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?   Andrew Keel (00:24:15) - Best way to do that would be to check out my website, it's keel team.com. That's just K e E L t e A m.com.   Sam Wilson (00:24:25) - Kehl team.com. We'll make sure we put that there in the show notes. Andrew, thank you again. Have a great rest of your day.   Andrew Keel (00:24:31) - Yeah, thank you so much, Sam.   Sam Wilson (00:24:33) - Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can, do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.      

From acquisition to construction and rehab to property management, you'll learn how to look for opportunistic value-add deals with today's guest, William Walker. Don't miss his trajectory-changing real estate tips so you can grow your business and make sound investments!WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE Efficient ways to start your real estate careerHow to locate, manage, and exit your first dealThe value of real estate syndications and good property managersAdvantages of new-build multifamily propertiesTools and tips to help you understand the basics of real estate investingRESOURCES/LINKS MENTIONEDMid-America Apartment Communities http://www.maac.com/Reonomy https://www.reonomy.com/ULI Events | Urban Land Institute https://uli.org/events/ 1% Rule in Real Estate https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/one-percent-rule.aspUtah Association of REALTORS https://utahrealtors.com/Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki https://amzn.to/3gCS6NWMultifamily Millions by David Lindahl https://amzn.to/3D5bL0uCommercial Empire - Virtual 3-day event https://legacywealthholdings.com/commercial-empire/Best Ever Conference https://www.besteverconference.com/ABOUT WILLIAM WALKERWilliam serves as a Managing Partner and leads pursuit efforts for the 4M Real Estate Investments. He is a CPA and registered appraiser with diverse experience in portfolio and single-asset valuation, transaction due diligence, valuation review, quality of earnings analysis, construction, and property management.  Additionally, he has acquired operational and management experience through his residential portfolio in Nashville, TN. William's real estate, accounting, and auditing background provide unique expertise and support during acquisition and throughout the life of the investment.CONNECT WITH WILLIAMWebsite: 4M Capital Real Estate Investments https://4mrei.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/willwalker_3/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamwalker1/CONNECT WITH USWant a list of top-rated real estate conferences, virtual meetups, and mastermind groups? Send Tate an email at tate@glequitygroup.com to learn more about real estate using a relational approach.Looking for ways to make passive income? Greenlight Equity Group can help you invest in multifamily properties and create consistent cash flow without being a landlord. Book a consultation call and download Tate's free e-book, "F.I.R.E.-Financial Independence Retire Early via Apartment Investing," at www.investwithgreenlight.com to start your wealth-building journey today!

In the second installment of this special Transform It Forward mini series, Paul reviews some of the highlights from interviews with Mike Starkey, Chief Information Officer at Christy Sports, Robert Gerwig, Senior Vice President of Distribution at Sweetwater, and Aviva Fink, the Vice President of Growth and Partnerships at Reonomy to take a status check of the retail industry. Using clips from these interviews as a guide, Paul explores the evolution of the retail world over the past few years, and where it could be headed in the future. Specifically, the episode covers the mass exodus from in-person retail shops to exclusively online shopping experiences that took place throughout the pandemic period, strategies for making use of the rich sources of data we have at our fingertips today, and the art of change management during these rapidly evolving times. Interested in learning more about the show? Check out our website: https://www.transformitforward.com/

Looking for actionable advice to achieve profitability in CRE?   In this episode, we welcome Terry Hale, author of “The Two Best Strategies to Profit with Commercial Real Estate.” Terry is an active investor and CEO of a private commercial real estate firm that provides acquisitions for all commercial property types and investment opportunities. Today, he brings his wealth of knowledge and experience to talk about non-conventional investing methodology, value-add assets and self-storage, and how to thrive in the current market.   [00:01 - 06:14] Working Smart as an Investor Why Terry decided to reverse engineer his buying approach Getting into value-add plays Terry's advice: Don't do personal guarantees How he's able to protect his portfolio   [06:15 - 21:34] The Best Strategies For Profit Terry discusses his book: The Two Best Strategies to Profit with Commercial Real Estate Wholesaling and changing how contracts are written Repositioning and capturing lift and upside How to find distressed sellers Common mistakes that investors are doing right now Networking and building relationships with brokers who are specialists in a particular asset Focusing on recession-proof properties   [21:35 - 22:30] Closing Segment Reach out to Terry!  Links Below Final Words Tweetable Quotes   “It comes down to the story, the reasons of why they're selling. Once you deal with a motivated seller… They just want you to perform and they're going to play by your rules.” - Terry Hale “Most people are result driven in their mindset, but they just don't make the connection and follow through.” - Terry Hale “So I see that a lot of people are just overpaying for property. They're not looking at opportunity in the growth area.” - Terry Hale -----------------------------------------------------------------------------   Connect with Terry! Go to TerryHale.com or email him at support@terryhale.com.   Resource Mentioned Reonomy   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] Terry Hale: when you write it in the contract that the deposit is put down and that you're utilizing a unilateral clause, it's unilateral, meaning it only takes your signature to get your money back. So no one can actually tie up your money. And you always make sure in the contract that there is a specific performance box, make sure that that is always going to be unchecked, meaning that they cannot sue you if you decide to pull out at the end of the day. You have control earnest money and they can't go after you for a specific performance because you didn't perform.  [00:00:42] Sam Wilson: Terry Hale is a commercial real estate investor, author, and mentor of 25 plus years in the business. Terry, welcome to the show.  [00:00:49] Terry Hale: Thanks, Sam. Thanks for having me. [00:00:51] Sam Wilson: Pleasure's mine. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes in the show: in 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?  [00:00:58] Terry Hale: Where did I start? So I started off, I'm a third generation contractor. I saw my dad working his fingers to the bone, decided that I didn't want to get dirt underneath my fingernails. So we were doing a big job of development project for a very wealthy individual and I begged and completed for his help. And he put me to work and I worked for 5% and I learned the rich man's game. That's where I, that's where I started off. And I realized quickly once I got my financial legs, that my debt to income ratio was hurt because I guarantee too much debt. [00:01:26] Terry Hale: So I had to reverse engineer my thought of how I can pursue these deals. And I stopped buying property utilizing a capitalization rate. And I started looking for distressed properties that have lift, that have upside. And where I am today is, very successful already, came back out of retirement. And, now I work with people one on one, and we move forward and we mainly acquire recessionary-proof properties, like multifamily, self-storage, and mobile home parks.  [00:01:52] Sam Wilson: That is a lot of moving pieces, 25 going on, I think you said 25 plus years there in your bio. And I know it's been longer than that, probably over 30 at this point, from what I understand, most of what you've done has been a pretty non-conventional approach to buying assets. Is that right?  [00:02:09] Terry Hale: Yeah, I had to, because in the beginning of my career, I was just, again, buying on cap rates. So I would look at the gross income. I'd look at the itemized expenses, the property's expenses. I'd look at the net income, simple formulas, the NOI divided by the purchase price, that yields the cap, right? Very simple. I was just buying two rips Sam, and I had to reverse engineer and start looking at these value- add plays, vacancy, low rents, mismanaged, property, inheritance property, partners feuding, all those wonderful things that people want to sell. [00:02:39] Sam Wilson: Right. And so when you got into those, were you finding seller financing opportunities? Were you finding, I mean, you know, there's a lot of hair on a lot of those deals, so break some of those down for us and how you've used that as a springboard to really, I mean, the rest of your career, it sounds like you've spent using those same strategies. [00:02:56] Terry Hale: Yeah. And the strategies continued to evolve, just watching and seeing how people are buying businesses and just looking at creative ways. Like, I just continued to go back after I closed a deal and realized, you know, it's going to be a little bit of, of a challenge. And I knew it was a challenge at a time, but, you know, it's just going to be a challenge of time to reposition. [00:03:17] Terry Hale: So we actually went back and worked a deferment of payment where it actually stops the payments and puts the actual monthly debt service to the end of the loan. So they're still going to make their money, but they make it later, which gives us an opportunity to free up capital and kick in the marketing and efforts to fill the vacancies. [00:03:34] Terry Hale: But yeah, some deals have seller financing right out of the gate. Obviously, Sam, they would because they don't, you know, they don't qualify for bank financing, something that's sitting at say 50% occupancy, any lender, regardless it's of a conventional lender or private lender or hard money lender even, they're going to look at it and say, wait a sec, you know, this thing has, like you said, a lot of hair on it and we don't want to take on that risk. [00:03:57] Terry Hale: So they're going to want someone to buy it and come in with a ton of money where it just makes sense for us to approach it from a seller-financed aspect. But for, for the listeners, I want to give some value- add to that. When I was personally guaranteeing these deals, that's what hurt me. That's where I hit the ceiling. [00:04:14] Terry Hale: My credit was good and I still had cash reserves in the bank, but I just guaranteed too much debt. So that's why lenders were shying away from me. So I would encourage all the listeners, whether you're doing residential commercial or buying businesses or doing anything where you're making money, try not to give personal guarantees. It's non-recourse structure. And when you're doing a non-recourse, that means that you're actually signing on behalf of a company versus putting it all the weight on your own shoulders.  [00:04:40] Sam Wilson: Right. Yeah. And you've been in this business long enough to have weathered the 2008 crisis where a lot of people got hammered because of their personal guarantees that were out there. How was your portfolio structured differently such that maybe you didn't suffer the same effects that other people did.  [00:04:57] Terry Hale: Yeah, it was a bad, big, bad banks, man, with those negative deferred amortized loans. People, you fog a mirror, you get a loan, right? That's what we're talking about. I stopped, when I went into retirement in my late thirties, I was already doing nonrecourse structures. [00:05:11] Terry Hale: When I came back into the game, I realized, Sam, that people, they want really good deals, right? And when I resell these, I'm not selling these at a heavy retail price. I'm still selling them at discounted prices. Because I've created so much value and being able to buy it with creative structures. So one of the things that I did during that whole 2008, that whole upside-down situation. I was all set up in non-recourse structures, but I also did a very slick technique on all my contracts, where I had the contracts written in the way as such where they said that they are assumable, transferable, non-recourse seller finance notes. [00:05:51] Terry Hale: So what that means in layman's terms is that I can actually take that deal at any point in time 'cause everything's for sale, that the wife, the dog and the kid, right? So somebody wants the deal. I can actually take all that work that I put into it, working smart, and putting the deal together, and someone else wants it, they can step right into my shoes and just assume it assume that non-recourse seller finance note.  [00:06:15] Sam Wilson: Gotcha. That's very, very cool. I love that. Tell me, you know, about this, you're still using, I think, today two strategies for profit. You guys kind of have two separate parts of your business. How are you finding opportunity, especially as it pertains to these two strategies? Can you break those down for us and tell us how you're finding opportunity in that?  [00:06:33] Terry Hale: For sure, Sam. So I did author a book and the name of the book is The Two Best Strategies to Profit with Commercial Real Estate. And the one strategy to profit is everything that we write is always going to be, and I said this earlier, put into a company, right? So our contracts are written in a way where it is, you know, buyer, Terry Hale or one of my companies, but it's always going to be, and/ or signs. So, what that does is that gives the person who has it written in and/or signs the ability to assign the contract. [00:07:03] Terry Hale: So, one of our strategies, when we start going through our due diligence, which typically could be 30, 45, 60, sometimes even 90 days. If we find that there's money in the deal, of course, cause we recognize that up front, but that the juice just really isn't worth the squeeze. We don't want to put our time and energy there ''cause time is money, right? We could focus on something bigger and better that's going to produce more money. So some of these smaller deals, maybe in a smaller tertiary market out in the sticks, we just decide that it's a good deal, but it just doesn't fit our model. So that one strategy we just assign the contract. It's basically flipping our wholesaling commercial property, but it's done in a way where you're not putting any of your capital at risk . 'cause all we do is put up an EMD, which is earnest money deposit. That earnest money deposit is always going to be refundable. And if you're slick enough to do what I do, you never put that money at risk because you have something called the unilateral clause. [00:07:55] Terry Hale: And when you write it in the contract that the deposit is put down and that you're utilizing a unilateral clause, it's unilateral, meaning it only takes your signature to get your money back. So no one can actually tie up your money. And you always make sure in the contract that there is a specific performance box, make sure that that is always going to be unchecked, meaning that they cannot sue you if you decide to pull out at the end of the day. You have control earnest money and they can't go after you for a specific performance because you didn't perform. So that's one strategy.  [00:08:28] Sam Wilson: Most sellers, I'm asking for a clarification or tell me why I'm wrong, most sellers, I would think are savvy enough to look at a unilateral clause or a specific performance, you know, clause and just say, you know, we want that in there. You know, Terry, I don't want to do business with you. Thanks for the earnest money. I don't care if it's $10 million, but I don't want you pulling out at the 89 of 90 and then walking. So, no, I'm not working with you. How do you overcome that?  [00:08:53] Terry Hale: Well, it does come up from time to time, but not as often as one would think. When it does come up, we just let 'em know that that's the way we do business. And if it doesn't work for them, you know, if time and circumstances changes, circle back and let us know, and we wish you the best. We're not really pulling the wool over people's eyes and trying to sneak stuff through. We have a very high level of ethics and integrity here in my firm, and I've always practiced that throughout my entire career and I always will.  [00:09:16] Terry Hale: The main situation here is that the properties that we're going after, and I totally agree with you, Sam, the average person would think just like that, right? Like, Hey, I'm not going to want to do that. I'm going to want to make sure I got you on the hook. And all this, the properties, the differences the properties we're pursuing, and the sellers were pursuing. [00:09:33] Terry Hale: There's either going to be a problem with the property and they can't sell it. There's going to be a problem with the seller and they need some quick relief. As I mentioned earlier, partners feuding, ill health, just out of gas. And it comes down to the story, the story on the reasons of why they're selling. You know, once you deal with a motivated seller, man, I'm telling you, that's stuff that they could care less about. They just want you to perform. And they're going to play by your rules if you're showing them that you have the ability to perform.  [00:09:59] Sam Wilson: Right. Absolutely, which brings me to my next question. You know, as far as I can tell, every asset class in commercial real estate is just on fire. And I know you brought up some, you know, points here where you say, Hey, you know, there's, there's partners feuding, or there's, you know, sickness. There's all sorts of reasons why someone becomes a distressed seller. How do you find those distressed sellers? And then I guess on top of that, why don't they just put it out the market? I mean, right now stuff's just selling for stupid prices. So why not just pun it through the traditional channels? [00:10:29] Terry Hale: Yeah. So a lot of times in hot markets, and the market is exceptionally hot right now, there's no doubt, but we are still locating off-market projects. And the way we market to these people, and a lot of people are doing the same is you can purchase lists. You can go on platforms like Reonomy and Reonomy is a platform where you can get cellphone numbers direct to the seller. But the thing about that is, Sam, and you know this, right? Because I'm sure you're like me. We're victims in a sense, because we've been handed a book and we've neglected to read it, cover to cover. We get that gratification right out of the gate that we have that book. [00:11:00] Terry Hale: We have that knowledge in our hands, but until we digest that knowledge, it's still useless. You actually have to digest the knowledge and then apply the knowledge to be able to get the results. Most people are result driven in their mindset, but they just don't make the connection and follow through. And that's just life. That's why that's that 3% rule, that only 3% are actually controlling. The rest of the people are the foot soldiers that are out there kind of, you know, making things happen because they're being delegated the responsibility, and they're given direction and they're following that directly. [00:11:30] Terry Hale: So my point is one would think that even in a hot market like today, that there's tons and tons of competition, but it comes down to also relationship building with brokers beside the fact of doing direct mail or making cold calls through that Reonomy platform or any other way that somebody may use the search engine like Google or being or whatever to actually locate property, go on LoopNet, Crexi, CityFeet, you know, all these different places for self-storage, mobile home parks, mobilehomeparkstore.com. It's also noting that someone out there is advertising to the marketplace. Like you said, slap it up online. Why don't they just sell it? A lot of people just aren't looking for those huge value add deals, where it's going to take a bunch of capital to put into reposition. [00:12:11] Terry Hale: Plus they don't have the connections for third-party marketing management collections to make that happen. And they don't have a team underneath them to really take it serious and move it forward. So we're still finding very, very juicy deals, but the second strategy the one of course is the wholesale strategy. [00:12:27] Terry Hale: The second strategy is to really capture that lift, that upside. And we won't typically touch a project unless it's got seven figures. So it has to have a million-dollar upside for us to really get involved with it, to say to ourselves, okay, we're going to close this deal with capital. We're going to bring on. All of the moving parts, both the physical, you know, automate modernization, and then also the online web presence and all of the way to connect to that third party, put all that energy into it. That's repositioning when we reposition our property for tax reasons, we hold it for 12 months. We stabilize it. We create three things which everyone wants, which is a trailing 12 months, a rent roll and a profit loss. Once we have that intelligent data, we can go back to market. We can slap it up and sell it at retail price. And then we create that lift and make all the money.  [00:13:22] Sam Wilson: Right. That makes, that makes a lot of sense. When you look at where we are in the marketplace and you guys are obviously, you know, you've got your own creative strategy for finding opportunity, but as you look at the, and we're going to, you know, just sort of broad, kind of broad brush here, when you look at investors at large and you see the kind of investment philosophy that's going on in the market right now, and especially in this really hot market, what are some mistakes you feel like investors are making right now? [00:13:48] Terry Hale: I've done a deep dive into the way people purchase property. And as I was purchasing property and my original mentor was doing it. And when you're buying property and you're paying these crazy numbers that we just discussed, you're buying it, you know, like out here, you know, California, crazy Malibu, California, where I'm located, you're at like three cap, four cap. I mean, you're not going to make money. The only thing you're doing is playing appreciation and taking advantage of some depreciation aspect. You have, you're lacking in the four reasons why people should buy property to begin with, which is appreciation, depreciation, cash flow, and then to do the cash-out refinance, right?  [00:14:27] Terry Hale: So I see that a lot of people are just overpaying for property. They're not looking at, at opportunity in the growth area. For example, we just wholesale a deal in Montgomery, Alabama, and somebody would say, well, why go to Montgomery? Well, look, if you don't have your fingers on the pulse and understanding exactly what's happening in certain areas, we knew just because it was public knowledge where money's going, and there's a couple of hundred million dollars going into the Montgomery area, that tells me something right, tells me something. So when we see things like this happening, or the Panthers are slating out in South Carolina to put in a $32 million arena so they can do workouts and have their athletic field. And we know that money's coming in to little areas like Rock Hill, South Carolina, and you see a self-storage facility sitting at Rock Hill, South Carolina. Well, guess what? People are going to want that deal. And dirt around it, too, for expansion. So just being in the know and I always say common sense, isn't so common.  [00:15:24] Sam Wilson: Those are some, some wildly different projects in very different places. How do you stay in front of it? I mean, that's a lot of moving pieces across a very big country. [00:15:32] Terry Hale: Yeah. Well, as they say, the size of your net worth is due to the size of your network. And I encourage everybody to do that networking aspect. I mean, just me meeting up with you and having some common ground. You know, off-topic of this podcast, we could have future discussions. And next thing you know, we're chatting up about something big that's coming into Tennessee in a certain area. And all of a sudden you're like, Terry, put your team to work. Let's find some property. And then voila, there it is. Boom. We land a handful of properties. And it, you know, sky's the limit, man.  [00:16:02] Sam Wilson: Absolutely. Tell me about this. I want to circle back on this distressed real estate question a little bit, 'cause I didn't clarify this the way I, that I really wanted to, you know, sure. I used to buy distressed single-family property. I actually cut my teeth for the first six years of real estate only buying at the foreclosure auctions. I can spot a foreclosure right now a mile away. It's like, oh, okay. Yeah, the gutters are overflowing. The grass is high. The trash cans don't come out every week. [00:16:25] Sam Wilson: It's, you know, the paints peel. It's like, you can just pick 'em out, like, once you start buying them, I would say that it's probably not as easy in the commercial real estate space, cuz you don't necessarily know when the partners are having a feud or when someone's suffering from ill health or things like that. How do you build that funnel? For properties that you want to go after you say, Hey, these are potential properties that could have distress.  [00:16:48] Terry Hale: Sure. And that's like the shotgun approach due to the rifle approach, right? So if you're doing the shotgun approach, then you gotta kind of keep it apart and ask the bright questions to be able to get to that. There really isn't you know, a website out there that just has, you know, commercial, you know, deals out there that are distressed. Unfortunately, I'm waiting for it, right, when it's there it'll make things a whole heck of a lot easier. [00:17:08] Sam Wilson: Or terrible, ' cause the deals will all go away.  [00:17:11] Terry Hale: Yeah, exactly. Everybody would be jumping on 'em you know, So there's a couple of different ways that we approach this. And one of the ways that that is the easiest, right, I'll give the path to least resistance is creating these relationships out there with brokers that are specialists in that particular type of product. [00:17:28] Terry Hale: So I'll use self-storage. For example, self-storage is over 50,000 self-storage facilities across the nation. These are not corporate conglomerates. These are not your cute smarts in your public storage and all, all the new big dogs that are out there, is not the climate control, new generation storage. [00:17:43] Terry Hale: There's 50,000 self-storage facilities that are out there that are second, third generation, second generation, meaning the nonclimate control roll doors. And also the barn doors that still squeak open and close, right, and fall off the hinges. Got it? Now, out of those, out of those 50,000 facilities, statistics show on even Storage Brokers of America's site, that over 85% of those are owned by independent operators like mom and pop, okay? Out of that, what we find, Sam, is the majority of those are lacking in being indexed on Google, having websites, it's all driven by traffic and people don't even know they're there. And to test that, any listener, any listener, you can go right outside the outskirts of your area, 'cause remember the secret sauce here is that self-storage, the particular property type we're in the discussion of right now, that is an industrial zone property. [00:18:35] Terry Hale: So most of these are kind of ugly. They're boxes on dirt. They're not too aesthetically pleasing. It's not like you're looking at something that's appealing. So they're made to go outside of the master plan community. So they're on industrial zone roads. If you locate one storage facility, chances are, you've seen this driving on the freeway. You drive down, next thing you know, you see another one, you see another one, you see another one and they're kind of all somewhat clustered in a particular area.  [00:18:59] Sam Wilson: Right. [00:19:00] Terry Hale: Most of those that are out there across the nation do not even have websites. So brokers can do door knocking and you can search the area. And if they do have some type of advertising and they're using something like SpareFoot or something like that, you can find them as well on there. But driving for dollars, the old-fashioned way for brokers, we're finding that mom and pop that are out of gas, but we also use these list brokers and you could get really detailed information, Sam, from these list brokers, like, how long the owners have owned them for. So if they've owned self-storage facilities for, you know, 15 years, chances are, they're tired of waking up in the morning, scratching and yawning, and grabbing their Joe, and rolling back into the box, and sitting there and staring at the television all day long, you know?  [00:19:45] Sam Wilson: Absolutely. That's really interesting. I mean, that you say that. I mean, when I think of self-storage, I think of, yes, I think of was still a fragmented market, but I also think of just one step behind multifamily and its competitive landscape in the sense that there's so much institutional money pouring into it. [00:20:01] Sam Wilson: And you're spelling a lot of the myths, probably that people like me, that aren't in self-storage, probably hold, you know, again, you know, unreasonably so. Like, that there still is huge opportunity in this space. So I think, I think that's really, you've given some really helpful insight and information there on certainly on that front. So yeah, I appreciate you giving some insight on how you guys are identifying opportunity. And in this case, you know, just particularly in self-storage and how you're working with brokers as well. I mean, that's the key we hear on this show all the time, which is that the brokers hold the keys. So, you know, getting to know your brokers is certainly the path to success. Terry, I appreciate you coming on. Is there any last thought you have for our listeners before we sign off?  [00:20:43] Terry Hale: Hey, you know, I mean, we can all take it with a grain of salt on what people are sitting here with their predictions on what's happening next. We know that there's inflation. We know that gas is up, right? Gas prices are, I just got back from Florida, man, it was like foreign change a gallon and out here in California, almost at like over seven bucks.  [00:21:00] Sam Wilson: Wow.  [00:21:01] Terry Hale: I know. So like how do you justify this stuff? I think it's just willy-nilly, man. It's just all out there. So I say focus on the recessionary proof property, like the multifamily, the self-storage, and even mobile home parks. There's plenty of those out there and just take some action and get out there and create those relationships. As I said, get educated in, in that expertise of, of where you want to, you know, gravitate towards. And, you know, commercial real estate has made more multi-millionaires and any other product that's out there still to this day, even with the new crypto stuff and all that happening. You know, it's a rock-solid business and it's real estate, you know, it's real. So I'm for everybody to get to it. Yep.  [00:21:35] Sam Wilson: That's cool, man. Terry, thank you for coming on today. Certainly appreciate it. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?  [00:21:41] Terry Hale: Yeah, they can go to my website, which is my name, which is Terry Hale, T E R R Y H A L E.com. I'm huge on support, Sam. So my email is very simple. It's support@terryhale.com. If anybody wants to reach out and have a quick chat, see if we're fit, see if I can help you get in the business. I'd love to do so. That's what I'm here for. And I'd appreciate you having me on, Sam.  [00:22:01] Sam Wilson: Awesome. Thank you, Terry. Appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day. [00:22:04] Terry Hale: Yeah, you too. Thanks, man. 

There's many different ways to find deals. Your network of professionals know people that have multifamily properties. And they might know when the owners want to sell. If you're in that network, and you are a trusted person, then you might get the inside scoop on a deal that nobody else sees. Your network is super important.Download your Free Private Lending Report here: www.freedomcapitalinvestments.com/lendingDownload your Freedom # worksheet here:  www.freedomcapitalinvestments.com/worksheetClick on the Social Media links below and listen in on our Private Group Conversations about how to achieve Financial Freedom through a consistent pipeline of passive income investments:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedomthroughpassiveincomehttps://www.linkedin.com/groups/14048250—————————————————————————To find multifamily deals, you can start with your network of professionals, getting out there with other investors, maybe apartment meetings or REI clubs or things like that. You can also find deals through the following:1) Brokers - The one that we always start with is brokers that are doing multifamily deals. Because a lot of times they'll get deals and won't put them on the market. 2) Wholesalers - it's not as common to see wholesalers in the multifamily industry but you still come across wholesalers on the individually owned properties vs. institution owned.3) Investor referrals because a lot of times we'll get property sent to us and even if the lead doesn't work for us, we'll refer it to another investor that might be interested. Facebook 4) Facebook is a great place to find deals5) Commercial software - like Propstream, Reonomy. CoStar, Deal Flow6) Driving for dollars - Keep on the lookout when simply driving around. Owners will sometime put a sign up but not market anywhere else. 7) Pulling Lists - using the list of tax default or foreclosure lists can help, tooJoin our groups on Facebook and LinkedIn.https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedomthroughpassiveincomehttps://www.linkedin.com/groups/14048250www.FreedomCapitalInvestments.comInvest Smart.  Live Happy.—————————————————————————Connect with us here:FB personal pageshttps://www.facebook.com/Flipsterhttps://www.facebook.com/dani.lynn.robisonLinkedIn personal pageshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/fliprobisonhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/danilynnrobisonInstagram personal pageshttps://www.instagram.com/fliprobisonhttps://www.instagram.com/danilynn23TikTok  personal pageshttps://www.tiktok.com/@danilynnrobisonhttps://www.tiktok.com/@fliprobison

In the second part of this series, we'll discuss the last three steps to securing good real estate deals and what happens after you've established yourself in the market. Don't miss the chance to activate your inner real estate mogul today!WHAT YOU'LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE A quick rundown of the first three steps to landing your first dealEfficient ways to start raising capital2 strategies for locating the best market dealsReasons to write ‘letter of intent'Why building long-term relationships in real estate is importantRESOURCES/LINKS MENTIONEDHow to Make Big Money in Small Apartments: Paperback https://amzn.to/3vVHGND and Kindle https://amzn.to/37by09oBest Ever Apartment Syndication Book: Paperback https://amzn.to/38Ghrmi and Kindle https://amzn.to/3LFEsECGoodegg Investments: https://goodegginvestments.com/Reonomy: https://www.reonomy.com/Yardi Matrix: https://www.yardimatrix.com/CONNECT WITH USGreen Light Equity Group - http://www.investwithgreenlight.com/For a list of Virtual Meetups - Email:tate@glequitygroup.com | chelsea@glequitygroup.com Special Announcement! Tate's brand-new audiobook "F.I.R.E.-Financial Independence Retire Early Through Apartment Investing" is downloadable! Go to: Green Light Equity Group: http://www.investwithgreenlight.com/

Investing in commercial real estate can offer great financial rewards but only if you've made an insightful and data-driven decision. Reonomy is the leading provider of Commercial Real Estate insights, empowering top brokerages, financial institutions, and commercial services providers with actionable data and solutions. The Director of Growth, Puneeth Ghodgeri dives into his growth strategies and his efforts to restructure the buying journey to support an Enterprise audience. As they grew exponentially through SEO, paid search, and events they reached high volume leads but with a core problem; low conversions. Puneeth has stepped in to refocus the target audience and be more intentional by looking at the full buying journey.

Most real estate professionals and agents do not take the competitive advantage that they have with their license and the data they have access to for  investing in real estate.  On today's episode of the Lab Coat Agents Podcast, host Jeff Pfitzer is talking  with Jake Harris about how to make commercial real estate more profitable and easier to manage. Jake is the author of a book called Catching Knives - A Guide to Investing in Distressed Commercial Real Estate. You won't want to miss this one!   Episode Highlights:  Jake kind of grew up on a construction site. He got into the army, and when he was getting out of the army, somebody gave him the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and it was a lightbulb moment. Now, he has been a professional investor for the last 20 years. Jake was a bartender at a country club because that is where rich people hang out. He asked their advice and said, “I am 23, ready to grab the tiger by its tail, and I want to build skyscrapers. What should I do? And they said, “work for a contractor.”  Jake worked in commercial construction as an estimator superintendent and as a project manager, did many projects, and started flipping houses.  In the early 2000s down in Phoenix, Jake met Robert Kiyosaki, and he hung out with him at his studio. Robert warned him to be cautious of greed. Robert was from Hawaii, but he moved to Arizona. Jake talks about the journey and what he learned.  The book's momentum created real revenue for Robert and allowed him to start investing. And then, as a millionaire, he was able to continue to assemble good teams around him and continue to double and triple and quadruple down on real estate. For Jake, part of writing his book was to showcase or show people like it is not as complex or more difficult to do a commercial deal as it is to do residential. All the other areas of Jake's life were bankrupt, but real estate was the thing that he still was meant to do. He shares how he needed to focus on all those other aspects to become kind of a whole life millionaire. Jake even put one quote on the back of his book from Baron Rothschild, “The best time to be buying real estate is when there is blood in the streets, even if it's your own blood.” In the commercial real estate world, putting together the financial systems is not about how good the individual is but about putting together a team because it is a team effort. What is interesting about commercial real estate and real estate as a whole is you get a free option. There are ways to do $100 million deals with no money, and you only need a goal to find out how to do that.  In commercial real estate, you can tie a piece of property up in escrow. When you are in escrow and tied up controlling it, you have a very intensive time trying to figure out all the things that could go wrong with this deal. Many brokers want to close deals similar to a real estate agent who sees the transactions going on, but very few own real estate. They all want to be the sponsors, and they know how to structure it.  Reonomy is a commercial real estate database that tracks all the mortgage holders and owners of the particular asset types. Jake shares his view point on where he thinks the market will go. He also talks about the market shift. He shares his opinion on what is coming, and should investors wait because prices are so inflated right now. Jake thinks there are opportunities in infill housing that already has the infrastructure built in because of the people buying houses in square footage and rent by bedrooms.  3 Key Points: Jake focused a lot more on the commercial space, building a hotel on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, converting an office building to apartments, doing new ground-up construction on apartments in East Austin and other markets. Systems are great for those that want repeatable and predictable success. Jake had a goal to become a millionaire before 30, and he achieved that, but goals are great for those who want one-time success. For people looking to get from residential to multifamily, it has some very similar mechanisms of fixing up a kitchen, a bathroom, or whatever, and that becomes a very easy place for people to transition to on the small scale multifamily. Resources Mentioned:  Lab Coat Agents | Website | Facebook | Facebook Group | Twitter | Instagram  Jeff Pfitzer   | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter Jake Harris  | Instagram | https://www.reonomy.com/ https://www.catchknives.com/ https://www.catchknives.com/course/ - Course 50% off by using the code word Jeff

Our guest for today is Darren Smith, an industrial commercial real estate investor. He partners with people looking to make a secured and consistent return on their money backed by cash-flowing real estate. We talk about a variety of topics in such a short amount of time, especially his experience in investing in industrial real estate properties. He reveals the strategies and decision-making processes that helped him purchase over $10 million in real estate through his almost 2-decade career.  [00:01 - 04:41] Opening Segment Darren Smith talks about his journey to industrial real estate Why he build a company, only to let it go in the end [04:42 - 11:34] Shifting to Industrial Real Estate Darren talks about his process for selecting the person who will lead his company This creative lead generation technique sets Darren apart from his peers The most important factor for Darren when buying properties [11:35 - 16:56] Investing in Industrial Real Estate Here are Darren's tactics to protect his team from non-renewals Why building relationships and rapport with sellers is important Should you be in many markets, finding deals? Darren won't advise this, and here's why [16:57 - 19:56] Closing Segment A tool or resource you can't live without Google Sheets A real estate mistake you can help other investors avoid Do not jump into real estate right away Build your bank money first Your way to make the world a better place Providing job opportunities to people Reach out to Darren See links below  Final words   Tweetable Quotes “Everything that we do in real estate, it all comes down to that relationship and that rapport with sellers.” - Darren Smith “I'm not saying don't make the leap [to real estate] eventually, but just make sure that you have enough of a base and then also that you've put some bank money in your portfolio where you have property leverage.” - Darren Smith “If you're just going out submitting cash offers or blind offers through brokers, you basically have no shot in [the industrial] market.” - Darren Smith -----------------------------------------------------------------------------   Email darren@solidgrowthproperties.com to connect with Darren or follow him on LinkedIn. Do you want to sell your property fast without having to go to an agent? Visit Solid Growth Properties now. 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:   Darren Smith  00:00 Like everything that we do in real estate, it all comes down to that relationship and that rapport with sellers, and it's the same thing with your tenants. So having those conversations, finding out what are their needs and desires and hey, what's fair and work that out through the process, and if you can pull it off great, you know, do it. I know some of my tenants will another one of my tenants is the Army Corps of Engineers, there's zero chance they're going to agree to that they are so fixed in their ways. And so some you just work it out in other ways.   Intro  00:23 Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we will teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson  00:35 Darren Smith served almost six years in the Army, and he spent the last 18 years as a professional real estate investor. He has flipped rented and wholesaled hundreds of residential properties, and in recent years, has purchased over $10 million in real estate. And now he's full-time in commercial industrial real estate assets. Darren, welcome to the show.   Darren Smith  00:54 Hey, thank you very much for having me on Sam.    Sam Wilson  00:56 Hey, man, the pleasure's mind. same three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show. In 90 seconds or less, can you tell us where did you start? Where are you now? And how did you get there?   Darren Smith  01:03 I started back in the service, as you mentioned in 1997, did six years in there, got out of the service did a lot with computers. So I continued on with that for quite a few years. But at the same time doing residential real estate I had a mentor who was also in computers who did real estate and I sat next to him for about a year or two. That's how I got started real estate, was just Rich Dad, Poor Dad reading his books, following him along and picking his brain, everything I could go into his rentals. And long journey up and down had some big failures to be perfectly honest in the crash. But started back at the bottom of real estate back in about 2012, 13, was an assistant to a wholesaler, eventually start off doing that on my own. When I moved out to Colorado, build up a residential real estate business, there over several years. And I was doing really well, move back to Pennsylvania, which is where I am currently. And over that time last four years have done the transition from residential to now, I am 100% industrial real estate.   Sam Wilson  01:58 That is fantastic. Let's take a few minutes and talk about your transition. Because you're back in Pennsylvania, transition out of residential into commercial because I think it's a fascinating kind of story how you had a functioning business and it was making money. And you hung up the cleats and said, “Hey, I'm going to commercial real estate.” tell us that backstory.   Darren Smith  02:18 That's pretty much what it was I have done residence for a while and I liked it. Don't be wrong. It was a great business for a long time. But I really saw friends doing the commercial side, I have some that were doing all aspects of commercial office retail, industrial and multifamily. And then but most of my friends probably 90% are only doing multifamily commercial. And I kind of looked at all those options. And we can get it if you want. But I chose the industrial avenue, and that's the one I've stuck with. So I've been doing that for a couple of years while running my residential business. Thankfully, I had some awesome employees, they just, they do fantastic work. They allow me to run my business in Colorado while I live in Pennsylvania. And actually, they ran the residential business in Pennsylvania as well. So they ran both sides of the country. And it just didn't take me much time. And so I was able to do both. But as I scaled that up, as I scaled industrial, you just start looking at where you're spending your time where you're getting your return from. And then where you see yourself, I read a book called Vivid Vision this last summer. And it really spoke to me, it's it's probably a lot of things your listeners have already heard. But when you really like sat down and went through an actual day and close your eyes and think about it, I didn't see myself in a residential space anymore. And so my employees, they've been so fast, fantastic. I knew if they were able to take this and run with it on their own, they practice even running it anyway, I thought how great would that be for them. So it was a win-win because it's great for me, because now I can focus 100% on industrial. And as we all know, when you do switch from residential commercial, you basically had a zero or two to every deal you're doing. And so it allowed me to scale and it will much faster, but also them I mean, the lifestyle they're gonna be able to have now running and owning that business and having all the profits I think is going to be great for them as well. So it kind of was an easy decision and you know, knock it out a couple of months, it was pretty quick.   Sam Wilson  04:00 That is absolutely intriguing. Because you read the book, and you said, you knocked out a couple of months, you said, Hey, man, I'm out. I'm moving into commercial full time, you gave the company away, right? That's right. So most people, and this is not maybe this is the greed monster in me or whatever it is. Or maybe just like, hey, I've put years and years into building this company. And the last thing I want to do is, after all my blood, sweat and tears, because it's really difficult to build a functioning company that produces a regular steady income, I'd say hey, look, I've earned the right to let you guys continue to operate this and I will collect you know, whatever it is maybe last but I'm gonna be more of a hands-off owner and you said instead look, I don't want the middle distraction, and I can bless you guys have a good time. That's courageous.   Darren Smith  04:42 Why do we ultimately do a lot of what we're doing here? It's obviously, there's a lifestyle component to it. But you do get to a point where giving back you know is important. And you know, we think of charities we think of you know, rotary and do stuff in your church, but you know, the people around you like charity starts with very starts with your employees as well and they have given so much to me, so I really do see it as you know, it could be seen as generous doing that to them. And maybe that was, but at the same time, they gave so much to me. So they were generous to me for so long. And as I said, it also allows me that time and that mental bandwidth to just focus on industrial, so I will benefit out of this, they will benefit out of this. And so I guess I just didn't see it quite that way when I was going through it.    Sam Wilson  05:21 And that's incredible. Very cool. So I love it. So how did you select? I'll get off of this, like, I'm hammering home on this, but how did you select the person that would lead this company? Were they already at the top? Was it already like main lead person, you're like, “Hey, man, I'm gonna give you the company.” Or how did you decide who gets equity? And who doesn't? I mean, that seems like it'd be a tough decision when you're basically giving away the farm.   Darren Smith  05:40 It was a bit of a challenge. But since they've run it for so many years, it really, you know, the top leaders, they were pretty obvious. So it wasn't that hard of a choice. It was just split equally, you know, between the people who were already running the show.   Sam Wilson  05:54 Gotcha. Fantastic. I love that. So let's talk industrial. Where are you finding opportunity right now? And let's start with that I've got about 12 questions for you, you can think of right out of the gate. But tell us how you're finding opportunity on industrial, how you plan on scaling that.   Darren Smith  06:08 That was what was so great about starting with residential is that is, you know, Doggy Dog out there, it is so competitive. I mean, I've literally spent millions of dollars in marketing on the residential side. And so to take all the lessons learned over there, and then apply them back to commercial, because honestly, super simple. It's the basic core things that were working. And I did them at a very high level. So I in fact, I have examples here, I use the auto pin handwritten letters, I put a real stamp on them, I put a business card and everyone with my picture on it, then. So everything has to just be high class in how all your communications are done. And so I just took the same residential marketing I'm doing and I started with mailers. And that has been really successful. For me, the cost is, gosh, a 10th of what I used to be spending on residential, and yet I get much more many more leads from those letters that I send. And people talk about that I just every week, somebody will tell me, “Hey, I love that you wrote me a letter” or I love that, you know, you know that you wrote this out, my kids would have just typed this where they say, “Hey, you know, look like good looking guy” or whatever, you know, they talk about the picture. And so being able to see me as they're talking on the phone, so I want to propose to you, if anybody's looking on the commercials, you're doing residential, don't send out your 35 cent postcards on the yellow thing, you're not going to get calls make your numbers are so much smaller. And my whole list is less than 6,000 properties. Right now. I'm growing that a little by little but not that much wants to do with hundreds of 1000s, you know, on our list on so much debt per month. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that was how I made that transit. That's how I'm finding opportunities. I have started doing cold calling here recently. But again, I don't do the hired out yet. I may do it at a small scale. But I don't do the triple dialers I do one at a time because I want to have that high level of professionalism. You know, I want to do it, where I'm speaking with the person and it talks to them. And I have great conversations, I don't get the calls of, hey, take me off your list or worse, as you all know, when people are calling me it's like, Hey, thanks for writing, you know, what's this all about? And it's just I love the conversations I have with commercial property owners, because it's a different level of sophistication. You know, when you talk about why I made that switch as well, I think at the aggravations that we have closing deals where you make 10 $20,000. And it's just like, oh my gosh, that the headaches can drag out for six months. And not that industrial doesn't have long closing times. I mean, they can take you know, six months or more I've I closed property last year, I was talking to the guy for over two years. But when you get to the end of the road, one your gains and your profits are significantly more. But two, you're dealing with a different level of sophistication and people that they have their lives together for the most part, you're not coming to bail them out of, you know, whatever tragedy that's, you know, half the time self-inflicted, a lot of these are there people that have money, I close to a 40,000 square foot warehouse last Thursday, and he had more than enough money. He didn't even eat the money from the sale. But I was able to help him with simplifying his life in some ways getting him an income stream, we did a partial seller finance on this one. So it helped them with some taxes. Just got to where I want to be. And just it was much easier conversation.   Sam Wilson  08:59 That's fantastic. Yeah. I love that in the autopen handwritten letters. Is that a machine that you have there at your house or I mean, or your office? What do you use, seven, nine out? Or what's that look like?   Darren Smith  09:09 I don't, I use two companies. I use Open Letter Marketing, which is a great one that's kind of turnkey, they put the stamp on, they mail it out. I have mine delivered, unsealed. And without a stamp, I like to put a little bit of a different stamp on again that that touch. I think though, I just ordered a couple of 1000 with a bouquet on them. So I use pioneer direct and they mail them to me handwritten open with no stamp.    Sam Wilson  09:32 Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah. And it's funny that the creativity in that and it's the little tweaks that set you apart, right when you're doing, you know, direct mail or when you're doing cold calls or things like that. It's like it doesn't take a lot to be different. And I've heard some really interesting stories on this show. I mean, there's one guest who sends a Rubik's Cube in a box and it says, Hey, let's figure this out. Right. So it sends all of his information with a Rubik's Cube but let's figure this out. And he gets calls from it. Like, I mean, he's I think he's gone so far as to send them a pair of shoes like there was some question killer deals like, Hey, here's a pair of shoes. You know what, I can't read what the story was behind that. But it's really unique just going the act, and that's not scalable, right? Like, it's not scalable, but yet, I think it puts you at the front of the line, which is, you know, that's where you need to be. So talk to us about the type of industrial you guys are doing. Are you doing manufacturing and you want warehousing? Or what are you getting into?   Darren Smith  10:21 For me, it's really, I focus more on the square footage, and, you know, the zoning ICSP right. And then for me, it's location is the absolute most important factor for what I'm buying. As far as the, you know, what they're doing in the building, it's all sorts of things. It is it's, you know, general warehouse, one of them was actually mostly office, you know, it was kind of like that flex space, a building spot. It's a forklift rental repair service, you know, company did a cabinetry making, you know, business last year, that was a huge 152,000 square feet building, I did not buy that myself, that was an assignment. So I'm doing both, buying, you know, and assigning properties. But really anything as long as the things you're looking for is, you know, the location has to be number one, the condition of the property, you know, when things have been upgraded, all the same stuff, you look at a house, just, you know, different terms you have to learn, but really in commercial comes down to the tenant, that is absolutely the most critical thing that you're looking at. And that's what banks are going to look at. So when I'm on all my whole properties, I get bank financing for the majority of it, you're just never gonna find, you know, cheaper debt, I'm getting three and a half percent debt right now locked in for seven years. I mean, you can't beat that. And so having that long-term tenant in who is, been there a long time with their longevity, then have they invested in their building themselves, you know, what's their credit rating, you know, haven't been profitable last several years. So those are things you really want to make sure that you lock-in.   Sam Wilson  11:35 Cool. Well, let's talk about this. I mean, one of the problems that I see in long term leases in triple net leases, which a lot of imagine that's what you're dealing with your double net, or triple net leases, is that they don't renew, but every three or five, or whatever the renewal periods are, in a time of hyper, we're in, you know, accelerated inflation, how do you protect yourself in that?   Darren Smith  11:58 That's an excellent question. Because you're right, that's very real. And it's something that we weren't having to deal with before. So I'll tell you one way of doing it, and I lucked into this, I inherited the lease that's on the building I closed last week, but it is tied to the Philadelphia consumer price index for all goods and services. So the rent automatically increases every year based on inflation. So if you can get that clause in your lease, you're obviously doing pretty well. And it's helpful. I do have some buildings that obviously don't have that big 10. And they have, I think, you know, two and a half or 3%, you know, kind of annual increases. And those, you're right, my costs are definitely going up every single year. But what I'll say is that your costs, like let's say, you know, utilities, if it's a gross lease, and you're paying utilities, they're going up significantly, but as your overall intake of your property, it's not a huge part of that income. So let's say your expenses on it are 10%. Well, even if those 10% expenses go up 50% In year, let's just say some crazy number, but really, your expenses on the property have only got 5% as a total rent. So since my rent on the property went up, 3%, I'm either you know, breaking even so I didn't make any more money that year. Or maybe I lost just just a little bit. But my principal paydown is obviously still going, you know, in the right direction. And my appreciation for the properties in general is going up. So you look at what industrial is going up, I think nationwide went up 9% last year, and I think even more the year before. And so I'm kind of baking in appreciation over time that I know when I do have renewals that come up, I'll be able to capture that. But as long as I can ride out through that period, I'm not concerned if I made the same cash flow one year to the next or maybe lost a small percentage, because I know overtime principal pay down and appreciation will make up for that.   Sam Wilson  13:38 Right. Yeah, that's intriguing. How hard would it be to on lease renewal? Or how agreeable do you think tenants would be to saying, Hey, we're tying all our leases now to the Philadelphia Consumer Price Index. I mean, as a landlord, the owner, I mean, that's, especially when we see numbers, just I mean, we saw what 6.7% published, you know, maybe not even the actual because they don't count the things that all of us have to pay for every day. So it's like, you know, how hard would that be to pull off? You think?   Darren Smith  14:05 Sam, that's a great question. And I just learned about on this, I read that for the first time a couple of months ago. And there's the first lease I have with that. So I wish I could speak more to it, but I can't. What I will tell you is like everything that we do in real estate, it all comes down to that relationship and that rapport with sellers, and it's the same thing with your tenants. So having those conversations, finding out what are their needs and desires and hey, what's fair and work that out through the process. And if you can pull it off great, you know, do it. I know some of my tenants will another one of my tenants is the Army Corps of Engineers, there's zero chance they're going to agree to that they are so fixed in their ways. And so some you just work it out in other ways,=.   Sam Wilson  14:39 Right, yeah. Good luck on that. Good luck. The Corps of Engineers to agree to a CPI-based or you know, the least tied to the CPI. That's wild man, that's absolutely fantastic. You buy in across the country or you sticking sticking to specific markets?   Darren Smith  14:52 I'm sticking to just my market, if I can't drive there in two hours, I'm not going to look at it and I know people that do it both ways. And for me, I love it. have ADD, and I need to focus. Like I can't do too many things at one time, my brain just doesn't function that way. So if I'm in too many markets, I want to be the master of where I'm at.   Sam Wilson  15:08 Yeah. How did you build that? 6,000 property list? I mean, it seems like this would be a fairly broker-controlled asset class. So and you're going all off-market direct to seller. Is that right? Are you also working with brokers? I do questions in there. Sorry.   Darren Smith  15:25 I do both. I work with brokers as well. In fact, I've wholesale buildings through brokers, where I have it under contract to either lease or sell the building. And I have that worked out with the seller, they know the owner, they know what I'm doing. And so I've listed properties on the commercial MLS, if you want to call it that, and sold them that way. So brokers are a great asset, one of the properties that I own. In fact, the first property I bought was a listed property, it just sat for a while. But I still have to talk with the sellers. I'd never buy a property where I'm not sitting down with the seller because I got partial seller finance on that one as well. And so you need to have that conversation to really make it a win-win. If you're just going out submitting cash offers or blind offers through brokers, you basically have no shot in this market. Don't even waste your time to be honest, completely wasting brokers' times waste anybody's time, where I get my data, I use Reonomy, R-E-O-N-O-M-Y, is a source I've been using last year, I recently got costar access as well. And so I've been pulling lists from there. And I there's a I think it's easy excel.com or there's it Maury is his name. And he has a website. And he makes Excel macros where he will combine all your data for you and do this cool stuff. So he makes these macros I combined my files together. And then that's what I take. And I load that into Mojo dialer. I send that off to my mailer to get the kids into.   Sam Wilson  16:37 Right, yeah. And I'll link to Maury as well. I know exactly you're talking about, I think he's somewhere out in California. But yeah, it makes them really cool. I mean, it does all wizard. Anything. Yeah. And you will custom build some crazy widgets inside of Excel that you're like this thing could launch a rocket. What are we doing here? That's really cool. I love it. Man. This is great. Darren, thanks for coming on today. I've certainly enjoyed this jump here into the final four questions. The first one is this, which you've answered like you've taken most of my first question already. But what is one tool or resource like digital software, something along those lines you find you can't live without?   Darren Smith  17:11 Ah, I go complete old school Google Sheets. I've had all these high powered CRMs, and Salesforce and all this stuff. And I gone back to Google Sheets. And my most important thing is I put a column with the next follow-up date. And every morning, I just sort by that date and what's do, knock them out.   Sam Wilson  17:27 Right. I love that. That's great. What is one mistake you could help our listeners avoid? And then how would you avoid it?   Darren Smith  17:32 The one I probably did was, I made many, many, many, when it comes to mind is I got laid off from a very well-paying computer consulting job six years ago, and I thought I got this real estate thing. I was making money. And I was doing okay, and my wife and I recently got out of her fellowship. So I thought, Okay, I got this, I can make the transition, I don't need to go get a job, because I could have got one the next day. And I did. And that was a mistake. Because if I had gone back and got another one for maybe a year or two, I would have been able to take more of my profits from real estate and hold onto more properties. And I would be further along than I am right now had not done that. So I'm not saying don't make the leap eventually. But just make sure that you have enough of a base and then also that you've put some bank money in your portfolio where you have a property leverage that way, because your W2is a huge asset for that. And I didn't have that for a number of years.   Sam Wilson  18:22 Right, man, I love that. That's great. Cool. Question number three, when it comes to investing in the world, what's one thing you're doing right now to make the world a better place?   Darren Smith  18:29 So for investing side we're talking specifically just with the business and not charity. What I'm trying to do is I think the, everything I see like Mike Rowe doing and these other people were that there were jobs where people, where skill training is so critical right now and so lacking. And so we have a manufacturer association here in town. In fact, I'm meeting with the president of that next week, we're having breakfast. And I want to matching up the people who are in my buildings that have these jobs, these high-skilled jobs that are needed with the manufacturer association. So we can put those two together for apprenticeships and things like that. I said, it's in my vivid vision I have it all planned out what I want to do perfectly the full because I am in the beginning stages of that. It's what I am working on at this time.    Sam Wilson  19:05 I love that there and our listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you what is the best way to do that?    Darren Smith  19:09 Yep, my company is Solid Growth Properties. So Darren, D-A-R-R-E-N, at solid growth properties dot com. Shoot me an email I'm happy to connect with any and everybody whether it be they're interested in industrial real estate, or whether on the private money side, I do make quite a bit of money and send out a lot of checks every week to my private lenders. And that works really well for them.    Sam Wilson  19:28 Fantastic, Darren. Thanks for your time today. Appreciate it.   Darren Smith  19:29 Thanks for having me on. Sam. Have a great day.   Sam Wilson  19:31 Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen, if you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners, as well as rank higher on those directories. So I appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode

On the final episode of Transform It Forward season two, Paul is reflecting on some of the most interesting, insightful and thought-provoking interviews of the season. From content marketing to the events industry, Paul and his guests have covered a wide range of topics on season two of the podcast, all through the lens of the cutting-edge transformations we're seeing in society today. As we close the door on 2021 and look ahead to 2022, Paul is counting down some of the most memorable clips from season two of Transform It Forward. Listeners will hear clips from: Aviva Fink, Vice President of Growth and Partnerships at Reonomy, on the future of commercial real estateVince Padua, EVP and Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Axway, on the nature of digital transformationMichael Brenner, CEO of Marketing Insider Group, on the rise of digital marketingDaphne Hoppenot, founder of The Vendry, on the future of the events industryJacqueline Teo, Global Chief Digital Officer at HGC Global Communications, on change managementInterested in learning more about the show? Check out our website: https://www.transformitforward.com/

On this week's episode, I welcome a very special guest, Rich Sarkis, Founder & Executive Chairman at Reonomy. Reonomy is the leading provider of CRE insights, empowering top brokerages, financial institutions, and commercial services providers with actionable data and solutions. In this episode, Rich gives us an inside look at Reonomy and how it can benefit anyone involved in real estate, based on their data driven approach. In this episode I also share with the audience, Step 1 of my ten part series on how to invest in commercial real estate. 

Guillermo (Memo) Sanchez joins this episode to talk about being a tech founder. After working at FactSet for over 5 years, he co-founded Reonomy. Then, he was a manager at Blink Health and VP of Engineering at DelShah Capital before co-founding another startup, Pragmic that was recently acquired by dev01. Memo discusses getting into tech, his first startup and the lessons he learned, navigating co-founder relationships, going through an acquisition, why he went to a bigger company after his first startup, the advice he has for anyone looking to found a startup now, and much more! You can support this podcast on the anchor page. Make sure to subscribe and follow Alexa's Input Twitter account to get notified when a new podcast episode comes out. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/alexagriffith/support

The pandemic has changed the way we work, shop and experience life. Although the commercial real estate industry is generally optimistic about the path forward, questions remain—especially in retail. In this episode, Paul sits down with Aviva Fink, Vice President of Growth and Partnerships at Reonomy, a property intelligence platform for commercial real estate professionals. They discuss how retail brands can thrive in a post-COVID world, change management and the multiple dimensions of data that professionals are leveraging to make informed investment decisions. Aviva shares her take on the modernization of the commercial real estate world, and the role technology will play in the industry's future.Learn more about Aviva Fink: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finkaviva/Interested in learning more about the show? Check out our website: https://www.transformitforward.com/

In this episode, Tukan spoke with the Director of Growth at Reonomy, Puneeth Ghodgeri. Every SaaS company dreads it...

Maureen Teyssier joins us to discuss the cutting-edge work Reonomy is doing in commercial property real estate and her views and tips on building a great data science team. In this episode you will learn: • Maureen's work with Reonomy [5:40] • Knowledge graphs and use cases [7:35] • Other tools Reonomy uses [18:58] • What Maureen looks for in potential hires, soft skills and hard skills [26:28] • Hiring at Reonomy [41:40] • Maureen's tips for growing a data science team [48:55] • Tools to transition from academia to industry [52:45] Additional materials: www.superdatascience.com/479

Miguel Armaza is joined by Richard Sarkis, serial entrepreneur, Executive Chair, and Co-Founder of Reonomy, a commercial real estate data and analytics platform. Since inception in 2013, the company has raised over $130 million in equity from leading industry investors like Georgian Partners, Softbank, Citi Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Fintech Collective, and many more... Rich is also a proud graduate of our very own Wharton School In this episode, we discuss: - His journey as a repeat entrepreneur - Exciting stories and challenges of building Reonomy from the ground up - His views on company culture why it is extremely important - Transitioning from CEO to Executive Chairman and what this entails - State of the US commercial real estate market and the impact of COVID - Valuable founder advice and takeaways after almost two decades of entrepreneurship - And a whole lot more! Soundcloud: Spotify: Apple: Full interview --> Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple Richard Sarkis Richard Sarkis is Executive Chair and co-founder of Reonomy, a commercial real estate data and analytics platform. Since the company’s founding in 2013, Sarkis has been instrumental in raising $128 million in venture capital and led Reonomy through a successful web-platform launch in New York City, as well as the launch of a second nationwide platform in 2017. About Reonomy Reonomy leverages big data, partnerships and machine learning to connect the fragmented, disparate world of commercial real estate. By providing unparalleled access to property intelligence, Reonomy products empower individuals, teams, and companies to unlock insights and discover new opportunities.

The Most Complete Property & Owner Database In this episode, I talk about the different options for data providers that provide searches and contact information for owners. I use this for my lending business and I believe this would be great for hungry investors and wholesalers. I am using Reonomy but will give ProspectNow a trial to see if I prefer their data. They have a few more features that Reonomy does not. If you want a free trial, feel free to message me and I will put you in touch.

On this episode of Discovering Design our guest is Joel Cox, a former Writer and current Senior UX Designer at Reonomy where he helps create products that leverage big data, partnerships and machine learning to connect the fragmented, disparate world of commercial real estate.

Today on Real Estate REality Check we have with us someone who less than a decade ago took on a U2 like “I Will Follow” mindset when it came to his passion to make something out of nothing, notwithstanding that at the time, he then possessed the equivalent of the title of an Elvis Costello song called “Less Than Zero” when it came to his base of knowledge in the world of CRE. In spite of those challenges, he went on to build a “value-added tech driven data engine employing sophisticated algorithms and artificial intelligence” that some may describe as a “CRE data democracy.” He did (and I may add, continues to do) so by not only subconsciously embracing the song titles “Harder Better Stronger Faster” by Daft Punk and "It's in the Way That You Use It" by Eric Clapton, but also by heeding the wisdom of, among others, Jeff Bezos and his “Day 1” mindset, so as to minimize the chances of Reonomy meeting up with the business equivalent of the schoolyard bully who wants to take its lunch and give them a metaphorical wedgie, to that of Ben Franklin’s mantra of “Diligence is the mother of good luck,” and W.B. Yeats as well, who said “There are no strangers here, only friends you haven't yet met,” all of which he employed to ultimately co-found Reonomy (which, as a consequence of a networking play date, with props out to an old Grateful Dead tune and his co-founder, because “Mr. Charlie” told him so). I give to you my real estate brethren, from the streets of London, the one language shy of being a polyglot and the man who had the business he co-founded in college become the subject of a 60 Minutes segment, the truly fascinating CEO of Reonomy, my new friend Rich Sarkis.

Today my guest is Rich Sarkis. Rich is the executive chairman of Reonomy, a leading provider of property intelligence to the commercial real estate industry. And in just a minute we're going to speak with Rich about Reonomy and how you can utilize that to help grow your business.

Chief Executive and Founder of Reonomy Rich Sarkis understands the value of data. He discusses how proper data analysis can be an essential tool for commercial real estate professionals looking for opportunity in an economy destabilized by COVID-19.

Rich Sarkis is as sharp as they come and after you listen to this episode, I think you'll agree. He's the CEO of Reonomy, the breakout proptech data company that is making commercial real estate data accessible and actionable to all other businesses. This is the second time Reonomy has been featured on Tech Nest, and there's good reasons for that. Reonomy has built up a strong company that's seen impressive growth with a lot of buy in from strategic startup investors. We discuss Reonomy's success and Rich revealed very interesting information about their Series C and Series D. I think listening to this episode may have you thinking big. Give it a listen, then let me know.

Welcome to Industrial Real Estate Secrets! In this six episode mini-series, Shah Ahsan & Adam J. Carswell uncover information and data on one of the least talked about asset classes in commercial real estate investing; industrial real estate. In this episode Shah and Adam discuss: Data backing the continued demand for distribution centers across North America A compelling COVID-19 report by Reonomy that highlights IRE Shah's recommended country to keep an eye on for IRE opportunities, besides the US *Adam Carswell and Shah Ahsan are members of the Next Level Mastermind --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dreamchasers/support

Tiffany is an experienced entrepreneur, growth strategist and startup mentor. She has been helping venture-backed startups build, launch and scale consumer products, with roles in product management, marketing and strategy. In 2015, she co-founded Menagerie to provide modern couples with personalized financial guidance and vendor recommendations. Currently, she is part of the 5G Labs strategy team and responsible for investigating and incubating next-generation products and businesses. Tiffany continues to advise BrightEyes, the organization she founded to empower student entrepreneurs, and is actively involved as a mentor to startups (and sometimes investor!). Harlan Milkove is a repeat VC-backed startup founder, and Managing Partner at Foundational where he works with early-stage startups plan and implement their fundraising strategies. His prior venture, Reonomy, has raised $125M+ for its industry-standard commercial real estate data analytics platform. Harlan has also been a founding member of companies in the blockchain, IoT, and on-demand labor verticals. He graduated Cum Laude with a B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

How do you jump into multifamily and quickly build credibility to grow? After launching a successful eCommerce site called DropCatch, Joe Walsh and Kent Frayn faced this challenge. They had built a portfolio of smaller multifamily properties before turning to a growth hack to scale quickly and add credibility. They knew their own experience was limited so they added an experienced mentor to their team to launch HomeCatch Holdings. In this episode, Joe and Kent share the inspiration for the initial eCommerce business, the transition into real estate, best practices for securing mentors and partners, and other tips to get into multifamily syndication.   Partner: Join me at the Best Ever Conference plus 15% discount with 15DEAL   Key Insights Launched DropCatch to grab beer bottle caps Raised $50,000 on Kickstarter and quit their jobs Wanted to diversify and add income outside of eCommerce   Treats online rental listings like a product Big differences: eCommerce is more backend focused, real estate is face to face Interested in syndication, brought on a partner with experience Know what you want, be open to ideas of how to do it When approaching a mentor, go to them with a plan Easier to ask someone to oversee than to teach Challenge with a new partner: disagreement on the management plan Are there great 3rd party management options? Created a mastermind group to help hold each other accountable.  Kent and Joe use Reonomy to find off-market deals   Partner: Download a Free Sample Apartment Deal Package     Bull’s Eye Tips:    Resources: Reonomy.com   Apparent Failure: Had a rent to own deal, where they had to change financing terms   Most Recommended Book: The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone   Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book by Joe Fairless and Theo Hicks   12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson   Most Recommended Digital/Mobile Resource: Squarespace Liondesk   Daily Habit: Morning Routine; Audiobooks, and Podcasts   Advice for College Students: Focus on building relationships with people who are business-oriented; Prepare yourself and take action   Current Curiosity: PACE Financing    Best Place to Grab a Bite in Chicago: Smoque BBQ   Connect with Joe and Kent: Website: homecatchcapital.com Email: joe@homecatchcapital.com, kent@homecatchcapital.com     Leave us a review and rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Be sure to check out more info at TargetMarketInsights.com.

Are limiting beliefs stopping you from becoming a multifamily investor? When Sterling White got his start in real estate, he was crashing in a friend’s den. He had no money in the bank and zero credit. But Sterling DID have a willingness to learn, and he understood that the best way to approach a potential mentor was to provide value. Today, Sterling is a seasoned real estate investor and philanthropist based in Indianapolis. He got his start in 2009, building a portfolio of 150 SFH before transitioning to multifamily in 2017. To date, Sterling owns a total of 587 single- and multifamily units, and he is a frequent contributor to BiggerPockets. He also serves as the host of The Real Estate Experience podcast and author of From Zero to 400 Units: How I Found Another Path & Discovered Freedom Through Real Estate. On this episode of Apartment Building Investing, Sterling joins me to explain how he got his start in real estate, working for a mentor (for free!) to find SFH buy-and-hold deals. He discusses his transition to multifamily, sharing his bold approach to finding off-market deals and the resources he uses to get in touch with property owners. Listen in for Sterling’s insight on providing value to attract investors and learn how to overcome the limiting beliefs that are keeping you from achieving financial freedom with multifamily investing! Key Takeaways Sterling’s journey to real estate investing Grew up in Section 8 housing with single mom Natural entrepreneur, figure things out on own Work for free with mentor to build SFH portfolio Shift to multifamily in 2017 (587 units total) How Sterling developed an interest in real estate Work construction for college roommate’s dad Liked seeing transformation of distressed asset Learned that most successful owned portfolio How Sterling provided value to his mentor early on Hustle to find SFH deals Assist with digital marketing Sterling’s first SFH investing deal $25K property + $25K in renovations (financed by mentor) Responsible for everything else associated with transaction What inspired Sterling’s transition to multifamily Economies of scale (multiple doors at one location) Ability to control own destiny, influence value Sterling’s first multifamily investing deal 46-unit seller financing deal ($200K down on $900K) Brought on SFH investors to raise $ for renovations How Sterling hustles to find new deals Approach owner directly, pitch on cold call Strategic follow up (e.g.: birthday card) Sterling’s resources for finding owner contact info CoStar, Reonomy and ListSource Skip trace or directory of business filing Sterling’s advice on marketing to attract investors Connect through BiggerPockets Appearances on podcasts The evolution of how Sterling raises money for deals Friends and family through fund for SFH Preferred return to start with multifamily Now straight equity (85% to LPs, 15% to GPs) The limiting beliefs that hold aspiring investors back Need large amount of own capital Fear of failure OR success Sterling’s insight on the value of time Pay someone to do low-value activities Willing to spend extra to save time Connect with Sterling White Sterling on BiggerPockets Resources Earl Nightingale Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki LoopNet CoStar Reonomy ListSource BeenVerified TruePeopleSearch LexisNexis Fiverr Upwork BiggerPockets The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Grant Cardone on Lewis Howes’ Podcast Michael’s Free Webinar: How to Do Your First Apartment Deal (Without Experience or Using Your Own Money) Michael’s Mentorship Program Podcast Show Notes Review the Podcast on iTunes Michael’s Website Michael on Facebook Michael on Instagram Michael on YouTube Apartment Investor Network Facebook Group

If you're following the companies I'm talking with, then you're seeing a trail success being blazed right before your eyes. In this podcast episode, I recap companies I've featured previously including Reonomy, Remarkably, and of course Avail. Of the companies I've featured, they've gone on to raise over $200M since they were featured on Tech Nest. I also put my guest list I'd like to make happen in 2020 including guests from Compass, NFX, VTS, Inc., Hello Alfred, and Clutter.Not finished recording new episodes for 2019 yet, but getting amped up for the interviews I can hopefully bring y'all in 2020! BTW, if you're not yet on our Insiders email list, you can join, visit http://technest.io to find the link.

In today’s episode of “Commercial Real Estate Investing with Don & Eden” we have guest John Casmon. He’s founded Casmon Capital Group where he primarily invests in Chicago & Cincinnati. Together, he and his business partner/wife have helped families invest in multifamily apartments to create a passive income stream and tax benefits without the hassles of becoming landlords.    In today’s episode, John discusses his partnership and business goals, his big deal in Texas, shares a variety of resources to learn your market & discusses important factors when analyzing a deal. He also explains why multifamily apartments are the main focus of his business strategy, his different types of value adds & views on the mobile home parks asset class.   Highlights:  Importance of Building Relationships How to Analyze Unfamiliar Markets Data Points to Focus On Knowing When to Scale Up   Connect with John: Website: casmoncapital.com Email: john@casmoncapital.com   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TRANSCRIPTION   00:00 Hey guys, this is Don and my guest today on the show is John Casmon. John is a real estate investor and he's investing primarily in Chicago and Cincinnati and he's in control of over 920 units, which is quite a lot of units. So I'm very excited to have him on the show today because he's one of the most experienced investors out there and I'm also, John was kind enough to share his resources with us. So at the end of the episode I'm going to read a few websites that you want to check out in case you want to do some research and find out some more information about the multifamily deal you're looking at. So we're always happy to give you guys that information. So stay tuned. 00:46 Welcome to the Commercial Real Estate Investing podcast with Don and Eden where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to off-market strategies. 01:03 Hey John, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on. 01:07 Of course. I think you deserve it. I heard you own or in control of over 920 units. 01:14 Yeah. Were general partners of 920 units across the country, primarily in Texas, Florida, South Carolina and Cincinnati. And continue to grow that and working with investors. So excited about everything. 01:27 That's great. But I know when you started it wasn't always this way, so now you're a full time real estate investor, but when you started, you were doing that part time. I know you're investing since 2012 if my records are right. 01:41 Yeah, absolutely. We started off part time. I started with the house hack. We had a two unit property, lived in one unit, rented out the other and you know, from there we bought a three unit building. A couple of years later we bought an eight unit building the next year and just continued to build the portfolio. And eventually it got to the point where we were running out of our own money and we're talking to a lot of people who were interested in investing in real estate but didn't have the time to really learn everything that we had learned in the us on their own. And at that moment we kind of realized, Hey, there might be a great opportunity to partner with these people where we can bring them in along side of us on deals. They can be passive, they can, get all the, you know, the income that comes from being an investor without having to actually be the landlord and take care of the property themselves. So that kind of really opened us up to different ways of expanding and growing our portfolio. Yeah. So when you say we, who exactly are you talking about? Oh, my wife. You know, I don't make any decisions without checking in with the boss. 02:41 Yeah. Just checking in with the boss. That's, that's true. So when you, when you first made the transition to real estate, I know you were working in a different job, a day job and then how, how did your wife take it? So how, how was she with, with that idea? 02:57 Yeah, I mean it's the, it was truly a partnership thing. So it wasn't like I had to convince her or anything like that. I know some folks go to those situations, but you know, we were always aligned on the lifestyle we wanted to create a lifestyle, we wanted to live the environment we went to raise our kids in. So as we had conversations about how to create it, real estate was a big part of it. So that first property, I mean we lived in that property, lived in one unit. We lived in our property for seven years. So I mean we lived basically in an apartment for seven years in and built equity and continue to grow. So that was something we were always aligned on. And I think that's really important. If you're going to invest in real estate you want to make sure your partner is on board with that. 03:38 So she was completely aligned with it. We had our roles in the business, so she did certain things. I did certain things and we kind of use that to grow the portfolio. So we were both, you know, doing it kind of on the side and we have a smaller portfolio, you can do that. I think when you get to the point where you really want to scale and you want to start working with other people, that's where you start to have to shift roles, responsibilities and dedicate more time into the business. Yeah. So when did you feel that things are getting bigger and that you, you're, you just scaled up a little bit? You know, we bought the eight unit building and that was our first commercial property. We hired a professional management company to over see it and we're still pretty involved in the process from an asset management standpoint. 04:22 But going through that process gave me the confidence and, you know, the readiness to start moving forward into some of the larger properties. So I think for me, you know, cutting the teeth on something that was commercial but not overwhelming, that gave us a chance to learn to work with property management companies, understand the way they work, the way they underwrite, the way they manage and just really take that experience and they use that to kind of build and take the next step into kind of larger commercial properties. Okay. So yeah, let's talk about that. So when you're saying large commercial properties- I'm assuming you're talking about multifamily units over 80 units or 90 units, right? Apartment buildings. That's right. Yeah. So tell us about the first deal that you had of, of that scale. Yeah, so I mean, we were looking for properties for awhile and knew just like now the market's been kinda tight and we were looking for properties where we could deliver strong returns for our investors and we're having a hard time finding it. 05:23 So we ended up partnering with a friend, a gentleman that I had met and he was in a similar boat, but we just kinda had a conversation and I expressed that if he found something that made sense, wanting to love to review it, and if the deal looked good, we'd be interested in coming on as partners and maybe bringing some of our partners on as well. Because at that point point we had been talking to investors for a little bit of time and you know, they were kind of getting itchy and wanted to get in on a deal that all the great things we have been telling them about multifamily investing and we were struggling to find that deal. So we ended up partnering with that investor and that was 192 units out in San Antonio, Texas. Oh, that's a big, that's a big property. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it was a win, win situation because that was the big property for them as well. Right. So that was their first very large apartment deal where they kind of word the, the leads. So we came in as general partners and we help them with you know, kind of some of the marketing from the investor relations and you know, that was kind of our foray into the larger commercial apartment space. 06:29 Okay. So do you feel like you got into the deal because your investors got itchy or did you actually spot the opportunity there? 06:37 Well, I mean I think it comes down to building relationships first of all. Right. So for us, we would not have done this with just anyone. This was an individual that we had gotten to know over the course of probably about nine months. And you know, we've met him in person, we've sat, we've had dinner with them. We've had various conversations at that time. I had just launched our podcast “Target Market Insights” and he was one of the early guests on this show and it actually came up while we were talking right after we recorded the episode. So, you know, he was someone that we respected, we, we understood how he was looking at deals. He had been a general partner and other deals as well. In a large space. So he had experienced that. He knew what he was doing from that perspective. So I think we, there was a level of comfort with with that individual that gave us comfort and moving forward and, and being a partner there that I don't think we would have had no matter what our investors were thinking or looking for. 07:33 Okay. So let's talk about the numbers for that deal. So what was the purchase price? Find my ask and, and what was the value at plan and everything there? 07:41 Yeah, 16 point $1 million purchase price. We invested a little more than a million bucks into renovations. Value adds a couple things. Interior innovations on that property. We changed up the exterior landscape changed out the siding. There was a who's that? There was a, a second area that was kind of like a hot tub at one point. I, I don't know why, but it was a hot tub and we actually fill that in and made a kind of a barbecue pit area. So looking at different amenities that we can add. We added in private fenced in yards for the first floor units and then we added some technology packages as well. 08:24 I see. Okay. So basically you focused on improving the lifestyle and the, comfortability and the feeling of, of the people that are going to live in that, 08:33 The apartment, right? Yeah, yeah. A combination of interior renovations too. You know, just have a more attractive home, a more premium home, and also adding amenities and improving the amenities of the property. And then also just the aesthetics. Right. So from the exterior, just improving the aesthetics with a scheme of brand colors that really popped in, allow the property to stand out and photos and in person and felt more warm. It felt like a great home environment. 09:01 Yeah. So when you guys bought the property at $16.1, what was the, the vacancy rate roughly? If you don't remember? That's fine. 09:11 Yeah. I mean, I believe it was 92% occupied, so we're on a 7% or 8% vacancy rate. 09:16 Okay. And so the, the rents where they, where they maxed up or there were still some space? 09:22 Well, I'll tell you, this is the great thing about our strategy. So we do value add investing, right? So I just talked about all the stuff we did to it, but the beauty is you can buy the property based on its current operations. So it was making money and it was doing okay for what it was and what we saw was an opportunity for the property to perform even better. So almost like a private equity firm coming into it, looking at the current operations, but knowing that if we inject this some capital into the right things, we could really drive the returns. And that's kind of what we did. So it was for the vintage of the property, it was achieving pretty good rinse, but there was an opportunity to improve those units and take it from being a 1983 product and actually upfitting the countertops and appliances and the flooring and the fixtures and updating all of these things where we could compete with some of the class A properties and some of the 2015 & 2016 builds. Now we have something that's a bit more attractive and because it is still a little bit of an older property it can't quite achieve the rents of those new construction projects. But it's certainly gonna stand above the properties that were its like a B-class class. 10:40 That's exactly it. That's exactly it. So it's a nice sweet spot for us to play in where it's a better property than the other, you know, 1980 construction properties that are there, but it's going to be more affordable than the new construction. So for a renter, what they really care about, they don't care about the year of property was built, they care about what my apartment looks like, you know, does it have nice countertops? Does it have a washer dryer in unit, does it have a stainless steel appliances? Those kinds of things is what they care about. And then also what other amenities are there. Right. So that's what we, that's what we did with our business plan and that's worked out really well for us. 11:15 Very interesting. So let, let me, let me dig a little bit deeper on that deal specifically. Cause it's, it's very interesting the things you were saying. So as far as the rents, the 1983 product that was out there in the market, what was it by the way, that deal, you said, where was it? Yeah, San Antonio. Oh, San Antonio Okay. So the, the, the other products are the B class, in that market at the time. How much were they renting for roughly? And so where did you put your property in comparison with the A class property? So you, you were right in the middle, you're saying, right? 11:48 Yeah, I mean, so I think what we'd like to do, right, and for your listeners here don't understand part, what you want to do is you never want to have the most expensive property out there. So we were very conscious to manage our renovation schedule and understanding what kind of rents we could get. So we looked at those class a project properties and said, okay, if they're charging, and I'm just going to throw rough numbers here, they're charging $1,300 in rent or $1,400 in rent. If we fit, have our property with similar finishes. If we do units with similar finishes to this class A property, then we can expect to get something a little less than that. Now again, because that's the class A they knew, bill knew everything. Maybe you get $1100, maybe you get $1200, but take a couple, take 100 bucks off to, you know, 10- 20%, something like that. 12:36 Take that off of the class, but you also have to compare that to class B because again, you want to make sure you're not above the market to the point where you're in no man's land. So you wanna make sure that you're providing something of value and that value is ‘Hey, if you can get a class a product at a class B price’, that's how you know you've hit the sweet spot. So you want to make sure that you're still able to compete with those other properties and it's okay to be at a premium to some of them as long as your renovations and the property itself is above is above kind of the offerings that those properties have.  13:12 What would you say the price of the other B properties was? The same price, like $1100, $1200 13:18 A more the, thousand dollar range rights. I mean they kind of depends on where you start your property. So in this scenario, let's say that they're all getting similar rents, but there are a couple of comp properties that I've seen some upgrades and those properties that have been upgraded are seeing rent premiums of a $100-$150. That lets you know that Hey, if we were to do certain renovations, we can improve the rents, we let them this property. 13:42 Yeah. And so when you got into the deal, what was the rent that was charged by the, by the previous owner? 13:48 I don't know. I'd have to look back on that one, man. 13:50 Yeah. Okay. Yeah, of course. You can't remember everything. But that's very interesting. So I think the, the ability to really look at a deal and see the small things you can do, but still looking at it objectively. Cause sometimes, you know, when I look at deals, I want them to work, you know, cause I want to close on the deal and I want the deal to work. So I'm not really looking at it objectively when I give it to somebody else that I know and I have them look at it then, you know, they look at it in a different way. And so I think looking at a deal and knowing that you could get what it is you're trying to get, you know, and add the extra value and still make good profit. I think it's great. And you guys really noticed that on that specific property. And I think that's, that's amazing. That's beautiful. 14:33 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think ultimately when you talk about underwriting, right? And when you're looking at these numbers, I mean, you have to allow the numbers to tell the story, right? You can't get too fixated on, you know, what you want to happen on that deal in particular, you know, like th the numbers they made sense and sometimes you have to tweak it, right? I mean, it's not say that, ‘Hey, if you underwrite a deal and the numbers don't work, run away.’ I think what it means is you have to rethink your business plan. Sometimes you step back and say, okay, well what will happen if we did this? Or what will happen if we, if we didn't upgrade every unit, what if we only did these units? So I think you can play around with scenarios, but the numbers are the numbers that you don't want to force the numbers to work. That's where you get into a lot of trouble. So you definitely wanna make sure you stay diligent to the numbers. But you can stay somewhat open-minded in your business plan as long as the numbers are dictating the proof points of what your business plan actually is. 15:28 Definitely. Okay. So let's talk about your other deals that you've done since that big deal over there. So have you changed your strategies, you know, during the years with looking at properties differently and doing other things that, you know, you, you haven't done in that specific deal? 15:46 Ah, I mean I think generally speaking, value add is our approach. So we're always looking to buy a property that is cash flowing day one. That's, that's a core principle of ours. We like cash flowing assets day one. And what we want to do is want to find ways to add value. So that is a core principle of our business and the way we operate. So some of the things that have changed since then is we, we look at our loans. So the loan kind of is a deal by deal thing. So we're always balancing the loan product that we want to put on there and the exit strategy that we place. And we're always looking at the market, you know, the market dynamics, you know, how much room is there to improve rents you know, what can the market take, what will be too much, what's the story of the asset and how do we come up with the business plan that best matches the property itself, the community, and then what renters in the area are looking for. 16:39 Yeah. So when you're looking at a new market or a market that you don't know, where would you look or what is the data that you're trying to get? 16:46 Yeah, there's a ton of data that you're looking for, but ultimately the main thing that you're looking for is you want to understand where demand is, not just today, but tomorrow. You want to know how future demand compares to current demand and the, the more recent realities. So a lot of people will tell you, ‘Hey, you know, I'm, you know, this market saw 5% rent growth last year.’ That's great. It does not mean it's going to see 5% rent growth in the future, which is what you really care about. So we try to look at the different data points to figure out what's demand currently and what can we realistically expect it to be in the near future through life of our business plan. Now, none of us have a crystal ball, but we try to look at different data points to determine that. So what are some of those points? 17:31 Look at population. So you want to understand population population growth in particular. Are people leaving an area or are they moving into an area? Jobs, job growth. We're looking at, you know, what jobs are there, are they growing? Are there more jobs being added to an area or people, you know, more companies leaving the area. Job diversification. So, you know, I lived in Detroit for four and a half years and I worked in the automotive industry. So I can tell you how important it is to have a diverse industry from a, from a jobs perspective, you never want to have one city or one market solely dependent on one industry because if something happens to that industry, you know, obviously you can suffer the consequences of it. Outside of that, you are looking at the ease of doing business and you're looking at landlord, tenant friendliness. 18:20 So how easy is it to evict or to, you know, get a tenant out of if they're not paying their rent. So you want to understand those different components. So we look at all of that, but ultimately, you know, we're trying to figure out demand. So the last factor we look at there is more in the multifamily space. We'll look at as supply and demand. New construction is new construction coming on board. You know, what is the absorption rate for that? So absorption rate is essentially the, the frequency or the amount of demand for the new apartments that are coming on board. So you want to make sure that there's more demand than properties being built because there's more properties, more units being built, then demand, then that's going to force everyone's rent to go down. So you may not be able to actually implement your business plan if you are trying to raise rents. 19:09 Yeah. So where do you gather all the data on? I know that you, you probably gathered from many, many places like I know CoStar, you can look at things over there, you can look at things that Reonomy. You can look at best basis. There are so many, you know, things you could look at and report. So you could read. So for our listeners, people that are trying to get into real estate investing and they want to know where you gather the data, what would you say are the best places to do that? 19:33 Yeah, so there's a lot of different resources out there. I just did a presentation. I've put a whole list together. I'd be happy to email this to you or share with your audience as a download. But a handful that I'll go off the top of my head. You mentioned bus places. That's a great one. Best places done that is a, is a great resource there. The US census census.gov it's a great website, great forum for understanding both population and job growth. So it does have that information on there. On the jobs, it's more, I think it's a Bureau of Labor is the website to go check out for, for the jobs there. And yeah, I mean, unfortunately there's not like one site that's going to just give you all of those things in a pretty package. What I will say is that brokers to now this information available. 20:20 So if you're talking to brokers, that's something that you can ask them. Typically they'll, you'll see some of this information in their offering memorandum. The other places you know, talking to, to local officials, but also reach out to any kind of Economic Development Council. So if you're looking at a specific market, a great resource is going to be that Local Economic Development Council, Chamber Of Commerce. And you can just flat out ask them, Hey you know, trying to get some information in regards to population growth and job growth in this market, new construction and what developments are being planned and they can have some of that information available to you as well. Nice. These are some great tips. So what is your focus for the future? I know that multifamily market is kind of tight right now that, you know, the way you said it before. 21:11 So what are you doing in this type market? Are you still looking at multifamily deals or, you're looking at different asset classes? No, we stay focused on multifamily. You know, I know a lot of people are looking at other asset classes and there's certainly opportunities in different asset classes and I think that's the beauty of real estate is there's always going to be some opportunities, but multifamily from a fundamental standpoint is something we really like. And I'll tell you why. First of all, it's housing. So everyone's always going to need a place to live. That's something that technology can't replace. It's pretty straight forward. You know, you need a place to stay. Two- Affordable housing is getting tough in this country. You know, prices are going up, rents are going up, home ownership is going down. You know, they're trying to increase salaries and wages, but between the debt that most people have, whether it be called student loan debt or other debt, it's really difficult for, for your average person to come up with 20%- 25% down for a have to buy a new home. 22:09 So many people are saving. The other thing is people are getting married later in life. So young people are not getting married in their thirties. They're having children later in life and no one wants to own a ranch home when there's 24 years old live in by themselves. So most of them want to be in the city. They won't be downtown. They would be close to the action. So you're seeing more people choose to rent out a lifestyle. Same thing on the flip side of that equation, you have more older renters now where they don't want the burden of being a homeowner. They'd rather rent call the main has got it fixed, whatever they need, fixed, live, close to the city, close to colleges, universities, things like that. And they're happy to, to rent as opposed to owning a home. So I think the view of what home ownership means has changed significantly in this country where he used to be kind of a, the goal for many people. 22:58 Now it's almost a burden, you know, to, to be a homeowner. You can't move around the country, you can't take a new job, you can't do the different things. So people actually prefer a lot of people prefer to rent. So because of all those things, I still think multifamily is a strong place to be. The core for us is we, we buy based off our fundamentals. So if you're buying based off of fundamentals, you're a little less concerned with the economy. Because I could sell whenever I want to sell for the most part, as long as I put a loan product on the proper property, that gives me flexibility on the exit. We're buying cash flowing assets day one. So I'm not trying to flip a project or, you know, do all these other things to try to figure out how to make my money. 23:38 It's not new construction or development. You know, so we're going in and we are particularly investing capital into the property when and where it makes sense. We have the ability to slow down or rev up that process as we see fit. So I still think multifamily is a great place to be. You need to be smart and you need to be diligent as you're going through the process. But if you're buying cash flow that properties and you have proper reserves and you put the proper loan on it, that gives you flexibility and I think you'll still do fine even in an economic downturn. 24:11 Yeah, definitely. And I think a lot of things you discussed before are so interesting and so true because the people that rent today are primarily millennials. And then we were exposed to, and that's what happened to me. We were exposed to the purple book or, or you know, some other people call it ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’. I just call it the purple book because people just know what I'm talking about and then that book describes that owning a home in America and in general is more of a liability than, than an asset. And so you see the impact of, of Robert Kiyosaki's words, you know, to the people where you'd see that everybody would prefer to rent and not to own. And you're, you're so right about the things you said. Cause I had the same, the same concept right now when I was debating where I'm going to move if I was gonna move to another, a condo or an apartment or a, or a single family house in Miami, that's, that's where I'm from. 25:04 And then I was thinking the exact same thing I was thinking about. Do I? I'm single. So I, I'm, I'm not married, I don't have kids. So I was thinking, you know, the exact same thing even though I'm 30 I, I still don't want to, don't want to live in, in a, in a single family house, you know, when I can live downtown, close to everything and, and close to my friends and close to young people, you know. So, so the things you mentioned are, are very true. But despite that, I'm going to ask a question regarding what she said about the affordable housing. So since the crisis of affordable housing is not going anywhere anytime soon, what do you think about, I see a lot of, a lot of chatter on a mobile home parks and  the affordability of, of basically living in a mobile home in comparison to other things. And so a lot of investors and trust and funds are buying them right now. So what do you think about that asset class? So have you ever looked into it? 26:03 Yeah, I mean, you know, we, we interview a lot of people and we have talked to multiple people who are focused on mobile home parks and we know a lot of other city caters and operators and investors who, who are in that space. We get it, we understand it at a high level. It's just, you know, for us, when I think about mobile home parks I think that it makes sense for certain people. I just, I personally haven't seen a reason for us to pivot our strategy. You know I think that there are a couple of different types of people here and I'm not saying one is right, but we like to try to focus on one thing and really get great at it and spend a lot of time and energy to excel and get as great as we can be on something. 26:51 And at that point then we would consider other approaches, other asset classes or whatever. But for us, I just don't like I'm concerned about the shiny object syndrome for us. So we just prefer to focus in on what we're doing and not try to chase yields. Cause I think unless you truly want to be in a mobile home parks or you know, still a self storage or some of these other things, I think what's happening is people are chasing yields are chasing deals as opposed to really trying to lock in on what they do. And I'm not saying one is right or one is wrong. If you have the ability to do that, the great for us, you know, I think we prefer to just kind of focus in one asset class as opposed to trying to be a Jack of all trades. 27:35 Yeah. And that makes sense because you're already in that asset class and you have the connections, you have the knowledge and you've done it before the investors been brokers, everything is at your hand. So what would you, what would you think about a person who's trying to get into multifamily investing right now at this market at this point? Yeah, I will tell you the same thing I tell everybody. So if you want to get into it wonky clarity on what you want to do if you want to kind of buy large apartment buildings or things like that, then or if you just want to, you just heard of all commercial investing and you want to get into the space. What I would say is the best thing to do is find someone who's doing it and see if you can be a limited partner. 28:20 Because being a limited partner is going to allow you to learn more real time. You, you have money in the deal. So you've got skin in the game and you can ask the questions that come up and you can gain experience, confidence and credibility that's gonna make it much easier to grow. And that's something that will put you in position to be very successful. So we talk a lot about the kind of how to grow into the space and do it where you don't have so many things pushing against you with the learning curve is very high. And I think ultimately what will happen is, you know, people get into this, they read a book and they get excited and you know, it just becomes very tough. It's very difficult to go out and just buy a property in a very competitive market. 29:04 And you don't want to be the person who inadvertently overpays for something and you know, not be in a position to make that money back or implement your business plan. So I would say trying to find a deal where you can come in is a great way to start from there. You can become a general partner or become an operator yourself. But then also think about what you really want to do. Because for many people, they want to invest in real estate, especially commercial real estate because they want the benefits that come with it. You want the passive income, you want the tax benefits, you want to diversify your portfolio. What you don't want is a second job. You want to be chasing down tenants for rent. You don't want to be, you know, fixing toilets that are leaking in the night. So, you know, just make sure you're clear on what you're signing up for and what you're going to get out of it. The larger properties give you the ability to be an investor and the smaller properties, you know, give you a chance to be a landlord. 30:01 Yeah. But I guess a lot of people would say that you also learn a lot when you deal with the small properties. You learn what you don't want to do. 30:09 I think many people can learn from me telling you, you don't want to change toilets though. So you can, there's a lot of ways to learn, right? You can learn by getting punched in the face or you can learn from someone saying, Hey, that probably hurts. You just don't walk into it. Right. Yeah. It's up to you about how you want to learn. 30:23 Yeah, definitely. That's very smart. Okay. So John Casmon, what are the best ways to connect with you in case anybody wants to get in touch? 30:31 Yeah. So if you're interested in multifamily or you want to grow kind of from a marketing standpoint, whether it be finding deals or you want to learn more about how to find deals, how to analyze deals, how to learn more about markets or even just growing your personal brand, check out our podcast is called “Target Market Insights” and sites and it's available anywhere podcasts are, and you can also go to our website. We have a free download, you go to casmoncapital.com/sampledeal. We have a free sample deals to get a sense of what a deal package looks like. And then if you have any questions or you want to connect with me further, you can email me at john@casmoncapital.com. 31:10 Alright John, thank you very much. 31:13 Thank you. Appreciate you having me on the show. 31:15 Yup. Have a great day. Hey guys, so yes, as promised courtesy of John casmon. Here are some resources in case you want to check some critical information on multifamily deals or the market that you're looking into. So if you want to know more about economic trends in the market, you can check out the US Census. You could check out the Bureau of Labor statistics, the Local Economic Development Council, and there's a website called areavibes.com. So it's area vibes.com. Okay. So if you want to know more about multifamily trends check out Colliers International Marcus and Millichap, C. B. R. E. you can always use CoStar. You could use REI reports, ALN Data, Integra Realty resources, also known as IRR. WeAreApartments.org and justicemap.org. So these are all the resources that John shared with us. I hope this is very helpful to anybody who's trying to get into multifamily and learn more. It's always good to know as much as you can about the market. I hope that helps. So thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the episode. 32:30 Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden. Stay tuned for more episodes till next time.

 Richard Sarkis, Co-Founder and CEO of Reonomy, joins Michael to discuss how brokers, lenders, and principals can use real estate data to conduct research and improve their bottom line.For customized commercial brokerage services call Michael Bull, CCIM at 404-876-1640 x 101 or visit http://www.BullRealty.comFor cloud accessible commercial agent training, check out Michael Bull’s video-audio training at: http://www.CommercialAgentSuccess.comAppreciate the show? Please thank our sponsors: http://bit.ly/2ty53e1Subscribe to our weekly show topic email notification to know who’s on each weeks show and the topic: http://bit.ly/2gfoKSNYou’re invited to subscribe to the show’s YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/2u1vr1nFor more videos, podcasts, and articles visit: http://www.CREshow.comConnect with America’s Commercial Real Estate Show: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/amer... Twitter: https://twitter.com/CRE_show Instagram: https://instragram.com/creshow

After a strong career as a civil engineer, Hawaiian native, Lane Kawaoka, decided to kiss corporate America goodbye and turn towards a stronger long term wealth plan - investing in single and multifamily units. After purchasing his first property in Seattle, Lane quickly realized what he needed to do to bring better cash flow to his strategy and invested in eleven different single-family units is not as large cities, such as Birmingham, Alabama, and Indianapolis, Indiana. Lane has a different business model where he focuses primarily on getting the money for the deal, and this way he joins on the GP side of the syndication.  In this episode of Multifamily Real Estate Investments with Don and Eden, Lane dives into how he conducts business all over the country - investing in multifamily units in different regions of the United States and more specifically how he anticipates what the markets are like so he can find a good deal. From there he will detail his unique business model of finding deals that no one else is really putting into practice and why it generates such great success for him and his partners. Lane also talks about why he thinks self-storage units and mobile home parks are a great start to investing in real estate and why he is focused on that for his investment future. At the end of this episode, Don also records an outro that explains how the entire syndication process works.   Highlights:  Lane’s Beginnings In Real Estate  His Unusual Business Model  How He Analyzes Markets Throughout Us Why He Believes Mobile Home Parks Are A Great Investment   Current Projects And Future Outlook   How to Connect with Lane   SimplePassiveCashFlow.com Simple Passive Cashflow Podcast with Lane Kawaoka    ----------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPTION   Hey guys, today I'm going to interview Lane Kawaoka - a real estate investor from Hawaii and he is also syndicating deals. What I like about him is that he's going to educate us on a different way of making passive income from multi-family and other real estate's syndications without ever finding the deal, but only finding the money. Now I realize not all of my listeners are really educated as far as the syndication process and how it works. So I decided to add a small part at the end of the interview, at the end of this episode really, to kind of educate you guys about the process so that you would know exactly what we're talking about because these are some critical advice that he gives and I really want everybody to understand. So I hope you guys are excited and stay tuned.  Welcome to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to multi-family apartment buildings and off-market strategies.  Hey, Lane Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Don. Yeah. So how's the weather in Hawaii?  Perfect as normal little hot, but not complaining.  So I live in Florida and that's where I want to live. But right now as it's the summer here it’s not that pleasant, there's a lot of rain, hurricanes, the Internet is bad. I'm pretty sure you're having a better time than I am the other day or just in the office all day long looking at deals.  You're so right about that. So how about you tell us a little bit about yourself. For our audience to be able to get to know you a little bit.  Yes. I used to be an engineer, graduated from college in 2007, but none of my family was in real estate. They thought that the tenants would just rip the house. So I kind of grew up on this linear path that goes to school, study hard, get a good job, yeah engineer of all things and work for 40-50 years and maybe retire, but that kind of changed for me when I started to work as a construction supervisor and my first job out of college. The job kind of sucked. I didn't like it at all. I was traveling all the time, but I got paid a pretty good salary   80-90 grand a year wasn't bad. And I was able to buy a primary residence up in Seattle which I'm sure you guys talk a lot about that. That's not exactly where you want to invest for cash flow, but I didn't know any better start to rent it out and for a young 20 something-year-old kid. It was a lot of beer money when the monthly rents were twenty-two hundred a month. And the key idea the mortgage payments were sixteen hundred dollars a month. Then at that point, I realized like shoot I gotta keep doing this over and over again and that's my way out of this crappy job and to get financial freedom.  So, you bought some more single-family units afterward right? Yes, I bought another one in Seattle, but at that time I was in a bunch of podcasts and kind of learning this concept of yeah you don't want to buy A class rental. You want to buy more B or C class. And so I bought a nice class rental was a duplex, but at that time it was   2011, 2012 the prices were starting to come out and I was realizing that wasn't cash-flowing. That's where I learned the concept of you don't buy properties and probably markets like Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston you look for more of these secondary markets like Kansas City, Memphis, Indianapolis, Little Rock, Jacksonville, Birmingham kind of those places are. Today tertiary markets so that you can buy more for cash flow as opposed to appreciation which is sort of gambling and a little dangerous in my opinion especially when it looks like we're sort of getting to the top of the market.  Yes, I agree. So, what was the stage where you decided to move from single families to commercial real estate especially multifamily?  Yeah so after those two rentals - all I bought the other one of these turnkey rentals in Birmingham. So, I think the purchase price is like 80 grand. And the rents were like eight hundred or so. Right at that 1 percent rent to value ratio and I had some pretty good luck with it. So, I sold those two Seattle properties and did a 1031 exchange for nine out-of-state properties and then they picked up another property in Pennsylvania. So in 2015, I found myself having 11 rental properties and at that point, I was operating off of this mindset of hey I'm just going to buy a whole bunch of these single-family homes just get another 20 I'll be financially free right. Thirty properties cash flying at 300k dollars a piece that's about 9-10 grand passive. But then I realized with those 10 rentals I was getting an eviction or two every year. So that's when I kind of walked down this path this logical path of becoming a multi-family investor.  That's cool. So, I know you have a different business model when it comes to multifamily apartment especially when it comes to syndication. So tell us a little bit about that business model. What's so special about it and how do you go about it. How do you do it?  Yeah. So, I mean, I started to do this podcast and if at first, it wasn't very popular. Like most podcasts die. But I kept doing it because my motivation was that in the first like the podcast was about, hey educate people buying a single-family home, turnkey rentals, or buy properties remotely. Just because a lot of my friends were asking me this and I was just so tired of saying the thing over and over again to people and nobody does anything. But throughout that process people kind of got to know me and they realized like alright this is cool and nice you're going into these multifamilies, these syndications and private equity deals. Can we just copy what you do? So that's what I do today and every deal I go into I typically bring in about 50 or 60 investors or three million dollars follows along with me.  That's very cool. So you're focusing on raising the funds rather than finding the deal or you're doing both? So if you've kind of back up to 2016 I joined an apartment investing group and you spend like 30 grand to get in and get the training. But I went in this because I wanted to be the operator I want to be the guy who is running this 200-300 unit apartment complex.  So I went and got the training for it. I got the coach and learned how to underwrite deals and for about 18 months I must have analyzed a couple of hundred properties and I realized that absolutely none of them made sense. Most of the garbage is out there especially through brokers and Don you kind of mentioned that most of you guys are looking for properties, not from a broker which I think is a good idea because even me and my partner we had like 30 or 40 units in their name, but nobody cared. If you have a bunch of single-family homes they only want to know if you close big deals. So I wasn't getting anywhere in terms of traction if there was one saving grace being able to underwrite deals pull the panels or rent rolls do my analysis. It prevented me from buying a lot of deals in that from 2016-2017. And at that point me and my partner were like ‘hey we're not getting anywhere with these brokers’ which I'm sure a lot of you guys can sympathize with. And because it is super hard and so we're like well let's just go as a passive investor into some deals and build our track record and make us look cool on our resumé.  So we went through a few deals and then we had 300 units to our name, but then I realized like ‘hey this is pretty easy just being a limited partner, making 10 to 15 percent on my money and then not doing a thing like this’ is pretty good and my net worth at the time I was getting to a point where hey if I die if I just invest my money at 10 or 15 percent I'll be financially free in the very near future. Definitely, well before my 40s. So why would I want to take on all this risk putting down all this hard money on these bigger deals and I'm going down that route.  So it's always the question we always want to do the bigger things. Even though we could make good money by just investing our money inside other people's deals but we want to be the people that actually operate the deal.   That's the thing right. I mean but ego aside. Right.  Everybody wants to do big things or whatever, but it comes down to your net worth. Like if you're under half a million dollars net worth you're broke. I mean you got to be the guy operating there. You can't be a passive investor. You got you gotta have money to invest as a passive investor. So it's just more of a math equation kind of moving past that critical mass point or I could be a passive investor and just sort of these single-family homes and those rentals got me up to that point so I could switch that just instead of talking with brokers and finding my deals. I started to go out and network with other operators and to go in as a big name partner on these deals and just got really good at underwriting those deals because I did it as a sort of pseudo operator for a while.  I could look through all the garbage and all these pitch deck deals because I've been in Dallas trying to invest my own money and so it all kind of came together where my investor list wanted to know what I was investing in and I was kind of looking for deals for myself.  So far we've closed on about two hundred sixty million dollars worth of properties and 26 units or twenty-eight hundred units I think I don't really count anymore.  Who counts. Yeah. Yeah, I got six hundred after a thousand, that just sounds a bit ridiculous. I just sound like a jackass.  So you were just getting into these deals that other syndicators had and you were just investing as a passive investor and then you decide that you have the connections with other investors that are looking to invest. So you could get on the GP side of the deal by just being the person who brings the money in the right. Am I getting you?  Right. I mean I'm very valuable when I come into a deal. I bring in three million dollars of investors with my great relationships. It’s a big problem especially being in some deals that don't go as well.  Investors start to get very whiny and they start to ask a lot of questions and some of them may even sue you. So those relationships are key and I think a lot of newer investors lead investors don't realize this. So having relationships with all your investors is very important and not to mention that that's the S.E.C. protocol you need to have your pre-existing relationship with all your investors and you need to know every single one of their financial pictures intimately.  So now I go in as sort of a sub syndication and bring in my investors and my investors want to know that they have somebody on the inside somebody who is pulling the strings on the management team and a lot of times I've been in more deals than the operators at this point, almost like 20 something deals. So I bring in my insights I bring in my contacts best practices from other deals. But at the end of the day I don't I'm not I don't want to be that person managing the manager on a week to week basis know in my opinion that's trading time for dollars. That's not the highest best use for my time.  Ok, so you're giving some critical advice here which I love. So the first thing that you're saying is that you're getting in all the deals that your investors are getting into. So they know that Lane here, that we trust Lane, and he's got experience and he was involved in 20 deals or so and he's investing his own money. So we know that we could invest together with him because we've made money with him and we have a great rapport with him and we trust him. So that's the first thing that you do but the other thing you do is you've got to screen out all these deals coming from syndicators must have heard about you and your connections because a lot of people are stuck because they don't have money right? So then you have to screen out the deals between all the syndicators and you've got to pick the right one for your investors and yourself. So how do you do that?  Well it's a simple process of I mean it's just no different than getting deals from brokers or figuring out deals from wholesalers are good. At the end of the day you grab the pen, you get the rent roll and you put it into the analyzer and you analyze the paper yourself. That's half of that right. The other half is building up a network of other past the best serves so that the operators because I don't go into a deal unless I know I have a strong relationship with somebody who has been in their previous deal to bet that expense.  Yeah. So how often do you see syndicators that are involved in bad deals? Ones that don't have any chance of delivering what they're promising to their investors.  Well, I mean quite often. I mean it's kind of like syndication. They're kind of like airplanes right. When they take off everybody's all happy, but nobody knows if it's taking off with a quarter tank of gas. When I go into a deal I want to at least know we have enough fuel to get there.  Yeah, I see so that's your criteria. Your check to see that the plane is not going to crash.  Well, I don't know. I don't know if it's going to crash or not. Nobody knows, but I want to make sure it has enough gasoline to get there and metaphorically what I'm talking about is it underwritten the right way or are they using these loony projections on rent increases per year, the reversion cap rates are too low, or if the rent increases just too aggressive? Okay, but let me try to understand something. So when you're underwriting a deal you also have to get to know the market. So if you're working with syndicators from all over the United States sometimes they would show you deals from markets that you don't know you're not familiar with. So how do you go about getting to know the market so that you could understand that their underwriting is done correctly?  Well, every day where the rubber meets the road is on a few cells on a spreadsheet. Different locations are underwritten a little bit differently. For example, Dallas is a very hot market these days you might underwrite it for more than 90-92 percent occupancy whereas Oklahoma City is not the case and you might underwrite it for a maximum of 88 percent occupancy. Now, of course, there are a lot of other boxes on the spreadsheets that I might play around with based on the market, but those are some of the levers that you pull. And where do I get some of those numbers from? Well I just call up some of my buddies who are in those markets and I ask them what they're using at the time and they level and normalize based on what other people are using.   So it's all about networking, you don't know anything about every market that the people in every market so that you could ask them?  Right. Right. But it's the same it's no different than like me asking you well hey what's the temperature in Florida like I don't have a clue what the temperature in Florida is, but I know what it is relative right to Hawaii or California. Same thing.   Yeah. That's a very smart perspective. I like it a lot so I know you've been looking at other asset classes recently especially self-storage sites and mobile home parks which I've been hearing a lot of people talk about recently. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? What exactly are you looking at and what are some of the opportunities that you see over there.  Yeah. So I mean multifamily don't get around as a great asset class right. The population is increasing and the whole workforce housing story. And then a lot of people like to get into multi-family because of great financing options. In theory, you could just get a good property manager and they just run the show for you. But those are the exact reasons why you shouldn't do it because everybody and their mother is syndicating multifamily deals these days and very few people are into the mobile home park space. So from one perspective, you're kind of looking for an investment that is a good investment. Which mobile home parks and what they found they are but from another viewpoint. You're looking for which one has less competition and this is where mobile home parks vastly overpower what they found the apartments. If I were a new operator today I would do a mobile home park investing just because there is a lot less competition out there for it. Part of the reason why it's kind of a dirty asset. Most people have a knee jerk reaction to it like they're like I don't want to own a mobile home park, a trailer park trash type of environment and everybody who's own single-family homes gets the renter mindset of a renter in that environment and they're like all of this. It's a logical progression to go to multifamily but not a lot of people have lived in a mobile home park. So again it's a lack of competition.  So, what are the opportunities or more correctly the value add opportunities that you see in a mobile home park?  Yeah, I mean it's no different than apartments or says family homes. It's a little bit nice lipstick on a pig but a lot of it more like management plays. There's a big increase in the amount of community and that's where the property manager comes in with the leasing getting more systems in place improving the community because the nice thing about these mobile home parks is yeah you can have one business model where you rehab the existing units but you're trying to get to a point where the tenants on their own houses. Right. So if a tenant screws up property just like how they screw up a single-family home or they screw up an apartment complex in a mobile home park when it's their property, well, that's their problem as a mobile home park owner you want to get to a point where you just on the concrete slabs and people pay you the rent for that lot. It's really hard to screw up a concrete slab.   Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So where do you see yourself in the next 10 years as far as real estate investing, what are your goals and dreams for the future? You are still in your 20’s right? No, I look 20 but I'm a lot older it's the Asian thing or something.  Thirty-three. Oh, you must be using some good anti-aging then yeah.  Well, it kind of sucks when you're in corporate America right. Because you look like a little kid. One of the reasons why I quit my job five months ago.  Well, I thought to do somebody that they look younger is always a compliment.  Yeah. I mean, I kind of realized that like five years into my career - probably like seven years into my career and at that time I had like five or eight rental properties and like somebody told me at work to go grab these boxes with the interns. And I was like Man I've been here for like five-seven years don't tell me to go grab some boxes so then I realized at that point this is how companies are it's how much white hair you have. It's funny. Yeah. But yeah. So to answer your question, yeah and let's get back to that.  What's going to happen in 10 years think in the next I think in the next couple of years.   I'm going to write out this mobile home park because I feel like it's a little bit better cash flow than apartments. It's not as great appreciation play. But quite frankly I'm not looking for appreciation. I'm looking more for cash flow these days.  I stay away from the development deals and I think I'm going to be doing this mobile home park for the next couple of years of course still like cherry-picking the mobile home parks or the multi-family apartments because there are still big deals out there you just need to know how to analyze them and figure out the good ones from the bad ones. But two years and beyond. I think I might phase-out of real estate and maybe go to something more recession-proof or not correlated asset to the economy such as life settlements or something like that when you buy policies the people who are going to die. I mean there's nothing more guaranteed than death and taxes right. Yeah definitely. Ok so now I want to get back to the mobile home parks again just one last question. So when you look at a mobile home park what are you looking for? What are you looking at? How do you have a deal? Yeah, I mean, I don't know yet too much. I mean I'm still learning the asset class. That's why I'm going to go into parks that are already stabilized so eighty-five to ninety-five percent occupied. I'm just going to buy existing lemonade stands that are cash flowing? I learned it from that. I mean that's it but it's no different than an apartment. Really. It's just I think the key difference is property management. They are a lot stronger. The key employee part of this business.  I had a guest maybe like five or six episodes before and he said something about adding a value add to a mobile home park by just cutting some weeds out and just clearing some more space so that you could lease more units or you could do small storage for people to put some stuff they have like boats or cars or stuff like that, so that's how you could get some more value-add and you could increase your rent.  Then we went over the numbers together and I think it was Paul Moore one of my guests here and we went over the numbers together and I was shocked by how easy it is to increase the value of that park and I was actually starting to look at them myself and asking people what they know about them. So I was looking up I use Reonomy if about it but I use it it's very the interface is very nice and I started looking up the mobile home parks here in South Florida which I'm not really sure I want to invest in them yet because of the hurricanes and everything you're people they want to have.   That's exactly why do you want to own them because that 10 if you if you get to the point where the tenant owns the homes I don't care if the tornado or hurricane takes the target but you would think but you would think that maybe now when there is a big hurricane make almost every year that people would just maybe prefer not to move their homes here so maybe that the demand is decreasing.  I don't know. See I don't know as much as I know about real estate. There are so many things said I don't know. And so I want to do some more research before and try to understand exactly what's going on because people are talking about mobile home parks right now and I have to say it is interesting and you're talking about it and then people say it's like the next big thing right and apartments are already overheated but they're still buying apartments and you rarely hear about anybody that's buying mobile home parks. So it's kind of confusing. Everybody's saying different things. Right?  Right. I think I will talk about a lot like psyche. He has a saying there's two there are three sides to a coin. There are people who are on heads or tails right. What people normally think that you should buy multifamily you shouldn't buy multi-family, you should buy a mobile home park, you shouldn't. But there are investors out there that have a spreadsheet and they can put the numbers into the spreadsheet and those are the guys who live on the edge of the coin. Good or bad market. They know what the deals are. And I think that's the key is figuring out being able to analyze the properties and that's going to require you to go find a mentor to teach you that too and then go doing that for yourself. Because numbers don't lie. People do.  I could agree. Numbers don't lie. People do. So maybe I'm going to make that the headline of this episode. Who knows? So Lane, really it was a pleasure talking to you to do it today you're so smart and you have such beautiful insights. What are the best ways to connect with you for other people that are listening to that show?  Yeah. My podcast is Simple Passive Cashflow mostly for passive investors, first money podcast about single-family home, turnkeys. But then that's when the story starts changing to these private equities and we talk about all kinds of stuff like internet banking and that kind of stuff and have a whole bunch of articles on my website simplepassivecash.com. Wonderful. Ok so thank you very much for coming to the show and I hope you're going to enjoy the beautiful weather in Hawaii and stay in touch, I'm sure we have a lot more to talk about.  Yeah yeah. Thanks for having me.  You have a great day. ------------------------------------------- Syndication Process by Don  So a real estate syndication is essentially the operator of a deal. That's a person that's trying to facilitate a deal in real estate typically commercial real estate. It's usually the bigger deals but it could be any type of deal it could be one million, it could be 10 million, it could be one hundred million. So the syndicator what they're trying to do is they're trying to raise the down payment to the purchase of that property. So let's say that we are buying a property for one million, let's say this is the purchase price. So the syndicator is going to need at least two hundred thousand to get a loan so that they're going to get 80 percent of the purchase price from the bank. They still need a down payment so that the 20 percent and that they raise from investors.    Now, what's in it for the investors? The investors are making a preferred return which is a return that they're going to make anyway using a PPM, also known as a private placement memorandum. And then they're going to make that preferred return anyway every year. So if they invested a hundred thousand they're going to make eight thousand every year. And they're also the partners of the entire LLC that is purchasing the property and they are known as limited partners which means they're not taking any decisions of operating the transaction doing the value add plans and all of the above. But they're just making the money. So they're just passive investors making the 70 percent, of course, based on the amount of money that they had contributed. But they're going to make that limited partnership return and also the preferred return that they're going to make every year.    So the syndicator is going to make 30 percent of the entire LLC but he's going to be a general partner. So he's making decisions, he's implementing the value plans and he's doing all the work of assembling the deal. And that is what he's making. So a lot of syndicators they would also make acquisition fees so once the deal is completed then they're going to take between two to five percent of the entire purchase price of the property and they're going to take that in a check from the money of the investor. So the money of the down payment which is why you have to raise a little bit more than 20 percent also for a cap-ex and other things but that's pretty much how it works. Of course, you have to remember that sometimes the numbers change. I've seen general partners that are 30 percent and the limited partners would be 70 percent obviously but then I've seen general partners that are 25 percent /75 percent limited partners and so it changes. I've seen acquisitions fees for one percent and I've seen some 4 5 percent. So the numbers are negotiable. Every syndicator has its secret sauce. So what I would say is average is 30 percent, General Partners 70 percent, Limited Partners and a preferred return of 8 percent and then an acquisition fee of 2 percent is what I think is the average. So I hope you guys enjoyed the episode and remember two episodes are coming every week so stay tuned.    Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden. Stay tuned for more episodes. Till next time. 

Research and applied data are powering the commercial real estate industry now more than ever, and new resources are letting brokers utilize that information more efficiently. Join Michael as he discusses new services with some of the most innovative companies in commercial real estate. Guests include Carol Campbell, Director of Operations for CCIM and STDB, Richard Maxson, Senior VP with Catylist, and Richard Sarkis, CEO and Co-Founder of Reonomy.For customized commercial brokerage services call Michael Bull, CCIM at 404-876-1640 x 101 or visit http://www.BullRealty.com For cloud accessible commercial agent training, check out Michael Bull’s video-audio training at: http://www.CommercialAgentSuccess.com Appreciate the show? Please thank our sponsors: http://bit.ly/2ty53e1 Subscribe to our weekly show topic email notification to know who’s on each weeks show and the topic: http://bit.ly/2gfoKSN You’re invited to subscribe to the show’s YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/2u1vr1n For more videos, podcasts, and articles visit: http://www.CREshow.com Connect with America’s Commercial Real Estate Show: LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/americas-commercial-real-estate-show Twitter: https://twitter.com/CRE_show  Instagram: https://instragram.com/creshow

Advancements in technology allow us to access and analyze an incredible amount of data. But what does this mean for multifamily investors? Can we make use of tech tools to find off-market deals, for example? What if we could automate the underwriting process? How might machine learning facilitate market analysis? Raj Tekchandani is the Founder and Managing Principal at Smart Capital Management, a real estate investment firm that focuses on the acquisition and management of value-add multifamily properties. Raj brings his significant experience in tech startups to his work as a full-time investor, leveraging data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify strategic assets in emerging markets that provide high-yield returns. Today, Raj joins me to explain how he got started in real estate, buying condos in Orlando to supplement his uncertain W-2 income. He discusses what inspired his transition to multifamily and shares his diverse experience as an active investor, passive investor, and capital raiser for syndication deals. Listen in for Raj’s assessment of the available tech tools for real estate and learn how he quit his job in startups to become a data-driven multifamily investor!  Key Takeaways What inspired Raj’s interest in real estate Uncertainty of work in tech startups Create second income stream How Raj got started in real estate Friend buying condos in Orlando (2012) Purchased 9 of own for cashflow Raj’s transition to multifamily Reading about economies of scale Decision to get more involved Raj’s first multifamily investment 15-unit in up-and-coming neighborhood nearby Unexpected expenses, fired property manager How Raj got into passive investing in multifamily Continuing education in syndications LP for 151-unit in Georgia Why Raj decided to quit his job and do real estate full-time Control own destiny, control own time Bring passion for data analytics to real estate What Raj is working on now Partner with syndicator as capital raiser ‘Full-time evangelist for multifamily’ The tech tools for real estate Raj is exploring Reonomy for apartment ownership data Enodo for underwriting multifamily deals Building market analysis tools with Bay Area company How Raj educates new real estate investors Build trust through meetups and content Walk through recent transaction Serve as concierge through first deal What Raj looks for in a multifamily operator Trusted partners from mastermind network Responsive to communication Connect with Raj Smart Capital Management Email raj@smartcapitalmgmt.com Data Driven Multifamily Investing Facebook Group Resources What’s the Best Investment: The Stock Market or Real Estate? Syndicated Deal Analyzer Meetup Reonomy Enodo Nighthawk Equity Podcast Show Notes Review the Podcast on iTunes Michael’s Website Michael on Facebook Michael on Instagram Apartment Investor Network Facebook Group Financial Freedom with Real Estate Investing: The Blueprint to Quitting Your Job with Real Estate—Even Without Experience or Cash by Michael Blank

Lead, delegate, motivate, and coach Find people who are smarter and better than you to hire Look for partners with experience and momentum Know where the money partners bring to the project comes from Get information on projects and opportunities from lawyers/architects/engineers/etc. Look for patient capital Investing capital gains in Opportunity Zones Nuggets of Wealth: What is a good tool, source, or platform that you use almost daily that can also help others? Technology in general, leverage the cloud, Reonomy, and Loopnet. What was the best business advice you ever received? Find a mentor, educate yourself, and go big How do you manage your time? Check in with people, trust people to do their jobs, have people in place that do the day to day. Don't do the jobs of the people you've hired. Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years: Right now, we're looking at what we can do with Opportunity Zone investments. How do you want to be remembered? A someone who impacted many lives, someone you could trust, and who made a difference in peoples' lives. Watch full interview on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJlxF3WH0Y&list=PLTrNhHrlKks3j9DlqB10ad9DrilvZkqMR&index=9 --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/greg-dickerson/support

Welcome to Episode 95 of The VentureFizz Podcast, the flagship podcast from the leading authority for jobs & careers in the tech industry. For this episode of our podcast, I interviewed Kristen Caldwell, talent consultant and advisor. I was really excited to speak with Kristen as we talk at length about a topic that I'm very passionate about and have pretty much built my career around: recruiting. Kristen has an impressive background where she has played in key role in building out some of the top companies across both coasts like Yammer, Vine, Uber, and Blue Apron. Today, she is working with founders to help out with their talent acquisition strategy, as well as working as an advisor for firms Thrive Capital and NextView Ventures. In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of topics, like: -Kristen's background and the story of how she “fell into” recruiting. -The details of her in-house recruiting experience at each company. -The common mistakes entrepreneurs make when hiring. -How Kristen advises brand-new companies on top-of-the-funnel candidate strategy, including how to recruit engineers. -Telling the difference between someone who is good at interviewing versus a good hire. -How to approach diversity and inclusion. -Plus, a lot more. Our BIZZpages are a great way to do a virtual tour of high growth tech companies across the New York tech scene. Each BIZZpage has lots of information about the company, its culture, job openings, team, and more. You'll find lots of great companies listed like Ordergroove, SevenRooms, Reonomy, Kasisto, Bowery, UiPath, Facebook, DigitalOcean, and so many more. Go to venturefizz.com/bizzpages to start exploring! Lastly, if you like the show, please remember to subscribe to and review us on iTunes, or your podcast player of choice!

Greg is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience as a real estate investor and developer in over $200M in real estate transactions including the construction or renovation of custom homes and commercial properties, mixed use buildings and multifamily assets. Topics Covered: Lead, delegate, motivate, and coach Find people who are smarter and better than you to hire Look for partners with experience and momentum Know where the money partners bring to the project comes from Get information on projects and opportunities from lawyers/architects/engineers/etc. Look for patient capital Investing capital gains in Opportunity Zones Nuggets of Wealth: What is a good tool, source, or platform that you use almost daily that can also help others? Technology in general, leverage the cloud, Reonomy, and Loopnet What was the best business advice you ever received? Find a mentor, educate yourself, and go big How do you manage your time? Check in with people, trust people to do their jobs, have people in place that do the day to day. Don't do the jobs of the people you've hired. Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years: Right now, we're looking at what we can do with Opportunity Zone investments How do you want to be remembered? A someone who impacted many lives, someone you could trust, and who made a difference in peoples' lives. Where can Commit to Wealth Nation go to contact you and find out more about you?  https://gregdickerson.com/ 434-326-3903 

Sam Viskovich is blazing a path in the commercial real estate tech space and the effect has been explosive growth for the data company Reonomy. Reonomy leverages the power of data and technology to transform commercial real estate. As Sam notes, commercial real estate is the world's largest asset class, but it really hasn't done well in keeping up with tech disruption like so many other industries. We discuss why the commercial real estate space needs data tools like Reonomy, the numerous use cases you wouldn't likely assume, and why Reonomy is uniquely positioned to dominate this space.

In this episode of Raising Your Antenna, we examine data democratization in the commercial real estate industry with Sam Viskovich, Director of Marketing at Reonomy. Reonomy is a commercial real estate data platform that facilitates prospecting processes for CRE professionals and uncovers ownership information for over 49M commercial properties in the United States. Reonomy creates intuitive products designed to help CRE professionals achieve success by easily finding the information they need. Tune in as we talk about... -The commercial real estate technology industry -Background of Reonomy -Democratization of data -How data can be used in navigating CRE markets and more! Learn more about Sam Viskovich and Reonomy at https://www.reonomy.com/

An avid entrepreneur, Richard Sarkis has launched and run numerous businesses and most recently, he was an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company specializing in Financial Services. In 2013 he co-founded Reonomy, a commercial real estate data and analytics platform he hopes will democratize the world of commercial real estate data, bringing CRE into the 21st century and in line with other capital markets. Richard Sarkis joins former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt to discuss his company Reonomy Richard Sarkis joins former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt to discuss his company Reonomy, which launched its first platform in New York City in 2013, and in 2017 they launched a second nationwide platform.  Host: Arthur Levitt Producer: Madena Parwana 

Big real estate data is changing the playing field by closing the inefficiencies in the commercial real estate market.  How will this impact investing in the future? Today we sit down with Richard Sarkis, Co-Founder and CEO of Reonomy. Reonomy is a commercial real estate data platform that is transforming the world’s largest asset class.  It’s all about analytics, data crunching, and AI for commercial real estate. Richard and his co-founder Charlie Oshman grew a chance coffee shop conversation into revolutionary company, which has raised over $70 million in funding and currently holds partnerships with all the top CRE firms. So how does someone go from having zero real estate experience to creating a successful prop tech company? This episode is a great story about courage and walking away from something good (such as an associate partner position at McKinsey) to start something that could be great. In this episode, we will hear about the hottest investment markets in US, how the integration of AI enabled Rich to scale his model nationally, and learn who are some surprising consumers making money with big real estate data.  [hint: they’re not investors] If you are interested in the future of commercial real estate, the future of real estate technology, and like hearing stories of founders, who are adding massive value to an industry, you will love this episode.  It’s a must for players who want a successful future in the business... In this show, we discuss: How he decided to leave a promising career to follow his passion and what was his “eureka” moment What the future of real estate is going to look like in the midst of the 4th industrial revolution and why big data is here to stay What were the biggest challenged he faced and still faces as Reonomy continues to grow and evolve What are the hottest US real estate markets today and how he uses a heat map to find this out What is his unique super power and why it’s a very trainable skill that anyone can do For more information visit www.behindthebricks.com

Here’s some of what you will learn: How to be a real estate investor without any money Wholesale properties How to leverage social media How to find buyers Importance of residential brokers CBS - Concrete Block Construction Creative financing Importance of partner involvement Owners vs renters paying utilities Where to look for deals Importance of on-site property manager Cozy.co free rental and management platform When to refinance Understanding when to sell and when to hold properties Understanding the value of cold calling Podio and Reonomy platforms The value of Mom and Pop sellers KP - Key Principle Investor Book Recommendation: The Contrarian Playbook by Manny Khoshbin About our Guest: To reach Logan Hand please visit: http://www.sellquickgetcash.com Join us at a Multifamily Bootcamp, visit MultifamilyBootcamp.com For more information on my Multifamily Training and Coaching Program, Text CRUSH to 41411. Join us online at MultifamilyCommunity.com Connect with me on Facebook at: Rod Khleif Text ROD to 41411 or visit RodKhleif.com for a FREE copy of my book, “How to Create Lifetime Cash Flow Through Multifamily Properties.” 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, Logan Hand, 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

Take a deep dive into one of the original #CRE #Tech Companies. What is quality data for #CRE? What are the problems associated with that data? Take a journey from idea to concept to a viable product. What does it take to create a company and raise millions of dollars in the big city of New York? Do you have a company mission? Are you sure? Reonomy does! How can you scale #CRE and #Tech on a national level? What is Reonomy again?  How about a database of 47 million properties across 3200+ counties in the US? All of that and so much more.

Coming back from the Thanksgiving holiday we were back in the studio this week with Liz Young, the VP of Sales at Reonomy, to discuss SaaS pricing strategies that work. We've talked a bunch on the podcast about pricing and in particular have covered discounting and choosing scaling units. However, we have never had someone like Liz on to talk about the broader thinking around product pricing and what strategies work and don't work. Founders go through a lot of pain in thinking about SaaS pricing strategies and for the most part get this wrong out of the gate. Liz came on to the show to talk through the various approaches of pricing that she has seen work. In particular we cover pricing strategies around research to do, pricing strategies around the frameworks to create, pricing strategies around communicating value, and various stories and lessons from Liz and her current and prior companies. Give a listen to learn more below, and make sure to subscribe for a new episode every week!

Coming back from the Thanksgiving holiday we were back in the studio this week with Liz Young, the VP of Sales at Reonomy, to discuss SaaS pricing strategies that work. We've talked a bunch on the podcast about pricing and in particular have covered discounting and choosing scaling units. However, we have never had someone like Liz on to talk about the broader thinking around product pricing and what strategies work and don't work. Founders go through a lot of pain in thinking about SaaS pricing strategies and for the most part get this wrong out of the gate. Liz came on to the show to talk through the various approaches of pricing that she has seen work. In particular we cover pricing strategies around research to do, pricing strategies around the frameworks to create, pricing strategies around communicating value, and various stories and lessons from Liz and her current and prior companies. Give a listen to learn more below, and make sure to subscribe for a new episode every week!