Episode 019: Ricky Aranda - Real Estate Investing Secrets

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This is the Rise of the Young podcast, bringing you insights from the most innovative entrepreneurs and influencers of this era. Hosted by 17 year old entrepreneur, author, public speaker and branding expert, Casey Adams. Now let's get right into the show.

What's going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we got the man radio, Ricky Aranda here with us today. And Ricky, I want to start off by first asking you, who is Ricky Aranda and how did you get started into real estate investing?

So who am I? Man? That's such a deep question right off the bat. I thought we were going to be getting the simpler things. No, I'm just, I'm just a guy that loves life. And about five years ago, I really hit a crossroads in my life where I didn't, I was pretty lost. I didn't know what I want to do all that. And I think it's something that a lot of people in their early 20s hit. And that identity that you're trying to find yourself, what you want to do, what you're passionate about. So I went and got my real estate license just to sell houses because I thought it'd be good. And then just through networking, I quickly realized that the money's really in investing. And, you know, getting a paycheck or getting money will bring in money, but what will create wealth is investments and passive income. So it transitioned that way. There's more of the story, but that's basically the 10 second nutshell.

Yeah, for sure. So, yeah. So, I mean, regarding real estate investing, like, for everyone that's listening to the podcast as well as on the Facebook Live, what would you say are the three key tips for people getting started in real estate investing when it comes to like the beginner levels?

So the three keys is like, you got to be relentless. You got to have you Got to be able to take objections. Okay. You know, you have to really understand that no is just no until you can turn it into a yes. So don't be afraid from that. You have to be structured. You have to have some kind of structure. You know, I know a lot of people just want to do whatever, don't want to work at an office, I totally get that. I'm all about the laptop independent lifestyle of freedom. But you got to have some kind of structure that you're doing the same thing every single day. And then the third is to have some kind of routine that starts your day off right. When I used to just get up in the morning, I would just wake up naturally. But what would happen is you start the day off negatively, you're having negative energy coming in. As far as scarcity, as there's not enough time, oh, I need to eat, but there's not enough food. So you're having the mindset of already negative emotions coming in. And when you get up an hour earlier and actually start your day off right, where you take a little bit of time for yourself, you read a little bit, you look over your goals, you meditate, you really start the day off at a totally different mental level, which sounds very simple, but you got to have that mentality of abundance. So first is being okay with hearing no. Second is having some kind of structure that every day you're doing the same thing for about three to four hours. And then the third is having some kind of morning routine ritual that you get up, that you're doing every single day that starts the day off at a different mental level.

Okay, perfect, perfect. I mean, I totally agree with you. I think whenever for me, especially when I'm not going to school, waking up stay sticking to a routine is by far the most critical thing I do in my day to actually get me going in the morning. So I mean, moving forward with that, I know there's a lot of people listening regarding the real estate topic that we're covering. And for everyone that's maybe listening, 18 to 20 year olds, that they know about real estate, they know it's money making opportunities, Number one question to you is, do you have to have a real estate license to make money in real estate?

No, I didn't know that when I got in. I had no mentorship, no anything.

So.

One of the vertical streams that I do is called wholesaling and that's based on. I know a lot of people have heard of it, they might not know much about it, but wholesaling you don't need a license. In my opinion, it's actually better to not have a license. And you could be any age, it doesn't matter. You could be 18 years old. You know, as long as whoever. You gotta remember this. Whoever controls the deal flow will control the market. You know, that's what it depends on. And people that have money that are looking to flip. Essentially, wholesaling is you're flipping the paper, which is actually work. That's where the money's at. It's in the contract. You're flipping the contract and there's a lot less risk than actually put it. Number one, to flip, you need a lot of money. Two, you're risking a lot of money to make maybe 10, 20, 30 grand in my market, at least in other markets you can make more. But I'm all about how can I make the most amount of money and, and have as least amount of risk as possible. And to answer your question, you don't need a license, you don't need to be licensed, you don't even need to know much about, you know, real estate, except a few simple fundamentals that you only need to know. Kindergarten math. Yeah, that's the greatest thing too.

Perfect. Perfect. So, yeah, I mean, I think that covers a lot of people because I feel like a lot of people, even myself, moving into real estate, you hear from like young age, like, you need a lot of money to get started in it and all that sort of stuff. But when it comes to making money in real estate, I know when it comes to the, is it possible to make money in real estate with zero money down, or is there some type of capital needed to even get your foot in the door so you don't.

Need to do wholesaling? So my whole strategy with wholesaling is if I could go back and I knew what I knew five years ago, I would have strictly done wholesaling. I would have added sales later on, but I would have done wholesaling right away. Because wholesaling, in my opinion, is the most profitable margins to make. Because you're making the split between how much is left over after the flipper and how much the remodel cost that you can make the spread. And the spread can be whatever. I mean, it can be in my market, my average spread is about $15,000, but our average price point is 170,000. If you're in California and your average price point is like 800, 900,000, you going to be making bigger spreads. So to answer your question, you don't need any money to, you know, to do this, you need. The way I do it, I do it a little bit differently. You might need like a couple grand or like I would say five grand max to lock up these houses. You put them under contract and you put earnest money. You can get away from anywhere from like 2 to $5,000, depending on how much the property is. But that goes back to you, and that's not really, you know, that much money, in my opinion, to get started. But you don't need 20 grand, 50 grand, because you're not actually buying these houses and holding them. You're flipping the paper. So essentially you're locking up these houses that are off market and then within 15 to 30 days, you're trying to find an end buyer and get rid of it and assign the contract to them.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, regarding wholesale, like the flipping the paper in a sense, for the beginners that are listening when it comes to getting to that point of finding a deal and to actually get that process started, what would be the most practical piece of advice? That if someone's listening right now, they could put the phone down afterwards and then start going and executing. What would that one piece of advice be? To start getting your foot into the door.

So there's two, but the easiest way is just everybody's on social media now. So if you just put on your Facebook or your Instagram, I think Facebook personally is better for this because it's bit little, a. A little bit older demographics. You actually need people that have equity within the property, meaning that they actually have less of a loan amount. So there's more actually money in the property that if they were to sell, they would get rather than go to the bank. So it's as simple as just putting on your Facebook page that, look, I'm looking to buy houses, cash. Is anybody looking to sell? Or it's just putting those out there. And maybe the first time people see it, they're like, whatever. But the second, third, fourth time people start seeing that. I had somebody reach out to me the other day that did that, that somebody's mom's looking to sell. So you never know. These people's parents are looking for a quick sell. So that would be the easiest way to find a deal. It's just to put on social media. And then the second way is there's title companies in every market. Every state is either an escrow or a title state. And these are all public records. You can get a public record of something called the NOS list, which is Notice of sale, which are people that have missed their payments two months in a row. And these are people that are really desperate. So what we do in our market is we'll get that list, which is free, from a title company. They'll actually give it to you. It comes up every single week. And you actually go and knock on these people's doors and say, hi, I'm a local real estate investor. Have you thought about selling your house? You don't even need to go and say, hey, I saw you missed your payment. You don't even want to go there. You just show up and say that simple script and let them speak. You know, most of the time you're helping these people out of financial distress. And again, wholesaling is about finding motivated people that are in some kind of financial distress. Because wholesaling, again, you got to get the house that is way below fair market value. These are not properties that are just selling on the regular market. These are people that need to sell now that do not have time to go through the whole rigorous process of selling, waiting, see if the deal's going to go through. They just want a cash offer and get out of their situation right away.

Perfect. Perfect. So when it comes to regarding that cash offer, if someone's coming into it, are you someone for the wholesaling aspect of you're connecting two people, or is it like you're. When you say offering cash down, if someone wanted to get started but doesn't have money to put down, is it something where you have to connect to people to make the deal happen? Or what's that little small process from finding the deal and then closing it or flipping the paper, as you say.

Yeah. So essentially what it is is that in every single market, like right now, the real estate's really good. You know, we'll see how long we have, you know, before there's. There's a correction in the market. But there's always going to be opportunities elsewhere in real estate. You just have to adjust. So what you do is right now there's a lot of people trying to flip houses. There's tons of money out there. There's either hard money, which is people borrowing money, and they're paying anywhere from 10 to 12% on that money interest, but they can utilize that money to flip. There's a lot of people that just have their own money that are trying to get in the game. The problem is these flippers, they have no idea where they're gonna get their deals. And there's a lot of competition so essentially what you can do is you could go on Craigslist and I mean, you can find these flippers or just call one of, you know, go on Google and put in, you know, put in like top, top realtors and you can find out if you talk to them and let them know, look, I'm gonna be wholesaling. I want to know, are you connected with any flippers that I could flip to? And then you can get the listing. You know, real estate agents, never go to them, ask for them. You know, I'm a realtor as well and associate with a lot of them, so I know the mentality. But you come to them with some kind of value and your value is, look, I'm going to be going after wholesales. I'm not a licensed agent. So after I sell these, I can try to get them to use you to list the property. So it's basically, you know, it's a win, win for everybody. But that's the best place because real estate agents that are in the game are going to know who the players are and you want to get in touch with them. You want to develop a list, anywhere from five to 20 people that you have at any given time that once you get a property under contract, you can send out to them and you're going to have tons of buyers looking at it. So it's basically you're developing a team. You need to have a team of flippers that you're utilizing. But this is the best thing. You're using their money to lock up the deal. You're locking up the deal just with the contract, the paper, and then you're signing the contract with this legal, you just put that terminology in the contract that you're assigning it to them. So when you close something called a double close, where a portion goes to this side, then a portion goes to that side, and Title will do all the checks accordingly. So you'll get paid, paid out, but you're not having to come to the table with $150,000, $200,000.

Good. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I think that was super valuable at everyone listening. So I know that you said earlier that I wish I would have known certain things from the beginning. So when it comes to your whole journey so far, you've learned a lot of things. If you were to go back to your first few years of getting into real estate, what would be the two things that you'd want yourself to know now that you do know right now that you tell people listening also, I.

Would have Hit the wholesaling a lot harder. You know, this year we really hit wholesaling. We were always doing a little bit of wholesaling here and there. But this year we really developed a system that now we're doing about eight to 10 wholesales a month, which is, you know, obviously great money, and it's easier said than done. You actually have to, like, put in the work. So, like, what I do want everybody to realize that's listening to this is that there's no easy money. There's a process right at the beginning. You work really hard, and then if you want to build out a system, which I'm all about leveraging and getting other people to do things, you do it yourself, and then you do it with somebody together, and then they do it. That should be the whole process. So you can think about exiting. But at the beginning, you have to put in the work yourself. So always knowing that I would have just. Instead of trying to, like, sling houses here and there to just regular buyers and sellers, I would have really hit the wholesale really hard. I would have taken that NOS list that I tell people to do that we do now. And I just would have done that because when you start in real estate, you don't have a lot of money, but you have a lot of time, right? So if you have a lot of time, you can be going and doing these things. Now, it's the opposite.

Now I have.

I have. What I do is I will. I'll leverage that through marketing and other things like that. But if I had to go back, I would hit the wholesale as hard as possible and just really utilize my time and knocking on as many doors. And then you can leave little door hangers, too. That just says we buy houses, cash, and you can leave your number. A lot of people won't be home. They'll be working. But if, you know, you only need like one wholesale a month, and you can make 10, $15,000, you know, so anybody. I remember being 18, 19 years old. I mean, I remember just getting an extra thousand, two thousand bucks. And I thought I was. So if you're thinking 15 grand, which is real, like, that's not like a. It's not a get rich quick model at all. But the fact that you don't need a license, you can scale it really quickly and you don't need a lot of capital, and real estate is tangible. I know everybody's on the cryptocurrency train right now. And don't worry, I have bitcoin as well. But what's great about real estate is it's tangible, it's always going to be there. Real estate has created more millionaires than any other industry, period. Like, end of story. Yeah, it's a great industry to be in and you don't need to be in it full time too, if you're going to be wholesaling, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, regarding that, just. We're coming into the last questions of the interview. Number one, thanks so much for coming on. But the last question before we end this interview. When it comes to the daily routine, what are one to two things that you make sure that you do daily that I just helped you progress and reach the success that you're at now?

So meditation for sure. I'm pretty wired all the time. It's hard for me to calm down and get my mind really calm. So I'm always thinking, I'm always trying to do deals. And it's really important to have a really calm mind because under stress, under pressure, you want to be able to react accordingly. Meditation has been a real game changer. I meditate for about 10 to 20 minutes every single day. I use an app called simply Bean, which actually is a walk. It's like a verbal meditation as well. You can put different backgrounds, but you can use a voice. So if you're not familiar with meditation yourself, that's a great one because it'll actually walk you through what to do. So I use that and then just reading. I learned you and I met each other at Tai Lopez's house, but before that, Kai had a guy named Jim Quick that actually taught me how to speed read. So speed reading has been a game changer as well because now instead of, you know, getting through 5, 10 pages in X amount of time, now I get through like 40 and retain the same amount of knowledge. So just just reading about three to four books a month and it's just every single morning doing a little bit of it. You'll be reading so many books. Those two things have been huge for me.

Perfect. Absolutely. I mean, that's something I feel like is just something when it comes to learning from Thai especially. I mean, for me coming I'm still in high school, like reading, I'm starting to do a lot more of meditation currently, like moving into the last of 2017, coming in 2018. But that being said, Ricky, number one, where can people learn more about you? Where can they follow you on Instagram? Social media? Go ahead, drop your stuff so that they can ask you.

Yeah, so follow me on Instagram. My handle is rickyarandaofficial. So that's R I C K Y.

Official.

And yeah, I dropped a lot of cool stuff. You know, I'm all about. I do. I really am passionate about life, which I hope all you young kids that are listening could take this advice. And I got this advice from Ty is to really win the war. Life is not. Is to truly live the life that you want, not for anybody else. Don't do it for your parents. Don't do it for your friends. Don't do it for all these people that you think are your friends that are not. Here's the thing. Most people are so focused on themselves that they don't really care. So you got to really focus on what you want. And the second that I did that and started focusing on what I truly wanted and only ask myself, what do I want? What do I want to do every single day? How do I want to live? That's my life is excelled. So real estate, all it is is a vehicle to get what you want to get. If you look at money, why people want to make money, money's just a tool for freedom to create more, time to create more, you know, whatever it is that you want. But if you. But it's a very bad slave master too, because if you just get on the wheel and you don't know what type of life you want to live, you're just going to work and work and work. You know, one of the conversations I have with Ty a lot is that a lot of people don't need to work harder. The hustle's overrated at the beginning. You have to hustle. But why is everybody hustling forever and ever? You got to work smarter. The way to work smarter is to create time, work less, but actually scale, build a system that you can step out, enjoy your life more. You know, I'm friends with a lot of doctors, surgeons in town. They're great people that make a lot of money. But the thing is, they can never really go anywhere, do anything because they're always working. And that, to me, is not a good quality life. You want to have a good quality life. So that's why I love real estate. Real estate. You can really leverage yourself and scale and create that lifestyle that you want. So follow me on Instagram. I also have a course that's coming out. We'll be out in about a week. We're doing Pre sale. It's 497 right now. After the pre sales done, in about a week, we'll go to 997. We might have some deals after that. But really locking your spot now you can get that at the easiest flip.com or the easiest flip.com presale I think is where you get the pre sale right now. But it's going to be a great course. I drop it's me and a business partner of mine, my buddy Prashant who also does wholesale, he does development out in California, I'm out in Arizona. So you get like two different dynamics and we go over everything. How to set up your team, our morning routines, how to, how to do leverage. I mean it's like, it's like three courses in one and it's really a no brainer. So 500 bucks, you're going to get a 10x return if you just put in the money, the work, if not more. And if you don't, then you probably not going to get anywhere in life either.

Perfect.

It's pretty fire. I'm pretty excited about it.

Absolutely man. Me too. See everyone listening. Make sure follow Ricky on Instagram. It will be in the description as well. So if you want to go check that out. And that being said, I want to give a big thanks. Ricky coming on again. This is episode 19 of the Rise of the Young podcast. Make sure you subscribe, make sure you drop a rating and do not forget to follow Ricky. Thanks so much.

Thanks Casey. Monarch. Legacy of Monsters An Apple Original Series the world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me. The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything. I promise. Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV.

Plus.