87: Abundance Mentality With Eloy Retana

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This is Real Estate Investing Live from New York with James Nelson, the principal and head of Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group. In this program, you'll learn about the world of commercial real estate and find out why it's one of the largest investment opportunities in New York and around the world. Now here is your host, James Nelson.

Welcome to episode number 87 of Real Estate Investing Live from New York. This is your host, James Nelson. I am principal and head of Tri State Investment Sales at Avis and Young. Thank you as always for joining. And for today's show, we're going to try something a little different. I actually recorded this on Clubhouse. If you all have not checked the app out yet, please do it. Unfortunately, I think right now it's only available to Apple Phone users, so hopefully that'll open that up to all you Android fans out there. But I think it's an incredible platform and there's a lot of knowledge to be learned there and also to have a discussion. And that is really the beauty. As much as I love this long form format where you all can listen and then get to me with your thoughts, your questions afterwards. But here obviously you have the ability to come up on stage and ask questions. And we were just trying this out. So we actually, for this episode we actually did not get any questions from some of the listeners who participated. But again we were doing this just to test out the technology and make sure it worked. So for future episodes, and if you like Clubhouse, by the way, and if you think this is a good idea where you would want to come on the show, ask your questions, I'd love to hear from you. You can link in with me at James Nelson NYC. Hit me up on LinkedIn and tell me what you think because we'd love to have you part of the discussion. This show is all about making you the best investor possible. For those of you who have not made your first real estate investment yet, I want to inspire you to go out and do that and you're going to learn so much in today's show as I'm sure you have in the past shows. So with us today is Aloy Ratana and Aloy, actually it was his PR team that reached out to me. So I thought that was really impressive that he's going out there, he's trying to get his name out there, he's built out his own website, he's got his own podcast and I know we usually get New York investors on this show. Aloy is actually based out of Denver but he's been investing in mobile park homes throughout the country. Before you stop the podcast and say, James, thanks, but no thanks, this really isn't the type of thing I'm going after. Don't forget, and I mention it in the interview that Sam Zell says that his most successful fund ever was his mobile home strategy. So there's definitely something there. But I think even if you're not looking at this particular asset class, I think what you'll get out of this show is how Alloy has really built out a personal brand. And I really think that we've seen over the last year or two a huge advancement with this and you see investors really becoming more visible. When I started in the business over 20 years ago, investors were usually very below the radar screen. They didn't want their name out there, they didn't want to attract attention. Now there's this new breed of investors who are out there who want to let the world know about what they're doing. And when I asked Elroy, I said, why are, excuse me, Eloy, why are you out there and being so vocal about what you're doing and sharing? And he talks about the abundance mentality, which I really love this answer that you'll hear about. So we're going to take a brief word from our sponsor and then we'll get right back to that recorded interview that I did with Aloy on Clubhouse. And as always, thank you, thank you so much for joining for your ratings, for your comments and telling your friends about the show. It means so much to me.

Thank you.

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You are listening to Real Estate Investing live from New York. To find out more about James Nelson or avison young, visit avisonyoung.com now back to our show.

With that, I'm pleased to announce Eloy Ratana Eloy. Did I say your name?

Okay, you got it.

Eloy retronor, yes, from Apex Communities llc. And Eloy is an IT engineer by trade working across many fields, including financial, big data and entertainment. He began his real estate education 20 years ago and has been broadening his experience ever since. He's currently invested in 72 multifamily units while also investing in his ongoing education. So, Loy, I know you have your own podcast as well, which I've tuned into the Savvy MOT Investor show and so urge you all to check that out. But welcome, Eloy, and thank you for joining us today.

Hey, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to it.

So I'm sitting here in my office at 530 Fifth Ave. In New York, and I can tell you that there's not a lot of mobile home parks within, as far as I know, anywhere on the island. Although I can tell you a lot of the institutional money that might be based out of New York is definitely taking a very hard look at this. And in listening to some of your podcasts, I think you make a good point that a lot of investors have kind of overlooked this asset class. But not Sam Zell. If you listen to Sam Zell's story, he was very early on this and he has said that his mobile home park fund that he is, or REIT rather, has been one of his best performing funds that he's put out. So clearly there's a lot of value here. So, Eloy, I want to get to that. But typically on the show, what we do is get a little background. And I was interested to hear that you actually, you didn't start in the real estate space. So you said that you actually started in it. Maybe talk a little bit about your background, grew up, and maybe how you initially got into real estate.

Yeah, I'm originally from Southern California. I grew up in Los Angeles and I moved out to Denver, Colorado back in 99. And right around that time, the IT world was blowing up. Right there was, if you wanted to get into the IT career, there was just so many. There was just so much work that it just seemed kind of the way to go. And right around that time, I started learning about lease options. And I thought, well, I can pick up a few homes here and there, and while I grow my IT career. And it didn't occur to me that I could do, you know, real estate full time until many, many years later. So, yeah, that's kind of how I started in it. I'm a network engineer by trade. Specifically I do network engineering and security of corporate computer networks. Yeah, that's how, that's how I got started. And I've been doing that for 25 plus years.

You know, for a lot of our listeners, they might be like you or maybe earlier on in your career, which was that maybe they, they're interested in investing in real estate but they're not ready to jump in with two feet. So explain how you were able, you know, to kind of both keep up a day job and source opportunities and be able to do that at the same time. Because you know, I found at least for me that real estate is certainly a full time profession. So maybe talk about those early years how you were able to juggle and figure this out while also working a full time job.

Yeah, early on it was more of I'm going to build up my rental portfolio as a way to drove my retirement. Right. I was thinking more of a long term plan. It never occurred to me that I could make enough monthly income that I could one day, you know, not need a job anymore because I've got enough, sufficient income coming in for my rentals that I don't need to work anymore if I don't have to. Right at the beginning I was just seeking out a house here, a house there, either through lease option or through a wholesale because that's what I initially learned. And then flipping them if I had time to do that, which as it turns out I didn't have a whole lot of time to do that. So that became a real challenge to try to flip up, flip a home while simultaneously, you know, have a job. How does that work? But I can tell you it doesn't work too well because anybody who's, who's done wholesaling for a long period of time or flip homes will tell you that, you know, wholesaling and flipping homes are basically jobs, right. And if you're going to flip a home, you better have the time to flip one. And so that became a real challenge. So for me I had to kind of take a step back and realize, well, what is it that I'm after here? I'm, I'm after rental income, right. And to build out my retirement. But as time went on it was, I started to figure, well, I might actually be able to quit my job if I just continue picking up rentals. But like I said back in 99, in those years my IT career was taking off. So it makes sense for me at least, you know, that's what I thought back Then that it didn't make sense for me to quit my, you know, my six figure job to venture out into full time real estate. I wish I had now looking back, but at that time it was more of trying to pick up a home here and there, mostly through cold calling. I would cold call homes and people who were in distressed properties. I would buy a list and that's kind of how I would source my deals. But it was again, I wasn't trying to close 10 deals a month like some people normally are. I was trying to close a deal here and there just to kind of augment my salary and bill for the future.

You know, I really like how you differentiated between kind of the quick, you know, profit fix and flip versus building, you know, long term wealth. And you know, and yes, this is subject to change under the current administration. If you all are not thinking about the tax implications and what's going on here, you should be watching very closely on, you know, what's going to happen with the 1031, but what's also going to happen, you know, with capital gains. So, and I will let you all know that I am certainly not an accountant, but what I can tell you is, you know, what I've observed is for, you know, the flippers, if that's what you want to call it, if you're buying and selling, you know, in a short period of time, historically that means that you're getting, you know, you're paying ordinary income tax, which is, you know, about double what capital gains has been. And those of you who have been able to utilize the 1031 exchange, when you want to go sell a property with a long term gain, you can roll that into a new property. So we'll, we'll, we'll see if that changes, you know, moving forward. But I like the fact that very early on you were able to tell, you know, hey, you know, maybe I've made a couple quick profits. But you know, again, if you're giving almost half of that back to the government and then you got to go repeat and find it again, you know, that's not how you build long term income, so.

That's right.

So how did you decide on mobile home parks? Because I mean, we've had, you know, big office owners on this show. We've had a lot of multifamily retail, we've even had some developers. I mean, those are really the four major food groups. I mean, I can think about some of the smaller asset classes, whether it's medical. But you know, talk about, you know, how you came across this because you said you started investing in, you know, single family and multis. How did you end up happening on mobile home parks?

Well, it started when I was looking, we were looking, my partner and I were initially looking for apartments because when you, after a while doing single family homes, you start to, as you start to network and meet other people and start, start looking at alternative ways and other niches within real estate. One of the things that I found was that I can get to where I want to go a lot quicker if I team up with somebody who's like minded and go bigger. And that was the case with multifamily, right. What's referred to as multifamily doing apartments and things of that nature. And so I started, you know, that piqued my interest. I didn't know a whole lot about that. But I started going to some of the meetups here locally in Denver and I met my partner of all things, through salsa dancing. Him and I, we became good friends through salsa dancing. And one day, you know, through just typical conversation, I asked him what he did for a living. Well, he says, well, I flip homes but I'm looking to get into the apartments. I'm like, are you kidding? Me too. So that's how kind of how Steve and I, my partner, met. And initially we started out by looking at apartments after he had gone through some of that multifamily training and learning how to underwrite, seek out deals. One of the things that you're taught is to, hey, why don't you start looking for something in your local neighborhood, right? And in our case, Denver. We quickly found out that Denver was overpriced. None of the numbers made sense because this was 2016. The price of real estate out there was slowly creeping up and none of the deals made sense. So we started looking at, we started looking for deals in secondary cities like Phoenix and Tucson and Albuquerque. And you know, we would find deals here and there and we would get beat, you know, on price by, you know, people who have been doing this a lot longer than us. So we figured it was going to take us about a year of just cold calling, just calling brokers, trying to cold call apartment owners. And about a year later, my partner Steve says, hey, I think I got something. And I remember my initial reaction because I asked him, so what do you got? He says, well, I think I found a trailer park in Orlando, just outside of Orlando, a little town called Cape Canaveral. And I thought, I thought, no way. I want nothing to do with trailer Parks. That was my initial reaction. And he thought, no, look at these numbers. There's, we're not going to find numbers like these on any apartments. So I looked over at his underwriting and I thought, wow, this is a really good deal. What's the catch here? And not knowing anything about mobile home parks, I asked him, I said, look, give me 10 days, give me a week or so to kind of bury myself in as much mobile home park information as I can. Right. So during that time, I downloaded every book that was available. I listen to every podcast that was available. You know, this was four or five years ago, so there wasn't as many as there are now. But after a week of doing that, of just kind of immersing myself in mobile home parks, I thought, not only is this the right asset class for us, I think the timing might be pretty good for us. Right. So it just made sense for us to go down the road of mobile home parks. We had, we had our hands on a pretty good deal and we had an opportunity for some of our friends and investors that we had met up until that time to jump on this deal with us. So that's kind of how that whole thing unfolded.

Amazing. So I think it's helpful for our audience and especially a lot of our listeners are just starting out thinking about their first investment and I think sometimes it's super helpful for them if we can put some real numbers behind this. So if you wouldn't mind sharing, could you let us know what was the purchase price, how much, you know, are you even able to finance these? If so, what did that look like? How much money did you have to come up with? It sounds like you raised it from partners. So, you know, more details, you know, the better. We'd love to hear how you structured it and kind of what returns look like on this investment.

Yeah, so you'll have to forgive me on the exact figures, but we paid about 650. It was a small mobile home community, it was 18 units and we found it through a broker. And yeah, one of the things that is that they don't tell you a whole lot about with regards to mobile home parks is that it is a little bit more difficult to find financing. Right. From banks, long term debt to put on it. Especially if like a park needs a lot of work. Similar to, you know, if you're going to flip a home, the banks don't want to touch it until it's, until it's moving ready. Right. So you have to find hard money lenders and bridge lending to help you get through that whole stabilization period. So we had to raise what we had to raise. We raised about 300,000 to do the work that needed to be done there, which was mostly replacing a couple of units. We had. Out of the 18 units, if I remember correctly, we had 16 that were, that were tenant owned and two of them were park owned. Right. So one of the things, one of the things that we love about mobile home parks in particular is that the idea is to own the land, not own the units themselves. Right. Because if you put the burden of the maintenance and the upkeep on the people who own the people who own the parks, and that's one less thing that you as a park owner have to worry about. So we had to raise about.

You're basically. So you're basically just renting out the land. I mean, you've got acreage, you've got 18 lots and you're basically renting out those individual spaces. But people have to bring their own homes there and they're responsible for that. They're basically just paying you rent for their plot. Is that the way to look at it?

Correct. And if there's any stick built homes, like there's usually at least one duplex or a couple of single family homes on the property themselves, those belong to the park. We are responsible for the maintenance and keeping those. And of course, you know, mowing the, you know, the lawn and things of that nature, infrastructure items like septic systems, water wells, those are our responsibility. Right. As park owners. But as far as the units themselves, if the unit, if the park comes with any park owned homes, and sometimes there's a mix, sometimes the park owns all of them, sometimes the park owns none of them. Just depends. But I think for most people, one of the things that, for investors like me who are actively looking for these kind of deals, one of the things that's attractive about mobile home parks is that we don't want to maintain the homes themselves, Right. So we want to be able to turn around and sell them either through lease option or owner finance or just a straight up cash sale. Right. And ultimately whoever owns a unit is going to be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance. So that's, that's one less thing that we as park owners have to worry about.

So it's almost like a condo conversion where you buy a property and then you're basically just subdividing and selling off lots. Is that a good way to look at it?

Well, we still own the lots, right? We own the land, right? We're just.

Right, you're selling the leasehold. So you're saying, look, I'll give you, you know, whether it's a 10, 20 year, I mean, you give them kind of sell the rights to that lot for a specific period of time.

Right. They're basically leasing. Right. So the thing about mobile homes too is that after, I think this differs from state to state, but in several states, if a certain unit is older than say 1988, even if they wanted to move it, they can't move it. Right. Because not only will the cities not issue the permit for the move, but the insurance, there would be no insurance that will cover a relocation of an older unit like that. So what you'll see is that most units, once they're in, they never move. So the only option for a person who no longer wants to live there is to sell the unit themselves.

Got it. So that initial buy that you made, was there a cap rate that you originally went in and bought it and after you were able to improve or maybe raise the rents, I mean, what type of return do you stabilize that?

Yes. So we, if I remember correctly, I think we purchased that at an 8.9 cap rate. And the cool thing about that deal in particular was that the, well, what makes it particularly interesting, and we see a lot of this, is that the original owner, she had owned it for about 25 years and in that entire time she had never raised the rents. Right. So a lot of these people were paying125,150 when the market rate in that area was closer to 450 for these, for these lot rents. Right. And when she passed, she inherited, her daughter, inherited the property, and after a year of her owning it, she wanted nothing to do with the property. She had, she basically took it over and had no idea how to manage it. So that was an opportunity for us to get our hands on something that was new to us. Right. We had done, between my partner and I, we had done plenty of flips and we had done owner financing and lease option, those sort of deals, but only on single family homes. This was an opportunity for us to scale and build on something that we already knew how to do. Right. So the we, we bought it, I believe it was an 8.9. We've been slowly raising the rents over the past several years, over two years now. And we are at the point right now, in fact, next month that we are going to start the refi process and we're going to be able to get our investors back their, their initial investment and if I remember correctly, we're looking at doubling people's money over the course of five years, including the distributions that we were going to be paying out on a quarterly basis. So I think it was 12% cash on cash returns on that deal and a 20% internal rate of return. I think.

Amazing. I mean, you think so? And obviously when you're dealing with larger markets, there's a lot more competition, a lot more efficiency. But you know, apartment buildings throughout the U.S. trade somewhere between 4 to 6%. Right. Is the return. And you're hoping that, hey, if you go in and you buy one of these, value add. I have a lot of friends who buy garden style apartments and they'll come in and they'll buy it at 3.5 or 4%, but that's because they hope they can raise the rents 20, 30%. And if they stabilize somewhere in the 5% range, they're thrilled because they're going to go out, they're going to borrow money probably in the low to mid 3% range and get a high single digit return. You know, you're already before you've even put debt on this, you know, at a high single digit. So I mean, this is, yeah, this, this is really intriguing.

So now, having said that, I won't lie, it's getting harder and harder to find those sort of deals because what you initially mentioned is that there's secrets out with mobile home parks, is that there's a growing number of. The competition is growing. Right. Especially through Covid, since we didn't see the kind of people leaving or people not paying their rents during that time. Mobile home parks actually thrived during the COVID period. So as a result of that is that you have a lot more people that are looking to get into this asset class. And the private funds, as you mentioned earlier, the Sam Zells and those sort of people, the people who have the ability to just pay $50 million for a mobile home park. Right. A really large one. You're seeing a lot more of that now, so.

Well, this is really great and we appreciate your sharing this with us. What I think would be really interesting for our audience because you've got this great website, you obviously have a great digital marketing strategy and I hope you don't mind, you know, me sharing this, but I mean, your PR team reached out to me and said, you know, that you would like to come on the podcast. And so you're out there and the people listening might say, you know, why is Eloy, you know, sharing all his secrets and you know, you know, the trade. And, you know, I think your answer for that would probably be, look, I mean, there's probably, you know, tens of thousands of these opportunities, you know, across the country. But, you know, it is a good question. Why, Eloy, are you sharing, you know, kind of your business plan and your secrets? I mean, you're very visible with this, so why would you do that?

Well, I have that. What's it called, the abundance mentality. Right. I think there's plenty for everybody. And, you know, there's a lot. If you put 10 people together that say they want to invest in real estate, how many of them are actually going to take an active approach and really get after it? Probably a small group of those 10 people are. When you truly ask them what they're after, they might say, well, really, what I want is income, right? I'm looking for rental income. So when I talk to people, I say, are you willing to put in the work? Like, if you were to go and buy a small, you know, quadplex, do you want to be the one showing up on the 1st and collecting rents? Do you want to be the one getting the calls at midnight fixing toilets and leaky roofs? Oh, no, I don't want any of that. I just want to. I just want income. I want somebody else to do the work. Ultimately, that's. That's who I'm looking to talk to, right? Looking at people who are looking for opportunities to invest passively in deals such as this, mobile home parks and commercial real estate in general. Right? We don't want to do mobile home parks forever. I think there's a window right now of a couple years where mobile home parks are going to continue to thrive and be great investments. But we'd like. At some point, we'd like to get into buying our first apartment complex, too, right? Something large. So there's going to be an opportunity there to grow our investor database so that we can do more deals.

I love what you had to say about the abundance mentality, and it's so true. And, you know, what you had to say really reminded me. I was listening to Michael Lewis's new podcast. I'm blanking on the name of it, but for those of you who don't know, Michael Lewis was the author of Moneyball, and he has this new series, and he was talking about coaching. And one of the questions for one of the coaches is, why would you share all this information on how to do it? And it was kind of the answer was. Exactly your point. Well, look, people are interested to kind of know the basics and learn a little bit about it. But then, you know, they're looking for professionals to, to execute on it who need more help. So I couldn't agree more with you to kind of put it out there. And I've always been the school of thought. I'm good friends with my competitors up here in New York. Fellow brokers, we trade notes all the time. There's plenty of business for everybody. But I do want to, you know, really encourage the audience. And you can go to apexcommunities.net to see what you've done. Eloy. But you basically put a website out there that says, hey, we're buying mobile park homes and contact me here for more information, we'll make a bid. My experience is most of the investors who I deal with are all very below the radar. They're very secretive. They don't want to, maybe they put out on a site they're based on of contact information with maybe some pretty pictures of the portfolio. But there's not a call to action on their website saying, hey, send me deals. So talk to us a little bit about that finding opportunities here. You've built out your own website, a lead generation tool. Does that work?

Yeah, I mean, it's just one aspect of a marketing campaign, right? My, my focus is on seeking out investors. So if you get a partner with Apex.com, you'll get links to talk to me directly. But in terms of seeking out deals, we have a marketing campaign where we'll send out flyers to mobile home park owners. Right. And every now and then the idea there is that nobody's going to sell you their park or their home on the first call. The idea is to get on the phone, start building some sort of rapport relationship that you can build long term. Right. And then once, once we, once we initially have that first conversation, you know, we'll, we'll reach out again in a few weeks or a couple of months just to see how they're doing, see if they might be interested. And sometimes, you know, within six months, eight months, 12 months, you'll get somebody who says, hey, you know, I might be interested. What can we, you know, let's talk about it. And then at that point, what you're what. One of the cool things that we find with mobile home park owners is that a lot of these owners have owned these parks for a very long time, right? They might own the parks free and clear and they don't have the money to fix the place up and they just, they don't get rid of them because it's a source of income for them. Right? So, but they're elderly, right? They don't have the time or the means to fix a park. So one of the things that we, we've done with the recent acquisition is to do seller financing, right, where they, they, they now take the position of, of the bank and we take over the position of, of, of, of the owners of the park so they can continue receiving monthly income. Right. Without having to deal with the day to day maintenance that, that we've effectively taken over.

That's really smart. And I, I, I would agree, especially for assets that are difficult to finance. Asking for seller financing and basically buying the building or property over time makes a lot of sense. But I want to go back to something you said earlier because I am very fascinated in deal sourcing and I'm actually working on a book right now and talking about what are the keys to the best real estate investment. And it all starts with sourcing the opportunity. Because the one thing you can't change about an investment is where you bought it. So you know, if you're able to locate a property and buy it below market, you're already way ahead of the game. So if I heard you correctly, you said you're actually sending flyers, you're actually reaching out to the owners directly. You're not waiting for something to be publicly listed on a website, you're not waiting for a broker to call you up and say, hey, you know, I'm sending this to you and you know, hundreds if not thousands of other people, you're actually picking up the phone and you're calling owners and you're asking them what.

If you're interested in selling your mobile home part it's just if you've done any sort of wholesaling or any sort of, you know, you're sourcing your own flips, it's kind of the same, right? You're looking for people that might be interested in selling their homes. And a lot of times what's difficult about cold calling is that, yeah, you're going to get people who are rude, people who are going to hang up. And that's the game of cold calling, right? We've tried Facebook ads. Those don't work out too well with mobile home parks for the simple reason, and it makes perfect sense, and we didn't think of this early on when we started running Facebook ads seeking deals is that the vast majority of mobile home park owners are elderly, right? They're not on Facebook. So the Way to reach them is through, through mailers and through attempting to cold call. So it is a hustle trying to get a hold of them. A lot of times, you know, you'll get the property manager and he wants nothing to do with you. So it is, I'm not gonna lie, it is a grind to get through to people. But that's, that's the way we, that's where we do things. You gotta pick up the phone if you wanna, if you only want to do one deal per year, then only send out mailers and maybe you might land a deal, right? But if you want to, if you want to do more than that, if you want to do multiple deals in a year, then I would say you've got to pick up the phone. You got to try to build rapport with the sellers and get them on the phone.

You know, it's, there's no doubt hard work, but I can imagine that the payoff must be enormous because, you know, look on the flip side of it. And what do I do as a seller's broker? You know, my job is to represent an owner to sell their property and maximize exposure to get it out to the whole world. So we're all over, I mean, I'll do a video in front of a property and we'll get 15, 20,000 downloads of that video, right? So if you're buying that property, you know, you're not the only one out there who knows about it, right? And as a result, you know, our job is to go out and get multiple offers. So, you know, on the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're finding an opportunity that's not advertised, that's not out there, that people can't easily find, I mean, it's, it's, it's surely a numbers game, right? I mean, if you can buy something that you, to, you know, the potential to secure it at a below market price and that, that's the amazing thing about real estate, you know, and, and you know, I, I don't, I don't know the first thing about investing in the stock market, but I know that I, I always figure that I, I have the, the worst information. I'm, I'm probably the last person to know, but any of us can go and find out a stock, I'm with you at any time of the day, right? We all have that. And so, but with real estate, it's not the same. It's incredibly inefficient because there's no place, every asset is different. For starters, there's no place where you can go. I mean, I guess Zillow has, you know, they have their algorithm to try to determine what is a market price for a property. But again, that can even be wildly off. And when you're talking about investment, very much so, it's like you could have one property that's vacant, in need of a lot of work, and one that's cash flowing. So, you know, until someone figures out how to, you know, how to synthesize that and get that out, I think that, you know, if you can find these situations off market, I mean, it's, it's. There's a real opportunity here. This is, this is very interesting. We're going to open up for questions in just a minute. So if people want to start raising their hands, you know, feel free to come on up. You know, my question, you know, one of the questions I typically ask is, Eloy, if you had to say, you know, what have been the keys to your success? I mean, if you look back and you built out this great business, you've got this portfolio, what are the things that you do that make you successful?

I think one of the things that I discovered early on, I mentioned this earlier, but I wasn't sure. I mean, I knew when you think about real estate, when most people think about real estate, they think of two things. They think of owning rentals or flipping homes. Because that's what the media portrays, right? Mostly flipping homes. There are so many niches within real estate that unless you're in this world, unless you start going to the meetups, unless you start involving yourself, immersing yourself in the real estate world, but you never hear about all these other niches within real estate. So what I've seen people do is that they'll start picking up, you know, they'll pay two grand for a course, and they start learning that thing, and then later they learn something else, and they'll pay a couple grand to go to that course. But. And they keep doing that over and over, right? They're chasing these shiny objects, right? But they don't settle on anyone. So they're educated and they've learned all these techniques and all these different things, whether it's investing in storage or investing in mobile home parks or doing subject twos or any number of things that you can do within real estate. They've taken all the classes, but they're not taking action anywhere, right? They haven't done anything. One of the things that I tell people when they get in, if they, when they asked me about this, is well, regardless of whether you want to do single family homes or you want to get into real estate, pick one thing, right? Understand what your goal is. If your goal is to find something that will keep you busy full time, then there's a niche for that within real estate. If your goal is to build out your retirement, there's another niche for that that might help you reach your goals. If you want to be slowly start becoming active and then grow your business, well, there's any number of way you can do that, but pick one and just go all out. Don't do something halfway. Just kind of go all out. That's normally what I tell people.

Yeah, I love that. And also coupled with that specialization and when I started in the business over 20 years, and I give a lot of credit to Paul Massey and Bob Nackle, who were the founders of this brokerage firm, and they came up with this strategy to cover the city by territories. And so, you know, my job was to cover the Chelsea neighborhood and find out everything about it. And you all would be very surprised that when you focus on a specific neighborhood and you track every sale in that area and you get to know, you know, what are the new developments there, you know, what are rents going for Very quickly, if you study a certain area or asset class in a short period of time, you're going to know more than the veterans out there who are generalists, right? So I really love how you kind of happened on to this business plan that I think, you know, look, a lot of people probably just say, well, hey, that's not real estate. And I'm, you know, I don't want to get involved with that. But that's, you know, that's why the returns are greater, right? I mean, it's less competition for what you've been doing. So I think that's, you know, that's.

That'S really interesting, but how many podcasts you listen to, you're not going to learn until you're. You're in there doing it. You got to, you got to get your hands, you got to get your feet wet, right? As they say, you got to get in there, jump in, get your first deal under your belt, then you're truly going to start learning, right? So, yes, education and paying for seminars and all this, that, that's all good. But the key is to start taking action and just get that first deal under your belt.

That's also incredible advice. And if you all listen to my podcast and go back, I did this interview with Jordan Vogel, and I see Larry Ross Just joined. Thanks for tuning in. Jordan has been. He started off buying one apartment building at a time, and he ended up pulling together a portfolio of dozens and dozens of buildings and created his own fund and now even has a SPAC investment. But the title of. I took this from the Nike Playbook, the title of that episode was Just Do It. I mean, it's. Sometimes he said, look, if you wait for that perfect deal, you're going to talk yourself out of every single purchase. And you never, you know, you're never gonna do it. He said, every single deal. And again, I think he's purchased, you know, over 100 buildings at this point. He says, every single time after I close, I have that buyer's remorse the next day where I, oh, my gosh, what have I done? I've just over overpaid. But, you know, again, you have to, to your point, you have to. To get in there. And you. You certainly learn along the way.

Exactly.

Well, good. Well, this has been awesome. I don't. I want to see if there's any questions, if there's anyone from the audience. I mean, Hilo, I think, really interesting business model you've happened on, but also I think about, you know, the marketing aspect of this, and that's not really something that we've talked a lot about on this show before. I'm very intrigued by the fact that, you know, you're out there, you're visible, you've got your website, you've got, you've got your own lead generation, you've got your podcast going on. Is that. I mean, I know I'm very fortunate. I see Matt Meyer in the audience as well, and I don't give him a shout out enough. But it is a lot of work to pull this stuff together. So, I mean, it is, it is. How do you do this?

Yeah, I mean, I have my partner and I. There's just two of us, and we, we focus on. He focuses on the acquisitions, and I help him out with the marketing. Fortunately for me, I have a girlfriend who's an expert marketer, so she's the one that gives me tidbits on what I need to do to kind of get some attention. Right. And so I've been, I've been blessed with that. Yeah. But we're a small team and we're pursuing, you know, smaller deals right now, so it kind of works out. But as we continue to grow. Yeah. The team's going to grow, too.

That's awesome. Yeah. And I think for those of you listening, and I just love the Clubhouse Forum because there's so much information out there. And even if you want to start your own podcast, I know Larry's got one, you can listen, you can learn about how to do this. I mean, there's so much when you talk about digital marketing and I mean, again, I've got some great help doing this, but there are so many ways to kind of get the word out there. And so this has been an incredible conversation. So I don't see any questions from the audience, so I think we'll go ahead and wrap it up. But I was really excited to do the podcast recording in this format because again, I've always, you know, you have these great conversations. But in the future, and hopefully you all will join us as we do this in the future, we want to give an opportunity for the audience to chime in and ask questions. And for those of you listening right now, you can always reach out to me, whether it's jamesperiodnelsonvisonyoun.com or connect with me at James Nelson NYC. And it's a great place where if you've got questions that you want me to bring up on future shows, I'm happy to do it. Eloy, what's the best way to reach you?

Best way to reach me is to go to a partner with apex.com and then just type in your email address to join my mailing list and you'll get a little pop up with my calendar and we can talk.

Perfect. Well, thank you again for joining us today and wishing all of you in the audience the best of success out there in investing and looking forward to continuing the the dialogue. And so thank you again Eloy, Appreciate you joining us today.

Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Sure thing. Okay, bye bye.

Bye bye.

A different approach to putting our clients first Avis and Young's Tri State Investment Sales Group sells multifamily office, retail development and specialty sales throughout the New York metro area. As experienced thought leaders in their industry, our 35 member group is available to help you make informed investment decisions by advising you on your current holdings or identifying new opportunities in the marketplace. Our one unified team is built on an industry unique platform which promotes unparalleled collaboration and teamwork. We share core values of hard work, integrity and expertise. We put our clients first providing tailor made strategies to achieve superior results. Please Visit us at aytristateinvestmentsales.com and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagramesnelsonnyc to learn more.

Thank you for tuning in this week to real estate investing live from New York. Please join your host, James Nelson for another program next Tuesday at 7pm in New York, 4pm Pacific Time on the Voice America Business Channel. All shows are rebroadcast on Wednesday mornings at 7:00am Eastern Time and 4:00am Pacific Time, as well as always on Demand. We'll talk again next week.

Sam.