Investing For Cash Flow With The Casano Family

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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 100M1 of Real Estate Investing Live from New York. This is your host, James Nelson. I'm principal and head of Tri State Investment Sales for Avis and Young. And thank you as always for joining. Thank you for subscribing, thank you for your ratings that helps others find this show and wow, what an incredible run it has been. And if you did not get a chance to listen to our 100th episode, which was a tribute to my partner Jim Kinsey, definitely worth a listen for today's show. And this is new. We have the Cassano family who are joining us in two parts. So first I'm going to be speaking with John Cassano Sr. Who is the patriarch, the principal at Great Global Holdings. And then I'm going to be speaking to his daughters, Lara and Emily Cassano. They have their own company, Rame Capital and they are brokers as well as investors. Their brokerage business is focused on 1031 exchanges they've been able to navigate where they have their brokerage business that focuses on single tenant assets, where they invest in multi tenant assets assets across the country. You could imagine their expertise in being out there as brokers helps their father make a lot more informed decisions investing. I really like what John also has to say at the beginning about the fundamentals of real estate. I think oftentimes we think that most of the profits are made on resale or on finance. But John really talks about the value of cash flow, cash on cash returns and certainly with the type of financing that's available today, locking in long term debt and enjoying the benefits of long term cash flow, which is tax advantageous is certainly a very smart and worthy philosophy. We're going to have that interview with John first and then at the break we'll begin the conversation with Lara and Emily. Thank you again for joining. We'll have a brief word from our sponsor and we'll get right into that discussion.

Discussion.

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And now it's time for our Investor Spotlight. And with us today is my good friend John Cassano who is one of the founding principles of Great Global Holdings. Over the course of his career, their company has amassed quite an enviable portfolio of predominantly retail and industrial properties throughout the country. So John, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate you taking the time.

How are you James? Thanks for the invite. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Perfect. So if I'm not mistaken, you were born in Brooklyn. Is that where it all began?

Blackbush Originally, yes, and ended up going to Erasmus Hall High school. Graduated in 71, went to Pace University. I graduated Erasmus in 66, graduated Pace in 70 and I, you know I had a real estate, I had a love of real estate even in college because I there was not many real estate courses given by colleges, James, but Pace had an undergraduate course So I took 12 credits in real estate and when I graduated I went to work for one of my professors in real estate and they owned number of apartment buildings in the Bronx and for six months I worked for them, collecting rents, management and then I moved on, I went into the apparel business and I was a salesman, a young salesman for a number of years. And when I was 28 I joined three other brothers who were cousins, my cousins and we founded an apparel firm that we worked for 25 years. And while we are, while we were in the apparel business we bought two properties, one of which we still own. A number of apparel manufacturers have started off in real estate this way, as you know, and at 52 we closed the company down. I semi retired but my love was real estate so I started buying single tenant properties. One thing led to another and I ended up having, I'd say a small to mid sized real estate firm. It's more of a hobby for me, but it's a business, I enjoy it. It's not like a job, let's put it that way. It's enjoyable.

That's wonderful to hear and I'm always so interested to hear about how some of the investors from your generation were able to find out in the business. Because you're right. I mean, today there's so many options. There's, you know, even the undergraduate programs, a lot of them have real real estate specialties. And even my alma mater, Colgate, I mean it's a liberal arts school, but there is a real estate club on campus. I didn't even know what real estate.

Was when I graduated.

So that was wonderful that you had that experience at Pace and that exposure. I mean, I gotta believe back in the 70s in the Bronx, if you were up there collecting rent, I mean, I'm sure you got some stories from back then that wouldn't have been the easiest job. Right.

I didn't stay too long because of that. It was. I kind of started off, I think on the wrong foot with real estate because property management Bronx was very difficult. So it kind of put me on a. On a bad footing and I left that industry, but I still always loved it. And when we had the apparel firm, I was the one, one of the partners who found the two of the properties that we own, One of which was in Ridgefield, Ridgewood, Queens was a 23,000 foot sewing plant. And we ended up when we closed the company, changing it to a retail building. And we sold it in 2011, I think it was. And that was, that was like. If you're asking about favorite deals, that was a very interesting deal because we paid. You get at the figures.

That would be fantastic. No, it's very helpful for our listeners.

To kind of understand.

Paid $640,000 for the building in 1997, and we sold it in 2011 for $6,650,000. And we hit the lotto on the building. Now, at the time we first put that we weren't real estate people. We just. Sometimes you could be lucky in real estate. It's like, you know, and what happened was we didn't even realize there were 15,000ft of buildable space above it. And we had two people bidding on it, two bars built it and we sold the building in 2011. And I actually, you know, learning in real estate now that I've learned a lot over the years, that building should have been sold. But most of the properties that we keep, we don't want to sell because we've learned that selling a property is very hard to sell. Doing, doing a 1031 many times, it's a whole conversation. But that property deserved to be sold. And I'll tell you the reason why. And it goes back to Investing the cash flow at the time on that Property was about $150,000 a year. Okay. That's all it was. It netted when we sold the property after the mortgage, we had about $4 million. Okay. We took that $4 million and bought one of my favorite properties, which is a Kroger anchored center in Dakolda, Georgia. We put a million six down, and from day one, we've started cash flowing. $180,000 a year on a million six. I still own it today, as a matter of fact, I think it might be. It's 22,000 foot Kroger Center. And then I bought another one, both 1031s in Atlanta, and it's a strip center, and we own both to this day. The total cash flow out of those two properties are around 400, $450,000 right now. So although this is part the whole investing, sometimes you buy for appreciation, sometimes.

You buy for cash flow, and sometimes.

You buy for both.

Right.

These two properties that I bought, although the Myrtle Avido Ren Ritual property is probably worth more than the two properties I own now, the cash flow has been so good, I'm happy I bought these properties.

Okay.

I have another little story to tell you that I've learned in real estate. We bought a property in 2003 from some of the people that, you know, good guys. And it was on 80th street and Myrtle Label in Ridgewood. And we paid 1,800,000 for it. This is an appreciation deal. Paid a million eight for it. We put down $400,000 to buy it. And there were two apartments and a store that were pro forma for young investors. And on renting those apartments and those stores out, based upon the OM, we should be making around $45,000 a year net. We should have been. And one of my partners came to me and said, John, we put $400,000 in. How much are we taking? I said, well, $12,000. He said, John, you've made a big mistake. I said, I really don't think so. I think this is an appreciation deal. Well, two years later, we sold it for 2 million 400. So sometimes the deals work that the appreciation far outweighs the cash flow. And this was a lucky example. We sold it, made 600 less calls it cost on that deal in 2005. It's right down from the Atlas Center.

John, I really like how you spelled that out. And it can be a complicated business, but it's also very simple. And we've been doing this show for a year. And a half. And I don't think I've had anyone say look, it's cash flow and it's appreciation. Right? Those are really the two ways to.

That's how I look at all of my deals. And it's interesting. The reason James wanted to come on is because buying properties and telling a young investors. But there's another side to it. We analyze each of our properties on a monthly basis. I want make sure everyone understands that a lot of real estate people don't ever bring this up how they run their properties. Not from the standpoint of the leasing. It's the actual cash flow of the properties. So every month I see all my income, all my expenses ON we have 13 properties. And I see the bottom line after we pay the mortgage and after we pay ourselves. It's called return on investment. I see whether that property is making money that month or not. And I ask why it hasn't or why it has maybe a tenant left or maybe this. So we follow them very closely. We also do a yearly report prior to the property for that year to see where we estimate it's going to be. And another thing I found and I have a friend, he owns three shopping centers. He pulls all the money into one account. That account he takes, he puts into his checking account. He never has any money for his accounts. We do it very, very different. And if you're going to grow your business as an investor, I think the conservative way to do it is the best way. I'll give you an example. If a property, if you buy a property that has. We're in a contract right now on a, on a Kroger anchor center in Louisiana. The NOI is 725. Okay, 725. But their NOI and something again for investors is not apples and apples. Their NOI shows a 3% management fee and a 3% vacancy. Any deal that I analyze, I put in a 9% figure for vacancy and management, 5% for vacancy, 4% to management. Then I know and I take the capex, which is, you know, the quarter or whatever and I put that, I take that off the NOI. So their 725 NOI is a 700,000 NOI to me. So then I'm comparing apples to apples with other deals because so many brokers don't put in what they have to because they make the deal look better. We all know that. So then we analyze and by the way, I don't put the closing course in. Every deal's closing costs are different. I Just analyze the noi and the equity that I put in to buy it, not the closing cost that way. And then I say, how much should I make on this? And we try on every deal to make a minimum of a 10% cash on cash return. In our deals we normally perform better, but sometimes we don't. And that's a part of the investing. Sometimes we buy it anyhow. There's really, we bought a deal, I get off. So what we then do in managing our properties is we decide what we're going to take out of the property. Now if it's throwing off 300,000, if the debt is 400 and it's throwing off 300, we don't automatically take $300,000 out of the property. Several things we look to do, we work with our mortgage bank many times and ask for the first year at least to be an interest only mortgage. And rather than taking that money and keeping it, we said to the bank, you hold it as a reserve. So if it's a $10 million deal, you might start off the first year with $125,000 reserve for future turnover, which is great. Also if it's throwing off 300,000, we don't go to take that 300, we'll maybe take 200. And we say we keep 100,000 in the property. So what happens over the years if you have a number of properties, you develop cash that you could go then take and buy another property. We don't, we are a group, we're basically retired. We don't have cash that's generated in other matters. Our cash is generated to our building. So we're conservative with what we take out. And by the way, in the pandemic we had cash on board that helped us greatly get through it. So each of the properties had cash sitting in the account. So it's a smart way to do it. Never take your full return out. Always try to keep in and try to build that reserve. I also, I don't pay down the mortgage. Some people will, I don't. Some people will double up payments. I've learned not to just keep the cash aside for rainy days. That's another thing.

This is really. No, I love the advice and the approach here because you're really keeping your eye on the ball and no, it's interesting. I mean, I've been brokering here in New York City my, my entire career and you know, most of what we sell is value add and the returns are always hockey stick. And you know, a lot of these developers, they're looking for that, that big payday, but you know, that could be three to five years. And the whole notion of cash flow is just, you know, something to keep the lights on until a capital event. But, but I love the focus that you, your real estate is working for you and you're really looking at that cash flow and what it does for you. And I also love to hear about the discipline to save for a rainy day. And it put that away because if you didn't, there's a lot of owners out there who certainly were not as prepared for Covid. I mean, not that any of us were, but to have some breathing room and have some reserves to ride something out if you need to. I mean that your foresight was incredible.

But we're very fortunate and that's how we run a business on a conservative basis. We don't pull everything out of every account. We look at the end of the year and we'll sit down and we decide, hey, should we go up in our take home and return our investor? Stay where we are. What are our plans for this year? Right now we're in contract on a Kroger anchored center in Louisiana and we're going to pull some from each of our properties. We're going to put some in and we'll probably figure out a way how to buy that. But that's probably our buy for this year because it's a major buy. It's almost $10 million. We've been very fortunate because our group has had the help from my two daughters who, you know, James has done business with because we really don't buy in the New York tri state area anymore because my daughters do. 1031s have developed relationships and with various brokers around the country. And because of that and having done deals, they have established relationships with them. So for example, the Kroger we're buying now, the center, Emily, my daughter Emily, knows the broker, has done other deals, is based in Atlanta with srs and he said, oh, you're interested in let's do a deal together. It wasn't that I had to try to get the best deal or bid or anything. So. Oh, you're interested. We know you guys. Let's work together to get this deal done. James, that's very important. It's very important because a lot of these deals around the country, there's multiple bids on them and it's very hard to get them. So with that statement, I said, okay, let's work on the deal. Let's see if it works for Us and if it does, we'll get the deal done. So we're fortunate that we have that.

As part of our group.

We also have properties in various states that we all that we run from the New York area and it's a different setup. And we left New York around 2003 and started buying because we saw higher cap rates out there. And at my age, at that point I wanted cash flow. So we flew into Chicago. We owned five properties in Chicago. We own an Atlanta. We own. We just recently bought a 57,000 foot. My daughter Emily brought it to the group industrial complex in Lincoln, Rhode island and Lincoln, Rhode island, where is that for a New Yorker? You know, where is that? And I'm looking at the deal and saying, hey, this is very interesting. So we find out that it's down the road from CBS's world headquarters. Everyone who is anyone wants to be there, including Mars, Candy, Colgate, Palmolive, Thiessen, corrupt, the elevator company. So it's a 57,000 foot building that has national and international tenants in it. It's very fortunate. We paid 5.4 million for it. The NOI, a true NOI, was around 460 for it. The debt is about 240. We take well over $200,000 a year on it, putting down a million five. So it's another deal that we've done very well with due to my daughter's finding this out and the end as you. I don't want to enter. You want to say something, but you said something on a number of your podcasts that I thought was very important. There's something called the fear factor, right? A lot of people are afraid to invest because of the fear factor. It's something you have to get over because as you learn the business, the fear factor gets lower and lower and lower. I'm buying a Kroger anchor center in Louisiana because I already own one in Atlanta. I know the animal. It's like somebody owning multifamily. I know Kroger's. I've owned one for seven years. I know the animal. I've owned an industrial building for 30 years. I know the animal. I bought another industrial building. And it's not only that, the buying itself. And the buying itself is very interesting because I heard some twice two of your interviewees said overpay, overpay. And I found that to be a very interesting statement because none of the properties that I own did I look back and say I paid too much for it. At the time, I might have overpaid the Kroger Center I paid, I bought in Atlanta was on the market for six two. I paid six four. I paid six, four. It turns out the people who sold it to me was the Weingarten REIT. They owned 450 shopping centers. The head of it became a friend of mine. They told me the backstory on the deal. He said, john, you would have never gotten the deal unless you overpaid for that deal. We don't know who you were and the extra couple hundred thousand. We did the deal with you so many times. Overpaying gets you the deal. And if you look out on a five year basis and see where the deal is going, overpaying really isn't important as long as it's a good property that stays rented. Yes. No. What do you think?

No, I really, I think that interview that you were probably referring to, maybe that was with Jordan Vogel. And he said by definition, if you win the bid, you paid the most. But it's really, I like your perspective on it where if you're a private investor and you are going up against larger, more institutional shops, you have to either be more nimble or you have to show that you can do more on price. And so, but, but, but again, I.

Think that the fact that you're focused.

On the right fundamentals and if the numbers hit your box and you know what it is, I think you said, you know, the animal. It almost doesn't matter what other people are saying. You've got to have that conviction.

So get your cash return on it. You've got to pay the extra couple hundred thousand if your mandate is hit.

That's right.

Because I happen to have a very good memory numbers. I'm 72. But one of the things, James, that I have is I remember many, many deals. This deal we paid 6,200,000 for, we put down 1,600,000. The NOI at the time was 492. It was 10% vacant. One store went in and gave us another 50,000. So it went to around 445, 30. The debt was 273. So it's actually making, it was actually making around $240,000 a year once it was fully rented on a million six in. Come on, where do you make that money? And it's the type of center it is. There's a waiting list to get in. Anytime somebody goes empty, somebody comes back in. So that's the kind of real estate you want to own. That's the kind of real estate, the amount of risk that you Take. You have to limit. I mean, this is for, you know, the people listening. But the limit, it limited. It's so important. Anything I buy, I look at the history. And back in 2007, how empty were they? Did they go below 80%? That scares me. You follow what I'm saying? We look at all the properties that we buy, if we can, to see how do they perform in recessions, because that's where you could get hurt. That's where everyone goes out. If it performed well enough, then okay, I know that. I know the downside. I know the upside. Great. Because nothing ever really stays fully rented all the time. But as long as it's strong, you know, you have a good thing. Also, I don't do any residential, James. And it's interesting. Everyone is different. A lot of people made money in residential. Multifamily in New York is the major thing. We're a small company. We don't have the time to. To handle all the paperwork or the tenancies. We don't do that. We only do either industrial or commercial. And we find that we could handle a lot of different tenants in a more compact way. The way we do it is we either hire a management firm. Let's say in Chicago. We have a guy, a gentleman, who manages our properties. He's there once a week with five properties in Chicago. We have a bookkeeper in our Atlanta office who handles the bookkeeping. And we have various people in each area that once a week goes to the property. We have a gentleman up in Rhode island who's there once a week. I or my daughters will hop on a plane every few months to go out and do a run of the properties. So it's different from New York, where you could go and kick the property. We can't. But we've figured out a way to keep them and to manage them well.

So talk to me a little bit.

More about how you get comfortable with an area, because I don't want to gloss over that, because I think that's a really important part to your success. So you even.

James, very interesting point. Because what we've done is, as we go, we make our first buy in any areas. And sometimes it's just luck. Like we made this buy in Rhode Island.

Didn't know anything about Rhode island, but the broker was so important. And I find brokers extremely important to any deal that we do, especially the way we buy. I'll go back to our deal in Georgia, the Kroger Anchorage center brokers. Young man by the name of Mark Jones, I said, mark, I'm buying this. I don't really know much about it. I mean, everything looks good to me, but I don't have that knowledge and experience to own a Kroger. He said, and I trusted him and he turned out great. I said, mark, a year from now, I'm going to call you up and I'm going to say, you did great by me and we're going to do another deal together. We're going to. Or I'm gonna say, mark, you didn't. Year later, I called him, mark, you did a great job. I'm gonna give you this sentence to sell someday when we sell it.

Terrific.

So the broker relied a lot on that broker. And what happens is from that broker, we have a leasing agent, the shopping center group, and every deal that we see in Atlanta, we throw by him and he'll tell us, hey, this is good. This isn't. We bought another deal in Atlanta. We had another one just sold. So we work with the people in that area. In Chicago, we have an extensive group of leasing agents and brokers that we've become quite friendly with that we've done deals. We've done five properties in Chicago. Chicago right now has its own problems because of what's been going on and taxes also. But it still is a good place to buy, James, because the cap rates there, when you compare it to New York, are still much stronger. They're still much stronger. Now I'm not buying in Chicago anymore until they straighten out the tax situation. This is a new assessor who's talking about major tax changes there. But it still has been good. We flew in there in 2012, my daughter Emily and I, and bought a 12,000 foot retail condo. Basically, we flew in, we made an offer and we owned it because it looked. It had a 711 and had Italian restaurants. Beautiful building. That building in New York would have been seven to ten million dollars. Here it was two and a half million. So I said, have to own it. I knew, I knew, we still own it. It's a beautiful building.

John, how do you compete with the local buyers? Because I've got to imagine that there's plenty of local buyers in Chicago who know the neighborhoods that you would think they have the inside track. They're already on the block. You know, somehow you get the call. You got a reputation now, but how do you, how do you compete when you're kind of the outsider?

Well, we're no longer outsiders. We're considered local.

We are.

We just had a deal that we, we were going to do. We went and saw it many times.

When you go see take, take any new market that you get into. So even the Rhode island property, I.

Mean if it wasn't deal, you know.

It'S funny, don't you think?

Each deal is so different. The Rhode island deal was a deal with a out of contract. My daughter Emily and Lara had been speaking with the broker and it fell out and he called them and we flew up there and the owner, we all hit it off and we did the deal. It was just fortunate the deal that we're doing right now. My daughter just spoke with that broker for probably the past eight years. It's like you, James, sooner or later we're going to do a deal. You follow? But his time hit and, and he wanted to do the deal with us. So he wanted to do the deal so we didn't really have to compete against anyone as long as he told us to whisper price, hit this price or whatever it was, you know, and you got the deal because we know you're gonna get it closed. So it tends to happen, you know, after a while it tends to happen. Mortgages, it's another thing that we really. Several things I wanted to bring up because young investors, I tend to mentor some young investors and there are several things that I suggest to a new investor. Number one, I strongly think they should have a partner. I strongly think that because doing things on your own, it's not as much fun. Number one, you have a point. You throw things against. And owning real estate is not the same as having a partner in an ongoing business. Because when you have an ongoing business and that partner doesn't perform on his day to day functions and it could cause problems. Real estate is not that way. Real estate is. You collect the rents. You could have somebody manage it. And also the thing with having a partner is you have two heads. I have three partners and I'll talk with them. And after a while the right decision. Jealous. I find that the right decision. I want to go one way. And we all talk and say okay, yeah, you're right, let's do it. When you do it on your own, it's much harder because you're the only one that has an idea or decision. So I think having a partner, number one is very important for young investors. Investor, whether he is experienced or not, as long as he has the capital you could find somebody to work with you. But I think that's number one. Number two, understanding the right properties to purchase is very important for a young investor. I heard in one of your calls, just jump in and do it. Because I heard you saying, or somebody else saying that 95% of the people that you speak with a year later haven't jumped in the fear factor, right?

That's correct.

If you don't get up to bat, you're never going to be in the game. If you don't get up to bat, you're never going to be in the game. And I say that continually. Once you get up to bat, once you get in the game, you're in it. And then from there you develop it. I think that my personal opinion is that young investors should, although residential is great for young investors, I still think that commercial is the best way to go. And I think they have to kind of set their sights with the mortgage, mortgage and financing as part of their deal. You know, when you buy a building for a million dollars, let's say, and you put down 30%, 300, you have a lot of fees that are involved with buying a property at a million dollars, a lot of fees. And if you go to 2 million, the fees are basically still the same. The lawyer, the environmental, the survey. And also, banks are more apt to give a million and a half dollar loan than a $700,000 loan.

Right.

And also.

You'Re apt to have more.

Tenants, a bigger spread, maybe a five or six tenants trip center rather than two. I found in real estate, one of the other things I've learned is try to get as many tenants as you can because as tenants come and go, as long as you're keeping your proper reserves and you don't have to cut your roi, you don't have to. If you buy a three tenant center and one guy, one tenant leaves and he's a third of the center, you stop making enough money to pay yourself. You have just have enough money to pay your mortgage. So that to me is important. If you're in real estate, you should try to get as many tenants, if it's a strip center, eight or nine, one or two leave, you're still good. Am I on point with you, James?

No, I'm taking notes here because this is, I love the practical advice and how you're breaking this down and yeah, I was just going to add a little bit to the last point. You know, you mentioned understanding, you know, the product and getting up to the plate, I think is the way you put it. And I think a lot of that has to do with also specializing and picking that asset class. And I think even though you're investing all over the country, you know, these multi tenant shopping centers and they are their own specific asset class. It's very different than buying a triple net property or even high street retail here in New York. I mean, it's very different and. But you start getting exposure, I would imagine, you know what the right tenant mix is. Right. And you probably know what makes for a good shopping center. And everyone loves the, you know, the CVS's and the, you know, the banks. But you also need, you know, the dry cleaners and the hair.

You need the wings guy.

We have.

Yeah, it's interesting. Just put a bank on one of our centers, but one center in Stockbridge, Georgia, Walmart, they come out of Walmart, get dumped right into our center. There's 10 tenants there. It's very interesting. I have a firehouse sub in it and the actual rent in that center is about 18 to $22, $23. The firehouse sub does so well. He's at $32 and he doesn't want to leave. He said $32. He's paying probably $10 more because his net is well over $150,000. So that center performs so well. He's doing well. By the way, the Kroger center we're buying is another one of those centers that has 1,700,000 visitors per year on the plaster report. Actually, I've never seen a center this busy. So it generates higher rents for the shop space. Retailers. Because my daughter and I were talking to them, the term was slamming it. You don't hear that that often anymore, James. Slamming it. But they were slamming it. So it's like, okay, I understand the rents are a little higher, but they're slamming it. They're doing business. People want to be there. Something you learn.

And you referenced a report to find that out. Are you actually watching the traffic count?

We spent a half a day there. My daughter Emily, one of the things she does, she's learned as an investor to walk into the nail salon and she'll talk with the people in the nail salon. We were there on a Tuesday morning at 10 o'.

Clock.

Actually, 15 clients having their nail done on a Tuesday morning at 10 o'. Clock. Now that is a lot of business for a nail salon. Her nails were $47. Now you multiply that by 15 and a half hours. They're doing business. And a wax shop was doing business. A bundt cake shop, they're all doing business. Pizza place.

So you could tell, you could tell.

They were doing fine. And that's important because if they're doing business. The rents are not as important as they are with many people. You have to be real, you have to understand that.

That's another understand if you buy a.

Center where the rents are in such a state where the stores are just breaking even, are doing okay, or they're paying a lot of rent, but they're doing a lot of business. Rent is not important. Rent is the least important, you follow? Because if they're doing business, they don't mind paying the rent because they're there to do business.

So yeah, I believe with restaurants it's usually they want the rent to be about 10, 12% of their top line. So you're right. I mean it's not, I mean payroll is obviously the biggest expense and they're, you know, they're goods. But yeah, they're doing well. Rent should be the smallest percentage.

Exactly. And I found that with a lot of them. You know, another thing I've learned interesting mortgages. James James. The variety of mortgages and what I, what I've been through in the past 20 years. Because you could get a port of bank mortgage, you know, you can get a CMBS mortgage, you get a real maintenance. And I've been caught on a few and it's very interesting. If you want a non recourse mortgage, it's generally 65%, 35% down. Right. I put a non recourse mortgage on a building that I own in Chicago that has a DaVita dialysis great tenant and Advanced Auto Grand Castle home and another small tenant and it's a 10 year loan. I got it at 4.6 and I'm now seven years into the loan and I really would like to get out of the loan. I called the other day and it's $330,000 penalty if I sell the right now.

If I had to put a regular loan on that, I would have refinanced.

About two years ago down to 3.5%. I would have been cash flowing and pull cash out. So each loan has a certain but on the other side it's non recourse. I could walk away if I get hurt, you know what I'm saying? Lose the money in my down payment. So you have to really be careful and watch what loans you go. I learned something just recently also that I was really kind of stupid on my part, to be honest with you. But I'm still learning. By the way, as an apparel manufacturer, the apparel business was so much more difficult than the real estate business. I hate to say it, running an apparel Firm from the design, from the financing, from the raw materials, the ship it produces, deal with customers 100 times more difficult than real estate. Apparel manufacturer guys who, in this, there.

Are a lot of them have learned the hard way in their business, and.

This is a much easier business. I have to say.

I find it.

It's not even stressful. I find it enjoyable. So that's the type of business. But from the standpoint of mortgages, you know, it's very hard to decide what mortgage to take on a property. I've gotten to a point now that I'm taking bank mortgages many times I'll pay 1% upfront and have the right to get out of the mortgage at any time going forward. My last one was the one up in Lincoln. I put a 1%, I paid 1%.

And at any time they could get.

Out of that mortgage because I don't know what the rate's going to be. The rents have gone up. I'm refinanced. It gives me a lot more freedom and flexibility.

So I've kind of.

That's kind of the way I've been going.

So. So, John, I mean, I'm definitely the attention to the fundamentals and the details. I mean, clearly, you know, to me it seems to be a big reason for your success. I mean, what else would you attribute to your success over the years? And again, you're playing a game where you're bumping up against the big institutions and, you know, what.

What is your competitive advantage?

Well, we've developed good relationships over the years. You. I mean, we've developed even in the New York market, you know, our group, everyone, we're. I'm sorry. Quick decisions. Yeah. My daughter said we make very quick decisions.

What.

All the institutions take a long time. She's right.

We know when we see a property.

We want it, we'll tell them. And the other thing with us, and I find it very interesting, we'll know.

Whether we have financing on that property.

Within three or four days after the accepted order.

That's how quickly we know.

And I'm sure that's a relationship piece as well, because it's having done business with these banks over and over, and I would imagine it's also following through, you know, and, you know, performing.

Right. Well, I. You learn through experience. Now, I know a number of investors who go to various brokers and banks and try to get the best rate, best deal they possibly can. I don't do that. I do everything through one bank, one broke in Northmore Capital. They're the second largest commercial brokerage bank in the company. They're like our financial arm. Every deal that my daughter sees that she likes, I look at it, I say, okay, I like it. We sent to Northmore. So we don't do any analysis. They do the analysis of the deal and they tell us whether it's financeable. Now I probably pay a little bit more because I don't really beat them up and I don't. And I don't. But the service that they provide is well worth it. You follow James?

So I don't mind doing that.

I don't say, okay, you're three and a quarter, 3.75. I can get the deal at 3.555. I'm going to go with this guy. No, I don't do that. I stay with them. And over the years they've done an excellent job. They have all of my corporations all in their files. If we have, they could shoot it right out to a bank. I don't have to deal with all the paperwork.

Every one of my certainty of execution.

Also, you know, we know so I.

Mean, when a broker sees it, oh, we know, we know we'll get the deal done and we know we get the deal. Actually there's no deal that we have not done that was not our fault. So if we've gotten financing and every deal we had deals usually on the sell side, not on the buy side. So and we do, and each of the people that we buy from generally become, we become friendly with, you know, guest sellers and we become friendly.

So John, we only have a couple minutes left and you've already given incredible advice. But you know, maybe for the college student that's out there now, maybe they're graduating. I was actually just with a group of interns that we have here that you this summer. What advice would you give them today to get in the business? Where would you tell them to start? Go, go work with a big shop, small shop, try to go do it on their own. I mean, I know you said find a partner, but what, what, what would be a good job, a good stepping stone if you wanted to become an investor?

Interesting question. Interesting. First of all, I think any broker, any sales broker should become eventually owned commercial real estate. I really feel that because they're at the, they're at, they're right at the tip point of all the deals. If they see deals, you know, and I understand this could be some conflicts, but there's also, I think any investment broker should be, I think becoming a sales broker would be an important way to do it.

I think an analyst also would be.

A good way to start. So you understand the deals. It depends upon their education. I mean if they're Ivy League, they could go to a private equity firm and learn that way. I do have a young girl who spoke with me and she said, well.

I like to go to a bank.

A private equity firm and ultimately I'd like to buy real estate. I said, why don't you buy real estate? You follow what I'm saying? Why don't you just buy real estate and learn? Start off sitting with broker and buying some properties. It's not that hard. It's not. Her father was in the business. It's not that hard. And it's interesting because everyone wants to acquire wealth. This is why we all work. You want to acquire wealth, you want to have your family safe and secure. And I really feel that real estate is the way to do it. And one of many of the things that you've talked about in your guests don't really explain it in a way that I understand it. If you buy the right property, it generates cash for you and your family. It generates it. And I'll give you one more example. We bought a property up in Fairfield, Connecticut and it was a small property, 10,000ft. And it's another one of those properties that many times we look at a property and we don't buy it for today, we buy it for five years from now. There's so many different ways, but we buy it for five years from now too. We'll look at cash flow. But then if we look at the area, we'd say, hey, this is a great area. This is going to be a great property home. So we bought a 10,000 foot building.

Paid at 1.8500 for it, put down.

$450,000 and we started growing $24,000 a year. The cash return on was maybe 5 to 6%. Yeah, not so good. Five years later we refinanced the building, we pulled out about $100,000 and we actually pulling 75,000 a year out of it. Now $75,000 on a 450,000 initial investment, that's now 350 is a salary for somebody. You know what, you know what I'm saying? And so it depends on the. There's another thing I found. I don't use the Argus now. I went to Pace. I understand that. I don't use August.

I'll go to the year one on.

August and after that I don't look at I'll look on the top and see the rent growth. I'll see the rent growth but I won't look at leasing costs this and that because as far as I'm concerned, your vacancy reserve should be covering that. And in the beginning you should have a higher vacancy reserve anyhow, not the 5% they show. The difference is of course Property's going off 300, take out 200. So you have the vacancy reserve which is 40 grand and you have another 100 adding to the bottom line. So you have a good amount of money to secure that property as it goes forward. So that's one of the things I believe.

This is John, this has been fantastic and I just, I really appreciate the specifics and sharing the numbers because.

That makes it real.

And, and you know, really I think it'll be this is a lot easier.

For our listeners to follow and I.

Really like how you boil this down and simplified. So this has been an incredible conversation. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to have Emily and Laura come on next because I'd love to get their perspective. So I think we will, you know, we'll wrap for now. But I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to, you know, I definitely want to hear Emily and and Lara's perspective on this as well because this is definitely, you know, this family business you have here, I mean that's a big key to your success like you said it is. So John, thank you again for joining us today and I am looking forward to certainly staying in touch and you know, maybe one of these days I will talk in making coming back to New York after all these years.

Ok. We will James will defend.

Thank you again. Wonderful. All right.

Bye. Bye.

Okay, so that was a great conversation with John and again now we're gonna have that conversation with Lara and Emily talking about their business. And I think you're also gonna get a lot out of this. Thank you again for listening.

So how do you brokering and investing, some would say there's inherent conflicts there. How do you all manage that? Because if you're, you know, if you have a buyer coming to you saying I've got a 1031, but you all are out there buying as well, how do you convince them that you're not going to end up competing with them?

Yeah, we actually get asked, yeah, we get asked this question a lot and how we're not cherry picking. To be honest, what we look for on the acquisition side for our family is completely different than any 1031 that we would advise on. First off, we don't buy single tenant, not lease. And for our 1031 clients, that's 100% what the focus is. It is already complicated getting a 1031 done and having a multi tenant deal going into a 1031, a whole new set of issues comes into play. So for us and our family, we also take a lot more risk. So we'll look at deals that may have some vacancy in it or some hair on the deal that for a 1031 you could blow an exchange. For example, a property that we close on in Chicago, if it was for a 1031, you it would have been blown. It took six months to close. There was a lot of issues with it. So as far as competition and how we kind of pick and choose for our 10:30 ones, it's completely net lease. Personally, we only do multi tenant and to be honest, we really like four or five tenants and above. So there really would never be a conflict of interest. There has been some cases where we found such a good deal, such as our last Evita, that if our tenant or if our client weren't going to close on it, we were going to go after it. But that's a one off kind of.

No, I'm sorry, Emily. Just to kind of further that, we look at every deal for our clients as if we were going to purchase it for ourselves. Not that we would because again, as Emily said, we are not single tenant, at least owners, but we look at it with an eye that we want to own something and that's the way we also pitch it to our clients. So we have to feel strongly enough about it that we want to own it ourselves if we're going to pitch it to an investor.

That makes total sense. And I've worked with you all over the years and know that your, you know, your ethics are top notch and you would always do right. And so I'm not surprised that you all are able to manage that. You know, I've got to think there's also benefits to being in the brokerage world when you're investing because as brokers we see hundreds if not thousands of transactions a year. And you look at some of the most prolific investors, developers here in New York, and many of them started as brokers, whether Harry Macklow or whether David Levinson from L and L. And no doubt when they went out on their own to start buying, they knew what tenants were looking for. So I'd have to imagine that your experience, experience out there, brokering seeing a lot of transactions, seeing what the new trends are, you know, better inform you all as investors, I mean, Laura, would you say that's a fair statement?

I would very much say that's a fair statement. I mean, we definitely, I think, have always been a little ahead of the curve. And not it's our father who has driven our personal portfolio, but he had always purchased service oriented retailers. And Emily, feel free to jump in at any time. But our tenants and the trends that we see, obviously now with COVID it's still service oriented, but there are things that we're able to weather the storm. Our portfolio as a whole held up very, very well. During COVID we had one property, I think my father touched upon it when he was speaking with you, that did struggle. It has begun to rebound, Emily, and we're seeing, you know, tenant interest in some of the vacant spaces and things like that. But we focus on service oriented retail and that includes medical in our mind. Right. So when people say, well, retail is hard, it struggled through Covid, it struggled before COVID We didn't necessarily see that because we also. The medical space did very well, obviously during COVID And those are retail locations that people walk into, whether it's an urgent care or David dialysis. Those were the trends that we followed during the past 18 months and continue to follow today.

And in addition, I just wanted to add to that, as far as buying and having the relationships, it's really benefited us because the brokerage community knows what we're looking for. So we have the connection in with them and they know that we look for something that many buyers wouldn't really focus on. I mean, things that have potential issues, not environmental or anything like that, but kind of out of the box type of deals. So having the connection with the brokers knowing that we can get a deal done is worth its weight in gold. I mean, nine times out of 10, it's not about a price, it's about who can close the deal. And not to toot our own horns, but like, we're a very easy group to work with. There's no, you know, weekly meeting to pitch a deal to get an approval to go forward. It's myself, my father, we make the deals, we make the decisions. We can move very quickly. So obviously sellers really like that and having that relationship with the brokers and knowing that we can get a deal done, they often come to us. And that's how we've actually gotten our last two or three deals. Specifically the one that we're actually in Contract on. Now, the broker came to us knowing that we own a Kroger anchor deal and said, this is. It fits your model. Have a look at this. We know you guys can get a deal done. There wasn't really any bidding process. It was, we want to work with you. Let's get a deal done. What works for both parties. So really, that's kind of the benefit of being both on the brokerage side and also on the ownership principal side, because you do build those relationships.

Mm.

I'm really glad you brought that up. I mean, that's what we call certainty of execution. And, you know, for our clients, when we're selling properties, the highest offer is not always the best offer, and oftentimes it's not because someone who's reaching for a really, really high price we're willing to pay, saying they're willing to pay a very high price. It might not be their own money. They might be trying to syndicate it after. They might be trying to tie up a transaction to see if they can then, you know, raise the money or worse yet, retreat on the price. Once I've got it locked in, let me see if I can work the seller down on price. So if, you know, here's a group that, you know, says what they do, do what they say. I mean, we spend a lot of time talking to our clients about who's the buyer and certainty of execution. So that. That's huge. So, you know, and I think also what you alluded to, Emily, which your father was talking about, is how you do compete. I mean, some of the assets you're buying.

Yeah.

I mean, in some cases, maybe they're a little bit below the radar of some of these big institutions. But I really liked what you had to say is, you know, hey, we're quick. We don't have this investment committee. We don't have this formal process. We can get you an answer. We can move fast. And I think for a lot of our investors, I know a lot of the. Excuse me. A lot of our listeners, people who are listening to this show, they're kind of in that boat, and they're probably saying, well, hey, how am I going to compete with some of these huge publicly traded, you know, real estate shops out there? And the answer is, you know, again, you've got to have that credibility or you need to partner with someone who does. But, you know, if you can move faster and you can do things they can't, I mean, that sounds like a great way to win deals 100%.

And I just. I'M sorry, I just wanted to also add, we have found somewhat of a niche, too, which is very beneficial for us in that we fall below the institutional clients, as you're talking about, James. Right. The 10, 12, $15 million and above. And we are above the high net worth. So we fit in that niche between the two to, I'd say 12 million MLA that we target where the institutions are not going below that $12 million threshold. And the high net worth, the doctors, the lawyers, people such as that are not investing above the 2 to 3 million. So there is a range in there that there is not a lot of money chasing those assets. And Emily and my father have definitely found that to be a sweet spot for us because we do have the means to get to those higher price points that are just a little too low for the larger institutions, the REITs and those type of firms.

And it's also very important to work with the sell side to get a deal done. Coming from the brokerage side and the principal side, a seller wants to get a deal done, obviously, and you coming in as a buyer and nickel and diming everything, it's just going to tick them off and you have to be on the same page. And my father really sets an example at the start of a deal and he introduces himself. We always hop on a kickoff call and say, look, we're going to work to get this deal done. You know, you as a seller, we want to get this done for you. Us, as a buyer, we want to get our money to be working for us. So it's in our benefit as well to close this deal. So it's really important to be on the same page and have open communication. There is nothing worse in a deal and nothing that could kill a deal quicker than communication. And it's happened many times in the past whether, you know, balls got dropped by attorney, attorneys, by whomever. But it's very important to everybody be on the same page whether you can return something in a timeframe that's needed explaining the situation and just being open and communicative with the sell side. It's 100% necessary in getting a deal to move. And also just keeping everybody in the loop. And we really try hard. Once we're in a deal, we always keep communication open. If there's any sort of delay, we communicate that and we make sure that there's no waiting on either side because there's nothing worse than not hearing from somebody and waiting.

That's fantastic. No, I really appreciate you bringing up all these points and I Hope our listeners are taking notes. So one thing, and as I was speaking to your father, I said, look, I need to have you both on because it's you all as a team certainly complement each other and you work incredibly well together. But the most important thing of a transaction or the piece of the deal in my mind, is the sourcing. Because if you can't find the opportunity, there's no business, there's no deal to work on. I've said before on this show that the only thing you cannot change about a transaction is where you bought it. So let's talk about that, because your father was, he's very, very proud of all the success that you all have, Achie. But he is also, you know, he attributes, you know, a big, you know, a huge part of the success of this company to these opportunities that you find. So I think you've already kind of alluded to some of your relationships out there and the brokers, but I think for our listeners, they'd be really interested to hear how you source opportunities and then what advice you would have for them on how to be that first phone call.

Well, I can start off, Lara, on how we source honestly, the way we look at deals, I'll look at hundreds of deals, and I really like to focus on markets. Some markets that we have deals in, but other markets that are growing or that there's news about them, you know, new distribution centers are going in. We love to be around college campuses, so there really has to be some sort of story around it. We do have properties that are mostly in Chicago, Atlanta, but we're looking outside of those markets now. And we really, we look for deals. We look for good deals. Yes, we want to obviously be in strong markets, but we are looking for good real estate. So whether it's in Louisville, Kentucky or Atlanta, Georgia, the fundamentals of the deal have to be strong. Again, the locations obviously very important, but we're not, we're not looking at specific markets. So we're in, we're going to Louisiana now. So that's a new market for us. We've done a lot of research, due diligence to find out what that market's like. Is this the a location in that market? It may not be urban, you know, very dense population, but are we looking at a very of the a location in that specific market? So. So we really kind of look as broad as possible because to be quite honest, to get to this point, I mean, we didn't close a deal. Our last deal, we closed a year from now. So I've been looking at, I mean, thousands upon thousands of deals to find this deal. So it doesn't happen overnight. But the more and more obviously you look at deals and find out what markets you really want to focus on. Ours is really the, I'd say the eastern coast, Midwest slash eastern coast because of the travel. I will be the one doing the traveling. And it's important enough to have to make a two day trip to go see a property. So California, first of all, the prices are crazy, but anywhere really in the Midwest, western kind of area is really not a focus for us in particular. But if you're obviously in that location, that could be an area that you look at. But I mean, we'll look at everything from the online databases to brokerage community to other owners that we know that may be selling. So as far as sourcing, there's really no particular area, to be quite honest. LoopNet has been a huge source for us. It's the deals that everybody passes up on that we sort of kind of hone in on and kind of drill down and see why are people passing on it and is it something that we can go after and is it within our risk tolerance. So we've, we've found deals and have a lot of success in deals that may have been on the market for 6, 9, 12 months. So just because they're on the market for that long doesn't mean it's a bad deal. It could be, you know, the seller could, you know, there could be other issues related to that. Lad, do you want to jump in?

Yeah.

Let me. I want to, because you said a lot of great things there. I want to just quickly respond and then, and then add an additional question to this so Lara can answer along with her other thoughts. But I'm really glad, Emily, that you brought up LoopNet because we don't really talk enough about specifics on this show. And you know, LoopNet is the de facto search engine for commercial properties across the country. But I would say that they might not be happy with me saying this, but I would say brokers and investors probably do not spend as much time on it because they don't feel the opportunities are vetted. There's a lot of brokers who can put listings up there. Sometimes they control them, usually they don't. There's a lot of off market stuff. So you have to like sort through a lot of this stuff. And because it's work, most brokers, most investors will not do it. They would rather get the call from a broker who they know, who says this is a vetted opportunity. But again, they might be passing over something where there's a mismatch, where maybe there's a residential broker who doesn't really know what they have. So they say, look, I'm going to just post this thing, you know, on the multiple listing service and see what happens. So I really like that you brought this, this up. So, Laura, I want to hear your thoughts on this, but I also want to ask you the same question I asked your father because, you know, when you go into new markets, again, my question for him is like, how do you compete against the local buyers who have been there? You know, if you're going to Louisiana.

There'S probably, you know, buyers in that.

Market who've been there for decades. They're going to be those local brokers first call. So, like, how do you convince them to show you something before you know the other known buyers in that market?

Well, oftentimes and again, Emily really focuses on our personal portfolio. But I can speak to this in the sense that oftentimes the markets that we go into, we are brought the deals by brokers that we know, as Emily just said. Right. So a contact that we know, Kyle, brought this deal to Emily. It's in Louisiana. He is not a local broker, per se. Right. So these are national listings. So R. And James, as you know better than a lot of people, my father is very much into networking and very relationship driven. So we attribute a lot of our success to the fact that he is a master networker and goes out there and he meets people and deals are brought to us based on our relationships. So the Louisiana deal, we are not local to Louisiana. We obviously reside in New York in him and the Palm beach area. And we receive that information based on the fact that they knew who we were, they knew certainty of closing with this group. It fit our mandate. So that's how we, I think, have the competitive advantage to some of the local buyers. Furthermore, James, I think it's the price point that we fit into. Again, even in local markets, there's not many people that play in a certain price range.

Right.

You know, there's a handful of people that fit the same profile that our family probably fits at this point. And then there's the institutions after that. So at the $10 million price point, we're not competing with the institutions, but we also probably are not competing with the doctors and attorneys who are buying single properties every once in a while. So it's again, I think our mandate sets us apart and it's definitely our relationships. One of the deals that we have in Dakula, Georgia was a Weingarten owned property. So again, it was a relationship. We had a relationship with somebody there who we continue to have a relationship with. They were divesting some of their assets and we had an opportunity to take a look at it and it worked for us. So again, we're not competing really against the local, the local investors because the brokers tend to be more on a national level.

That makes a ton of sense.

Can I add one other thing? And you mentioned about LoopNet, I also know because I spend hours and hours a day. Actually you mentioned how brokers oftentimes don't want to do this. I will spend hours a day vetting deals. And oftentimes the deals that are thrown up there by a local residential broker or that may just have an Excel spreadsheet are the deals that I go after. I am not looking for some shiny marketing package. I look for the opposite. The shiny marketing package thinks they have a 4 cap when it's an 8 cap. Just because they put together a shiny marketing package. I don't need 60 pages of marketing information. I need a rent roll, a P and L, and basically that's it. One or two other things. And oftentimes people will pass up on deals because, you know, maybe the broker may not be sophisticated or it's an owner trying to just throw something up. And those are the ones that, that you really should be looking at because those are the ones that get passed up and those are the ones. I mean, we've bought nine and a quarter cap deals in the heart of Chicago because there was no shiny marketing package. And it happened. So I too like to look at a beautiful package. But in actuality, the deals are found where there isn't any marketing package or they just sent you a rent roll that you kind of have to dig through and clean up yourself. But it takes a lot of work. So you're not going to find a deal every day or every week, not even every month. I mean, I spend, I can't tell you the hundreds of hours I spent to get this deal. So a lot of time goes into it and once you get the deal, I mean, you're obviously very satisfied. But it's not an overnight thing.

I love. Thank you so much for sharing the specifics. I mean, it'll be so incredibly helpful for our listeners because I think again, sourcing a deal is the, you know, the most important part to, you know, set the stage for an investment and define that. And, you know, you've been doing this, you know, for however long, and it's not like, you know, these deals are just coming to you. It's great when you get that relationship call, but the fact that even today you were searching out and spending hours pouring through information, I think that's super helpful. So I'm so happy we were able to have this conversation. I've got one parting question for you all, and I think, especially for our listeners, where there's a family dynamic where, you know, maybe they're already working with. Maybe it's a brother or sister or parents, or maybe their parents are already in the real estate business. They're thinking about, do I go work with the family? Do I go do something independently? I'd love if you all could just share what it's like to work with that family dynamic.

Sure.

I'm happy to start. So we are. We are blessed to have the ability to work together. We have a very wonderful working relationship and an even better personal relationship, which is great. We have the ability to, I think, divide and conquer so we know our strengths and weaknesses. Emily is 100% a numbers person. I admittedly am not that right. I don't enjoy that part of the process. I love the thrill of the deal, but that's not. I'm not a numbers junkie. Her and my father work very well together. I am much more somebody that handles the relationships with our clients, the back office, all, everything that has to do with running a firm or multiple firms in our case. So I think our ability to know our strengths and we really complement one another, again, we're here to support. Support each other. We have. Have fun doing this too. You know, we. I think Emily has a more challenging role than I do working with our father. And Emily, if you want to explain, you know, kind of what you and dad do and how you kind of figure out the working relationship.

Well, I think Lara hit the nail on the head. I mean, it's really knowing your strengths. And we each have, you know, a specific role, and it's worked wonderfully for us. We did, you know, in the beginning, had to set kind of guidelines because we are, you know, working with. It could kind of spill over until personal lives as well. So just really knowing the role and kind of setting definitive roles. But I mean, every kind of family dynamic is going to be different. We, my father and I, happen to be on the same page with numbers and kind of underwriting of a deal. So, you know, that's. That's what's worked for us. I think it's important to kind of figure that out sooner rather than later because if you're going to be working together as a family, you want to make sure that relationship is kept intact because it could very well go south. A lot of times that does. And people are often surprised to hear how well it's worked out for us. But, yeah, I think just making sure everybody knows what their, you know, their strengths and weaknesses are and all working together because at the end of the day, this is going to be, you know, the next generation is going to be taking, taking control and learning obviously, as much as we can from our father and him taking, you know, kind of a bit of more of a backseat as the time goes on. We really have to figure out, you know, our roles and how they'll always be changing and evolving. And once he does, you know, retire, hopefully in 100 years, not anytime soon, Lara and I will be running it. So, yeah, he's a great person to learn from. And I think if it's a generational kind of situation for families, it's important to, you know, learn all you can from, you know, whomever it may be. But, yeah, have fun. And it's. We are very, very blessed and very happy to be doing what we're doing with each other.

Yeah. And we both generational, we're growing a portfolio that we hope continues.

Yeah.

And I just love how aligned you all are because sometimes you can sense there's this different dynamic when, you know, maybe that the parents, their grandparents, that was like the old guard and maybe the son or daughter has to make their name and do something radical or do and there doesn't need, you know, to be that friction. You all can keep doing what you've been doing, but figure out, you know, better ways to do it and improve and learn from all the great work that your father's done and bring kind of a new, fresh approach.

So this was really awesome.

I'm so glad that I could have you all on. I think I know our listeners are going to get a ton of this, so just want to thank you so much for joining the show today. And I can't wait to see you both in person again, hopefully soon.

Wonderful. Well, thank you for having us again, James.

Thank you so much for having us.

Wonderful. This is James Nelson, your host of Real Estate Investing, live from New York. If you haven't already, please go to jamesnelson.com, check out this new site that I have created for you to make you the best possible investor and love to get your comments questions at James Nelson NYC. Send them to me on LinkedIn until next week. Thank you again.

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.