The Future Of Multifamily Investing Is Now With Diva Rescia

Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to the New and Experienced Investor Podcast. Today we're talking about why you need to be investing in multifamily now. It's a show you definitely don't wanna miss. I'm Alex Barnett. I'm one of your hosts. I'm the new guy.

And I'm Joe Homs, and that makes me the experienced guy. Oh yeah.

Today we have an amazing guest with us. She's a real estate investor who has gone from Fox News and Univision to now closing over $500 million in real— in multifamily sales. A pretty amazing woman. Before we bring her on, we just wanna remind you about our upcoming meetup.

August 25th. And our guest speaker is gonna be Natalie Elsner.

Yeah. Elsner.

Elsner.

Yep, yep.

CPA. Natalie's a CPA and she's gonna talk about the Big Beautiful Bill. And I'm really, really excited to hear what she has to say, uh, because I like to buy a G-Wagon, see if I can write the whole thing off.

Oh, there you go. Swag, swag wagon.

I'm looking at Ryan just to make him laugh, you know. He's in the market for a new car because somebody ran into his car in the parking lot and just about totaled it.

Yeah, I could see him right now. Yeah, give it a week. Give it a week. I always like to remind you guys, this is a live show, so go ahead, jump in the chat, and please share with any new or experienced investor in your life. Let's stop screwing around. Let's go ahead and bring our guest in today. We have Diva Racia here with us. Diva, what's up? How you doing today?

I'm doing good. How are you doing? Thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. What were you doing before real estate? How'd you get into real estate?

So I was a news anchor and a reporter for Fox and Univision Network. I did Fox for about, I want to say, 5, 6 years. Univision few years after that. That was my passion, so I would always watch Barbara Walters, Jillian Barbieri, the news, the weather girl, and I said, one day I'm going to be working on TV. So once I got into TV, you know, it was nice being on camera, doing reports, and it wasn't all nice because I couldn't be the true journalist that I wanted to be. There was always control of my scripts.

Mm-hmm.

My parents always told me, "Hey, Diva, you should do real estate," because my parents were always doing real estate like the fix and flips. But I was just so focused on my career that I said, "No, no, no, no." But one day I woke up and you know just the light switch went off, and I was like, "You know what? F this. I'm just going to do real estate." So I had to pack my bags. At that time, I was living in Colorado. I also lived in Texas because that's where my journalistic career took me. You had to work the smaller markets in order to go to the larger markets, and I managed to save up about eighty thousand dollars. And that's when I just started shopping, when I was living in Texas at that time. And I started shopping for real estate in California because I knew I was coming back. I couldn't stand the weather over there either. It's too hot. So I bought my first house in Colton, which is the boonies. It's like, you know, very hood.

Very hot.

Yeah, very hood too. Yeah. You got to walk in there with like a bulletproof vest.

Yeah.

I bought my first house there. I fixed it up. It took me about 6 months because I didn't have sufficient capital to do all the remodeling, the extensive remodeling. So I would go on YouTube. Thank God for YouTube. So, and I would look like how to install vinyl plank flooring, how to patch up drywall. So that's why it took me so long because I didn't have the capital. I would only hire guys to do the electrical and the plumbing. So I would go to Home Depot because I know that's where they hung out, and I would pick up some workers and they would just come help me do the plumbing and the electrical. And so that took me 6 months and I made a profit. It wasn't a lot of money. It was only like $20,000. But I was like, you know, I had to work at Fox. My salary was really low. It was like $40,000.

Hmm.

I had to work. That was a big comparison. So that's when like the light bulb went off. I said, You know, I have to work half a year to make $20,000 and they control what I want to say. So at that time, was real estate really my passion? No, it wasn't. But it gave me the freedom of time and I'm like, you cannot buy that back. So just from then on, I kind of flipped about 20 properties, 15 to 20 properties, and I just kept rolling the money over onto the next property. And it was a good time to do fix and flip because I wouldn't say there was a lot of competition in the market. I remember on one flip I made like $200,000. So I was like, whoa, you know, the game's here. So that's how I was able to stack my capital. But long story short, when I look back, I always say, hey, if you always want to do reporting, now you can be a freelancer, you know, and you can do your own thing. So even though that's your passion, you can still do that. So I kind of shifted gears and now I kind of teach people about real estate and how to invest. So now it's that route.

Nice.

I love that.

Yeah.

I kind of have a similar thing where I would, my wife and I were in a touring band.

Oh, nice.

Yeah. And then, you know, the whole, the music industry is just like, it's terrible. It's one of those things. Same sort of thing.

After COVID. Oh, after COVID.

Well, yeah, after COVID, but in general too. So now like the real estate can provide some capital to kind of fuel our own passion, you know?

Right.

And you get, you get time freedom too.

Yeah.

So. That's— I, I love that story. That's great. Now, are you planning on going back to doing some journalism, or is that in the back of your mind?

So, I mean, I do a lot of freelance work, so I do, uh, I cover events for anything that has to do real estate related. So I'll go to that and I'll report on that. So that's what I do. Um, but it's not, you know, it's not like local news that I'm covering.

Right, right. That's cool.

And I know Univision is Spanish. Do you speak Spanish? I'm assuming.

Yeah, you got to be fluent to work for Univision. Yes, you got to learn. I was going to say, yeah, you have to Right.

You're— do you do like real estate stuff in Spanish as well?

Yes. Yes. So I educate, yeah, when I can, you know, I feel the Hispanic community, we haven't really been taught the power of leverage. Like my parents taught me, for example, buy everything cash. They don't know, you know, how to leverage correct debt. They think all debt is bad, you know, and buy everything cash and stash your money underneath the mattress. So that's how I was taught until I started learning the game. I started looking at these guys' portfolios that have really big portfolios, like, what are they doing? So that's when I really dove into it and I started learning about the game.

Yeah. A lot of times when you talk to people that did not grow up in this country, it's not like you can go to Mexico and buy something and finance it. Everything's pretty much cash.

Yeah.

And so that, you know, that's how they were taught. You know, you buy something and then you see that the project is a quarter the way done. That's because just like you just said, it's like you don't have enough money to finish it. You have to get more money and then you finish it, and then you go to the next, next step and then finally get the whole thing done, you know? Yeah, because I, I travel a lot and I see that all the time.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Have you been to Argentina? That's where I'm from.

Yeah. Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, it's just, it's— I think it's a culture, but just, I think the new generation is kind of adapting, so It's picking up a little bit. Um, so I think it's just you got to use the power of your voice to teach others and just spread that knowledge and help other individuals.

Well, that's really nice. Yes, I'm glad to hear that. Uh, Alex, we had lunch today at my favorite place. I won't tell you what it is, but we had lunch at my favorite place, and he was telling me that, um, he's giving one of his deals to a relative. And I thought that That's really nice. I mean, he's literally giving, let's say, $100,000 away to one of his relatives that is moving here from out of state into California. So I told him he'd be going to heaven for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Am I in now? Is it finally counting?

You're in.

You're in. You're like right behind Trump because that's Trump's goal is to get into heaven.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

So you like, you say you like Fox News?

I do like Fox News.

What do you like about Fox News?

Yes. Um, I don't know if I could say that here. Yeah, you can.

This is the guest you've been waiting for.

You know, I'm like way older than probably both of you put together. It's like—

This is a nice thing about podcasts. You could be open.

Yeah.

Nobody's controlling you here.

That's right.

I like, I like the females that they hire. Let's just say that.

Oh, you like the weather girls?

I don't see— no, I don't do a lot of weather girls. I like, uh, The Five. You've heard about The Five, right? I like The Five. Yeah. Uh, I like that show. I like Gutfeld as well.

Yeah.

So, I mean, Kat Timpf, you know Kat?

Yes.

She's my favorite. She's a— she's, uh, pretty much a liberal, but she's my favorite. Yeah. She's so cute. I, I really like her.

Okay. So it has nothing to do with politics or anything. It's literally just how the women look on there.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, politics, They're, you know, you're Republican, I'm Republican. It's like they're just telling you the truth. And sorry, the other side has an opinion, but I don't know where they're coming from. But anyway, let's, let's not digress. Okay, let's get back on topic here. Yeah, did I read someplace where— I thought I read someplace where you started in a van or something like that?

Oh, yes, a motorhome. So When I was rolling my capital over, uh, into the next property, uh, there was a time where I didn't have like a lot of capital, so I had to sell my cars to rack up that little bit of money to close on the next deal. So I ended up buying a Tioga motorhome. Uh, it was like really old. I remember I went to Home Depot, I remodeled that too, and I lived there for about 2 months, like just because— and then I found out you can live actually at the Walmart Supercenters.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that's where I would That's where I found Alex.

He was in the parking lot at Walmart. Oh, really? Said, hey, I need help.

I don't even like shopping at Walmart.

Oh, no.

But yeah, so I did it.

So was it just a short period of time?

Yeah, it was just short, 2 months. Okay. You know, but you have to do what you have to do.

Oh, absolutely. And that's why I'm asking, you know?

Yeah, so I lived there and it was, I mean, it was an experience. You learn from all your experiences.

Yeah.

But I mean, I had some fun too. I went on a weekend like down the coast, PCH Highway 1. I went up to Cambria and I came back.

Nice.

Heck yeah.

Yeah. It was nice.

Very nice.

Till I closed on the deal. I'm like, man, I need to get my mind off all this stuff.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That close feels good. So how do you transition from residential flipping into multifamily? What's that mindset shift?

It was when I was reporting on these events, I said I would just go in there and envision that I see these big buildings and I would envision, um, you know, someday I want to work with the big dogs. And I started researching these big dogs that owned all the buildings, especially apartments. I was more geared towards, uh, apartments because I started just going on YouTube and I came across Grant Cardone. Great. He's a mentor of mine. Um, I'm in his real estate club, so, uh, he's been a pioneer in me shaping the way Why I decided to go in multifamily. You don't know what you don't know until you surround yourself by those kind of individuals and you actually learn from them. So that was kind of the shift. And also, I was just looking at the portfolios. I had software, I was working at a brokerage and I have software to see actually how big their portfolio is. And it's like there's so many numbers on there, you don't even know how to read the number anymore. I was like, what are they doing? So that's when I dove into multifamily. Because I was only— I was only taught, like, it's like Grant always says, yeah, the more units you have, you can offset the debt. But if I only have one door and that becomes vacant, then, then you're screwed.

Yeah.

Not, not only that, you're dictated by the comps that are next to you on, on single family. So if the market takes a shift, there goes your profit. What are you going to do, rent it out when your intention was to sell and make money? Yeah.

Do you find buying multifamily deals a lot easier? 'Cause most of the time that people are buying multifamily deals, it, I mean, it's actually cash flowing for you at the end of the day. That's what you're looking for, correct? You're not gonna buy something in California for, you know, $900,000 that doesn't cash flow. You can't rent it out in hopes that it's gonna be worth, you know, $1.5 million, but that's 10 years down the road. You're looking for cash flow right away, correct?

Oh yeah. Usually you want to go in, you want it to cash flow day one. Yeah, it might not be a great return, but you always got to look at what markets you're buying in. And that's the beauty about being in the brokerage side of the business, because, uh, you get to come across those deals. You said you're not going to buy something for $900,000 and not make money. But I know just a deal that, uh, one of my colleagues closed on, got it for $900,000, a 10-unit. And he knows he has to go through a stabilization process, but, you know, at the end of the day, he's going to make his capital back in a matter of like 2 years, a year after stabilizing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's— it's stabilizing means bringing it up to code.

Oh, so yeah, it's like doing all the— usually we call it a value add.

Okay.

Yeah. So the value add is when you go in and you got to rehab the units, maybe Turn over the units, bad tenants, put better tenants in there.

Okay.

And just, you know, bring it up to par and increase the rents if you're allowed to, depending what state you're in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Where do you invest mostly in?

So I have a few units out in Las Vegas and I, I love California 'cause that's my backyard, but I usually mostly invest in the Inland Empire. Tertiary markets.

Okay.

But also Las Vegas. And then I'm looking at stuff out in Florida right now.

And I've been looking at a lot of YouTube because I spend a lot of time on YouTube. Probably shouldn't, but—

So do I.

They're saying that Vegas is kind of going downhill, not investment-wise or residential-wise, but, you know, people that are actually coming to Vegas. And it's been happening for like the last 2 or 3 years. Do you see that at all? I mean, are you having difficulty renting out your units and things like that?

Uh, I feel, yeah, it's kind of slowed down right now. There's been a flattening of rents. But, um, at the end of the day, we go through all these cycles in real estate, and you have to know— I would say not know, but you have to not be scared of the cycles because there's always opportunity during a contraction.

Yeah.

A lot of people might not see it, but there's opportunity definitely during a contraction. And it's at the end, you know, just buy, hold, wait, and then just let time do its thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

That's great. And I do like that you are saying that you're investing in California because there's so many people, especially in the multifamily space, that are just out in like Oklahoma and just, yeah, in the Midwest. But why, Do you think California is a good move?

Well, you see appreciation here. Yeah, it might take you a long time, but you know, you invest now, it's just going to keep going up. When have you seen rents gone down here? Never. It's becoming a renter's mark, a renter's nation. So a lot of people can't afford to buy here. So you're always going to have demand. You have the housing shortage as well. But I would not— me personally, I would not go into like Los Angeles because of all the policies and regulations that they have there.

Amen.

I would always go into the tertiary markets, because those people that can't really afford to live there, you're seeing that they're moving in. The ones that want to raise families, maybe they're going to like tertiary markets. So that's a good place to always invest. Plus the rent increase there is like 7.5% plus CPI, which you can't do that in Los Angeles. And I think that's a good amount if you're trying to do a rental increase or turnover on units.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. They pretty much want to make it to where any Mom-and-pop landlord, or I guess just any landlord can't even evict.

Yeah.

Um, can't raise rent.

It's becoming very difficult. I had a tenant, I have some apartments out in the Inland Empire and it took me to take out a tenant there about 8 months.

Yeah.

She was living with about, in a 1-bedroom, 1-bath. This is gonna sound nuts, but she has 17 dogs in there.

Ooh.

Mm-hmm.

17 dogs.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So where, where is— where would you say your break-even is? Is it a 4-unit complex? Is this a 10, a 20-unit complex? Where, where are you looking at the most to invest?

So right now, uh, right now I'm looking only at Class A and B buildings, meaning the newer construction, uh, just because rent control laws don't really apply, but I'm looking in Florida. But this— if I'm still looking like at a 50-unit, I'll look out in the Inland Empire. But if I'm looking at larger deals, I'm looking at Florida, Texas, uh, Arizona, Las Vegas. I'm looking in those markets, whatever's maybe like 200+ units, institutional quality assets. I'm looking out of state.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then how are you financing those? Are you putting a syndication together? Yes.

So we raise capital.

Okay.

Syndication, raise capital, investors get a return. And obviously it has to be a nice deal. That's going to be— that real estate's going to be there so you can provide a return for your investors. So you want that real estate to be there for long years to come. And it's institutional quality. So, you know, you're going to have a demand. You have all the amenities. These newer constructions are very nice. Tenant demographic is great. high-paying jobs, great locations. So I always say, you always have to, this, and being Orange County, you got to always buy location. That's the number one. I would always say location, location.

So where in Florida is kind of, are you seeing, I guess, the best locations?

Oops.

I think Tampa is a great market that's emerging right now. Tampa. And then The Fort Lauderdale area is also growing in Miami. So those are 2 markets that I'm actually looking at.

Okay.

Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah.

And because you work at a brokerage, you said you come across deals all the time.

Yes.

Right.

So as a, as a broker, you always, you're trying to find a motivated seller.

Mm-hmm.

Why are, why are those individuals or the mom and pop I represent here only in California, but Why are those owners trying to sell? It's because either there's a death in the family or, you know, they're tired of managing the property because it's been such a headache with tenants or regulation and policy. So they're looking to, you know, just transition into maybe a triple net type of deal. So that's where mostly I look and help represent clients. Is that— was that your question?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, that's good. Yeah. Basically, where you kind of— where are you finding your deals?

Yeah, so I mean, I make about 1,000 calls a week. Oh my God. So I call property owners that own property, and then I do a lot of cold calling and see how we could provide value or service to that client. You know, maybe a lot of the— a lot of, uh, they've had it for about 80 years, so they really don't know the depreciation. They don't know maybe about a cost seg. So we just try to be a resource at the end of the day and seeing maybe They have an older building. They've, uh, they have no more depreciation. So maybe roll that over into another building in which they can get that depreciation schedule again.

Yeah. Nice.

So that's where we find the owners. I mean, we have software, so we're just always on the phones dialing. We call it smile and dial.

Smile and dial. That's it.

That's—

there's honestly no way around it, you know. That's just like what, what this whole business is revolving around.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Talk to sellers.

Yeah, you have to talk to sellers. You have to talk to brokers, and it's all at the end of the day building relationships. So once you have those good relationships, you know, just keep coming, and they'll refer people over to you, or brokers or send send you deals. Yeah.

How are the interest rates hitting multifamily right now?

We set we I think they're kind of stable right now. So there's really not been a cut, but they're speculating that we might have. This is what they've been saying for like the past year. Nobody has a crystal ball, but they're saying that there's probably going to be about 3 rate cuts. So I think maybe one, uh, towards, uh, next month or so, and then the following year. But who knows?

You know, I have a crystal ball.

What does your crystal ball say?

I bring it out every December during our meetup. Um, what do you think the interest rate's going to be at December 31st of this year?

I think if it, if it dips, it's only going to be like a quarter.

Okay. I'm predicting 5.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow. You better start buying now.

I'm predicting 5, and I was hoping that it would be a lot closer, obviously, than we are now because he hasn't lowered it at all. But I agree with you. I think there's going to be at least 3 this year.

This year.

This year.

This I was thinking more towards like 2026.

No, I think he's gonna be three this year. Maybe another three or four next year.

Yeah.

You think they're gonna go back to how low?

Five.

Oh yeah. I think we'll be lucky if we get to see five. I think they're gonna maybe float around five and a half.

Okay. But maybe I'll take that too.

Maybe your crystal ball's right.

Yeah. I I put it down. In writing, basically.

That's right.

We're gonna review it this December, see if I'm right or not.

Yeah.

Oh well, we'll find out.

I mean, if it's 5, you know, there's— it'll be great. It'll be great.

Yeah, it'd be amazing.

It's—

yeah, yeah, you know, the whole market needs a little bit of a shot.

Yes, it does. It definitely does. Yes, I feel like a lot of, uh, investors are kind of— there's a lot of dry powder sitting on the sidelines. So you have all this money just sitting on the sidelines and just waiting to make a move in Right now. Right. So they can just come. But imagine all the competition that's going to come on tomorrow.

That's the part.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I always say it's a good time. You know, right now is the perfect time. And there's a lot of debt maturity with a lot of the institutional assets. So that's something to look at too, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. Do you guys ever utilize creative finance when you're putting these deals together?

Like seller finance?

Seller financing?

Yeah, on some deals. Yeah. I mean, those are the institutional. They don't really do seller finance, but the smaller deals, yeah, you'll see. I would say elderly people that just want to receive passive income and they don't want all the burden, they'll do seller financing. And it's a, it's a nice piece of strategy to put debt together because you could really negotiate. And it's actually a win-win for both parties, for the seller and the person that's buying the asset. So sometimes you can give them a higher price, you know, you just get a lower interest rate, but it's always negotiable. So that's the nice, nice kind of strategy for seller finance. But yeah, I think we've seen a few deals on the smaller side.

Okay.

Yeah.

Excellent.

You bought any deals with seller finance?

Yeah. Yeah, we have.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Buy one, get one.

What's the best rate? What are the best terms that you got?

Probably like, I think one was like 3%.

Wow.

Yeah.

For 5 years?

No, probably for like, I think one was like 10 years. Yeah.

3% for 10 years?

Yeah.

Oh, that's—

so I mean, but yeah, these are, these were all like mobile homes.

Yeah.

So they're kind of used to it. I mean, in the mobile home space, there's a lot of seller financing.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah. Because they're kind of hard to get regular financing on.

You ever thought about buying a mobile home park? That's a great business. Yeah.

Yeah.

You have any yet?

No, no, none yet. But that's definitely on the horizon.

Yeah.

The pads, because it goes by pads, I hear.

For sure. Yeah.

It's kind of—

I actually knew a lady that was selling a mobile home park. It had 27 spaces. And I think she wanted like 1.5 and she just wanted $300,000 down.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think she was okay with negotiating the rate.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Same sort of thing. It's like people that have had it in their family or they've just had it for 50 years and they don't know how to exit necessarily.

Right.

So they're just waiting for someone to call them like you and saying, hey, how can we help?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Mobile home is a great business. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Some of them are nice. Like if you go to, uh, I know there's one, uh, by where I live, uh, and it's nice. It looks like a resort. They got a lake, everything.

Right.

It's nice.

Yeah. Yeah. It's probably—

I wanted to check that portfolio to see kind of what they bought it for and what it traded last.

Right.

Yeah. So what, um, I guess like what software do you use when you're digging into looking for deals?

So there's a few. I mean, there's CoStar, Reonomy. It's all paid software. It could get pretty expensive. There's RCA Analytics. That's where you could look at debt maturity when it traded. But those are pretty much the softwares that I use.

Okay.

Yeah. Reonomy is a great one. Those are all the numbers. Sometimes you got to filter through them.

Okay.

And there's something new that'll kind of— they got AI. So before I would just have to dial and dial numbers. You got AI where you can implement AI and it'll make the calls for you. So there's this software that I started using. I want to say about four months ago. It's called Terracotta AI.

Okay.

Yeah. So it's great. So just pump out the calls and do the clone your voice and just drop the voicemail.

Oh.

So you don't take. You can save two three seconds from making a phone call by making another phone call instead of just hey call me back.

Right.

Yeah.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah.

Okay. So you cloned yourself and then it's just leaving messages. It's not doing the actual cold call.

No, it doesn't do the cold call. Oh yeah. Because it sounds too robotic.

Right.

I've heard of softwares that they have. I, I've kind of got a demo on 'em.

Mm-hmm.

But it just sounds too robotic and you can fine-tune everything. That's the cool thing about AI. You can fine-tune the voicemail, you can change it, but it's really neat because it'll pick up the address of the property or the person's name that you're calling and it'll just drop it. And it'll switch it like that.

Nice.

Yeah, it's a really nice software.

Yeah.

Terracotta.

Terracotta. There you go. Yeah, that's gonna be, that's gonna be really cool. And eventually, I guess the calls will be able to come. But yeah, I did the same thing. I wanted to get a robocaller for a while, but you can just tell. You can just—

It's robotic.

Yeah, it's robotic. There's pauses.

Oh yeah.

So human.

Yeah, I had a different software. It was called the Mojo Dialer.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I've used that, but there was always a delay before you call your next client, and you know, they just hang up on you. Yeah, they're like, oh, this is a— yeah, whatever, sales call.

Yeah.

Uh, but I recommend Terracotta. I think it's great. You know, I've got a lot of good feedback from it where they call you, they actually call you back.

Okay. Oh, so it's that the whole dial system is Terracotta? Like it's a multi-line dialer?

Yes.

Oh, okay. Gotcha.

It'll dial. You can upload your CVS file, put it in there with all your numbers, and then auto dial for you.

Nice.

Yeah.

And are you actually doing the calls or do you have a VA doing them?

No, I do the calls. Yeah, it's all hands-on. You want to talk to the client. You know what? I hired a VA, but I didn't really— it's not like you're personally calling. No.

Yeah.

So it's You know, they can create a warm lead and then send it over to you, but it's not the same. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah. I was talking to a buddy, he was training like, you know, a younger kid at cold calling, probably called for like 2 weeks and then he's like, I'm probably gonna hire a VA. Like, this is way too hard.

And I'm like, yeah.

But so that's impressive that, you know, you're still smiling and dialing.

Yeah. Before I would make about just like dialing number by number was like 350 calls a week. Right now I'm doing like 1,000, a little bit more. It depends how many hours you put in, but you could easily double your numbers.

Dang.

Yeah.

Heck yeah. Well, and the best part is like you just get better and better at talking to people.

Yeah.

You know, there's no way around that.

Yeah.

That's the biggest thing. You have to start calling yourself because you don't know what they're going to ask you. You know, you can't— you just, you can't hire a VA after doing it for a week because you don't know what the questions are that they're going to ask you.

Oh, the objections.

The objections. Yeah. It's like you don't know.

Well, in brokerage, in real estate brokerage, there's only like a certain amount of objections. There's probably like 10. But once you master those objections, you just got to learn how to pivot the conversation.

Yeah.

With the— but I mean, sometimes people just don't want to do it. They're tired of sales calls, so they just click on you. I kind of— I'm more like of aggressive, so I kind Press when I call, I'm not very like hey you know very so I kind of ask them like why did you buy the real estate? What's what's the long-term goal? Why did you buy the real estate? And they're like what last week I got a guy that said man you're really nosy huh? I was like he told me this he said I want to sell. I'm like okay did you get an evaluation on your property yet? And he said yes I did. I'm like okay so what did what did they evaluate it at? And he's like well why do you want to know? Why are you so nosy? I'm like because you told me you wanted to sell. I'm seeing if I can give you a second opinion. And then he's like well. Uh, he said, no, but you're still nosy. I'm like, okay, I'm just trying to help. And then I asked him, um, so have you put it on the market yet? And he's like, no. I'm like, but didn't you just say you want to sell?

Yeah, damn.

I just kept drilling them and then he kind of opened up later and then I was able to get another valuation for him.

So, okay, good. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like you, you gotta imagine most of the people when they say stuff like that, it Could just be a lie. Like, when they're like, oh, I already got evaluation. Oh, what is it? They don't actually know because they didn't actually get one.

Yeah.

Or he did and he didn't like where it was at.

Yeah.

I like the way Alex calls. He calls and says, hey, this is Alex. You know, it's like, Alex who? You know, like, what are you, my best friend or something? You know, it's like, yeah.

Yeah, just for the opening, rather than asking like if it's the person. You know, like, hey, is Donald there? Yeah, because then they get freaked out that you're trying to collect money or something, right?

A sales pitch.

Yeah.

So what's your opening?

I just go, hey, it's Al, how's it going? They're like, oh yeah, hey, pretty good. And then I just go right into it.

That's good. Yeah, it's a good opening. You get a good, uh, good feedback?

Yeah, yeah, people open up. Yeah, yeah, they're at least like, do I know this person or no?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They don't want to be totally rude and hang up on you, you know. They're thinking like Well, maybe I do know this person, so let me get a little bit more before I hang up on 'em.

Right.

Yeah.

Also, another thing with voicemails, I've noticed when you leave a voicemail, like if you leave, oh, this is, uh, Diva calling from XYZ, call me back. They won't call back.

Mm-hmm.

But if you just say, hey, this is Diva, you drop 'em your number. Yeah. Call me back. They'll call back and they're like, who is that? And they'll call back.

Yeah.

So I get more just by being very short.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Short and vague.

That, yeah, that's what you should try.

Yeah.

You should just say, this is Diva. Could you call me back?

That's true.

Yeah.

Little honeypot situation.

Yeah. Okay. Uh-huh.

That could work.

I think it would work.

Yeah. That's how you get to $500 mil in sales.

How do you?

Yeah.

That's how you do that.

Oh, I see. Yeah. A lot of phone calls.

A lot of phone calls.

A lot of phone calls. I love that.

A lot of phone calls.

A lot of phone calls.

I mean, okay, so if multifamily's the top, top, top, like where do you go from there?

You start going in, uh, What do you mean the top?

Like, like those are the big dogs.

Yeah. Where do you go from there? Mm-hmm. Well, that was my goal to get to the big dogs and I got to the big dogs. But what's after that? I think at the end of the day is just teach, pay it forward and teach other people how to do it. I think at the end of the day, she wants to go to Mar-a-Lago.

Oh God.

Mar-a-Lago.

Uh-huh. Mar-a-Lago. Do you? Yeah.

Do you go to Mar-a-Lago?

Yeah.

Maybe.

Oh, okay. All right.

Dang.

Yeah, yeah.

I think at the end of the day is just, uh, just paying it forward and teaching other people. Yeah.

Okay. So how are you— are you doing that already?

Like, yeah, so I do. I have a podcast too. It's Aresia Real Estate, and there I provide just all the updates on laws. Uh, there's a lot of formulas in multifamily. It's not the same like doing single family. Mm-hmm. You know, with the numbers and the math. Mm-hmm. So kind of explain that if anybody has any questions. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I have a podcast. Sometimes I'll bring my dad on there cuz my dad, uh, is very old school and that's how he was raised with real estate. So he doesn't— so he'll sit there with me and he'll ask me questions and then we kind of go back and forth.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah. Cuz he's like 80 and he's like Italian, hardheaded.

Yeah.

So I kind of gotta like, he'll start asking me all these questions. What's this and what's that and why do this way? But it's great because it's kind of an older generation with a younger generation and our mindset versus the older generation. So it's kind of good to see 2 sides to that.

Okay. Is he coming around to the way that you're doing real estate?

Yeah. So I kind of taught him now over the years and explained. He's like, well, I guess he still has some How would how can I say it? Like he's kind of still conservative. Yeah, very conservative, risk adverse, and still want to put his money in the bank. And I say, "Dude, they're working with your money. Like why you want to put in there? Invest it in real estate." Yeah, but he's always going back and forth. But I think he's opened up a little bit. Yeah, now yeah, he's opened up after he see me kind of you know scale a little quicker.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If I would've known about multifamily, what I knew 10 years ago, it's like you, you wish you would've known sooner.

Okay.

Yeah. But it's, I think everything happens for a reason.

That's true. That's true.

Sometimes it's learning experience.

It's learning experience. And then when you do receive the knowledge, you actually have like a foundation to sort of take it in and it grabs ahold of you.

Yeah. Yeah.

So what's something, if somebody wants to get into real estate that they're new, would you say go Straight to multifamily, or is that even feasible?

Well, we, we gotta keep in mind that real estate, it's, it's work. Like, if you're doing single family, you know, you're gonna have to sweat there. Like, if you want to fix that, you know, it's going to take time. So I always recommend, if you're like a CPA, a doctor, a lawyer, and you don't have time to do real estate, you could still get a pretty good return. Go with someone that maybe does a syndication where you can invest your capital, you get a return, and you're— you You double your money maybe in like 5 years. But then someone that can mentor you along the way too through that syndication. And then when you kind of ease off, you can go maybe after you make your money, you can do real estate. But if you're young and starting out, I always tell people like, if you're really eager to buy a house, man, get like a duplex, a triplex, a fourplex. Don't get a single family because you could do the house hacking.

Mm-hmm.

Have that pay your mortgage. This way you don't gotta go work a 9 to 5. So I think that's the route to go. But if, if I was starting out, I would strictly start out with commercial. I would do 5+ units.

Okay.

And the power of leverage, maybe get a couple guys together, save up for the down payment, put that down and buy the 5-10 unit.

There you go.

Yeah. It's hard going solo. It's really hard to scale going solo. But if like a group of individuals can get together and put their capital, but it's like A lot of individuals don't trust other individuals. So just maybe with like family and friends.

Hmm. I trust everybody.

God. Yeah, right.

I do. I trust everybody. Okay. Yeah.

I don't know about that.

Send, send me your money.

Yeah.

Send me your money.

Send me your money. I trust you. Please carry on.

So you've been doing real estate for 50 years?

50 years.

Yeah. Wow. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, almost. I'm 10 years behind your dad. Wow.

Yeah, look great.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

And how's the real estate business going for you after 50 years?

What have you said? Good. I'm at, uh, the stage in my life that you were just talking about. I'm giving back.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. That's good.

That's why he's here.

Nice.

Yeah.

I'm receiving right now.

Yeah. Yeah. But he's, he's transitioning. He's actually teaching. Uh, somebody how to flip properties as well.

So. Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

It's, it's a good business. It's fun to get your, like your hands. Yeah. Your feet wet.

Yeah.

It's great business.

Mm-hmm.

Plus you learn how to do like labor work.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Alex is the type that, you know, gets presented with a deal. He says, yeah, that's good. Not a problem. And then I have to talk to his wife and she says, oh no, that's not gonna work.

Why, why is it not gonna work? She doesn't wanna do the, like the work?

No, no. She's realistic. She works the numbers. She does everything right.

Yeah.

He's, He's just like a yes guy, you know?

Yes to everything.

Just, yeah, you need to sell something, talk to him because he'll say yes.

You hold on to it long enough, then it becomes a good deal.

Appreciation.

80 years.

Do you buy all your mobile homes here in California?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And have you seen appreciation with like the mobile home space?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. From when we first started, Joe, Joe and I did one, um, we made like $100 grand on a mobile home.

Really?

Yeah, and it was like the highest priced one out in Hemet.

Oh yeah, that's the capital for mobile home parks.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah, they got a—

they have a lot of manufacturing.

So many.

Yeah, it's insane.

I actually had a— I got a listing of land that's— maybe you might be interested, but it's 16 lots, and I actually got a quote to put manufactured housing on there on a permanent foundation because the lots are already divided, so it's RTI, ready to go. Yeah, but, um, I'm not— I would have to call the city to find out if you could put the actual mobile homes, but I got a quote because My mom does that. She'll buy land and then she'll put mobile homes on there.

Yeah.

And then she'll sell them. Yeah. Uh, but I thought it was— KB was building right across, and I think they were selling the properties there for about $600,000.

Okay.

And the mobile home manufacturer, I asked him for about 16 houses for each 16 lots, and he said each one would cost around— the mobile home, just the mobile home, was around $130,000.

Yeah, that's about right.

Um, but to— from start to finish with plans, permits, foundation, from A to Z, he said it was going to be like $280,000. I thought that was pretty pricey.

That is.

Yeah, isn't it?

That is pretty pricey.

We're doing one right now. How much is it going to be at the end of the day?

Um, we bought the land $150,000, $130,000 for the mobile, probably another $40,000 or $50,000 to hook it up.

Yeah.

To hook it up and do like the landscaping and everything. So it should just be Yeah, 130, but 180.

180 total.

Yeah.

Sorry. And how big is the mobile home? How many square feet?

1,500.

3/2.

How long does it take you to get that shipment of the mobile home?

6 weeks.

Oh, wow.

That's fast.

Yeah, it's fast.

Yeah. So from closing on the land to listing, about 90 days.

That's great. And your return's pretty good on that?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's nice. Yeah. So congrats. Yeah. Let's Look at this pad.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll send you, I'll send you the deck on it so you could look at it.

Nice.

Heck yeah.

It's, it's, I mean, it's great. So you invest in, you buy most of your mobile homes out in the IE?

Yeah.

Oh, great. So you know the IE market?

Yeah. It's on owned land rather than, you know, and it's just, you know, each plot is separated. Some of them don't even have HOA or anything. So it's You know, it just makes for an easy flip.

Yeah. A good thing is like building a community. Like you can get a big piece of land, build a community. Yeah.

Well, that's the 16 units you're going to send us. That's the community right there.

Oh, you mean the lot?

Yeah.

The land. 16 lots.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No problem.

We'll build a community.

There you go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know what goes into that. I don't know if they're zoning. It's, it's all comes down to zoning as far as like mobile home parks. I think they're trying to get rid of them and just do more of the, you know, KB Home stuff.

Yeah, I don't know why. That doesn't make sense, you know.

Some of those, those mobile homes are nice.

Yeah, they want more housing and stuff, and that's affordable, right? Yeah, you build something in LA, you know, for a little one-bedroom for, you know, the homeless, it's $600,000, you know.

Isn't that insane?

It is insane, you know. And you go out to Hemet and you can— let's put, let's, let's put them all out there and have it, you know, a couple hundred thousand, we're fine. That's like, yeah, 3 for what doing over here? It's like, you know, somebody's lining their pockets with that money.

Oh, 100%.

You know, it's like, that's crazy.

Yeah.

They also have the tiny homes. Have you heard of the tiny homes?

Yeah.

Yeah. Those tiny homes that they take out in wheels.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's pretty interesting.

But California is tough on regulation. So that's where it comes down the time. A good, a good city to look at, it's out in the boonies too, is Whitewater. Whitewater, because the turnaround time for permits and to install It's like 3 months. So it's pretty quickly.

Where is that? Out towards Joshua Tree?

Palm Springs area. Palm Springs.

Interesting. Not a lot there right now, but with the permitting, yeah.

Yeah, it's faster, very permit-friendly in that city, towards that city.

Okay, that's good to know.

Didn't your wife say she was going to get you a tiny home? Oh no, I'm sorry. That was a doghouse that she was referring to. Yeah, he was in a doghouse that week.

I don't think so.

My dogs live in the house.

That's right. Yes.

What kind of doghouse are you talking about?

I don't know what he's talking about. We have a couple people joining the chat. They want to know, we got Liz in the chat. She says, how do you stay ahead of shifting market trends in such dynamic regions?

So I would honestly recommend you have to know your data. So you have to read the reports, study the The market reports. You can sign up to a lot of the commercial brokerages and they release every year all the trends nationwide. So it's good to read on that, but you can get a lot of that information on CoStar.

Okay.

CoStar is a great source.

And what trends are they looking at mainly? Like just demographics, population growth? What, what are, what are—

Yeah, population growth.

Okay.

Uh, employment. Um, what else? Renter versus housing, right? Comparison. Right. The cap rates, uh, you know?

Yeah.

Are there, are there jobs flocking there?

Right.

Policies, regulation. That's a big one.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, it's been so interesting because 2020, everybody goes to, or 2021, everyone goes to Texas, Florida. Now apparently everyone's kind of leaving those areas after being there for a little while.

Where were they going?

I don't know, back to California or somewhere else. No way.

They're not coming back here.

I mean, that's—

No way.

That's one guy.

We don't want them back. Once they're gone, they stay gone. We don't want them back. What do we want them back for?

We'll take them back. They're from here.

No.

All right.

Yeah.

So I don't know. It's like, as far as population growth, it's like, you know, you're getting a report in a very snapshot.

Yeah.

Then you're investing in doing these Value adds, which could take 12 months. I don't know, what's a typical turnaround? 12 months, 18 months?

Yeah, roughly 12. Depends how many units, right? Yeah. A good strategy is, man, take the plane, book a trip, spend a weekend out there, go do boots on the ground, drive around, study the market, because it could change from one street to the—

Write it off.

There you go. Exactly. Uh, it could change from one street to the next.

Right. So Hawaii.

Hawaii.

Yeah.

They don't have a lot of like big multifamily in there just because not a lot of land.

They're not building any more land either. Yeah.

They're not building. They're big islands.

They're making.

Yeah.

They're making some land. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a little hot though right now.

Is it?

Yeah.

I know. Same like the Palisades.

Yeah.

For sure. Um, and then we also have Coach Steph says, when it comes to cold calling, what has been the longest nurturing period that finally transacted?

How long it took to get a client?

Get a deal.

Yeah.

Get a deal from the first time you called till you actually put them under contract. How long did that take?

Probably 15 phone calls, follow-ups. Uh, I want to say maybe Over a year?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Year and a half.

Yeah. The last one I did, it took 4 months.

Oh, that's not bad. You're a pro.

No, from the time that I called to the time I put it under contract, it was 4 months.

Really? Is this a house or multifamily?

It's a condo.

Okay.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think here in California, yeah, houses, there's always demand for housing.

Yeah.

I think there's a big demand. But multifamily, it's, it's difficult, especially with all the policies in Los Angeles.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I mean, they bought it so long ago, maybe in the 1980s. They see all this appreciation, like, why am I going to sell?

Yeah.

You know, why am I going to sell?

Why do you think CoStar is such an expensive program? Because I know it's really expensive. Yeah. Are they, are they just trying to keep normal people out?

You know, I don't, I don't really know why it's expensive, but probably, I mean, a lot of the commercial, the, the big guys use it. So I think since they're up for paying for that.

Yeah.

I don't know why they leave the little guy out, but yeah, it should be accessible. I think they should have a different tiered program so they can have access. But yeah, I don't know why it's expensive.

How much is it?

Very expensive.

What?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't pay for it, but it's Yeah, it's pretty up there.

$15,000?

It depends if you're signed with like a corporate company or if you buy it solo, but it could run like thousands of dollars.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, but then if you do one deal, that's how they say it. That's how every like person that's selling software or anything, all it takes is one deal.

That's good for analytics. Like if you're looking to get software to do cold calling, I recommend like Rionami. Yeah, Rionami.

That's where you can pull a list.

Those are the numbers. So it has all the numbers on there from the registered property owner, and then you can see how many units, and you can also see their portfolio. So that's a good software. CoStar is more for like analytics. Yes, you can find deals, but putting up listings, right? Yeah. But if you want to do cold calling, I would go into, uh, Reonomy.

Boom. It's a nugget right there.

Yeah.

Perfect. This is the part of the show we've curated several videos and I want to get your honest reaction.

Sure.

Okay, let's do it.

We're going to watch it on this monitor?

Yeah. Okay.

So the first one is downside of passively investing in multifamily real estate during a recession.

Hi, Tim Little here from Zana Investments. Now, I've talked a lot about why passively investing in multifamily real estate during a recession is a smart move, but are there any downsides? And yes, of course there are. Every investment carries risk, especially during a recession. So for multifamily or apartment buildings specifically, the one thing you have to look out for or consider is that during a recession, people aren't making as much money. They may be getting laid off from their jobs, and so it might be harder for them to pay higher rents. So you won't be able to bump those rents up maybe as frequently or as high as you anticipated. But if you had a good operator who is conservative in their underwriting and their expectations, then you should still be safe and still be able to see A nice return off that investment.

So I think he has a point. You have to do your due diligence on the operator, the GP that's managing the asset, and look at his track record and experience. How many deals has he done previously? But I mean, you always have risk as a passive investor. You're always going to have risk. But yeah, I would probably just do your due diligence on that operator.

How would you do that?

Hey, show me the numbers. Sit down with me. How long, how frequently are they reporting back to their investors? How's the property performing? You want to ask all these questions. There's some, when you invest passively, they don't give you updates on how the asset's performing. You can look it up on Reonomy.

Oh, you can?

You could see like the track record of a trade. Sometimes, you know, they won't give you updates, but you could research all That stuff. Wow.

Okay. Because, you know, sometimes these guys will just come out of the woodwork, they become an influencer, um, so they got a lot of eyes on them. Now they got a fund. Now everyone is a part of this fund. Now they're on, uh, private jets going on, you know, these trips all of a sudden. Sorry, it was a risk. Everyone knew that, and too bad. And then they end up in prison. So how do you find out about a person like that before you join them?

You got to do your research. I mean, you're always going to run risk. If you're scared of investing passively, just hold off until you can do it with maybe a group of your— oops, a group of your friends and save money instead of investing passively. If you're that scared, because all real estate has risk.

Yeah, right.

You know, they say in the stock market you're only as good as your last trade, you know. And in a rising market like we have been in, everybody's awesome, right? You know, it's when you get up to the top and it starts to go back down again that we separate the men from the boys. Now, I've been through 3 of these cycles. Did you start investing before '08?

'08.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay. And so what was that experience?

Uh, I lost money.

Okay.

But it was an experience.

Yes.

You learn from it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So—

I didn't lose any money in '08.

You didn't?

Because I had been through 2 of those before and I knew what was going to happen. And, uh, I had stopped helping people buy houses because I knew this is crazy. This is just a crazy price to pay for this. But I was helping people sell them and I was Zero, you know, obviously selling properties that they thought could never be sold at the price that I sold them for. And then the market did its, you know, massive downturn. And once it got to the bottom, then I'm buying again.

Yeah. You know, because you've already been through 2 cycles.

Yeah, I already—

So that's what I mean. Like, who are you surrounded by that can teach you that knowledge?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

That helps. Okay. Next one is, I bought a $2.4 million commercial building with just $24K.

You're sorry, I bought a— you're sorry, I bought a $2.4 million commercial building with just $24,000. The story's gonna make— the story's gonna make the true potential of creative real estate strategies that you're missing out on. So back in 2018, I purchased my first property, which was a fourplex. We bought it for $380,000 with a 5% down owner-occupied loan. So all into this property were about $24,000. We lived in one of the units and we lived for free thanks to renting out the other units. After we moved out, I was on the search for a larger commercial property. And I found a 24-unit property that was listed for $1.5 million with a $500,000 down payment. I sold my fourplex, which built up an equity of $250,000 by doing a 1031 exchange. I then used that $250,000 as a part of the down payment without paying any capital gains. My partner did the same thing with his fourplex and brought the other $250,000 to purchase this building. We made about $5,000 a month in cash flow from it and we split it 50/50. But after a year, this building appraised for $2.4 million and we did a cash-out refinance. We pulled out $500,000 from the equity and paid ourselves back. This meant that I didn't have any money in this deal and was making $2,500 a month in profit. If you found this video helpful, make sure to save this video and follow for more.

He talks so fast.

Yeah, that was insane.

Is that possible?

Buying, uh, he talks so fast. He bought a building with what, 5% down?

Yeah, yeah, $24K.

Yeah, you can't do that.

They have the 5%.

Yeah, you, I mean, you can do that, but, uh, you're overleveraging at that point. So you have to have some cushion, cuz imagine he said he had 3 of the other units rented out.

Mhm.

What happens if 2 tenants just vacate? Hey, you're negative there.

Yeah.

How are you going to cover the mortgage?

Right. He's got—

yeah, but it is doable.

His wife is working. She must be.

Yeah.

Yeah. She's there. They were having children way after that. Right. Yeah. Honey, you need to work this month because the tenants just left. Right. You know?

Uh, yeah, I think that's so—

But that's kind of what you were saying too. If somebody's just starting out, you would suggest they buy a duplex, triplex, or fourplex, correct?

Yeah, I would say get together with other family and friends. That would be my first strategy. Get together with family and friends, rack up some capital, put a down payment to buy a larger building, 5-unit.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you take—

how do you— why do you do the— how do you split it up percentage-wise?

Well, it depends on your business partners, how you want to structure the deal.

Well, these are family and friends.

Yeah.

So what would you do?

So if, if you're doing all the GP, so you're doing— you're finding the deal, you're fixing it, you're doing all the management, Um, you can get upside at the exit, whether you sell and, you know, don't put much money in at the beginning of the deal, or you can structure it where you guys do it evenly. And if you're doing more of the workload, then just get a little bit more of the profit when you exit.

Hmm.

Do you suggest writing all that up in like a partnership agreement, even though they're friends and family?

Depends what kind of friends and family.

How long? I see. I don't trust anybody. So it's, it's—

I say you trust— didn't you say you trust everybody?

No, I, I don't trust them anymore.

Oh, the truth comes out.

You changed my mind.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, I would, I mean, I see so many problems with, you know, friends and family. You get into these deals.

Well, I wouldn't say like 10 family members. I say max like 2.

Oh, okay.

Like if you have, I don't know, maybe a couple rich uncles. Yeah. And if you don't have rich uncles, then maybe like 3 buddies.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'll definitely write something up because that would— No worries.

Yeah, I would recommend so. Yeah, doing an LLC or something.

Yeah, yeah, just writing something up like, Alex, you're in charge of renting the place out.

No, I wouldn't have them do anything. I'd be like, you're literally just money people.

Oh, well, that's different then. Yeah. Yeah, then that's different. Yeah.

That's— I would feel safer with that.

Yeah, but most of the time when I've had people come to me, they say, you know, I'll, I'll do a deal with you 50/50. And just like she just said, it's like, okay, wait a second, what does that mean, 50/50? Like, I have to put all the money into the deal, I have to find it, I have to manage it, I have to do all that. How does that work? You know, it must be nice in your world, but yeah, 50/50 doesn't work for me. Right, because you're doing more of the Yeah, I'm like, well, why do I need you?

Right?

That's my question back.

That's fair, Alex.

Why do I need you?

I'm bringing value.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Last one we have: real estate syndication nightmare.

You know, the best thing that I had at the time is I was too ignorant to know that I can fail and how bad I could fall on my ass on. This deal because it's not a deal I would buy today. I know better. But we got into that deal, you know, we're bringing in the investors, closed on it, was super excited. My first syndication, I got 9 guys to take a chance on me. Within 30 days, we had a murder, drug deal gone bad. Within 60 days, we had 2 fires, we had a strong-arm robbery, we had a truck that was a manual transmission sitting up on a hill in front of the leasing office. He didn't put it in park, or he didn't put the parking brake on. It rolled right down the hill into somebody's living room. So everything that could have possibly went wrong on this deal went wrong. And I learned very quickly that whatever you renovate on a Class C apartment complex, in 12 months from now, you're going to do all those renovations all over again because that property gets beat up so bad. So that's what I mean. This is an asset that I would never go back to.

You know, do you think he didn't buy location? No, he didn't buy location.

And he's buying C properties as well. But do you think that's a good deal?

No.

I think it's a good deal.

He didn't study his market.

So much trouble that he's in. It's like, you could probably get it for half of what he paid for it.

Right.

He just wants to get out of it. Don't you think?

I think his next syndication that he's doing, he'll be good because he got experience, but he never asked us.

Okay. Well, here's, here's a question. If you were one of those 10 people who syndicated with him, would you do it again?

Investigate it again?

No. Yeah, no, I'm thinking, I'm thinking no either.

Imagine you got to report back to your investors. We just had murder, 2 murders the first month. We had a car roll into the living room, almost killed one of our tenants.

Imagine you said it was an up-and-coming neighborhood.

Yeah, we're gonna turn it around.

Yeah, Cleveland.

No, I'm just— I don't know, that's what I'm just guessing, right?

Can you say it's like Toledo, Toledo, Ohio? You could get deals there for cheap, right?

Yeah, it's ghost town Chicago.

And that's what's so funny about having like California goggles on when you go anywhere else. You're like, wow, I can get a 60-unit for like $120 grand, but it's in a sketch area.

Yeah, yeah, you got to be— you have to be scared from those deals. I'm personally scared. Like, why is it so cheap? That's the question I ask myself.

Absolutely.

Yeah, you're getting it for $20,000 a door. Like, what's going on?

Yeah, you know, you have to hire the local gang members just to keep an eye on it, you know. Exactly.

Yeah. You gotta walk with a bulletproof vest.

Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. I mean, but you say you're only doing A and B now, right?

A, B. Yeah. I'll do, I mean, I do some value add, but that'll be here in California. I got boots on the ground so I can really go, you know, nice. Go look at everything.

Mm-hmm. What about development? Is that in your future?

No, it's just the time value of money. I mean, it's—

thank you. I agree 100% with you.

Cost of construction.

Does anybody listen to me? No, they don't listen to me.

Time value of money.

It's like, you know, it's just, uh, I don't know.

Okay.

Yeah.

Let someone else do the work. You go buy it.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Okay. There you go. All right.

Let someone else do the work and, you know, when they're pressed with the rates or because the market's shifting, that's when you go get it. But, right.

Yeah.

No, that's not, just takes too long. Time value of money.

Yeah.

Gotcha. That's great.

Time's a currency you can never buy back.

Amen to that.

Yeah.

So I saw you brought some stuff with you. Do you want to share anything?

Oh, this is just, we're seeing like renter demands increase because of cost affordability.

Yeah.

That's our market report. I can send this. It's like very thorough.

Okay.

Yeah. It's from my company, but I can send this. There's a lot of numbers, a lot of data in there.

Yeah. So is there any like some highlights? You, what, what? Yeah. Some highlights you can just kind of mention.

So we're seeing net absorption. So whatever delivery of units that they're under construction in major cities, Those are being absorbed more quickly. Before, we were seeing like a flattening, um, just because the cost is just so elevated with housing. Uh, but there's a lot of delivery of units, especially like in the Dallas area, uh, some in Miami. So I think, um, there might be like some, a little bit of flattening of rents.

Hmm.

Uh, but, uh, we also seen Decline of jobs. So for the next year, we're going to see like a decline of jobs.

Bite your tongue. Yeah, God, I hope not.

We'll see what happens.

Yeah, I hope not, because that's going to throw off my 5% interest rate at the end of the year. That's going to kill it.

Because then they're going to leave it up.

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

But I think multifamily has been one of the strongest asset classes. It's outpaced Industrial, retail.

Mm-hmm.

South Bay.

I see them just nonstop building.

Right? Everywhere you go.

Yeah.

And I'm like, I, I feel like a lot of them are empty, but maybe they're not. I mean, like a lot of these apartment buildings, like just in Irvine alone, you know, it's just like they keep building, keep building, keep building.

Yeah. They're gonna keep building because it's becoming a renter's nation.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. How do you afford, what's the cost of a house out here? It's like, well, How much money?

$1.5 million.

$1.5 million. That's the average. How much do you have to make to afford a $1.5 million? And who's making that kind of money? It has to be like a couple.

Alex is making that much.

I'm getting there. I'm working towards it.

Yeah. But I mean—

Just no belief.

We'll see.

I mean, yeah.

She believes you.

Yeah, I believe you.

Yeah, she believes you.

I think you're being sarcastic right now.

But, um, you wouldn't tell her anything not truthful on the podcast here. By the way, this is the number one podcast in Laguna Hills. Just wanted to let you know.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, nice. I'm excited. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, absolutely.

Beautiful. You guys live in sunny, sunny California because, you know, when you go to Hemet— how hot is it over there in Hemet?

It's pretty hot. It's pretty freaking hot.

And you're fixing— you're doing all the fixing, or you just buy it already?

Um, no, I'm buying it distressed, hiring people.

No. And then how do you find your workers?

Uh, word of mouth.

Oh, nice.

Home Depot.

No, no, but just word of mouth. But we got a couple good crews right now.

Oh, that's good. Yeah, it's all about your crew. If— yeah, you know, honestly, they could do the turnover quickly. That's great.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. But yeah, all these apartments, people are going to be living in them. What do you— are you— or is multifamily competing with like the build-to-rent conglomerates, you know, that are just creating these housing, you know, housing tracts and then just renting them backed by BlackRock and all that stuff?

I don't think so. I don't think they're competing with build-to-rent. I think the multifamily that's already in place, as opposed to build-to-rent, gets absorbed. Because I think those investors are buying those assets more quickly as compared to build-to-rent. I mean, you have investors of both worlds. Mm-hmm.

BlackRock, good or evil?

Evil.

Okay. Okay.

Evil.

Okay.

I agree.

Okay.

They're evil. I was at an event and they were there, man.

Yeah.

They're just like serious. Never smile. They were up on— I think we were at the Waldorf Astoria. They were at an event and they had the whole floor, but they don't even say hi in the elevator. It's just Like they're dead-eyed.

Yeah. Dang.

Yeah, they're pretty intense.

Wow.

That's— I mean, I'm sure you have to be. Like, you make one mistake, you're out.

Yeah.

You try to— and it was kind of like a networking event. You go try to network to those guys?

No, nothing.

I think I need to be a white dude with blue eyes and a suit and a tie.

Ivy League.

Yes.

Oh man, I don't know what's going on with that, but it just can't be good.

Yeah.

I mean, isn't that kind of the plan? So you get these multifamilies, you do the value add, you get it stabilized, and then you sell to a hedge fund for way more than you're supposed to. Is that a dream of a multifamily investor or is that reality?

You get the— you do a value add, you stabilize it, and then you sell it to the hedge fund?

Yeah. For like way more than you should.

Uh, yeah. Why not? Why not?

Is that reality? Yeah.

Uh, no.

No. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

I mean, I, when things were going good, it was like when I was wholesaling real estate, probably 2021, 2022, hedge funds were coming in and paying way more than anybody else.

Mm-hmm.

Because they were willing to like sit on it. And same thing with like Zillow and Opendoor and They were— that was their whole plan, was just to buy all these properties, sit on it, and then I don't know what they're going to do with it, but just turn everyone in, just turn the whole place into a renter nation.

But yeah, pricing everybody out of California.

Mhm. But we can fight back. We can buy our own little empire here.

You got to deal with all this regulation and, uh, oh, okay, policy.

Oh, all right. So you're just leaving permanently?

No, I'm not leaving. I mean, if you can invest here long-term, you're going to make money, obviously. But there's— your buck will probably stretch with the policies and business in other states.

I know. That's what they want.

Yeah. I think we just need new politicians.

There we go. Let's go.

Let's go.

Fox News just came out.

Yeah.

Diva for governor, maybe.

Maybe.

Yeah, I could see that.

I'd vote for you.

Yeah, me too. Turn this whole place around.

Yeah, we need to.

Right? Absolutely. Cool.

Well, if people want to reach out to you, what's the best way?

On my Instagram, Resia Real Estate, @resiarealestate, or they can reach me out at my email, resia@resiaproperties.com.

Amazing.

Yeah. Okay.

Well, I appreciate it so much for you joining us today, and hopefully we can do it again.

Yeah.

Thank you for having me.

pleasure being here.

Absolutely.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks.

We'll be back here next Thursday, you guys. And also next Monday, coming up real soon, is our meetup. So we'll see everybody there live in person. See you on the next one.

Okay, we'll see you then. If you want some more advice on real estate investing, reach out to us one-on-one.