Setting Up a Residential Assisted Living Facility with Isabelle Guarino

Hello everyone.

Welcome to Syndication Attorneys' free monthly podcast where we talk about topics of interest to real estate syndicators with the opportunity for live questions and answers at the end of the call. I'm attorney Kim Lisa Taylor. Before we get started, please note that all of our podcasts will be recorded and may be used for future promotion, posted on our website, or broadcast in a podcast available to the public. If you don't wish to have your voice recorded, don't raise your hand. Instead, you can either type in your question in the Q&A, or you can schedule a one-on-one consultation. Information discussed during this free podcast is of a general educational nature and should not be construed as legal advice. Today, our topic, topic is setting up a residential assisted living facility with our esteemed guests. Isabel Guarino. And Isabel, thank you so much for joining us today. Of course.

Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm super excited. I met Isabel through her, I guess, your uncles.

Yeah.

Her 2 uncles became clients of our firm, and they kept insisting that we should connect and that we should come and sponsor one of your events. So we're going to be doing that in September. So I'm excited about that. I have never been. one of them before. I'm excited to learn what you guys are teaching. And anyway, so tell us a little bit about you, Isabelle.

Yeah, I'm Isabelle Guarino, the COO of Residential Assisted Living Academy, and we're basically the number one educators on residential assisted living. I currently own and operate 3 care homes in the Phoenix market, and we've taught, you know, tens of thousands of people how to do what we do. So I really love this industry. It's close to home for me. We got involved because my grandmother needed care. She fell and broke her hip and needed 24/7 care. And we quickly found that there was not enough quality options in this real estate sector. And so, you know, did some math and realized, wait, we're going to be paying $5,000 a month for her to live in one of these homes where we could own and operate it. She could live for free and we could cash flow $10,000 a month. And it made a whole lot of sense to get involved at that point. So that's really what got us involved, and it's been quite the journey ever since.

Wow, that's an amazing story that, you know, it kind of arose out of your own need, and you realize that there's a niche here that, you know, we all have aging family members, and, you know, of course we're all aging ourselves and need to be thinking about what's going to happen to us in the future. So what is the difference between residential assisted living and like a nursing home?

Yeah, great question. You know, the big box facilities are usually a little bit more Lacking in care, let's say, right? The typical ratio is 30 seniors to 1 caregiver, and in our homes it's a 4-to-1 or 5-to-1 resident-to-caregiver ratio. So it's significantly higher quality care, and also it's not a large commercial facility, right? Long hallways where the dining hall is, you know, 30 yards from your room. It's a regular single-family home, just instead of 2 kids, mom, you know, mom, dad, and, and the dog living there, you've got 6 to 16 seniors with their own private bedrooms and bathrooms, but in a residential neighborhood and in a residential home.

Wow. Well, that sounds a lot better. Uh, definitely. And so I guess what kind of care do you give versus— I mean, like, are you giving medical care, or is it really just taking care of people, making sure that they get Proper nutrition and, you know, safe, safe and sanitary housing. How is it?

Yeah, in assisted living, usually seniors move in when they need help with 3 to 5 ADLs, activities of daily living. So that's anything from getting up out of bed to bathing, eating, you know, brushing your hair, brushing your teeth, moving around, whatever the case is. So you don't move in until you need usually help with 3 to 5 of those. And then if you need more care, right, medical attention, doctors, IVs, gurneys, That's where you'd need to move into a nursing facility or a nursing home. So we're not licensed for that, but we are licensed for assisted living and/or memory care.

Tell us again what those 5 ADLs were.

There's a whole bunch of them, but bathing, eating, standing, walking, feeding, you know, there's— I think there's a list of like 30 ADLs.

Okay.

Really anything that you do from the moment you get up out of bed to the moment you go to bed at night.

Anything that you need help with that you can't really do on your own.

Yeah.

Well, that's interesting. I had never really heard about that before. Yeah. So what kind of properties, like, can you just put— can you convert any residential facility or any residential house into one of these facilities?

You probably could, but I would always focus on something with a larger footprint and then single level, you know, ranch style if possible. Now you can do it with multi-level. We've got plenty of students who have 2, 3, even 4-story homes. You just add in a chairlift or an elevator and you can make it work. But being on a 1-story home is definitely always going to be a lot better and easier. And then I think that it's also important to know, you know, the demographics of the area. That's always vital. I want to be around the 50 to 70-year-olds who are upper middle class, who make twice the median income, and that's where I want to focus my efforts.

And why is that?

That is daughter Judy. That's the adult child who's usually putting their loved one in your home. She's the one paying for the care. She's the one searching for the care. So I want to be as close to her as possible because she wants mom right around the corner from her. She doesn't want to have to go far away, you know.

And what size? So you said larger footprint. Are we looking for 3,000, 5,000 square foot homes? What?

With 6 to 16 seniors in the home, right? You're going to want 300 to 500 square feet per resident. So with, let's just say, 10 residents minimum, a 3,000 square foot home upwards of, you know, 4,000 or 5,000, it would be definitely fine.

And then you said looking for homes that have like a separate bathroom for each bedroom.

The more bathrooms, the better, because you have to think the residents, they're thinking privacy when they move in. So they're gonna want that private bedroom, that private bathroom. And if they're paying you $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a month to live in your home, they're expecting a really nice luxurious home. They don't want a shared bedroom, shared bath. You know, they want their own digs.

Right. Okay. So what kind of renovations do you typically have to do? Say if somebody went out and found a 5,000-square-foot home they wanted to convert, what, what would they have to do to make it, um, work?

Ready for it? Yeah. Um, ramps, guardrails, widening hallways and doorways, you know, chopping up the home differently so there's more bedrooms and bathrooms. Some states will require fire suppression, but you're still going to want all of your regular amenities that you have in a single-family home, like, you know, the living room and the dining room, a library or movie theater would be nice, you know, uh, an office for your caregiver and your administrator to be able to do That paperwork and have private meetings, a really nice backyard with gardens and walking paths and different things that the seniors can enjoy. So there's a lot of different things that you could do to the home to make it senior safe. It doesn't have to be ADA compliant. We're not commercial, so we don't have to do that. But you want it as close to that as possible, making sure that it's really, really easy and comfortable for the seniors to get around.

And then what kind of licensing do you have to get?

So the physical home will have a license, and that's based on the egress and the safety, right? So having 2 points of egress in every room, having enough square footage, having that safe passage for the seniors. The licensed administrator is basically in the real estate world your property manager, more or less. So they take care of all the day-to-day hiring and firing the caregivers. marketing the home, touring the home with the families and making sure that they're signing up for it, onboarding with the residents, right? They're doing really all of the day-to-day operations and work, and they have a license through the state. And then your caregivers are also licensed through the state, and every state varies on that. It might be you have to be 18, have a GED and 4 hours of training. It might be you need to be 21 with a bachelor's degree with 80 hours of training. It ranges state by state. But the physical home, the administrator, and the caregivers will be those 3 licenses that you need within the home.

And as the administrator, is that usually just one person who's there kind of like 9 to 5, Monday through Friday kind of thing? Or is there— do you have like different shifts where there's always someone on site?

The administrator is responsible for the home 24/7. So they're on call basically all day, every day. Full-time for administrators usually overseeing somewhere between 2 and 4 homes. One home is not full-time for them. So usually we, we encourage people to have a 3-pack, at least 3 So if you have 3 of these homes within 45 minutes of each other, it's better for you to be able to share your resources and your staff, and that administrator can oversee all 3. They don't have to be on site, they just need to be on duty or on call.

So what kind of financing is available for people who want to buy one of these homes? Do they usually buy them for all cash, or can you actually get bank loans to help finance this?

You can get bank loans, and SBA loans are very friendly to this. In our training, we always share about the SBA loans. SBA 7 loans, and a lot of our students like to go that route as well as, of course, what you guys do— syndication. That's a beautiful way to be able to get into this industry, and a lot of people have a lot of money that they're looking to invest, and they want someone who's trustworthy and is going to do something that makes sense. And so being able to offer them an opportunity to invest in this industry is a great way to go about this. So I see a lot of SBA, and I see a lot of syndication.

Just so— and you may or may not know the answer to this, but just in general, do you have a sense of what percentage of the acquisition and renovation costs will the SBA loan cover?

I don't know offhand because it totally ranges depending on the 4 ways that you get involved, right? If you're going to buy land and build a custom home from the ground up, that's going to be a pretty penny, somewhere between $1 and $3 million. If you are buying a single-family home and converting it to become— it depends on where you are, right? So the price of the real estate plus how much renovation we're doing. Third, if you're going to buy an existing business, so buy the real estate, buy the business, you're up and running day one. That might cost a pretty penny, but it's nothing to do with renovation. Fourth, the fourth way to get involved is leasing a home for this. So working with someone who's going to own the real estate and lease it back to you.

Interesting. Okay, so I guess if you're going to be the person that— a lot of the people that have come to us that we've set up a fair number of these for people who wanted to syndicate them, and some of them are using that lease model. So they'll come in, they'll buy the home, they'll lease it to an operator, but the operator could also be something that they're part of.

Right.

So in that case, How do you know what is like the right prices to charge for this kind of stuff? Are you using like normal lease rates or—

Good question. So for if you're going to own the real estate and lease it to an operator, I would say you could charge them up to twice the fair market rent because you've taken the property, retrofit it, got it ready, got it licensed. You've done a lot of the hard work and labor and they're willing to pay you For that. Now, if you are the landlord and the operations company, you're going to give yourself a deal, right? You're not going to be charging yourself more. I mean, maybe you will, but you don't need to be. But if you're— if these are two separate people, two separate companies, then up to twice the fair market rent is definitely very reasonable. One of our homes we do that model with, we own the real estate and we've sold the business to someone else. The home, the mortgage is only about $4,500, maybe $5,000 a month, and we're paying— we're charging them $8,500 $100 a month, and they're happy to pay it because it's an established business, and we just collect our check and have nothing to do with the day-to-day. And that's pretty cool.

Um, okay, well, I, um, promised, uh, you that I would show our, our people who are looking what a typical structure for this looks like. So I'm just going to share my screen for a moment and show you guys that. So this is a typical structure for a residential assisted living project. So any of you that have done syndication before, you might be familiar with this. So we have an investor-level LLC. So this is where your investors would be investing. We would separate that into 2 classes of members. There's Class A, who are all of the cash-paying investors, including you if you're putting your own cash in the deal. You can have different subclasses of Class A members here. Class A1 might get a fixed return. Class A2 you might get a share of equity, you know, or you might offer different subclasses based on how much people invest. People who invest more, maybe they get a different preferred return. So there's all different things we can do within this Class A, but we like to leave investors in Class A. Class B is the part that we carve out for management. So this is the members of your management team, and this is where the Class A and Class B members share profits. So this is where the profits are split between Class A and Class This syndicate is a manager-managed LLC. The manager itself is a separate LLC. So this is the members of the, the management. These are the people who are actively involved in acquiring the property, doing asset management on behalf of the Class A and Class B members. And they're all, you know, they're, they're the ones responsible for getting insurance and paying taxes and getting the loan. on this property that's going to be acquired. The operations manager is— this is the business. This is the one that's getting the licenses that Isabel was talking about, that's going to be actually running the day-to-day operations at the house once it's up and running. So sometimes this manager LLC for the syndicate and the operations manager are the same people. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes you could hire a third party, as Isabel mentioned. And then this title holding entity, this is where you're actually going to hold title to the property. We're going to have this one step removed from the investors, and this just helps separate the liabilities a little bit here. If something horrible were to happen at the property, then this is the entity that's going to get sued, and the other investor LLC hopefully would be— it would be staying out of that. So that's kind of how that looks. Okay. So, all right, well, cool. Thanks. So if anybody wants a copy of the slide, I am happy to share that with you. You could email me, kim@syndicationattorneys.com, and I would send that off to you. All right. So if you're going to be the landowner, you don't have to work in the home. You can hire third parties. We've already established that. We talked about the syndicate structure, and then so we talked a little bit about how much money people might need, and I guess that's largely dependent on what size property you're going to buy and whether you're going to build it from scratch. But what would be typical? You see people getting into these with $1 or $2 million or sometimes less?

Yeah, it really ranges on which of the 4 routes that we talked about earlier, as well as what part of town you're in. You know, Oklahoma is completely different than New Jersey, so it It really, really ranges. But I would say I've seen people in, you know, on the leasing end for as low as $100,000, and I've seen people in on the building end for as high as $3 million. So it's a huge range.

Okay. So that's all doable, you know, especially if you're going to be getting a bank loan for part of that, then, you know, a $1 to $2 million raise is very comfortable for syndicators.

Yeah.

What kind of— do you have some kind of models, um, that your students use to figure out how, you know, what kind of income this is going to generate, what kind of returns they can offer their investors?

Yes, we do have a profitability calculator that we like to use. It's a little free tool that you can kind of plug and play and say, we're going to spend more on this and less on this, you know, the money's coming in from this person or XYZ. And, um, you can find that— I'll drop it in chat if everyone— I don't know if everyone will be able to see. Oh, no. I can only chat with host and panelists. Maybe in the Q&A, then I'll put it in there. Oh, okay. RAL101.com. You should be able to grab that there. And there's a bunch of free stuff for you. RAL101.com. You can grab the profitability calculator. There's a free webinar, a free book, or you could schedule a discovery call if you ever wanna chat with me Or any of the team members.

Oh, perfect. Okay, great. And so how many people are on your team?

Yeah, we have about 30 people.

Wow. Yeah, that's great. Okay. And so I guess part of these people are involved in the academy, part of them are helping with the facilities that you own.

No, only with the homes. That's a totally separate company. The homes, just those 30 are for the academy. All of the people who teach and train with me, They were past students, so they came to the class, they learned how to do this, they went back and opened their own homes in their prospective states. So I don't own any piece of their home and they don't own any piece of mine. We're just all in the business together teaching others how to do it.

Excellent. And so do you do these academy locations all around the country?

We host them in Phoenix only every 6 to 8 weeks or so because we take you on a tour of my home. So you'll drive by my homes and a bunch of our students' homes. So we have them out out in Phoenix. Our next one is March 2nd through the 5th, and they're awesome. About 150 people each time, all different types of people from all walks of life, you know, and it's so much fun to have everybody there in a room together really just looking to do impact investing, right? Do good and do well. They're tired of either not making enough money from their current investments and they want to make more, or they're really ready to just build a legacy and appreciating assets and give back to their community. And so, it's a really cool blend of people that we And is, uh, can they get information about that at ral101.com? Yes, there is information about that there. And I know you're going to be joining us at our national convention in September, which I'm so excited about. That's, um, a much larger event. There's usually like 700 people there, and all of those are care home owners and operators and people in the industry. It's not as educational from my perspective, it's from your perspective. So you're able to teach them all sorts of different things that they're going to need or that are involved in the industry. Involved in, you know, the journey of being an RAL homeowner. So that'll be really fun too.

And that one has a different website.

That one's got a different website, ralnatcon.com, for RAL National Convention. And yeah, that one's going to be really fun. We will be there, so hopefully a lot of you will be able to join us there too.

Excellent. Okay, I'm kind of jumping ahead here, but I got excited about it.

Yeah, no worries.

You guys are doing, and I know that some of the people that are on the call are going to be interested in attending some of these, and I'm thinking about it too, for sure. Okay, so we've let's see how how in the world can you figure out what you're able to charge per bed? Great question.

So there is an awesome website, genworth.com forward slash cost of care, and gen is spelled G E N.

Worth.com/costofcare.

When you go to that website, um, you'll be able to type in the area where you live and it will pop up with your average cost of care. And the really cool thing about this site is there's a toggle button. So my mom isn't going to need care for another 25 years, so I can take that toggle button and say, how much is it going to cost in 5 years, 10 years, 20, 25 years? And the cost of care has gone up 79% over the last 10 years, and it's only gonna keep going up because the baby boomers are not in assisted living yet. It's the silent generation right now, and there's 47 million of them, but there's 76 million baby boomers, and we're currently 1.3 million beds short. The NIC is projecting we're only building 50,000 beds per year. This is a massive supply and demand issue. It's gonna be the biggest crisis our country, our world has ever faced. It was a world war that made the baby boomers such a large generation. So this is going to be a huge opportunity. I always tell everybody, even if you don't want to own a residential assisted living home, that's fine. Do something in this sector. Follow the money. The silver tsunami of seniors is coming, and we cannot stop it. So you might as well ride the wave and take advantage some way, somehow.

Wow. Well, that's some staggering statistics there.

Yeah.

So if someone were to buy just a large home and then renovate it, what could be— I mean, I know things are weird right now because of supply chain issues and all that, but in a normal world, what would you expect would be the time frame from when you acquire to when you're actually able to open the doors?

Great question. If you're starting with that larger footprint already, for example, the 2 homes we bought that were single-family homes and we just converted them a little bit differently, so they started as like like 6-bed, 5-baths, and we turn them into 10-bed, 10-bath without adding on an addition. It was just chopping it up differently, right? So, and we still have all of the regular rooms, the living room, dining room, kitchen, everything that you need. So those only cost about $200,000 to renovate. But if you're adding on a 3,000-square-foot addition, that's completely different. So it does still range, but I would say the larger footprint to start with is always going to be better because then there's less that you have to do.

It's just adding So would you say 6 months to a year would be typical for a renovation, maybe a couple years if you're doing a new build?

6 months to a year is great, uh, time frame for a renovation. And yes, a build can take 1 to 3 years depending on what you're doing.

And then are there restrictions against Like, you know, do you get neighborhood pushback? Are there restrictions? How do you get around that?

Great question. HOAs, cities, counties, states actually can't tell you no because of the Federal Fair Housing Act. It's discriminatory against disabled people to say that you can't do one of these homes. So, an HOA can have a rule that says the home can't look physically different from the outside. So, there are, you know, rules you may have to follow. But they're—they can't tell you no. So, as long as you're following all of the state rules on distance and licensing, you should be able to do it. And if for any reason you run into trouble, we have a team of lawyers over at the RAL National Association that represents all 30,000 of these care homes across the country. So, if you run into any issues, you give them a call and they help you fight that HOA or angry neighbor. I will say if there's a neighborhood with an HOA and one without, go to the one without. I know that's not possible in every part of town. You know, some people are like, every neighborhood has one. I get it. But the more that you can do to avoid a fight, avoid it.

So, yeah, path of least resistance is always the best way to go, right?

Yes.

And so tell us a little bit more about this RAL National Association. What do they do?

Yeah, so that's one of our companies, and it basically is just a free resource for care home owners. It's got a bunch of different discounts and opportunities for those care home owners to, you know, get connected in the community. And it has legal updates. So anything that's happening all across our country in our industry, we update it there. Because if a law gets passed in Georgia, right, it— you might feel like, well, I live in Florida, it doesn't matter to me. But it might, because if it's passed somewhere, the odds of it being passed somewhere else are way higher. So when there's a law that we think is not good and it's going to harm us, we get everyone there to sign or do whatever we need to kind of petition things. So we've got some lobbying and legal backing and power for you there. There's also continuing education courses on memory care, filling your home fast, how to market your home, how to give great tours. So it's just a really cool resource and network for care homeowners.

Now, is this an organization that you run or that you're part of?

Nope, we we own and operate it.

Oh, that's amazing! Yeah. Okay. So what's the website for that?

Ralna.org. Ralna.org.

Okay, great. All right. So. We've given— I guess we've given quite a few websites in there. I hope you guys are saving all of that. If you don't know how to save the information in the chat, if you go down to where you would type in a message, there's 3 little dots off to the right. If you click on that, you get a pop-up and it will say Save Chat. So you should be able to save the whole chat there, or you can go to the 3 little dots next to whatever it is you want to save and the same thing. Okay, so, um, what would you recommend if somebody is like super psyched about doing this? What would be their next steps?

Great next steps is to go to that first website we dropped in the chat, ral101.com, and really find out if this is the right fit for you. So, um, we do host 3-day trainings like I mentioned before in Phoenix, Arizona. We also have an online home study course. Um, if taking that next step is the right move for you, definitely schedule a discovery call and chat with the team and You know what might be the best option for you so that we can get you connected and start getting you involved, so we can get you learning everything you need to learn and then get you rocking and rolling to opening your first home.

And come to the national convention.

Yes. Okay.

And again, when is that one going to be?

The national convention is September. I guess it'd be 8 and 9, 7, 8, and 9.

In Phoenix. So get your tickets for that. We'll definitely be there. Okay. Anything else that we didn't cover that you think we should tell everybody about?

I'm happy to answer any questions that you guys have. I know there's been some good ones in the chat. I've been typing as we've been, you know, able to be here.

Yeah, we always want to ask the questions live. All right, so Deepak asks, where would we look to find current market rents for assisted living facilities?

So rentometer.com is a great website that will show you comparable rents in the area for single-family homes, not for RALs, but for single-family homes. So then you're able to see what the average rent for that area is, and then up to twice the fair market rent once you've renovated it, got it licensed, all ready to go. Okay, so if you're looking for go would be something that you'd be aiming for for your rent there.

Okay. And let's see, an anonymous attendee says, I couldn't find the worksheet on the website. Could you direct? So I think he's talking about the profitability calculator. Calculator. Yes.

So that's at RAL101.com. And when you're on that site and you scroll just maybe 1, 2 down, you've got the free book. And then right there in the middle, it's It says see potential profitability, and then you can click on that.

Okay. And, uh, so Ian says your passion is showing, Isabel. Good for you. Yes, that's always—

I love this industry.

And, uh, Rashish says, uh, do the care— does a caregiver have to be present at the care home 24/7?

You do need 24/7 awake staff, but the caregiver does not have to live there. You're going to do shift work, 8, 10, or 12-hour shifts. And then what about like background checks?

Do you do background checks on everybody or what's recommended for the industry?

You can do them on your caregivers. You don't have to, but you can. But I always, when I hire people, like to call previous recommendations, see kind of where they came from, what their background is in working. Did they have a good experience at their last job or not? It's a very tight-knit industry, so people will be pretty open with you.

Okay, good. Let's see. Somebody says thank you. So Neil asks, can I ask a syndication question? Of course, Neil, you can ask me anything you'd like. So let's see. And let's see. Rashi asks, is video surveillance legal?

I guess you can. Yeah, you can have videos in the home, but not in the bedrooms or bathrooms. But I do tell my staff to pretend that there are cameras everywhere because cameras are very small these days and you never know where Daughter Judy might hide one in the room. So you want to act like you're on camera 24/7 and behave that way. But for us, we do have them in the home, interior and exterior. Most of our homes have like 20+ cameras because I want to see everything that's going on, but no bedrooms and bathrooms. That's a HIPAA violation, right?

Unless they want to put it in themselves. Okay. All right. So Neil asks, how do you set up a syndication for something like residential assisted living where the return won't be seen for a year or 2? If I buy a multi-unit apartment building, I can get cash flow right away. I need long-term investors. It's the same as for a development project, Neil. You just tell people that we're in the setup phase. There's not going to be any returns. Your returns can can accrue during that time period, but you're not going to pay them until there is either sufficient income from cash flow or some kind of a refinance or something like that. And then you would go back and you would make up arrearages in any kind of preferred returns that weren't paid during the development time period or the renovation time period. So it's very common in a development or a heavy renovation project that you wouldn't have Isabel, let me handle these questions.

Okay.

Yeah. Does a syndication model do pre-development entitlement costs? It can. So you can actually use the syndicate to acquire raw land. You could use it to acquire an existing building. You can do it for renovation costs. You know, whatever you're not getting from a is what you're going to need to get from your syndication model, or you're going to have to put up your own cash to do that. So yes, and so when you're— if you're going to be doing a development project, you're going to be doing it one by one, like staged, right? Like, so you only raise what you need when you need it. You never want to have money hanging around in a bank account that isn't invested because then it's not generating a return. And it's diluting the returns to everyone. So you raise the money when you need it. If you only need to raise, you know, a couple hundred thousand to do the entitlement costs, then that's what you raise right then. If you need more, then you'd raise it. And then a lot of times, if you're doing a development project, by the time you get the project entitled, it's actually worth more than what you paid for it. So sometimes that will be sufficient for your down payment for a construction loan. So you wouldn't even need to raise more money. Or if you do need to raise more money, then you would go out and you would do a second raise at that time. Okay, so that's fine. After taking your course, what percentage of your students actually start a residential assisted living facility, and what percentage of them are actually in business successfully after 3 years?

Great question. So in our training, we're teaching you everything you need to know step by step how to own and operate your home. And then after the fact, we do offer coaching or mentorship. So for those who go forward with our coaching, I'm in touch with them all the time, right? And those students are almost all successful within 3 years if they decide to continue doing it. Of course, there's some people who say, I don't even want to do this anymore, and they decide to quit, and that's fine. But for those who come to the class and don't move forward with our coaching or mentoring, I don't really see or hear from them much after until they come to our national convention or something like that and run over to me and say, hey, I opened my home, and then I'm excited for them. But if they don't do coaching or mentoring, I'm not in touch with them as much. So I don't have that statistic. But for those who do work with us, it's extremely high of who is successful.

And I can tell you from our experience that those that have coaches accelerate their growth and are much more likely to grow bigger, do more deals, and eventually do bigger deals than those that don't have coaches. We see a lot of people that'll do 1 or 2 deals that don't have a coach, and that's about all they ever do. Or we see people that have a coach that will use their coach for the first 2, 3 years, and then after that, they've kind of got enough experience, they don't necessarily need it, but they keep coming to the events for the excitement and getting together in the community and keeping those relationships alive.

Yeah.

So we've seen a lot of that. So yes, if you want to increase your odds, get a coach in any kind of syndication model or real estate model. Certainly with this, because there's even more moving parts to this than there are in just, you know, buying and renovating an apartment building and then hiring a property manager to run it.

Yeah.

Yes. So yes, Neil, can we help set it up? Yes, we set up all those structures that we showed you in that slide. side. We do all of that, plus we do the private placement memorandum, subscription agreements, all of your entire offering package, and we help you understand what the rules and the securities laws are that you have to follow and how you have to document that to make sure that you're following all the applicable rules when you're raising money from private investors. So yes, we do all of that. And what's, what's the security that— well, what is a security? It's when you're exchanging a piece of paper in exchange for somebody's money, whether that is some kind of a promise to give them something in the future. If to understand securities laws, I'm going to highly recommend that you read my book. It's called How to Legally Raise Private Money. You can get a free copy at our website at syndicationattorneys.com. You can get a free digital copy. So if you go to syndicationattorneys.com and then go to the free book tab, then you can read all about syndication. Or you can buy it on Amazon. It's an Amazon number one bestseller. We actually are working on a second edition we'll be sending out eventually. When it's done, we'll be sending out physical copies to those that sign up for those. So let's see. In— not sure what that means. Which— Which geographical region has more demand? Well, I wouldn't imagine that He says, I'm in Florida. Well, that's an obvious question. I think there's a lot of seniors in Florida, a lot of seniors in Arizona, you know, where there's more seniors, warm climates.

Yeah, there's, you know, I always joke, I say, raise your hand if you're getting older or know someone who is, right? You know, if you grew up in Charleston, South Carolina your whole life, you're not moving to Florida just because you turned 85 and you need assisted living. You're staying in Charleston, South Carolina. So really, there's a need for this everywhere. Markets like Florida and Arizona, where in Arizona we have 3,000 of these care homes in one county, in Maricopa County. In Florida, you guys have 3,000 homes throughout the state. So there's a massive amount of homes already there. So your competition is going to be a lot more steep versus if you go to a place like New Hampshire, where our student created the first residential assisted living care home.

Wow.

She's got a waiting list out the door. The state is begging her to open more. She can be charging $12,000 per month per resident because the demand. So it really depends on what you want. Do you want to do it in a place that's very easy to set it up? There's rules and regs and you just follow it and, and there's not a lot of hoops to jump through, like in Arizona, like a Florida, like a Texas. Or do you want to be one of one with a waiting list and extremely high rates? It just depends. But people are getting old everywhere, and there's a massive need for this everywhere. You really can't go wrong.

Yeah, I always say it's easier to be a big fish in a small pond, right, than it is to be a big fish in a big pond. So if you're in Florida or someplace where there's already a lot of seniors, there's already a lot of facilities, you're going to be competing. Whereas if you go, you know, someplace up in the Northeast where there isn't so much, you know, people still want to be near their families, and their families want them to be near You know, just because your parents moved to Florida because they wanted to be warm doesn't mean that the kids are going to move to Florida in order to be close to their parents when they're in care, right? So, you know, they might bring their parents home if they could be near them. Exactly. Tell me, you know, here's the question that occurred to me is what about like visiting hours? Like, you know, what kind of rules do you have to put in place for people who come to visit?

For us, we kind of have an open-door policy in our home, but you have to think when you're starting this home. It's your baby. It's your business. You can set whatever rules you want. You know, we don't allow pets in our home. But if you want to be Dr. Dolittle's assisted living home, you can do it. You can do whatever you want. You're starting your own business. So you get to set your own rules. We allow open visiting hours. I've never had anyone come in the middle of the night. But I do have some families who have, let's say the husband is in our care, and the wife comes every single day. And she eats all 3 meals with us. And she hangs there from 8 or 9 AM to 8 Or 9 PM, and I'm perfectly okay with that, right? Because guess what? She's probably going to be my resident one day too, and she's already comfy in the home, and she already knows the caregivers in the home. So to me, paying for those 3 extra meals, worth it, worth it all day. But some families will come once a month to drop off the check. So it's that 80/20 principle. You're going to have 80% of people who barely ever come and never visit, and 20% of people who are there every day.

So Ian clarified his question. What is the security for the funds? In any syndication, the security for the funds is— there is no security for the funds. You're buying interest in somebody's company. You have to trust those people to do the right thing with the money. And you don't get, you know, it's not like you're loaning somebody money. You're going to get a promissory note or something like that. You just need to understand how syndications work. And again, I would direct you to reading my book, and then I think you'd have a better understanding of that. And, and Neil says, yeah, the book is a great resource. I recommend it highly. Thank you. And Deepak asks, are there any tax incentives from the city or the county that it's in?

We do not usually lean that direction because we're going all private pay. So we're not using any like government funding grants or loans, but there might be if you go that direction.

Yeah, I would imagine that if you explored that, you would find some tax incentives and tax credits. That in itself is kind of an art form, is learning how to tap into those. But there could be some available, especially if you're going to be building in maybe an opportunity zone or something like that. You could certainly take advantage of some of those other kind of tax benefits that you would have there as well. So let's see. So I think we've— the title of my book is How to Legally Raise Private Money. How to Legally Raise Private Money. So again, you can get that at syndicationattorneys.com. You can click on the free book tab to get the digital download, or you You can, there's a link there where you can go to Amazon and purchase it. So I think we've covered all the other questions that there are. I don't see anything else in the chat. It looks like we've covered everything. Anything else that you want to share with the audience, Isabel?

I really appreciate you guys letting me be here, and hopefully this piqued some of your interest. You know, I always say I guarantee you're going to get involved in senior housing one way or another. You're they're going to be lying in the bed or having a loved one lie in the bed writing the check for them, or you could be owning the real estate in the business, cash flowing, and giving your own loved ones a place to live if and when they need it. So, be sure to just check it out, gather whatever information that you need, and I hope to see many of you at our national convention with me and Kim. It's going to be a lot of fun. So, if you guys need anything, schedule a call with me or the team, ral101.com. Look forward to chatting with some of you then.

Okay, thanks so much. Thanks, everybody. Have a great day.