2000+ Transactions, $500M In Debt Purchases; Buy Notes On Residential And Commercial Properties Better With Scott Carson From 5 Talents Podcast With Abel Pacheco

People are just lazy. If you want to do big things, you got to have big commitments and realize, well, you didn't have. Your shows didn't go viral. But no, all I wanted is, all I need is one person new. Just one person new and it's worthwhile. You never know that one person is.

Hello. Hello. Welcome to the Five Talents podcast. I'm your host, Abel Pacheco. I interview the top commercial real estate investors and industry experts so you can learn from their experience. Experiences. So if you're an Investor, a high W2 earner or real estate or tech sales professional that wants to invest in real estate without having to manage properties or leave your day job, then this podcast is for you. Or if you're already investing in real estate but you're doing it part time and you want to become a full time multifamily or full time commercial real estate investor, this podcast is for you too. You're going to learn a ton. You will learn from real life multifamily investors and other professionals in the industry. They're going to share their blueprints for success. And I'm super excited that you're here, so I hope you enjoy the show. All right. Hello. Hello. This is Abel Pacheco, your host for the Five Talents podcast. Today we are graced with one of the most hardworking, determined somebody with high perseverance to push out a ton of content, help others just live this reciprocity game. And I'm super excited and humbled to have him on our show, Mr. Scott Carson. Scott, how's it going, sir?

I am doing great, buddy. It is nice to be talking with another fellow Texas podcaster out there and a real estate investor. I'm just up I35 San Antonio was home for a while for me. Used to live off 1604 and over and he in that neck of the woods. But I live up just up the road up I35 in Austin, Texas, man.

So I love it. Scott's right up the road from me. I'm San Antonio and It's just this i35 corridor, which some of you out of state investors may have heard about. It's growing up blowing like crazy. But we wanted to bring Scott on because he's got an amazing perspective that I think everyone's going to learn a lot from on this show. And Scott, I'm going to have him really dig into his background. But man, he is a beast in the podcasting side of the house. He told me he did a hundred shows this year. At 100 last year. His own podcast has about 650 shows and he is all into capital raising, investor relations, notes and really I'll let him introduce himself. Scott, you do a ton of stuff, man, and you've had such a successful track record. Let me let you talk about your background.

No problem. Thanks, Abel. Yeah, I've been an active real estate investor for almost 20 years and come from the banking and finance side of things. Mortgage. I ran a mortgage company here in Austin, Texas from 2004 to 2008 and then we're doing residential and commercial stuff primarily. 90% of our business was working with real estate investors in 30 states. And when the music stopped in 2008, I jumped shipped from the origination side to the distressed debt side. We were doing short sales, but I also started buying distressed mortgages on residential commercial properties. And actually a lot of my first few deals were buying apartment loans, buying debt for 50 cents on the dollar or 35 cents of value. You know, 20 unit, 30 unit, 50 units, 80 units. We bought a note on a 300 unit apartment complex in Indianapolis for like 25 cents on the dollar, worked it through to regentrify it and sold it off at the auction and made a buku chunk of money.

Heck yeah.

And so with everything being like it is, it's been an interesting ride. The last 12 years we've closed on a couple thousand transactions, closed on over a half a billion dollars in debt purchases, most of it with other people's money. And we've had our fair share of ups. We had our fair shares of downs, good deals, home runs, singles, doubles, and some strikeouts along the way. But I think that's when you're in real estate, that happens. But the beautiful thing is I think there's such an opportunity, especially in the commercial space, in the multifamily space. Still to this day. A lot of people talk about it being overcrowded, but I think with everything that's going on in the market right Now, I think 20, 21, if you know how to pivot a little bit or how to market yourself a little bit differently, how to dive into a different asset class, you might be coming out smelling pretty good at the end of the year and making some money these days. I know you're smiling. I know I'm smiling all the way to the bank.

I love it. That's exactly what we're doing. We're smiling and having a good time all the way to the bank, man. And I love Scott. Just hearing his background, like 2000 transactions. Anybody that does anything 2000 times has had some goods, some bad, some ups and downs and all around. And there's so much insight and knowledge. And so you're, you know, one of those individuals that I would, you know, call your expert category, man. And then multifamily single family residential notes. Half. Did you say half a billion dollars in debt?

Yep. Over $500 million. And actually it's closer to a B these times around. Started going back and look, I wasn't keeping track of it, but I know it was over half a billion.

Yeah.

In debt purchases, you know, and you know, sometimes we bought 200 notes, sometimes we bought 60, sometimes we bought one offs. It's just such an interesting ride the last 12 years, man.

Yeah. And I'm assuming didn't have this much cash in your pocket. How in the world did you buy half a billion dollars worth of debt?

Two ways. One, you got to find some deals. Could good deals find money? I think we can agree to that. Secondly, I've been a marketer because when I left the mortgage industry in 2000, I didn't have that much money because of the market taking a dump. You know, my last two big fix and flips, I wrote checks to the table. You want to receive checks when you're closing, not write checks when you're closing. You know what I mean?

There you go. Yeah.

So with everything being in the uproar back 2008, nine, ten, I just had to start marketing because I didn't have a lot of capital and I was getting these lists and lists are we calling tapes in the note industry spreadsheets with all these different asset classes that I just started marketing. I started Marketing Facebook and LinkedIn took my database of business cards that I'd met from traveling the country and all the investors I was meeting at meetup groups, real estate clubs, and I would send an email out once a week, hey, here's the deal. Deal of the week that we're working on. And that started leading to a lot of notoriety out there from people that started referring me, started referring investors to me. Hey, one of the biggest things that really changed out my business able is in 2010, I was sitting there watching TV thinking about the start of baseball season. They had these baseball commercials, you know, $5 for hot dog, 10 dol for a beer. Seeing every major league baseball park with your son, price list. I was like, man, I would love to travel the country and go see that. So I wrote my goals down to go and visit all 30 baseball parks. And at the same time, I was writing Blogs and doing videos on YouTube about specific deals and what I was focused on on a daily basis. And I started having real estate investment clubs reach out to me. And in a matter of, like, a week, I had five clubs, meetup groups reach out to me to ask me if I wanted to come speak to their club about debt. And I'm like, yeah, when do you want me come speak? And the days they wanted me to come speak lined up perfectly with this fictional baseball tour. So divine intervention, man. You know what I mean? And so I said, okay, all right. God. So I sold everything I own except my dog and my truck, and I jumped in the truck. And when I thought would be 30 weeks of traveling the country turned into almost four years of nonstop travel and speaking and teaching and buying and walking into banks and asset managers at banks, and from Miami to California and just about everywhere in between. So it's been a interesting ride. And that was one of the big things that really kind of changed my business. That was back in 2010. And then we've just. I've just been known as the note guy because we share our journey online. We do it. We got a ton of YouTube videos before ever started a podcast. I'm just a big believer that if you give people the tools, those that are interested, the 5 percenters out there that really are going to do something, they'll take what you're offering and understand the value of it and run with it and do some amazing things.

The five percenters, I love it. Yeah. That's such a small percentage of people, you know, And I think about, like, when I started the real estate education journey, I was a seminar conference guy, went to a bunch of different ones and, you know, got convinced. I say convinced, but made the decision fork over some money. That wasn't the action part. Even though it was hard to fork over the first, you know, education package, it was like 20 grand. I'm like, what in the world? But really, a bunch of people were with me that we all spent 20 grand. And after a number, a few conferences, three, four, you know, the educational sessions, I started, like, not seeing any of the same people that I signed up with, and they spent the money and they didn't even. They didn't act right. So the 5%, that's hard. And I looked around, I go, man, there's 20 grand on the hook. You got at least make your money back. And there was a good number of people, 95% of people that I never saw again.

You know, that just makes me feel like, you Know, just feel horrible. I want to scream, you know what I mean, out there. Because if you're gonna spend 20 grand, you better. I mean, that's the motivation and stuff. But there's been a lot of. I'll just put in a credit card. It's not really my money. I'm like, I gotta work to pay that sucker off, you know, you know, if I'm gonna learn something. And I was really blessed like from 2004 to 2008 when I was traveling the country working with investors and stuff like that, I had a. Before I jumped on the notes side, we were doing all these seminars, you know, origination. I was doing mortgages back in 2004 and so four years I had like an apprenticeship with one of the best note guys in the industry who taught me the creative side of financing. Subject to, taught me the commercial side of it. But so I was really lucky to have that kind of mentorship early on before everything hit The Fan in 2008. So, yeah, education, mentorship, having a coach, well worth it. I mean, to this day I know you do the same thing. Believe in it. If you want to go to a next level, hire a coach to get you there, you know?

Yeah, you got to. And then you have to take the action that they're telling you to do. You know, since joined a number of programs, I have a one on one coach. I'm in a mastermind. And every time I kind of get into it, it leads me to the next, you know, whatever that is, next deal, next mindset, next paradigm to keep, you know, acting and make it happen. But let me go back, Bill, because you said a lot of great things. Find deals. Number one, the way you found those deals. Like you said, hey, marketing like crazy. Finding the tapes. The tapes in the note business. Forgive me for not understanding, but is that literally like, hey, here's the owner, here's the amount that they owe and here's, you know, the property. And then you got to hunt them down and find that person, reach out to them or what.

Here's the beautiful thing about being in the note space. I don't usually deal with the borrowers, so I'm dealing directly with banks. And the banks have a list of. I suggest you say they're problem children, problem borrowers. So they do send us a spreadsheet with the loans that they're looking to sell. And then we often will see. Okay, when was the last payment made? What's the balance? Who's the borrower? Their fico. What's the value of the property.

Yeah, yeah.

And so on. Residential, it's pretty easy to figure out values. Apartment. Sometimes they'll have the financials, or other times you gotta become Sherlock Holmes and try to make, create the financials because the borrower is not being responsive.

They were probably in there for a reason. And one of those reasons, they probably didn't keep their books very well.

Exactly, exactly. Or they just, you know, and other things can happen. I mean, craziness, Covid, you know, we see that, that right now in a lot of areas, especially in student housing being vacant and stuff. But so then you basically are negotiating with the bank after you're doing some due diligence on the property. The borrower, I mean, I've been chased out of a few places when I was walking properties before.

It happens, it happens.

You know, we buy the debt usually at a substantial discount, so it gives us the opportunity to come in and then once we've closed on the note, reaching out to the borrower and say, hey, we're now the bank, we're the new bank. Exactly. You owe this. But let's work something out that makes sense for you.

If you get a discount, if you're buying it for 60% on the dollar, then you're trying to take the spread of the equity or maybe get creative like you're saying. Right.

Well, the biggest bang for our buck is always to try to keep the borrowers in the properties, whether it's single family or multifamily.

Yeah.

And because a lot of borrowers, they get six 12 months behind, they don't have the full amount to bring to the table. So if we can say, okay, can you start paying on time again? Or can we do a trial payment plan, get you back on track? You know, if you pay on time, get back on track for 12 months, then we'll talk about modifying the loan or adjusting what's owed if you're way upside down. Or hey, just sign the property over to us and walk away and we'll take away all those nightmares and we'll be left with it.

Yeah. However you want to do it. But if you can get them to pay and make it a producing note for you, then you're less headache, less work and the money's coming in. Or you have to do a little more work, but then there's some upside there.

You know, the nice thing in the note business too, especially when you start getting above that $1 million loan amount. A lot of times if you're buying a non performing loan, but you've got a team and you can show the bank that you've got a management team behind you or operations where it's not you, you have a team. Sometimes the bank's willing to carry the paper on that non performing note said, okay, you're gonna buy, take over receivership in it. Okay, great, we'll go ahead and carry the paper for 75% of whatever we agreed upon. And then it's like okay, great. Or even like we did one, it was 100% carry. So we got in, we basically the.

Bank gave you 100%.

Cause they didn't want to take, they don't want to be in the property management side. And so we basically put it, it was a short term 12 month loan. We got regentrified, finished up the foreclosure and sold it off and paid the bank. You know, saved the bank from having a million dollar bad loan on their books anymore, which affects them and we win. Win across the board.

Yeah. That's awesome. This is great insight, Scott. So we've got a couple different type of listeners and maybe we can frame the, you know, kind of the next points, right?

Sure.

We have passive investors that are trying to learn and educate themselves on the best place to put their money. You know, we talk about multifamily commercial real estate a ton. I do have some other commercial real estate guests, you know, like yourself in the peripheral that you do ton. It's commercial real estate also just on the note side. But the other part is like a new general partner, so somebody like a new principal, they're trying to find their first deal, maybe their second or third. And you know, they're just trying to learn a little bit more so they can be good operators and good stewards of people's money too. So those, think of those two reference points right now. The money and the capital that you raised that came from, you mentioned business cards, people you knew in the professional world and you just started making, you know, you started reaching out. So maybe help us, guide us into this. What did you do to raise capital in the beginning and how do you do it now, man?

So you. I think the biggest thing is most people have to realize these days we're not in the note business or the multifamily business. First and foremost, we're all in the media business. We're all competing for eyes and ears. And going back 12 years ago, we didn't have as podcasts or YouTube wasn't as big as it was now. So I just started sharing my journey. You know, I started Sharing what I was working on. Here's a deal that I could pick up at 50 cents on the dollar. It's an eight unit apartment complex in San Diego. At a picture, here's what rough rates are. Bank is owed 548,000. The property is roughly about 750. We can pick it up at 375.

Yeah.

So we want to pay 425. It's a $50,000 wholesale fee or best offer. And that was one of the ways that we started doing it. Just sharing what we were working on and not being afraid to share it. You know, there's times I had like this old flip camera that Dell produced. It was a little mini portable video camera. I'm out walking in an apartment complex in 116 degree heat in Austin, Texas. Sweats running down my face on video. But I'm just sharing the journey.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and people are like, oh my gosh, I want to, I like what this guy does. He's not perfect. You know, I screw up, you know, I forget what I'm saying sometimes I'll cuss occasionally, you know, but it's just people like seeing that journey. And people would start seeing my journey from the individual deal to the bigger deal. And I wasn't afraid to share my ups and downs. This was a great deal. Oh, this didn't turn out to be a good deal. Why? Well, because we found this and this and so we moved on and we said next. And I just started getting a regularity. You know, I had an email that went out once a week to my database. I would post almost daily on LinkedIn and Facebook. And when I would go to a different city, I would coordinate my visit around the big real estate investment clubs.

In that area and of course the ballparks.

But yes, of course the ballparks came into that.

Okay.

But that was always on the schedule. So I would have a meetup up and looking at the baseball and espn. Okay, can you tonight let's go to a meetup group and tomorrow night we'll go to the ball game. You know what I mean, who's a starting pitcher, you know what I mean, do that kind of stuff. But that's the thing. People don't realize that meetup.com is free. I mean you can join multiple groups all across the country and be tapped into 50 people to 5,000 and you just have to do a little bit of extra work. We talked about the extra 5% I was doing to do a little bit 5% more each day. That was like three more phone calls, three more posts at the end of the week. And just get the word out. And just built consistencies and shared video. And when people. I would get people like, hey, I've watched all your videos for the last six months. I want to invest with you. Or I've watched. I've been. One lady called me and she's like, you the only white man in my bedroom at night. I was like, whoa, okay, great.

Yeah.

I was like, that's awesome. She's like, yeah, I got. I got 100 grand. Let's do a deal. Let's help me find a deal. I was like, okay, great. And so that was the big thing to find deals in marketing. And when it comes to. I applied similar things to finding deals with notes. I'm not dealing with borrowers or not really dealing initially with commercial brokers like a lot of people use. I'm dealing with special asset managers and whole loan traders inside these. Some of these bigger banks. And so I built a list of these guys. I would dial for dollars, like 50 to 100 phone calls at least twice a week.

50 to 100 twice a week. Okay, so jam pack a day and that's all you did.

Exactly. I'd have a list and I would just dial for dollars. I thought I sound like I'm a fud at the end of the day from talking so much. You know, my tongue's all swelling. But then I would put them in a database and I would email them once a month. Hey, what do you have in your books this quarter? Or what do you have your books on the books this month? And I would get people that would start contacting me three months after or four months of getting the same email. They called it the green email because I had the background green. If they opened, it was green everywhere because that's my color and it branded. Yeah. And they're like, I have something now. Or, hey, something came across my desk from up here. Contact them. Here's a list for you. And so that's what I did. I didn't have it. You know, I was divorced at the time. I didn't have any little ones running around that I know of anyway. You know, just busting butt. You could grind.

You could grind every single day, and no one's gonna tell you to stop or, yeah, come visit, you know. Yeah. You just grind. Okay, man, that's amazing. That's a lot of hustle and a lot of effort. And out of all this time, when did you start, like, scaling up? What does your team look like today you started yourself. Tell us about this little scaling of your job.

That's a really good question because I think most investors are jack of all trades. They try to be. Yeah, you know they try, oh, I'm going to go look at the property, I'm going to pull comps and pull title. No, that's the biggest mistake you could ever make. And so immediately early on I started leveraging other people and other networks and stuff like that we talked about. Meetup is a great way to build networks and find other investors. But I also hired VAs virtual assistants to pull due diligence and photos and do some online stuff for me. I had a full time marketing person I hired about six months into that. She would do things for me from posting or even like I send her a spreadsheet and she would pull photos, the assets or the properties and then it's okay, here's what I want you to put say on the message. And she would do that and she would then use like buffer or hootsuite to auto synchronate, synchronize the marketing, you know. So I still with note investing you can run with a pretty lean team because a lot of the workout is done by vendors with like our servicing company who's dealing with the borrowers. They're the ones that are doing the borrower outreach. They're collecting the payments. If we've got to take it the legal route, then we hire real estate attorneys that handle the foreclosure, you know. So I've got, I got a full time gal that works for me who used to work for my servicing company. She handles a lot of my portfolio on the residential side, commercial assets, it's a whole different thing. A little more aggressive on reviewing that with our team and management side. And then we've got a couple of VAs that are still doing due diligence for us. But it's all about finding and putting the team together. You know, we like to leverage local realtors, local investors to bring them on for stuff. And so that's why I'm very advocate about like you'll hear me say again, meet up and local real estate club. You can find a lot of people and actually make more money and live a better life than trying to do it all yourself.

Agreed. I was in single family for 10 years, me and my wife. So I wasn't alone, but it was me and my wife. We would save the money ourselves, we'd go buy the deal ourselves, we would hold and rent and landlord the Deals ourselves. And at about 10 properties, we're like, this is dumb. And it wasn't until commercial real estate that we started partnering, you know, with other people. Yeah, it just makes a lot of sense to partner in general for this kind of stuff. And then, you know, VA assistant, people that help me on the acquisition side, people that help me in the marketing side and get podcast team. Now I'm like, oh, I've got a team. But anyways, it's a big team. Yeah. Hello, hello, this is Abel Pacheco, your host for the five Talents podcast. After listening to a few episodes, Deep down, do you know that multifamily and commercial real estate investing is one of the best ways to create financial freedom? If you said yes to that question, and you are where I was a few years ago, then I'd absolutely love to connect with you. A few years ago I started personally consuming a ton of real estate education. I traveled all over the country, as many real estate conferences and seminars that I could go to. I took 200 plus hours of real estate education. I spent thousands of dollars along the way. And I did this because I knew the path to financial freedom for me and my family was through commercial real estate and syndication. So if you've made a similar decision, I'd love to connect with you. And potentially in the future, I'd love to partner with you as well. Take a moment, go to 5TCRE com invest and I'd love to set up a time to talk.

Well, that's the thing is it's not as difficult as most people think it is. The number one most important hire is hiring that first assistant. A first assistant should make you 100 grand because they're doing all the bullshit stuff that you don't need to be doing. Yeah, you know, the callbacks, the recording and some of the easy marketing, some of the follow up. Just the scheduling stuff that needs to be done to make sure that you're more profitable in your hourly whether you're working full time at this or it's a part time side hustle. And an assistant could be working during the times that you're not, whether it's local or virtual. And I think that's the most valuable thing for any investor out there. Make a list of everything you're not getting done and figure out what it's costing you. And you'll find the money really fast to hire a VA for 10 to 20 hours a week. Right.

You brought me back to that mindset because this was my side hustle. Towards the end. I was working W2. I was a working professional IT sales leader. And so I made a good chunk of coin there. But where some people that I met that went through the same education, they were like, I don't have time to do what you're doing. And I go, neither do I. But I hired an assistant to help me implement this stuff. And it's her 30, 40 hours a week, and she's helping me put this together. And we did that, you know, a year, year and a half before we kind of ended up quitting the W2 and kind of go full time. But yeah, and it just leverage. You have to leverage your team and be willing to spend the money to realize you're going to make more money, you know, and that's, and that's the.

Thing is a lot of people, you know, you have to value your hour. I think that's one of the biggest things. Value in your time as a real estate investor. If you want to make 100 grand, well, that means you're. You need to value your time at 250 an hour. And if you're doing stupid stuff below 250, then you're costing yourself money. But if you hire somebody at 10 bucks an hour to do that job, now you just cloned yourself. You just made another 250, technically, because you just added an hour to you. And that's, that's the best way to do it. And a lot of people think, well, what would I have a VA do? Well, you could have them marketing for you. You could have them prospecting for investors. You could jump in and jump on the county records and start pulling IRA investors in the cities you like and mailing postcards or yellow letters or reaching out to them online. It's just so many things that pay off dramatically in a short term if you just actually implement it and start it.

Yeah, that's awesome. That's great. Well, okay. Well, this has been an amazing conversation so far, Scott, and what I'd love to do is kind of shape it a little bit. Talk to us about, like, what's going on today in multifamily. You know, you're seeing notes that aren't performing. You're seeing the, like you said, the banks problem child. And I'd like to know what those problem children are in multifamily, what you're seeing to come across your plate and, you know, let's start there.

Yeah. So I think we can all agree that the CMBS market took a $50 billion loss in February and March as the markets dropped Off. And there's a. I mean, this time around it's a little different than it was 12 years ago. The regional banks are actually. Banks actually finance more of this commercial stuff than beforehand, when it was mostly Wall Street. And so the biggest opportunity we are seeing right now, and this comes not just from me, but what we're seeing come across our books and from the hedge funds is that sub $5 million value asset. Okay.

Sub 5 million bucks.

Because any 5 million over Wall Street's gonna try to double that because they can write a check and get cheap money to do it. You know?

Bastards. Those bastards.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So. But that. But that means there's a lot of opportunity to that sub million. Sub five million mark.

Yeah.

And so that's the first thing. The second thing that we're seeing a lot of while apartments have still done well, still a really good collection. Right. We have seen the default rate jump up a little bit, but we've seen it more jump up. Oh, the college housing market, which is apartments, because kids aren't going to school, remote learning. And so I think that's the biggest opportunity is somebody to come in, pick up some college housing, hold onto it for two to three years, let people get back to normal because kids will go back to school, they're gonna get.

Back eventually, vaccines come out and time goes on and you know.

Yeah, I wouldn't be looking at small markets. I would be looking at your like Big 12, SCC, ACC or Big Power 5 colleges.

Or maybe they're going to be there.

Yeah. Or the A1 or the Division 1 colleges too, because that's going to be the thing. And I would keep your sourcing to markets that have at least 50,000 or more instead of the really small college towns, because those are the ones that may not recover at all.

Yeah.

And so looking at that, I would also be flexible. I've seen some interesting things happen up. I was reading an article today that in places like New York where they're seeing a huge amount of increase in office space going into the fall, them talking about converting that to apartments, affordable housing. And so I've got a couple of our students who are taking that to another level, they're looking at like smaller hotels and motels, 100 units, 200 units, something that's not operating really well because hotels have been hit the hardest.

Yeah.

But they're setting them up and getting them rezoned for multifamily. And in some cases they're able to do the pivot pretty easily at Times, it's a little bit more of a rehab, depending on old. The. The complex is or the property is. But we're seeing it happen in a couple places. Philadelphia, we're seeing it happen in Maryland. Colorado, Florida is really looking at that. Trying to turn some of these into affordable markets for you. So that's what we're seeing and what we expect to see a whole lot of in 2021, for the most part.

Got it. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. The college towns, unfortunately, you know, just not going to do as well today. But in the future, big major markets, good population growth, cities not going away. Now's a good time to get it. And then the conversion of the office to apartments or hotels to apartments, man, the hotel guys, they have it rough.

Well, here's the thing. There's basically saying the hotel market is. You can buy hotel debt roughly right now for around 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. Wow. I just saw a Hilton Express or Hilton Honors. A portfolio borrower had one in San Antonio, one in Austin, one in Dallas, one in Fort Worth, and then one in Houston. And they sold the portfolio, $16 million balance for 4 million bucks.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, he took a big hit on it. I mean, it still operates a hotel.

Yeah.

But you look at cities who are then dealing with the COVID impact. So they're converting some smaller hotels into storage or quarantine for the homeless or other things.

Whatever.

Yeah, whatever. Hey, you get a Hotel at 25 cents on the dollar, you can make that profitable if you come and operate it properly or get creative with it.

All of a sudden you like the building, you like the hotel a lot more. Well, and then, look, you're the buyer, not the person that got. That couldn't hold on to it.

But go ahead. Exactly. But then you have financials, you see what's going on. But then your play on that is really okay. Let me go to the city and say, hey, I'm willing to work with the increased number of residential evictions. Those people that are going to get foreclosed or evicted first of the year because they can't afford their rent, to bring them in at a number that makes sense. It's literally a market needs to be serviced.

Yeah. They still need housing needs.

Yeah. And while most apartment, your class A, class Bs are still at a high occupant, I mean, high or very low vacancy rate, high, you know, high occupancy rate, that leads to a huge opportunity to step in and really be Able to kind of break, see a need, fill a need and fill a gap for a while.

Yeah, yeah. Wow, that's eye opening, man. So you're investing all across the US doesn't matter kind of where it is. If the numbers make sense, after you do the analysis and deal kind of works, you're moving forward. And tell us a little bit about like how does disposition work in your world? How does like selling or do you hold or you know, just give us a little bit of. Illuminate this.

Yeah, there's only a couple states I don't really buy. I don't usually buy in New York or New Jersey because it takes forever to foreclose there and it's really expensive and so sorry. Yeah, sorry guys. Better deals. You know, other places I don't buy in Crook County, I mean Chicago because it's the same thing. It's a rough area. So I try to stay in your major or secondary markets. Disposition is not too bad because one of the great things when you buy commercial debt, you have the right to take over the property. You know, you've got the right to collect rents. And so if somebody, if an operator or property owner is using a property as its own personal ATM and not paying Peter and Paul for well, that removes a lot of that motivation not to work with you. So provided that there's not a big second lien or other things behind your first, a lot of times you can step into the operation side of a commercial property relatively easy. And then it's just connecting with operators or management companies to help out that are experts on that so that you're not having to deal with the day in, day out operations. A matter of just putting the right people in place, figuring out, okay, what's our time frame? Are we going to sell this at auction? Are we going to take it back? Do we want to hold onto this for a while and retrintify it? Or depending on what we buy it for. It all comes down to what can we get the auction, what can we get if we sell it? Or a lot of times we'll even work deed and lose with a borrower so we don't have to go through the foreclosure auction and just kind of take over the property and go from there and then hold onto it for a while.

Ah, nice. And the ones that you're holding maybe specific to multifamily. What are you holding on and what are you kind of getting in there and doing too?

So I love Florida, I love God's waiting room. Okay. I like areas though that aren't like the Miami areas. I like a little bit further up the coastline, like West Palm beach, go up to Jacksonville. I like Orlando. I think Orlando just has a huge opportunity right now for things. So we're really looking at the hotel space because that hotel space has been hit hard. But we've bought multifamily there before and done really well because it's, you know, you've ucf, big university there, you know, within five minutes of that. Another thing that works really, really well that we like is the southwest Florida part of the country. A lot of people from New York, New Jersey got the heck out of Dodge and flew down to that part of Florida to enjoy it. So it's still seeing a lot of good growth there. People spending long term, you know, long time staying there. So being able to rent stuff out for a while or what also does really well. You'd be surprised about this apartments near military bases. Because if you can get in and work with the on site housing director for these military bases, they'll usually pay 125% above market rents and they'll handle the in and out 90 to 100 day turnover rate. They'll keep it furnished. It's almost as good as section 8 if you can bring that on the multifamily side. So those are what I like in that neck of the woods. I'm a fan of the Carolinas. I think North Carolina's just booming like crazy. South Carolina is doing really well too. You know, Oklahoma City's been a big favorite market for a lot of multifamily guys in the years and then Dallas. I just think those areas are a little bit too overpriced right now. I think you've got to go where there's some distress at and build your profit in by the discount that you're getting and being able to step in. And I don't think the play is, hey, I'm going to buy this, I'm going to re gentrify it for three years and get refinanced out. I think you need to realize that those refinance loans may not be around in two, three years depending on what we end up finding out next year. And so you need to be in a spot that you need to either get taken out with private capital or really work to put your management team in place so it becomes an asset that the bank would be willing to carry the paper for you for a while.

Yeah. All right. All this is good insight. Thanks a lot, Scott.

Yeah, no problem.

Well, if our listeners, while we're on the topic, if our listeners want to reach out to you, learn more, get on your show, potentially invest with you, et cetera, et cetera. What's the best places to go or reach you?

Yeah, the best places, I guess we say we go to our mothershipweclosenotes.com, that's my main website that talks about our classes. You get the podcast, the Note Closer Show. And while your guys are listening to this, do Abel a favor. He didn't tell me to do this, but hit that subscribe button and go ahead and leave a five star review for him because you know he's busting ass. He is in the top 5 percenters of podcasts out there and his talents, come on, he's working hard. Give him subscribe. And we as podcasters love to see reviews. So he didn't ask me to mention that. But I'm sure the check is in the mail there, ladies and gentlemen. So that's the biggest thing. Check out my website. Check out the no Closer show podcast. We just recorded episode 650 yesterday. We'll have Abel on our podcast here hopefully in the next couple of weeks once he gets around to clicking on the link.

Hint, hint, cough, cough.

I mean, that's the big thing. I mean, you also see a ton of our videos and training on YouTube. So if you go to WeCloseNotes TV, they'll take you directly to our YouTube channel and we can go from there.

Yeah, you could probably learn a ton. 650 shows. So this is kind of the last, you know, bit of questions that I want to head down before we got to go. Because you are a marketing machine. You guys have been pumping out a bunch of stuff. Like I said, 100 shows this year, interviewed on 100 shows last year, 650 of your own shows. When did this start? And tell me a little bit about this journey, because it was one.

So I've been doing webinars and videos for years.

This is the old phone. You doing the videos, etc.

GoToWebinar. I started a GoToWebinar account April 2011. Almost embraced. Go.

Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, okay. Like a webinar. Go to webinar.

A true webinar. Yeah.

Okay, okay, okay.

And for Monday night, every Monday night, for the most part, I would do.

A regular webinar every Monday night.

And we still do it, for the most part, we call it Note Night in America. Now we rebranded it. So every Monday night we do a different webinar on topic it's open to the audience to come on. We'll have a speaker, I'll talk about a subject. It's about an hour, hour and a half. And I was doing it and I actually didn't want to do a podcast and I was doing that and I was doing Facebook lives with my cell phone. Just starting, just sharing a little bit. Hey, what's be a fly on the wall in the office for the day. What are we focused on today in our office? My team and I had a buddy come to me, said, listen, you should do a podcast. This is great stuff. I'm like, oh no, I don't want to do all that editing. I don't have time for that. You know, there's not really. Our listeners don't really listen to podcasts because there's no note investing podcasts out there. And one of my students was doing it and like, no, you should do it. Well, I was like, I don't wanna do all the work, nevermind. So six months goes by, I'm talking with my students that have the podcast and they're quitting it. I'm like, why the hell are you quitting it? You did 150 episodes and you've getting these down. Like, yeah, we just wanna go to a different direction. I'm like, okay, stupid. So I immediately called my buddy, but trying to get me to do a podcast for a year. So, okay, we're ready to roll. Can you reuse? He's like, yeah, just go on Zoom, record it and just send us the link and we'll make you look good. I'm like, that's all I have to do. I don't have to do. You just don't use. We'll do the editing, we'll charge you for that. But I was like, oh, it's done, let's do it. And as I said, I have a marketing mindset. So every day when I wake up, it's like, okay, what am I marketing today? Who am I interviewing on my show? Or what am I talking about? Or whose show am I on this week? And we just write it into the schedule, just time block our schedule for a couple of those. And it adds up over time and getting the word out. And since I'm so happy because not being able to travel this year, we just have embraced the podcast side of things. Okay, send me traveling to an event and seeing the same 75 people at every event. I'm just going to do a podcast and be in front of new people every time. And that's what's been our biggest mindset and mind shift starting three years ago.

With that, three years for the podcast and then webinars weekly Monday nights since 2011. Let me pause for anybody listening. Right. If you want to know like how to do like half a billion dollars worth of anything, there's just one, just massive mindset that you guys need to have is that you need to do exactly what you know you should do. Like market every single, you know, once a week. Persistent for the past nine years.

Consistently.

Yeah, consistently. Over and over and over and over again.

And here's the thing, Abel. Every week we track, okay, how many people signed up for our webinar this week? How many people are new? We have roughly 20 to 30 new people. Brand new people opt in every week. And so that's our number one source of markets. Like we're getting 20 new people this week by just showing up for half an hour.

Showing up. Yeah. That's so amazing. And you know, it's, I don't know the right word for it, but I will tell you that it's that dedication that you had. That's why you have success. And when people ask me all the time, how did you convert, you know, this, or how did you have success in this? And you know, I haven't done half a billion yet, but you know, we're, we're, we're grinding. This thing's been starting since 2008, man. Yeah, it hasn't started today. Promise.

Exactly. Damon John from Shark Tank, and he says he's the token smart guy on the show, which I love. But I got a chance to spend some time with him in San Diego to event a couple years back, and he talked about how he would wait tables at Red Lobster, go home at night, work on his clothes line, fubu, sleep on the floor, get back up, go work a double shift at Red Lobster, come home, work on his side hustle for 7p 2m. And so overnight success was like an eight year process for him. Overnight people are just lazy. If you want to do big things, you got to have big commitments and realize, well, you didn't have, your shows, didn't go viral. But no, all I wanted is, all I need is one person new. Just one person new and it's worthwhile. You never know that one person is.

Yeah, that's awesome. So is there anything, Scott, we didn't talk about, you know, you wanted to bring some exposure? I just didn't ask anything at all.

I have a very important question.

Yes.

Best breakfast taco in San Antonio, where's the best practice tacos? Because I know you like them like I do, man.

I do, my friend. Well, there's a number of just good, solid quality tacos that is in somewhat of a chain, but they're everywhere in San Antonio, Las Palapas.

Oh, my gosh, yes. I'm a big fan of Pico de Gallo's tacos, too. Or on the north side, Tinka taco tacos.

Tinka taco rocks. And so does Pico de Gallo. Yeah. The thing about Las Palapas is just it's everywhere.

It is.

You can find it on all the major.

I'm hungry now. I'm gonna drive to San Antonio. Give me some Las Palapas, brother.

Yeah, they're quality breakfast tacos. And that's another way, guys, go ahead.

You want to raise capital, do a breakfast taco networking?

Oh, man. Unfortunately for me, if you want to. You want to gain 10 more pounds, have a breakfast taco with cheese every morning. Whatever it is, put some cheese on it.

Queso good queso, brother.

And yes, but no. I love it, man. This has been a great conversation, Scott. Very appreciative, man. I'm very appreciative of just getting into a little bit of your world. And look, hopefully we can stay good friends and kind of continue on the relationship. I'd love to follow your success, et cetera.

You and I will be in touch, definitely. Because San Antonio is one of those markets I think in Texas is really growing rapidly, did a really good job, but I also think it's got space for a lot of things compared to, like, Austin, compared to Dallas, and compared to Houston. You know, if I didn't live in Austin, I'd live in San Antonio. And I think a lot of people don't realize that, but there's a lot of so much growth going on out on the west side of San Antonio and helotes and all over the place. And so you and I will be in touch on some of these deals that we're starting to see across our books and some stuff. Alrighty.

Yeah. Yeah, I look forward to it. Again, my name is Abel Pacheco. I am your host for the Five Talents podcast. As Scott mentioned, if there is something today that you got some value from, which I know there was more than a few nuggets here, I would encourage you, please, like, subscribe, rate, review. Leave us. A written review would be awesome. And then, man, get into Scott's world. You're going to learn a ton. So I thank you very much again. For your time, Scott. Appreciate it.

Honored to be here, Abel.

All right. Bye, bye, bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Five Talents podcast. I'm your host, Abel Pacheco. Each week we're going to bring you interviews from other industry experts and commercial real estate investors who followed their dreams and achieved massive success. If you enjoyed this episode, then you're going to want a copy of our passive Investors guide, Tackling Commercial Real Estate the Easy Way. It's the guide we use to invest in $93 million of commercial real estate. It's a 65 page ebook. It's a great resource to learn the basic mechanics of multifamily syndications. And we're going to show you how to evaluate your next passive investment opportunity. So if you subscribe to our podcast now, leave us a review and a rating. I'm going to give you a free copy. So take a moment to do that now. We'd appreciate it. And then you can register for the book at 5t cre.com forward/ebook 5t cre.com forward/ebook Let us know and we're going to send you a copy. Thank you so much for subscribing to the Five Talents Podcast.

Sam.