James Kandasamy - The Untold Stories Of Real Estate Investing - From Single Family To Multi-Family

Welcome to the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing hosted by Wayne Courageous iii, a place where active and passive investors come to hear the good, bad and ugly of real estate investing. Our guests consist of experienced operators and investors who want others to succeed by sharing their stories. If you're looking to syndicate deals or grow your wealth passively in real estate, you've come to the right show. It's now time to sit back, take mental notes and enjoy next episode of the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing. Welcome to the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing. I'm your host, Wayne Courageous. I'm really excited to have James Konasami with the Chief Investment Group on our show as he's someone I call a friend and mentor. Based out of Austin, James has syndicated nine multifamily properties valued over $130 million. In addition, James is a number one bestseller for his book Passive Investing and Commercial Real Estate Insider Secrets for achieving Financial Independence. Before we dive further with James, I wanted to ask our listeners to download my intro podcast to get a full background on this podcast and myself. Since it's our first episode, let me provide a high level intro. I'm your host, wayne courageous. With 13 years of experience at commercial real estate managing properties, I've enjoyed and been fortunate to have spent my real estate career assisting clients, creating investor wealth through advising and implementing their property strategic plans. In addition, I'm a deal sponsor and founder of a real estate investment company named CREI Partners. CREI Partners invest in value add multifamily properties in Austin, San Antonio and Houston. I wanted to start a podcast to provide an avenue for me to learn from others through these type of interviews, but also bring that value back to others who share my passion of real estate. The intent of this podcast is to make the path easier by learning from experienced investors and operators success in their challenging moments. It's going to go deep into what really is the good, bad and ugly real estate investing across all asset classes. Lastly, for our frequency of shows, we will have a new episode every other week. I hope you enjoy this podcast and in return, subscribe and share to your network to help elevate our podcast of the Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing. Without further ado, I'm honored to have James Konasami on our podcast. Welcome to our show James.

Hey Wayne, happy to be on your show.

Yeah, it's a big one. It's the first one, so you have a lot of experience with this with your very popular podcast, so just wanted to welcome you and thank you for Being on today.

Yeah, yeah. I'm happy that you have taken the step to really give out content out there to any listeners who's going to be resonating with you, going to learn from you and from the guests that you're going to bring. Right. So that's a really good value. Add that you do to your listeners and I'm sure you're going to get a manifold of value given back to you as you move forward in this journey.

Well, just real quick, I want to one, thank you for all that you've done for me. Back in December, I took a webinar of yours regarding real estate taxes and you had mentioned your mentorship program. So I want to do a shout out to you and your mentorship program started your program in January and I've really, really enjoyed it and appreciate your guidance and your weekly calls and you know, I think that adds a lot of value. So anybody out there that's looking to get into multifamily syndication, you know, James has been a great mentor for me, so thank you for that.

Yep. Yeah, I really don't promote a lot of my mentorship program, not like some of the gurus out there, but it is an exclusive. It's very focused a lot on being an operator at the same time raising money, doing asset management, property management, which not many people teach and. But that is the most important thing right now. Right. During the COVID 19 recession. Right. So yeah, I mean, contact me if you guys want to know more. Let's start with the podcast.

Yeah. So for our listeners, can you introduce yourself and provide a bit more of background of how you started in this industry and what asset class do you focus on?

Sure, sure. I focus a lot on residential and started with my W2 job. Right. And then three years ago I left my W2 job working full time on real estate. But I was doing real estate along more longer than that. I think six years ago is when I started my single family journey. And two years into my single family, I jumped up to my multi family journey and my single family. I think I had like 13 houses and it was just so much of work with single family. Right. And I say somehow we need to scale. Right. So we started looking at multifamily. I had a goal at the end of my single family journey where I said within six months I'm going to buy a multifamily. Right. And. And it's hard to penetrate into multifamily asset class. Right. But you know, we use a lot of off market strategies to Find our first deals. First deal. And we started with 45 units and then now we own almost 1700 units.

In Central Texas and in single family. So over a few years you acquired 13 properties. What did you like about single family? What'd you not like? Obviously there was a scaling factor that you wanted to grow your wealth a lot faster. But for those that are starting out in single family, what were some good and bad things with that investment?

Single family is awesome, right? You can buy deals out of anywhere. There's a lot of single family houses you can buy deal on your own. You can go and get a loan up to like 10 loan per person on, under Fannie Mae, the normal housing loan. Yeah, I liked it because you can find deals everywhere. I mean, not say it's easy to find deals nowadays anyway, but you can buy like one at a time, right? And it's all within you. You own the whole house by itself on your own name. Whereas on multifamily, we do a lot more syndication because it's much more higher value asset class, right? So and single family, you can find really good cash and cash and cash return compared to multifamily. If you just look at cash and cash. But the reason why I went to multifamily compared to single family, you know, I was really, when I was doing my single family, I was like, I was making like 30 to 50% cash in cash, which is crazy, right? I mean, how can you get that? But, and I had few infinite returns too, because we do. We put very little money or zero money into our single family and come to multifamily. I was, I mean, people are talking about 8 to 10% return, 7 to 10% return cash on account. I was thinking, why should I go to multifamily? But you know, after one week, I know I was doing all kind of calculation can never figure out. At one point I realized, oh my God, multifamily, there's something called NOI and value add where you can basically put your sweat equity into that asset class and push up the value of that asset by doing something called a value add strategy, right? So and you can go and refinance out and you can take out the money and you have a, almost a free building or a building with very, very little money, right? You can still do that in the single family as well. But I think the single family is you. Your value of the asset is really based on the comps surrounding it, right? So even you build a palace in front of all the other houses surrounding it. Your palace might be maybe 10% more than the rest of the houses. Right. Because that's how single family business work. Whereas multifamily is all based on the income that multifamily is producing. And I think it's very important that you can, if you are really good operator or a businessman, you can basically do all kind of strategy to push up that income on multifamily. And you know, you can really make a lot of money on multifamily for you and also for your investors.

Yeah. So you got the levers of, you know, increasing revenue through rents and finding miscellaneous income while trying to find efficiencies within the property to lower expenses to drive up your net operating income.

It's a very interesting business. Right. Because now you're able to use money, as you say, many levels to really change the value. Whereas single family, you can't do that. Right. Your after repair value is after repair value. That's it. Right. Everything is based on the comps. Yeah.

And then, you know, nice thing with multifamily is you have multiple streams of income because there's multiple units. You know, when I owned a rental property in California, you know, when our tenant moved out, there was no income coming in. Right. So the stress level of trying to release and renovate to get that property back on the market is, you know, you're putting all your eggs in one basket with single, you know, one property versus, you know, when you have, you know, multiple units to rent.

Yeah, yeah. And scalability, Right. I mean multi, I mean single family, of course, you, you own everything, you go and, you know, take care of the tenants and you, you know, of course you can use contractors to do the construction. Whereas in multifamily, I think it's a business, right. You can have an employee working on the site, on site and you can scale very quickly because now your time, your time can be leveraged much more efficiently. Right. So you can do big more deals. And one of the most important aspect of multifamily, I mean, I know we started with single family, I'm moving to multifamily. But I just want to put a contrast because it's very important here, right? So multifamily, a lot of the loans which is offered by government agencies, which is like almost 93% out of the loan out there, is offered by government agencies, which is like Fannie and Freddie Mac. They all are non recourse loans. Which means in case the economy goes down, you don't have any personal guarantee on that investment. They will go after the asset, they will not come after your house, your car. So it's basically, it's called non recourse loan, which is basically the borrower are not personally liable for that loan.

Well, yeah, that's a huge benefit. So if you're not able to make your debt service and you default on the loan, you're saying that with the non recourse, you know, they're going after the property, you're handing the keys figuratively to the lender and they're not coming after you or your, your investor. So it's definitely, you know, a great benefit.

Yeah, yeah. And of course there's bad boy Kawa. I mean, you can't do frauds and all that, right? So this is for something that's completely out of control and all that. I mean, imagine now with COVID 19, if I have a recast loan, I mean, all my loans has been non recourse because I know the markets are peaking. And that's what I teach you guys too, right? I mean, at this time, do not do recourse loan. Right? But when market is recovering back, that's one of the best time to take a lot more risk. But you know, in the past three, four months, and then last one year, I've moved all my deals to a non recourse loan to reduce reason and I can sleep peacefully because it's all non recourse.

So we are going to transition to multifamily. But for those that are getting into single family or wanting to buy their own property, what are some major pitfalls to look out for? Were there any times where you know you got burned or you're just like scratching your head, like, how am I going to get through this? With your single family, or did it overall go pretty well?

No, no, there's no such thing as overall going pretty well. If it's easy, everyone will be doing and making a lot of money. Right? There's no such thing. I mean, do not believe the gurus out there who's presenting from the stage and asking them to buy the education cost because it's all easy. There's no such thing. This is very, very hard work. Right? So yeah, of course we had a lot of pitfalls, a lot of learnings even in single family. And some of it is like where we have. I think I did, out of 13, I did 11 rentals and two of it was flipped. So the flips is one thing that I really regret. But it was so stressful. I mean, on one flip we made almost $40,000. On another flip, we made negative thousand dollars, which is okay, right? I mean, we still made a lot of money on the flip side, but the amount of stress that we have to go through on the flip is just so painful. Right. So, so yeah, flips were very hard to do. Rentals was hard to do because you're managing residents who are renting. But you know, because of the timeline and because of we are taking it slow and we know we're going to get that one year rental payment. Rental payment so that we can avoid the tax and all that counts in and gives us less stress on the rentals. But yeah, contractor management was really hard on all these deals, even on single family. In fact, contractor management is one of the hardest things to do. You know, it's just so not easy to manage contractors on a single family level. They always disappear. They always, you know, miscode you. They always, you know, do change order and ask you for more money. So many other problems. Right. And you know, that's some of the key learnings that we have learned in single family.

And y' all manage the, all the homes yourself. I mean that could, I mean having 13 families in the homes and you'll been on call 24 7, you know, how was that like? Or did you, or did you outsource the management?

No, no, no, we, we did our own managing directly the residents because I don't, I mean in the beginning is, it's always hard. But after one to two years, you know, it becomes easy because people are already used to staying in the house and you know, everything is following up, you know, as it is. Yeah, we didn't outsource. We did also. I mean it was hard to manage that many people. But single family residents are much better than apartment residents because, you know, single family rents are higher, which means the, the renters base is also paid higher. So they're a bit more well to do compared to apartment resident. But it was still painful since that's our, you know, one of the new ventures right from after I'm being W2 employee. So it was hard, but we were able to manage it well.

Transitioning over to multifamily, you continue to syndicate larger and larger deals behind all the good and the opportunities that, you know, investors have been benefited from over the, the past few years. You know, what are some challenges that you were put in a position that made you think, how am I going to get through this?

Presume you're asking on multifamily. Right. What are the challenges?

All right, yeah, Transition over To multifamily, you know.

Got it, got it.

With all the good. Is there something that you want to share the listeners on a lesson learned or you know, just a time where you were, you struggled to get through it. Obviously you did and you came out better for it. But any.

Oh yeah, sure, sure, sure. There's a lot of things that didn't go right. Right. So yeah, first of all finding the deal really hard because a lot of times when you are newbie on a multifamily business, you don't get the respect of the brokers. Most brokers doesn't even want to talk to you. And I feel that frustration because people say call the brokers, call the brokers, rebuild relationship. And every time I call them they are not really listening to you. They may be talking to you on the phone but they're not really listening to you because they know this guy is a new guy who's trying to, trying to buy, you know, multi million dollar deal and they're not going to risk their, you know, 100 to 300,000 of commission with a new guy. Right. So, so it was a bit frustrating because I realized it after a few calls with the brokers and you know I realized I have to figure out some other way to penetrate into the market. So that's why I started doing my own off market strategy with some of the things I teach you guys. Right. So you know, I think it's very important for first few deals to be really, really good. You know, rather than just buying from the brokers and you know, bidding, bidding and yourself bidding until the maximum price. And end of the day you win the war but you lost the battle or maybe the other way around. But yeah. And you have to really pray hard to market to carry up. So carry you up to make sure that your property cash flows. Right. Because you're paid so much. So yeah, that's one biggest thing. Right. Finding the deals was always hard. Finding the right staff was always hard. Right. I mean I know we said you can put a staff and we can get a property manager and move on but we chose to self manage and that has always been something that we want to do because we do a lot of difficult projects, we do a lot of value add deals which needs quick turnaround and we want to move quickly too. Right. So but it involves a lot of hard work for us.

So.

And finding the right people has always been hard. So starting with 45 units we had a full time manager but part time maintenance and after that we have all full Time, maintenance and manager. But just finding the right people has been always hard. These are some of the hard part. On multifamily.

Yeah. And then with multifamily, I mean, you started out with what, 45 units, knowing you went through every unit to inspect and you're checking the roof, you check in the age and the H VAC equipment. But are there things that new investors or even existing investors with infrastructure, things that they need to look out for that you've experienced as a. During your career in investing?

Yeah, a lot of things. Right. I mean, things like roof and how old is the roof, whether the roof was damaged by hail? You know, we had a case where we missed that part on one of the property and that, you know, we had to put a lot of money out after we closed because we didn't do a good inspection. So that is something we learned, you know, to make sure we do a thorough inspection. Some of the things in the due diligence, like, you know, sewer line breakage, you know, you have to make sure that you get someone to scope all the sewer lines. We, until now, we didn't have any issues with that. Some of the older properties, you know, you want to be watch out with the whole piping system to make sure that, you know, it's not too old, it's calcium beat up and it can cause a lot of issues in terms of water circulation and distribution. So we had some issues there. And just in general, just the knowing the tannin demographic. Right. Sometimes we missed. I mean, we see the apartments are occupied, but, you know, they may not be occupied by real tenants. Right. Real qualified tenants. Right. Because, you know, during. During sales, I mean, all sellers, you know, they put in all kind of people to fill up the property, you know, just to sell. Right. But once you sell it now it's your responsibility to turn around the property. So these are some of the things that you have to really watch out when you're doing due diligence on multifamily.

So for active investors, what are the most overlooked aspects in real estate investing that can cause investment mistakes that you see in the industry?

I wouldn't say overlooked, but I think over aggressive. Especially people who are coming new into the industry. They always like, they're like what you call, you know, they try to achieve the proforma numbers on paper, but that may not be reality on the ground. Right. So that's one of the most overlooked or most miscalculated judgment call by sponsors because it's very hard. You need a lot of experience to really match the tenant behavior on Excel whenever you do modeling, because that's what we're doing when we're doing modeling, you know, our spreadsheets are spreadsheet, but you're basically modeling how the tenant will behave compared to your capital injection, your renovation and whatever you're doing to the property, how are they going to behave? Right. So it needs a lot of experience because you have to look at whether the tenant can pay for it or not, whether they're willing to pay for it or not. Is there any other competition surrounding it? Is there any new construction coming in and what kind of unit size you have? Will they want to pay that many amount of money for that unit size? So a lot of things you have to consider in terms of modeling that tenant behavior on an Excel spreadsheet. And that's one of the hardest part in underwriting.

And how do passive investors, when they're trusting the active investor to underwrite properly. What are some questions that you feel a passive investor should be asking to just get a sense of like, hey, is this a One, does this person know what he or she's doing? And two, is this something I feel comfortable in investing with?

Yeah. I mean, for passive investors, they have to understand 90% of any deal is the operator. Right. So they have to bet on the jockey better than the operator. So the 10%, you can definitely ask questions about the deal like what kind of location is it? Why do you think this location is good? I mean, most of the time the operator should cover all that when they present that operator to the passive investor. Right. Why the location's good. And you want to find. I mean, as a passive, you really want to understand what is the play here? What is the value add that the operator is talking is the value add is because we have cheap money right now that we are printing so much money. The mortgage rate is so low. Is the value add is on the rents. The rents are low. And this is a rare fine compared to the comp surrounding it. Is the expense too high now these operators are going to go and fix it. Yeah. These are the things that they want to know from, from any presentation or any deals that the operator give it to the passive investor.

One thing, you know, reading your book about passive investors, it's really also they need to find out what is their goal and their strategy of investing. All the investors obviously are looking for capital preservation, but some are willing to take a bigger risk, right. To grow in equity and have a future higher payout in year five or seven, whenever the end the strategy is versus somebody who is looking maybe for a nicer property that has stability, more stability, less capital, but in return less risk. Are you seeing any of your passive investors as each year you go on? Are you seeing any of the of your investors or yourself going more towards stable assets? Are you looking, continuing to look for those true deep value add opportunities?

A lot of my investors want both. They want deep value add at the same time, they want cash flow, right? So there are some investors who just said I would just want to give me like annuity type of deal where you know, I just get cash flow. A lot of them, you know, they want both. Especially when I bring deals, I bring a combination of both. I don't do too much of a high risk deal versus too much of, you know, no cash flow deal. I usually bring somewhere in middle ground which is a perfect combination of investment. Right. Moving forward, post Covid, I probably will take much higher risk deal which means much higher returns as well. But I didn't do that for the past two years before COVID because I know the market's going too high and I want long term loans and more predictability in terms of risk. But yeah, my investors are, they look.

For both well and then you mentioned the post COVID 19 environment. How has Achieve investment group adapted to your operating the existing properties and buying new properties? Are you looking at different asset classes or what in general has changed since a few months ago?

So I think in terms of operation, we have taken an approach of filling up our property as high as possible, as much as possible. Because right now there is no eviction process and our delinquency, we are like 90, 92% collections from what we supposed to get. So the higher occupancy it is, the higher collection is going to be. So we're just, you know, pushing everyone to lease as much as possible because then. And also we're reducing all the NTVs, right? By not increasing. So a lot of NTVs are either not living or living less compared to what they used to be. And we are trying to be very careful with our capex budget and only do what the bank is asking us to do. Nothing really discretionary. I mean we don't do discretionary at all. But we are really being selective with the projects and also we are really pushing all of our stuff to lease, lease, lease as much as possible at the same time, collect, collect, collect as much as possible as well. So we are basically looking for some really good opportunities coming up. But how do you take advantage of the strategy. That's what I'm cracking my head right now. No one knows how the market's going to be, but there may not be a lot of deals in multifamily, but there could be a lot of deals in multifamily, too. Multifamily right now is being supported by the government money until July. From April to July, there's additional $600 of employment per week. Right. For unemployed people. Right. So because of that, people are paying a lot of their rents after July. Hopefully that everybody go back to work or they still get more money from the government until things got stabilized. So. But there will be people who are already in trouble before COVID They just continue to be in trouble. Right. That are the people that's going to be. They're going to. In the next few months, they're going to say, okay, I'm getting out for finally. Right. Because I was on trouble and now it made it worse. Now either they are, you know, they took out a lot of cash out of their pocket to sustain the operation, and once things become a bit stable, they want to get out quickly. So there will be opportunities from that aspect. In multifamily, there's also other aspects like, you know, hotels. If you find some hotels, you know, you can buy at a really good price, but you have to know how to operate hotels. And we are not operators of hotel, but you can partner up with people or you can look at hotel conversion to apartment as well. Right. So that's another point. If you can find somewhere in good location and good cities, that'll be a really good place as well. So, yeah, we are basically looking for people who need help either to buy out their deals so that we can buy more. But we are really, really focusing a lot on our operations right now, which is what all operators should be doing. There's not many deals which make sense right now just at this time.

Yeah. So what I'm hearing, especially on the operations side, is just being very mindful of the spend if there's not a value creation at the end of it, Right?

Yeah, yeah, correct.

And then for existing, your tenants that are existing, trying to have them renew or stay in the property. And one thing that has helped is having a relationship prior to Covid and. And having just that relationship with tenants doing a good job handling their work orders. You know, all those things that make them have a good taste in their mouth. Their mouth about, you know, staying at the property longer.

Right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Because tenant do appreciate good management. And this is when they're going to really appreciate you back, right? I mean the eviction laws and can force them to pay. But now that thing doesn't exist, right. So you'll see a lot of property management company, a lot of asset which didn't take care of tenant and now the tenant is going to take revenge, right? So because they know you can't evict me and you didn't treat me well previously. So I'm not going to take care of you, right. Because I'm going to get out or I'm just not going to pay because you can't really evict me, right. So yeah, it's always important to take care of the residents in the property.

So achieve investment group. Credit me if I'm wrong, but the focus has really been on class B, maybe C plus but mostly in the B area where there's true value add opportunity other than maximizing potential, the potential of maximizing wealth at the end of the, at the end of the five years or the whole period while you renovate. When you're comparing it to class A and let's just say class B, class A and class B, what's the elevator pitch for both right now for investors? And is class A in this post Covid environment better than a class B in your opinion?

I think in my opinion. Well we always thought that class B and C is the darling of the multifamily, right. I mean class A, maybe not the new construction, not the A, but class A minus would probably be a good play as well. I mean I still believe class A minus is a good asset. But during COVID I mean a lot of people who lost jobs are the class B and C people, right? But I think you know, class A, you know, people can still work from home and all that but you know, if the economy continues to go down like this, like what we have right now, class A will be impacted as well. But class B and C may be able to go back to their work because they, they live on paycheck to paycheck and they are more, you know, paid lower. Right. So a lot of people can take them back whereas class A is, you know, much more higher paid and a lot of companies and it might be impacting class A later on. So yeah, I would say, you know, the elevator pitch is do class B more because that's in between class B A and C. But as long as you buy it, right, you budget your capex, right. You should be doing very well. I mean when you buy class A right, paid right is new asset. It's not like people leaving class A right now and going to class B and C. It didn't happen. Right. But even class C, if you have budget reserves and all reserves and capex budget, you should be okay.

So shifting gears a little bit when you started, we've talked in the past that you woke up really early in the mornings because you had a W2 job and you were trying to make it all work. What were some of those routine habits that helped you stay focused and helped you keep motivated? When you were juggling a lot with raising capital, finding deals and just building the foundation for your success, how did you juggle it all and what are some habits that you recommend others you.

Know, do I think you know in the. Well, yeah. When I was working W2, you know, it's a very interesting time because I was doing W2 and I also want to do this business which I know can be a pathway to generational wealth. W2, there's always a cap, right. How much can you go? There's always someone on top of you and your pay is always capped. I like taking risk. I like being a creative thinker. And that's why I said I'm going to do some kind of business. So when we decide on real estate, we say, how are we going to do this? Because now we want to ramp up quickly. At the same time, we have to take care of W2. So I always wake up very early and put my mind into, you know, if you read this book called the Miracle Morning, they talk about doing like five different things. The savers, I think some of the meditation visualization. So savers are silence. Affirmation is for a V is for visualization. I can't remember what is E. And there's another S which I've completely forgot. But you do these five things and, and you can get your mind focused early morning. And if you wake up early morning, you'll be surprised to see how much focus you can have within the next one to two hours before you go into your routine W2 job. So the power of that hours, when you wake up early morning, let's say you wake up like 4:30 or 5. And let's say you do all this for 30, 40 minutes and let's say at 6 to 8, you know, you can do a lot of work, focused work, which is. Can be very, very powerful for your wealth growth. Right. In another business. So that's how. That's what I did, you know, that was very helpful.

Yeah, it's a lot of work, a lot of sweat equity. And you know, you really have to enjoy what you're doing, right. I mean, you can't. It needs to really be a passion. It's got to be more about money. And for me, and same with you, it's that, you know, real estate is, it's fun, it's a hobby, it's, it's a job, but it's also a way to do something that you enjoy every day. And oh, by the way, it helps others make money, it helps you make money. But that's not the end of the day. The underlying cause why we get in, we just, we love real estate and what we do.

Yeah, yeah. And look at the impact that you, you will put in on the people, right? I mean, when you're working for someone, you're within that domain, right? You are probably, you'll work on a project, on an asset. No, you are just an employee, right? But when you go out there and when you're being an entrepreneur and you are buying a deal which needs help, first of all, you're helping the deal itself, the asset itself, you are remodeling the property. Second is you are basically contributing to the community surrounding it and you're contributing to the community that's staying in that assets, and you are actually giving jobs to people who are coming and doing construction in your asset. And you're also helping lenders make money. And at the same time, you know, you are just all the vendors that's, you know, coming and, you know, selling things to your community, you know, they are making money. And so the quality of life for all these, you know, four to five groups of people and the amount of influence that you, you personally putting into all these people is huge. Right? So gives you a lot of fulfillment end of the day, right? I mean, yeah, of course you can make money out of it, but your money doesn't come to the grave, right? So your fulfillment comes to the grave, right? So. But one day when you're really old, you'll be thinking, wow, I made that much of impact to the community. Right? So. And that's what makes a lot of people happy. Yeah. You can work for a long time in a job. There's nothing wrong. I mean, I worked for almost 20 something years on a job and I really enjoyed it. But there's always a ceiling, there's always a, you know, your influence is so limited to within that domain, that small domain that you're talking about, probably four to five people. And you are just a small fish in a Big tank, right? So here you are. You are the big fish. Right? So. So it gives you a lot of fulfillment.

Yeah, it's a great perspective, especially thinking about all the value you can add in other people's lives. So, you know, as we start closing up on our podcast on a positive here, what are, what are some of your proudest moments investing in real estate?

Proud moment is, you know, giving jobs to people. I mean, I mean, not in multifamily. When I was doing my single family, I think either my third house or my fourth house I went to. By the way, nobody ever asked me this question.

It's the untold stories.

Yeah, yeah, correct. But I always had that in my mind, right? So I thought a fourth house. I went to this house and I saw my contractor, my GC there, he's a semi gc. And I saw another guy behind him. He was a really old guy. You know, it's like very old, very thin, and he's sweeping the house. And I was thinking, oh, my God, the impact that I'm making to this person. Life is huge, right? So, you know, I mean, otherwise, who's going to give this very old man a job, right? And because of me is having a job, right? So I was just so proud to be making an impact on other people's life at that time. So that's one of the proudest moments that I always have in my mind.

Well, James, I appreciate you being our first guest and appreciate your insights. Are there any other items you want to share on the show or about your company?

My company? I mean, you can reach me at Achieve Investment Group. Achieve is like achieve achieveinvestmentgroup.com my email is jameshieveinvestmentgroup.com you can get my book@Amazon.com it's called Passive Investing in Commercial Real Estate. And one of the fastest way to get connected with me, just text 38470 tax achieve to 38470. That's the newest geek. I have to get people to connect with me. If you text Achieve to 38470, you should be able to, you know, get well connected with me through my email list. That's it. I'm available in Facebook. We have a 5,000 member Facebook group called Multifamily Investors Group. I'm in LinkedIn. My podcast is called Achieve Wealth True Value at Real Estate Investing. Yeah, I think that's the whole gamut of what I do. Right? And on top of that, I do mentoring as well. And my mentoring website is achieve academy.net and I'm going to be soon launching a passive investor course, which is going to be awesome. It's going to be so valuable for passive investors. And I would really encourage you guys at least listen and look at that passive investor course and learn how to invest passively because it's not easy to get information about how to strategize or what are the tactics for passive investors. There's a lot of books on active investors, but passive investors are going to be a very interesting content there.

Yeah, this all sounds great, James. I really appreciate all that you do for others, adding value, educating and just making this multifamily industry, real estate industry in general better for all. So thank you for being on our show and we'll talk soon.

Absolutely. Happy to be here. Thank you.

That's all for this episode. We hope you subscribe, share and leave a review of the show. For more information about passively investing in multi family apartments, check out Wayne's free ebook by going to creipartners.com forward/ebook. Also, follow us on Facebook by searching CREI partners. This one.