Vinney ''Smile'' Chopra - Untold Stories of Real Estate Investing - From $7 to Acquiring Over $35M

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. For your next episode, we are excited to have Vinnie Smile Chopra, originally a mechanical engineer from India, is a top multifamily investor and syndicator with over 40 years of experience in real estate. As a multifamily syndication expert, he has facilitated over 29 successful syndication deals. He has acquired as principal and key sponsor a very successful real estate investment portfolio worth over $350 million, more than 4,300 doors under management. Vinny is an international best selling author and host of two podcasts. He holds an MBA from George Washington University. There's a reason Vinnie's name is Mr. Smiles, which is evident even through just hearing his demeanor in his voice. He's a strong believer in the power of an individual's ability to shape the world around them through positive thought, enthusiasm and selfless actions. His latest passion is to develop and build luxury assisted senior livings multifamily and a great partnership. Let's welcome Vinnie Smiles. Welcome, Vinny.

Hi. Hi Vin. So glad to be with you, brother. This is awesome. I can't wait to really give the nuggets and keep on asking and give a great material for your audiences. Thank you.

Thank you. Well, you know, we just kicked off our podcast, so thank you so much for your time and being willing to share the good, bad and the ugly. But first, I want to start off by saying I really enjoyed reading your book, Apartment Syndication Made Easy. I will say your experience and willingness to teach others is extremely valuable for our real estate investor group. So let's start by your story. Coming from India in the 1970s with just $7 in your pocket, from that time to today, you've grown an investment portfolio over $350 million. A lot to be grateful for. And I know success didn't come easy as there's a lot of hard work right in real estate syndication. But as we discussed the good, bad and ugly of your experience in real estate investing, what do you see as the good of real Estate investing for those getting into the industry, both from an active and passive investor perspective.

Sure, Wayne. You know, the biggest thing I'd like to tell your audience is that I started very small. I had single family homes like a lot of, you know, people start with. But when I was learning multifamily and I chose that field for a purpose because as an engineer, it just made sense to me rather than having homes all over in many, many states, you know, to have them under one or two roofs and the economies of scale will help and you can collect rents faster, things like that. But the biggest thing is I bought my 14 unit apartment for $180,000. That was my start in the crash, in the recession of 2007, 8 and 9. So I'm really fortunate that I stayed the course and I just kept on plugging away. Plugging away, plugging away. You're right, it's a lot of hard work. You know, the iceberg, when somebody looks at the tip of the iceberg, that's just the success we see. But we don't see under the level, the seawater, how much hard work has gone rejection, ups and downs in anybody's life. Right?

Yeah. So, I mean, obviously a lot of the financial benefits for you and your family, what other things would you say somebody getting in on an active and passive side are the good benefits of multifamily in your experience?

Totally. You know, active meaning like they are buying an apartment complex. Right. And I always tell my students also to go small, to get going. Right. Get it duplex, even get a four plex, get eight plex, 16 plex. But the big thing is the more bigger number of apartments, units you go, it gets easier and easier and easier. But the biggest trouble I find is that people are not able to scale up fast by their own money, which is the truth. You know, how much can we buy? How much can we spend our own money? That's what I got caught on in the early stages of my life. And I said, oh my gosh, I need to learn how can I buy more apartments. And that's when I was brought this in a world syndication, which is pooling of the money together legally through a common goal and then making profit for the investors. So I became syndicator and fortunately I've done all 29 deals as sponsor, as a principal, as being on the loan on all 29. So I've never been invested at all, I've never invested in LP deals at all, limited partnership at all.

So you have not invested any passively. It's all been active, active deals. So you've been the one who found the deal, underwrote it and now you manage it. All the properties are in house management.

Managing all of our assets, all 29 of them. So we started my old company, ideal Investment Group. 14 syndications I did in that one like in Odessa, Midland, San Marcos, where you are in Austin. Right there, Seguin, San Antonio. Then I opened my new company five years back only and we have done 220 million in that one just in the last four and a half years. Moneel Investment Group and we manage vertically aligned. We have property management companies in both sides. So everything is self managed.

Remind me, do you do class A and class B only or do you go into class C? What's your property type?

Well, let me kind of share with all your audience. The biggest reason I did C, C minus and C in my early years because I couldn't raise much money, you know. And when you start very small, you just try to make one investor at a time, one second, third, fourth, fifth, you know, with the grace of God. Now I have 160 investors who have built with me over, over and over and over, over again, you know, and I double their money, triple their money, things like that. So they are happy. So now I can raise more money so I can buy B class B plus, even A minus assets. Like last year we bought 35 million with a joint partner, Enzo Multifamily and 52 million. So it was big one from a 14 unit of 180,000 and we were buying C C C C minus value add for many, many years. And that's how everybody should get started because there is a big value add and you can make trouble the money, triple the money sometime, you know. But then when you can raise more money, that's what the power of syndication is. Now you're into more stable big V assets. That's where we are in now.

Yeah, I would say the barriers of entry. Right. Are easier to get in when you're dealing with smaller assets and there's less competition for the C C minus. You're dealing with a lot of the family owned properties. Institutional.

Totally, totally. A lot more.

So we hear a lot of the good. And part of the reason I started this podcast is really to hear the bad and ugly. So with 29 syndications all active, I mean it's not all smiles, is it? So I, you know, you know, I really want to hear, you know, this is, you know, I do it for myself is because I'm you Know, I'm learning from, you know, people that are experienced, like yourself is, you know, what are the bad? What is the ugly that you have gone through just so people can see that it's not all roses and all good.

You know, I agree with you. I know I wrote that book, you know, apartment syndication made easy. But more and more I read about it. And a lot of people, they tell me about it, they say, vinny, it's not that easy. And I have to agree with them because it's got spinning up a lot of plates. As I discussed in the book. I would say the hardest part, which I was starting out as a new investor, was my track record. No track record at all. So that was big thing, people. We lived always in California, near San Francisco. I never want to move back to where I'm purchasing. That was a drawback, big drawback. Banks wouldn't give me loan. They will say I have to live nearby the property, 15 miles away. And then the money dried up. We were in the crash. I risked million points, something. And by the Monday morning Friday, the crash was 854 points. I remember I was ready to buy this property. Very good property. It was fully real, actually repossessed by the bank. And they had worked on it for, I think about two years or so to bring it back to life. Two years or something. One year and some. And then we were going to buy it. Contract was on my table. But my money dried up. Oh my gosh, I couldn't buy that property near Dallas. I wish I had bought that. We would be a lot higher. But the thing is, due diligence problems. Oh my gosh, I can write a book on it. Not running the cameras through the sewer lines that caught me and caught ice. I think I have to pay $200,000, right when I bought the property near Nassau. And I couldn't believe it. Beautiful property. Everything was great. The seller put in 2.6 million or even 3 million into renovation of interiors and balconies and everything. But guess what? They never went under the ground. And that's where the wrought iron pipes were all broken and they were smelly and all that. They were throwing some chemicals in it. So a lot of trouble, you know. And then one property I bought in San Antonio, we missed the foundation. We were trying to cut corners in not getting these foundation people come in there. And so when we bought the property in about four months or so, we started seeing this something happening. And it was a chiller system. So the water pipes coming through, they bursted. It Was mess, I'm telling you. And my investors were, thank God they were nice people. They were actually attorneys. Can you believe? Friends attorneys. They joined together 7, 800 I raised. They were very kind to us. We meet every two weeks, my partner and I, and they were very happy that we did everything then we gave them 8.5% return per year after we sold it. We gave them cash flow. Only one quarter, but two and a half years, no cash flow. Wow. So those were bad things. Lots of contractor I can think of who have taken me to court because they didn't do a good job. I didn't pay them, not a lot. Maybe one I should say sorry about that. But you know, this was a burnt building I bought in Texas near Freeport. And I bought it as a C minus. I turned it into B, bought it for 3.550, sold it for 8 million. 8.5 actually made good money for my investors and me also. But it's a lot of hard work in there. Lot of problems, lots of demographical shift people living and I mean, so there are lots of negative things I can talk about as a sponsor. But if your attitude is right, if your mindset is right, you say, you know what? Every situation has a solution, every challenge has a solution. Every problem. I never look at problem. I just see, okay, what's in the best interest of the investors. Because investors are gold, residents are gold, our team members are gold. Those are the three people right in the chain. Vendors are gold, vendors, their families, their businesses. And then we are the fourth ones at the bottom. The key thing is, if we have that in our mind, always I make decisions totally based on those four models that I have, mission statements I have in the company. The key thing is, even though you may lose some money, I mean, sometimes we have given our property management fee back into the LLC to give out to the investors the cash flow for the quarter. Make it a little bit sweeter for them than they would have gotten. So little. Because some of the investors are actually retired people, right? And they are counting on that money and so forth. And then investor meetings, doing that communication is so humongous in my books, you know, because people want to sleep good at nighttime, and they can only sleep good at nighttime if they know that you are transparent, that you are able to provide them everything they need in a very short period of time. You know, our response time is like within an hour to all our investors. And they have told more people and more people and more people and. And that's how we have built our 168 investors, where I can raise 4, 5, 6, $10 million now from that same pool again and again and again.

Yeah, well, I heard, you know that a lot of great information. One being that due diligence, these older properties, if you're getting into the business and you don't have a lot of real estate background, you're not thinking a lot about back of the house stuff. You're thinking occupancy. You know, you're looking at the rent roll. When you're underwriting, you're looking at the Excel spreadsheet, right? And then when you're going in and doing your, your due diligence, you're walking into each unit. If you're investing in office, you're walking common areas to garage. You know, you're just, you might be able to look in tenant spaces. But going back of the house, right, and running that camera into those cast iron pipes, checking the chillers, looking at the, the chiller logs, you know, the maintenance on, on everything, just to make sure you know what you are buying. You have eyes wide open.

So true. And you know, the outside structure, if we find some shifting of the bricks, one should be totally, totally cognizant and say, why are these bricks not matching? Sometimes they do paint over it. It has happened. I've seen that, you know, sub flooring, oh my gosh, second floor, I mean, you know, subflooring is just ridiculous. When there is, this floor has already given up and it's creaking, those negative points, you know, or the flags never become green. I just tell them the small negative flag becomes bigger. Negative flag always, you know, green might just stay same size green, but the red ones become bigger and bigger. So I have always, always felt that every time when we kept on buying more and more and more and more and more to really get better at, you know, the financial due diligence, the physical, like you said, due diligence. The roofs, the chimneys, the outside exteriors, the parking lots, the sewer lines, the water line systems, all that electrical, all that system, it's worth, that's what I would like to say it's worth to spend that extra money with a professional company who can do a great due diligence because otherwise you're shelling out thousands and thousands of dollars once you have the keys.

Yeah, I think it's important because you're surrounding yourself with people that are experts in other fields. Right. And especially if you're a syndicator or you're buying on your own, you're Going to be experienced in what you do day to day. But it's important to spend that money to know what you're buying. But also you can use it as a renegotiation, right, or tool to renegotiate price. How have you used that? And it probably pays for itself after you mention it.

You know, I don't like to retrade. It's called retrading. The brokers hate it, the sellers hate it. And you know, we haven't done lately, but in the past I've done where I've gotten like I'd say 100,000, maybe 250. I got, I know one property, I got 450,000 at the closing because the situation they shared with me was not really up to date information. Right. As we started going through these units, we found lot more trouble with windows and this subflooring I just mentioned. And then of course the outside exteriors, they had painted it. So I'm just giving all these instances from my own self. You know, it's not any theory, it's practical. You know, I've learned. So that's where I start. What I do is, I'd love to give a nugget is that I start my process of due diligence right away. I hire a very good company within the area. I've never walked a unit, by the way, sorry, 29 things I've done. Maybe I've walked in one property, but most of the time I just believe in getting the professionals. The best attorneys, real estate attorneys, the best syndication attorneys, the best loan brokers to work with me. I've closed on all 29 deals from LOI letter of intent to final closing. So in the last 12 years, I have perfect record. I don't want to mess it up. But the key thing is that you have all these team members massaging and working with you. Then it's much, much better way to take down the property. The big thing I would like to say is that as you do the due diligence, you should start taking pictures. Even the due diligence team and you and your team members, everything that's off mark. You should take picture of that and put it in the Dropbox. Front of the property, back of the property, the sewer systems, the air conditioners, the quality of it means, the rustiness, the broken pavements, everything. Put it in the drop box, keep on putting, keep on putting, keep on putting. And then you start getting some even bids to fix some major things. And within seven to 10 days, if you think from the due diligence. Right. Seven to 10 days. Figure out a way if this is what you want to buy or not buy within seven days. You should decide on that, walk away or go further. And then you start preparing a repair letter. It's called repair letter. On the 10th day. On the 10th day, even though you have 30 days for the due diligence, you never want to wait until the 29th day to give this letter to the seller. And then seller says you walk away. You know, I don't want to give you retrade, whatever. Right. I mean we don't like to do too much retrading. But when the product is not good, especially in C, C, B, you do find lots and lots of challenges. So it's good to really make that list and get it going and get some bids also so that you could proof, give them proof. Hey, we have all these 350 pictures of what the property needs and we are just asking you for this, this, this, this, this, this line item. Many times the sellers know that.

Yeah. Well the other thing that you were talking about was investment. Well, in my mind, investment, transparency and communication. Because things are going to go maybe not perfect. I mean, at the end of the day we want things to go smoothly and a lot of times it does. But when it doesn't, I always tell my team at work, we're in commercial real estate, managing properties and you know, you want points on the board with your tenants because eventually you start going negative. But if you're still on that positive scoreboard, you're still okay. It's when you don't have that relationship, you don't have the, the communication with either your investors or your, or your tenants, your residents. That's when things start going bad. So love to hear, you know, how do you stay? I mean you said, do you do quarterly investor meetings and.

Yes.

What's all your communication process?

As soon as I purchase a property, I've been doing it for 12 years now. We are first month after the closing, I have an investor meeting. First month, I go with the closing statement. I give them the full disclosure how everything went, what, where all these fees went and all that stuff. Right. And we closed it. They see all my snippets. I never ever, ever like to show them Excel worksheets. Anybody can prepare Excel worksheets. I show them real snippets from the closing statement and it might take me four slides, but I want to share them everything. Who is the staff? How did we keep the staff that we purchased? You know, they Were really good. These are their pictures. So I bring the properties to my investors. That's what I do through very personalized presentations. The templates that we design, I design, actually I've been designing them. I like it this way. There are lots of pictures of the asset that they can see every quarter on the quarter. But first three months, I do three monthly investor meetings. First one is to go with the closing statement. Second one, I do it again one month later to show them what we have done within a month, what was our business plan, how we have changed the curb appeal, how we have done the trimming of the landscape and this and that. If we have already bought curing machines and the, you know, cafes and all that. And then we have, you know, media centers, if you bought the laptops and all those things and big, you know, all in ones. We have been doing dog parks. If you are building those, any kind of thing. If you have done like the parking lot resurfacing, the striping and all that. Those pictures are very meaningful to the investors. Oh, brochures. Hold on. Marketing the website. That's my second meeting. Third meeting. I do kind of take them into the software side. What software we are using, what's the purpose behind it? All the reports come. This is where the portal is, investor portal and all that. So I give them a complete training on that. And we record everything. Every single thing is recorded. All these meetings and those investors who are able to come, they ask me live questions in the zoom and then webex gotomeeting Zoom. We have done all three. Now we do Zoom and we archive those meetings. So we send that recording back to all the investors of that particular asset. So I've done it like that for 12 years. And then we do quarterly after that. So first three months, three meetings, then quarterly after that. And then we deposit now quarterly checks. We never pay monthly. It's just too much hassle. A lot of my investors are very rich people. Doctors, attorneys, directors, IT people, all them. They don't need that $500 check, you know, every month, or $600. So we pay quarterly. And they've been actually going to the mailbox and picking them up four times a year. We have done it for last 10 years almost. Then last year we went into IMS system and AppFolio where we are able to put in their account, you know, money. Yeah. So important in every presentation I do, I have two, three slides to investors. We are totally transparent. They can ask for invoices, for bids, for bank statements, for P Ls everybody gives P Ls for rentals. Everybody gives those Capex any kind of thing they want. No holds far. And my VP of Finance has been with me for 12 years and she's invested money, her husband has invested money, double, triple money like that. Then our accounts payable senior accounts payable manager. She's been with me seven years. So we have a whole department and I bring it to my investors should we get audits done on our books. And it's going to cost, you know, 12,000 or 10,000, whatever bids we got. They said, vinny, we don't need to. I mean you telling us everything and everything good, bad, ugly, I mean, you know, there's nothing hidden. We ask for it and you give it to us. So why. Yeah, well.

And they sleep easy at night and you obviously have that relationship with them. And what's great and what I tell investors for CREI Partners is it's tangible. It's a tangible asset that you are buying into on the equity side, you're part of the ownership and you can go to the property, you can ask for this transparency. You know, a lot of times they're not wanting to get in the details, but at least knowing that they can is a huge, huge, huge benefit in real estate investing versus other investments where you're waiting for, you know, a quarterly report or an annual report.

Right, right. I would love to say, Wayne, I never give them in my PowerPoint presentation an Excel worksheet. Never have shown it for 12 years. Always it's authenticated from the snippet from the software that we use and it shows the date I took that report and what's the program I'm using. So every time they see dollar and cents, we never have kept two weeks. There is no commingling of any accounts. So when we buy a property, we have operations checking account, we have escrow checking, a savings account which is for our deposits and any of the escrows for tax or insurance. And of course then we have a Capex account.

So.

And then we have investors account. So every single property I have like probably 120 accounts. Right. Because then we have manager LLCs and all their accounts. So that's what we have a whole structure where there's no commingling of any money and everything is face value in pennies. And I even show them. This is very interesting, I want to share to your audience. When I show the Capex report and the Capex report has like 17 pages long, I show them snippet of 1 of 17 and show them the whole thing. Then I show one in the middle, then I show the last one so that they could see. And then we also upload it also, you know, into our portal so that our investors can see all the 17 pages. Every dime is accounted for and everything. We are very proud of that because we don't want them to ever feel that we were dishonest or anything, which we are not. Integrity. And really having that fiduciary responsibility of taking care of other people's money is the best. And that they have told their friends and their family. I have my investors whose brothers, sisters, daughters, sons. I mean, everybody's coming in, you know, so it's a happy family, Moneel. Happy family, I call it.

Yeah. And just a side note, Moneel, the initials of your daughters. Right. If I remember you telling me last.

Time, we have two kids, Neil and Monica. Neil went to Berkeley. He's an electrical engineering and computer science scientist. And Monica went to ucla. So it's Monica and Neil kind of put together is Monil. That's our brand. Yeah. Our legacy we want to leave behind is investment. Moneel management, Monil senior living, Moneel hospitality, Monil branding, now digital branding, Monil cloud defense, Monil everything. Yeah.

So want to transition to going back to your book and you mentioned the plates earlier. So in your book you discussed the five plates that a syndicator must keep specifically spinning in the air, which I think is a great analogy. So those plates, and I wrote them down here. So one was building superb teams.

Yes.

The other is building investor list and relationships.

Yes.

You had another underwriting and analyzing the deals. You've got loan qualification and property takeover and management.

Yeah, yeah.

So a lot. And I really, for the listeners, if you are. If you can visualize spinning, you know, these five plates, I mean, that really is what a syndicator is doing. So my question to you, Vinnie, is, is there one plate more important than the other? And if not, what are your suggestions for active investors to not be overwhelmed by the process when starting out or growing their portfolio?

Very good question. Very good question, Wayne. And thank you for asking that. You know, in the book, if anybody reads the book, I do explain that, you know, even though I did the loan qualification as plate number four, because you do need to qualify for the loan. That's a huge part. Taking a principal or your own net worth. Because net worth has to be more than the loan. Of course, when you get to 10 million plus, then it's not proportional, it's a percentage but the first one is a very important play to get the right people on team. You know, your partner, your people who are the loan broke. I mean the sorry, the real estate attorney is on your team, SEC attorney, syndication attorney is on your team and loan broker is on your team. And then I cover the broker from real estate in my third plate because you got to get the whole system going. Second plate, I really make it a big deal. Out of it is the investor plate forest indicator. You know, if you don't need money, then you can jump over plate number two. Right. You know, you don't have to drop, but the biggest plate in the whole equation is the investor plate. Investor plate. Because the more you cultivate great investors, the more your bandwidth will be. And once you are able to prove to them that you can deliver results, then it's going to be very, very tremendous. Right there. Fifth plate is the property management plate. And anybody who's starting out doesn't really need to worry about that until you get to that point after you have bought the property. Actually you will need that person before even the company who's going to manage it.

Yeah, part of your team building.

Right. Nobody will give you the loan unless you have a very solid property management company who has experience in that range of units. So essentially plate number one is small, Plate number five is small. Plate number four is also small. Once you do your financial statement and you meet with some commercial loan people and you get a loan broker who can tell your story, that plate also is small. Now we are left with only two big plates, right? We have the plate number two, the investor plate. I always have felt that I need to cultivate investors and make sure I keep the ones that I get and they can invest again and again and again. And the third plate is also a big one. The third plate is the broker plate. That's the real estate broker. And then I always teach that, you know, in my academy you got to have three emerging markets, not just one, you got to have three different ones. And you go many leaves and trees, I call it trees and branches and leaves. Because different people, sellers in that one particular market is going to be working with not just one broker. They'll be working with several different outfits over there. So I really make a big deal out of that. We should have four to five brokerage houses in particular market to build relationships with if you want to get off market deals and even, you know, do the campaigns and things like that. So plate number two is big, plate number three is big. And they are ever Revolving. Because if you're doing 506B as in boy, exemption for the regulation D for syndication, you need pre existing relationship substantiated before the deal is really signed and it gets on the paper. Because your database freezes when you get a deal from anywhere and you sign a contract. You cannot talk about that deal after the people you meet. For 506B, you could do it in 506C advertisements and for accredited investors only, you could do it. But for the 506B, which is 90% of the syndication packets are done with the exemption regulation D exemption 506B are pre existing relationship. So I highly recommend everybody to really build their list. Go to meetings, go to wealth clubs, you know, all the different places and your colleagues and everybody do webinars, you know, educate people. That's how I started doing my business was educating. Meeting in the restaurants and here. It's the hardest thing. By the way, I will just say, everybody listening to me, it's not that easy. But you got to have the mindset. There is $23 trillion with a T trillion dollars in retirement funds in this country, in USA and out of that, about 11 or 12 million or trillion trillion is in the self directed. No, not self directed, I would say. Is that right? I'm mistaken now. So I think 11 million, I heard, is the one that could be self directed, but only 5% is invested in syndication like ours. I mean, these numbers might be here and there, but the big thing is the mindset.

There's opportunities for sure, yeah.

Wayne, you know, I mean, just to give you an example, my car care center guy, I know him very well. I've taken my Mercedes there and all that and he was working on it and you know, I thought that, you know, he's renting it and all that. One time few years back, he says, vinny, I bought the building. I said, oh, really? What kind of loan did you get, literally? I asked him, he says, no, I paid 4 million cash. I said, what? See, look at that. Look at my thinking. I thought that he's just running a small operation, that he may not have money. The guy has so much money, you know, and never assume, never rationalize anybody. The people who don't really show you that they have money have the money. I'm telling you, man, this is a.

Lot of good tidbits for all the investors. So I'd love to transition now to passive investors. So we talked a lot about the active. So let's talk a little bit about the passive. So what are Some, some things that passive investors need to hear more of to ensure they are making the right decisions with their investments.

Surely. I'm so glad you're asking me that question too. See, passive investing is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And as a passive investor, if I were to do it, I will look at the principals first. Who are the cooks in the kitchen, I call it. If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, it's going to burn and recipe is not going to be real. Everybody's going to. If they go through splits and things like that during the five years, it's the worst thing can happen. Look for how many general partners are in your deal. Who are the principals? They should be no more than three to four or five, four people at all in any kind of syndication, because there's no reason for that. Many other part is ask their track record big time. You know, what have they done? You know, a lot of people say I've got 5,000, 7,000 units. But ask them how many you are principal in how many limited partners, how many as general partners. So those are the three questions you want to ask them. And how. What's your experience and how many properties have you given the full cycle and how have the returns been? Right? I mean, all those things are very, very important also to really check them out, their credibility about their record, you know, any kind of, you know, any things happening, things like that. The other part is how is their criteria to buy? What's they looking for? Are they into that particular segment, how many properties they have bought in that particular place where they're, you know, asking you to invest? Things like that. But the biggest thing is how conservative are they underwriting things? Because in underwriting you could flip a switch just like this and you can make spectacular returns come alive by just changing few point two five in the cap rate, you know, just the cap rate exit or enter whatever, and you can add a little bit more into the rent and that's going to blow up the numbers like crazy. So you got to be really, really thinking through, okay, how conservative it is. Would they really be able to give the kind of percentages they are telling me as preferred returns? I see some people giving 10% returns, but the property is giving only 5.5% cash on cash. How can you give it? So some of the syndicators are taking the money from the investors and then giving it back to the investors. I know my syndication attorney said it's a fraud, it's a Ponzi scheme, you know, so it's very tough. I mean, you know, but please look into all these things. And there are a lot of other factors, you know, of course, how what's the due diligence process? Who is managing the assets? That's a huge one. Because once the deal is closed, some of the principles are going to go away. You know, only one or two are going to be left behind to watch the asset and work with the property management companies. That's why we are self managing because we. I'm the CEO of all the businesses. So buck stop stops with me. You know, I'm the principal, I'm the loan getter. I'm on the. I write my, you know, millions of dollars of signatures, you know, to get all these loans of 40, $50 million loans, all that stuff. Right. So those are few things come to my mind. But you know, hard earned money is very hard earned money. And that's why my wife and I, we are small company, mom and pop company. You know, with 350 million will be half a billion soon and then to a billion. But the key thing is my wife is involved. So what's the succession plan? Oh my gosh, I forgot. Succession plan. You know what happens if I die tomorrow? Right? My attorneys, four attorneys, my whole accounting department, everybody. My daughter is fully involved. She's making operation VP of operations. Then my wife is fully involved with the investor relations VP and then I have other VPs of other businesses and all that. So I feel really proud that the systems I've built and that's how one should build and I'm sure there are a lot of great syndicators out there who have built it to. But it has to have a good succession plan. What happens, you know, if some lawsuit comes or this and that and how are the insurances, the keyman insurance and all that.

Wow. It's a lot of great information.

I want to.

With the time that we have available, I have two more questions. One, I'm really interested to hear about the move to senior assisted living.

Oh yeah.

And especially with you know, everything going on right now with COVID 19, where are you with that? And so what motivated you to get into that space now? And can you talk to me more about what you are seeing that is.

Getting you into that love to love to win. Actually I've been contemplating for two years. By the way, the silver tsunami started to happen in USA about two years back or so. When I read the first articles I said oh my gosh, demographical shifts are happening. People are moving towards more into the Warmer states, you know, and everything into Texas, into Florida, Virginia, people from up there, Arizona. And then now 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65 every day, every midnight they turn 65. There is a pent up demand for senior living, not independent living. We are not in that at all. We are not into acute care like nursing homes, not at all. Rehab centers, nothing at all. Where there are doctors, nurses, there is a 24 hour, you know, watch and everything. And we are not into acute care either. That's the other places where Covid has happened. Some deaths have happened in nursing homes because the residents, I mean residents you could say, or patients are coming back and forth from the hospitals and they brought the viruses and things like that. In our we have built 23. Oh, oh, let me share now. So I was sending messages out in the universe that Vinny wants to be in senior living. I didn't know how to be truthful. I have always believed in energy. And we came across a partner of mine now who has done 23 of assisted senior living luxury kind already. He's the perfect person developing, ordinance changing, getting the whole project off the ground. And he's done it 23 times. So that's what I partnered with. Build Senior living with Mr. Imran and myself. We have about 600 million assets together now. And then we are doing ground up construction, not take the ones which are existing and manipulate or renovate them. But we are building from scratch. Buying the one story only. No, that was. Other problem with COVID was the elevators and the weight in the elevators and people getting stymied and all that. There will be some new regulations coming, hopefully. But we never have believed in elevators at all. At our senior living we built three separate compounds and then it's all senior living, about 88 to 90 units. We don't go for 200, 300, 500. Assisted living. Like there are some verticals, we just go flat and then we only buy them in the places where we do extensive research because we buy the land, we go through all the ordinance changes and permits and all architectural drawings on our dime, everything on our dimensions. Then we only raise money when we put shovel into the ground. So that has been our success recipe. We put shovel in the ground, we build it in 12 to 14 months, the whole thing. And then we are able to manage it for nine or 10 months and then we sell it. So our main recipe is to build it quickly, cheaply, nice with the movie theater in our livings. We have spas, we have, you know, the libraries, we have all These dining halls and billiard rooms. It's like a five star hotel. That's what it is. And this is multifamily at its core. A plus. And the best thing is we start marketing already when it's 75% complete, we know that we'll be opening on certain day and then, darn it, that's it. We have like 50%, 60% occupancy the day we open. So that's our recipe. And we are doing it over and over and over again. My partner is from Michigan. We built 22. He built, I should say we, he built 22 of them. Saturated in every small town in Michigan. Now we are in Florida, in Virginia, in Texas, in Arizona, Washington state and Oregon State. So that's where we are coming. And we'll be building 6 to 10 every year. 6 to 10 every year.

The big takeaways from me and I want to do another podcast at some point talking about senior.

Oh, I'm all yours. It's such a great niche, very big. And you know, I will even show some of the demographical shifts in the charts and all because that's what we have been studying for the last two years. And it's just the right time because shortage is amazing. I mean we were, we started six locations in Michigan and yet this year they were closed down in Covid. Then we got special letters from the mayors of the city. They said you don't want to stop, you want to keep on building because we need these facilities. So it's very exciting for us to see that, to have that. And also some of the cities are cutting down the time period, how it takes for all these approvals from six to nine, no eight to nine months to three months. They are saying we want your quality assisted living facility and memory care which we build. And we are Getting Great loans, 4.32% construction loan, 10 year fixed, you know, with no prepayment penalties and all that. 75% loan to construction loans. So we are very fortunate. And then my main business is definitely multifamily. This is just a sidetrack in developing multifamily assisted senior living. It's multifamily at its core. And then hospitality hotels. We just bought Hilton Garden Inn. We are buying Marriott. So that's my other part of the company which with COVID now. Oh my gosh, I mean hotels are going to be selling so cheap. So we are ready to buy them, you know.

Yeah, well one thing that you're a great example that is partnering with people who know that Business really well, I mean you, you could have gone in and said, you know, I've been extremely successful, I've got the money, I'm just going to go in and do it myself. You didn't do that. You chose to partner with somebody who has the experience and who's able to ramp up and scale quickly.

I totally agree what you said, Wayne. I think one should have a mind of abundance. First of all, always believe in abundance and positivity too. That's the other thing. Right. My new book is coming out. Positivity brings profitability. And the key thing is, and my podcast also, same way, I believe that there is so much we can do and accomplish and let's not limit ourselves to one thing. So I'm into six different companies. I just started a digital branding company also. I found the best of the best partners in Pune, India. And now we are selling click funnels and in a box and lead magnets, websites, the advertising, the graphics, everything at so cheap price. You know, for the investors in my academy who are, you know, learning from me and all that and anybody who approaches us, so we have that part of the business also really shooting up E commerce stores. I'm really big on that. So that's my new business. I'll be starting very soon in E commerce and selling products online. That's my other part.

How you fit it all in, I'm not sure. But hey, I got a question for you and I want to end this the same question I'll ask every guest of mine and really want to ask, you know, what's your proudest moment investing in real estate?

You know, the proudest moment is when I give these big, big checks to my investors. That's the proudest moment ever, ever. I look forward to giving them 40% IRR, 43%, 3% per year returns. I promised them only 10 or 15, but I double triple them. You know, that's my proudest moments and I really believe when my investors can give me some comments. I was humbled. I had not asked my investors for last six years how they felt about me. So I just sent a small email. I got 42 replies right away telling me, vinny, we appreciate working with you for this, this. So those are proudest things, I think.

I love it. Yeah. And after six years it's good to hear, you know, get those emails coming in. So are there any other items you would like to share with on the show or about your company?

You know, again, the big thing is please jump into real estate. First of all, if you're not into it, you're on the sidelines. Jump into commercial. If you even are doing less than four units, which is residential, buy a duplex or triplex or fourplex, never buy a singleplex because the economies of skills will come. Also get into multifamily. I didn't get into shopping centers. It's going to be bad news coming up. Office space. It's going to be very bad news coming up now with people just staying and working from homes, things like that. Hospitality, of course, you know, hotels have been great, great moneymakers, but now everything is little bit. But I would say get into syndication. I mean, that's my biggest advice. Money is flowing all around you. I'm telling you it's there. But you got to believe in it and you go for it. Get a great mentor. There are several very good gurus and mentors in usa. I'm one of them who is doing it, killing it and doing really well. So please join and you know, don't. Yeah, yeah, join. You know, join somebody who can take you where you want to go, I guess, and whose personalities, what you are really about.

Perfect. And to end where and how can people find you? Vinny.

Oh, okay. I'm all over the Internet. I know my team from Pune, they do everything. I don't do a darn thing. I'm telling you, I'm the kind of guy, I play bridge and do other things and all I do, miracle morning. In the morning, you know, busiest people have more time. I believe that. So I have so much free time. My wife won't say that, but you know, the key thing is just compartmentalizing and utilizing. You could Google me. Anybody can Google me. Vinny Chopra V I N N E Y C H O P R A Chopra. Or my website is Vinny Chopra dot com. That's V I N N E Y C Chopra. And we are building four more websites in senior living, investing and everything. And then you could email me also. Anybody can email me@vinnienichopra.com Wonderful.

Thank you so much for being on our show, our podcast, and look forward to staying in touch. If I can do anything for you, let me know. Vinny.

Oh, thank you, Vin, and God bless you. And I'm so glad you're giving back to the community with this podcast. And please, you know, I'm, I'm at your disposal if you want to talk about senior living or things like that or even go deeper into certain other things. You know, I'm here for you. You bet.

Sounds good. Well, stay safe and well. I'll talk to you soon.

Thank you.

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