Voice Over Intro
Don’t want what we know out there how a person can go from really almost nothing to becoming a millionaire. by owning rental properties, you will always find these flip houses and I just remember thinking this guy is crazy. Why would he buy that house in the past decade, there’s been a huge surge in the peer to peer short term rental Mark Become an insider. So you have to know the rules before you get the game, every second counts. So make every second count. Welcome to the Real Estate jam. Whether you’re just beginning or the best of the best, we’re glad you’re here. We will share successes, failures and strategies for the action taking real estate investor and now to your hosts JD, Annabel and Melissa.
JT 0:48
You guys, Welcome to the Real Estate jam podcast. I’m JT with my wonderful co hosts me Hey,
Unknown Speaker 0:53
how are you, Melissa?
JT 0:55
And we have a pretty great show today, especially for you guys that are looking for some insights on on multifamily investing. We have Brandon Magierowski, and he is the founding one of the founding members of real focus capital, as well as the CEO of diamond dynasty, which he’ll classify later as his w two job. So it’s definitely possible for you to be a real estate investor, successful real estate investor and W two employee and we’ll get to that here in a few minutes. Brandon, thank you so much for finding time. Sorry for our late start, but I’m glad you were able to hang in there with us.
Brandon 1:35
Yeah, no problem. Thanks, JD. Thanks, Melissa. Thanks, I have to be on.
JT 1:39
Great. So really, what we’d like is if you could just introduce yourself a little bit, give us kind of the quick version of your story and how you got started in real estate where you came from. And you know why it’s important why our audience should listen to you,
Brandon 1:54
Yeah, so I’m actually originally from Alberta, Canada. I came down in 2004 to Shreveport, Louisiana to play college baseball. I got recruited down here for our favorite, so I live so I live in Shreveport since 2004. I met my my wife. During my college playing days, I came back and I coached a couple years of college baseball at that time, that’s what I thought I wanted to do. I wanted to I love to baseball. That was my path, collegiate coaching. That’s where I wanted to go. My first, after my first season college baseball, I kind of saw the writing on the wall that it’s a long road to have financial freedom through. You know, being a college college coach, right? I always had the entrepreneur spirit, I want to do something on my own. So I got into the coaching and actually started a baseball company with a group of guys where we host travel baseball tournaments throughout the southeast. We’ve grown that business since 2014. from five tournaments in one state. Now we host over 100 events across 12 different states, mainly in the southeast. And along my path with the baseball company, which is diamond dynasty. That’s my w two job. I’m the current CEO with for that company. One of my partners, Ramsey who you guys have interviewed him before. He was doing real estate in the panhandle of Florida, specifically Panama City. He was doing short term rentals. And he kept talking about it during our you know, conversations when you’re running baseball tournaments together and I was like, Man, this sounds great. Like how, how are you doing this? What are you doing? So you know, he basically kind of took me under his wing and said, Hey, read these two books. You know, one was rich dad poor dad. One was a just a general real estate investing book, how to buy locally and kind of like the fix and flip model but for multifamily. I read the books I came back to him fast forward six months. That was back in 2016. We bought a triplex three unit deal in Shreveport together. Eight months after that we bought a six unit deal together in Shreveport. And I manage those properties myself for the first year really got into the weeds quickly realize that that’s not I’m not a property manager. There’s experts out there that can do that. But we had those two properties together and he kind of showed me the way he operated his in Panama City. But what we found was his success in Panama City wasn’t translating to Shreveport. But the properties were not performing. Like they were in the panhandle. And we’re just like, well, what did we do wrong because we underwrote them the same. They fit the mold, they fit the 1% rule. They fit everything we needed them to fit except the only problem is we didn’t do the proper market research. It was a big wake up call when we heard a guy named Neil Bhalla on a YouTube video he’s he’s a big syndicator multifamily syndicator in the country. He said the worst market to invest in in multifamily is Shreveport, Louisiana. So
JT 4:56
we missed. We missed it. So I’m not sure if he But I lived in entry port from 2004 to 2014. And our first deal together was a 10. Plex in. in Shreveport in in the closest thing to Warzone I’ve ever heard about where was it located? It was on heard in, which is the week after we bought it. Or maybe like the next day after we bought it in the house right next door to our 10 Plex, which was to four plexes. In a duplex on the on the same lot. There was an execution style game land murder in the house right next door, and it was just kind of all downhill from there. We had problems with property management. So I’m laughing and smiling so much at your story, because it is also our story.
Brandon 5:47
I read the books write the book said you know, buy your first property, buy it in your backyard. Yeah, feel see it, and hands on it, which is true. However, if you live in a market where a multifamily property will not perform like it should then you should not buy in your backyard you should buy in the correct market. So it was a big wake up call when we heard Neil say that word is like, Whoa, that makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. Because of all the delinquencies, we’re getting bad tenants. We’re not our properties aren’t in the war zone, but they’re not in the greatest neighborhood. We still on those properties today. And you know they’re performing but they’re not performing to the cash flow that we underwrote. Right? So we hear Neil Ballas say this Ramsey, I look at each other. And we said, we need to go to that guy’s conference and figure out how we did it wrong. And we want to go bigger. We want to go to big apartment complexes, but we don’t really understand. You know, we drive by these apartment complexes, and it’s like, How the hell does somebody buy that? 100 plus unit apartment, Mike. I know how much it cost us to buy the three unit. But I don’t have the money to buy 100 unit. Right? We went to the conference. It was about a two and a half day conference. It was unbelievable. It was no upsells. It was a straight educational networking event. And we came back from that and said, this is what we’re going to do. We now know how to research markets we now know have the playbook to syndicate apartments. Let’s build a team. So we built a team with another another military guy named Joey become he’s stationed in Panama City. And he’s 15 years of project management United States Navy, specifically, underwater construction. So if you can do it underwater, I’m sure you could do it on land. I’m not I’m not an expert in that it’s not my field. That’s his part of the business. And then recently, we picked up a local guy named Chris kudamon, who is a passive investor on about six units, six deals six big multifamily deals throughout the country. So we have the team of four. And since eight months, since eight months ago, when we built the team. We have closed on an eight unit Hotel in South Louisiana, a 10 unit property and golf on golf Avenue in Panama City Beach. And we just got involved in 119, New Deal deal that closed in Lubbock, Texas. And it was just a basically from the point of going to that conference and just slowly building it brick by brick, right learning meeting more people, learning their stories, building the team, creating the right network, priming our investors for bigger deals to come and keeping them and keeping them in the loop on what we’re doing. Long story short, we got that 119 unit deal. We came in on the deal two weeks before it was supposed to close. And we raised $500,000 in eight days. Wow. Not on that deal as it’s been. So that was a huge confidence booster for our team. And now we have we’ve kind of amplified our exposure to our investors and other syndicators that we are a real player in this field. And we’re going after bigger deals, and I think we’ll have another opportunity in a couple months.
Melissa 9:01
Okay, so my question to you is, and so our our audience is mostly newer investors or mid mid mid range investors. So, you know, I can’t tell you how many guests that we have on may come in, say, Oh, yeah, we raised X amount of dollars, a million dollars in three days, 507 days. So I need somebody that can break that down into what that means and what it looks like so that they understand that better.
Brandon 9:31
Okay, so you want to break down? Like how how we were able to get people to wire the funds, basically, right?
JT 9:37
What does that actually look like? Yeah, you know, did you call up your grandma and say, Hey, grandma loaned me 500,000 did you go and talk to 500 people and one of them came through with it, or was it you know, a couple grand from many, many people what did it so how did you actually have those conversations?
Brandon 9:56
Yeah, so like I said previously, we we primed those investors with We warm them up. So what we did the first thing we did, we didn’t we hadn’t had a big a bit. This is our first big deal. Everything else we’ve done is, you know, small multifamily, which is still very good. They cashflow it’s very good for our team. But we basically did a webinar, why and how to invest in apartments, we invited all of our friends, family colleagues on Facebook, it’s on our YouTube channel. And we had I think we had about 60 people come on that webinar. And it was built immediate credibility with that group of people, all the family, friends, colleagues go, oh, man, these guys know what they’re talking about. These guys have done their education. And they’ve presented information on why I should get into a deal from that point. And this is a six month process up into the point where we actually go to raise the capital from, from these investors. We just continue giving them information, you know, every every other week, we send them a little email saying, Hey, here’s what we’re up to. This is our progress. This is who we’ve met. This is what our plans are, there’s opportunities coming from those emails come phone calls and text messages amongst some of those investors who say, Hey, what do you got going on? I’m excited. Let me know when there’s a deal. The biggest question we had, and we asked our mentor, this was like, What if we don’t have a deal for two years? Because that can happen? Right? Yeah. Right, all these deals, and you sit there and you tell these investors, it’s common, it’s common, it’s common. And then it never comes for a long period of time. And all she said was just be transparent, honest with them. If you show them that you’re underwriting deals, and you’re putting in ello eyes, and you’re really focusing on these markets, that they’re going to, they’re going to stay warm, they understand that there’s a process to this, and you can’t just go and, and slap some cash on the doorstep and pick up the property. So we did that. We just kept them informed, informed. We did property tours, we sent pictures to them, just kept them in the loop on our progress. And then, when it came time with the deal, we basically sent the email, hosted a webinar about the deal. And funds were to be wired. Basically, it was an eight day process and funds already rewired on that Tuesday. And the minimum investment was 25,000 for accredited investors 50,000 for non accredited, and we raised a total of $500,000 over that eight day period. But it didn’t happen in eight days. Right? Look, it took six months of explain to people what we’re doing, right, this was the mentor we brought on base, he told us this, like you need to tell people what you’re up to, or else they’ll never know, they’ll just they’ll just think of Brandon, as the baseball guy that runs the baseball tournaments, very successful business gray guy, they have no idea do real estate. The second that I got off, I guess my ass and said, Hey, guys, this is what we’re up to. And this is why we’re doing it. And here’s the opportunities for you. the floodgates opened up, all the contacts that I’ve had over the years said, Oh, man, you know, you did that. Tell me more. And from those contacts go, I didn’t know you did that. Tell me more. I’ve got money sitting in the bank ready to go into real estate. I don’t know how to do that. And that’s when you get them. You send them the email, you send the information, you show them what we’ve done. And so there’s another deal coming up. And we’ve probably got another 20 investors primed to put money into the deal. On top of that, we put our own money into these deals. So important, right? Yes, absolutely. You’re coming to ask me for $50,000. And I asked you how much money you’re putting into it? Ah, none. Why not? Okay, there may be a reason maybe you have no money left. You know, maybe you have no personal capital left, you’re saving for the next deal. But every deal we’ve we’ve done to date we’ve put our own money in. And that’s just because we believe in the deal as well. Right. So I guess I mean, that’s a long way, a long answer to your short question, Melissa. But bottom line is, if you want investors to invest in your properties down the road, start connecting with them today.
Melissa 14:11
Yeah. And I liked how you said there, because we get all caught up in that eight days. And then Okay, why can’t we do that in eight days, but like what you said it’s six months, it’s maybe longer sometimes. Yeah,
JT 14:21
it’s an overnight success. That took six months. Yeah. Right.
Brandon 14:25
And it comes down to right, you got to build a brand and a presence and have legitimacy behind all of that. So we have the website, we have Google G Suite, Google email, so it’s Brandon at real focus.org. Not Brandon at gmail, right? We’re building a legitimate brand. Correct. And that just creates credibility. It really does. It shows people that we’re serious about it, that we put money into it, that we we put our own money in the deals. We built the right team and we’re connecting With other like minded investor groups to partner on deals like this deal, the cove in Lubbock, the 199 a deal, we didn’t take that down ourselves, we were brought into that deal by VFR capital and Georgia brew, to be partners on it. And that’s what I want people understand to is that this is not a lone soldier game, these big deals, these 100 plus units, 200 plus units, apartments are being taken down for the most part by three or four different groups like real focus, and each one of those groups carries a different responsibility amongst the team.
Melissa 15:36
Can you elaborate on that part of it as well?
Brandon 15:39
Sure, yeah. So like for I’ll just use this example, the CO VFR capital, they are the asset manager and the project lead, they are going to basically take the whole lead on everything because it was it was their deal, they founded the deal, they got it, they got it under contract, Georgia brew is a sponsor, Georgia brew has been net worth to sign on the loan documents Plus he has a construction company. So he’s doing the construction management. They brought us in at the back end, because one of their other groups dropped out, couldn’t raise the capital to come in, raise the capital and be part of the asset management group.
JT 16:16
And that’s why you had to do it in eight days. Yes,
Brandon 16:18
right. Yeah, we got the deal sent to us. Two weeks, it was two weeks before closing. They said we need a group to come in and do this, this and this. We said, Well, this is our opportunity. And by the time we vetted the deal, like we’ve added the deal, first we underwrote up, we’ve vetted the market, we’ve vetted the teams that had the deal before, before we put anything in front of our investors, we need to believe in the deal, because this is our first real opportunity to give these investors an opportunity to invest their own money. We better make sure it’s with the right team, and it’s the right deal, or they’ll never come back. For sure, Bill. So, I mean, just just to elaborate analysis. There’s always different roles within these big syndications, right, there’s the asset management, there’s the construction management, there is property management, there’s capital raising, so that they basically take the pie and they slice it up a bunch of different ways, and share it with all the groups based off of what they’re contributing to the deal. The smaller deals that we’ve done, the eight unit and the 10 unit. Those are joint ventures we’re we’re gonna just bring in, you know, us three are going to go pool our capital gather and go by that we all have a responsibility, but it’s just a joint venture. There’s no big ppm lawyers involved. You know, some of the ppm documents for syndications are 20 $25,000 for lawyer fees to do that. So when you have a smaller deal, that’s under $2 million, you usually want a joint venture that amongst three or four like minded people that you trust and can pull money together and
Melissa 18:04
buy. Good info. That’s good. I like how you broke that down. That makes sense for sure.
JT 18:11
So what are you looking for now? And and how can some of our audience you know, either help you find that or connect with you guys, to see a little bit more about what you’re doing and the direction you guys are going next?
Brandon 18:26
Yeah, so our criteria now we are looking for 100 plus unit deals of in Texas and the panhandle of Florida are two major markets we’re looking at. And those are generally value add properties, which means we want to go in do a light lift, renovate the units, increase the rents, increase the value, increase the cash flow, and that generates the returns we need for our investors. So 100 plus units, Texas Panhandle, Florida. We are also looking for joint venture opportunities amongst our group. So we’ll never start with stop looking for that low hanging fruit. Those 10 1520 unit deals under $2 million that we can pull capital gather, and that would be a great cash flowing asset. Right, the name of the game is cashflow. And if we want financial freedom like I do in five to 10 years, well, there better be money flowing into the bank account, or I’m just gonna keep working. Right? You got to have you got to have the cash flow. We’re not buying for the equity. The market appreciation is great. But we’re looking to force appreciation and generate cash flow. If you want to find me and our team, it’s just real focus.org real focus.org. Our team is listed on their contact information on LinkedIn. We also have our own podcast that we just launched a couple days ago. It’s the gorilla Estate Investing podcast, we saw that Yeah, I am. I’m one of the hosts and Ramsey my partner is the other host. So that’s why we’re really looking forward to getting that off the ground, we’ve done about 12 interviews. You guys know how to launch a podcast, right? It’s especially when you’ve never done it before.
JT 20:07
Well, I think you guys are definitely headed in the right direction. Ramsay built that. Real Estate Investor, podcast guests, not a genius. And that’s helped us out tremendously on getting getting people on on to our show. And I think that was the way that you guys handled your launch by setting all this stuff up beforehand was absolutely genius. I wish we would have thought of, I wish we would have thought of that beforehand, because
Brandon 20:33
we started the group because everyone kept saying, Hey, you got to get on podcast, you gotta make a podcast. And it’s like, well, how the hell do I get on the podcast? Like, you have to, like, reach out to each individual search, or get a virtual assistant to do that. And it’s like, Well, why don’t I just create a group and get all these people together? Because I’m sure you guys have the same pain point. You want good guests. And guests want to be on good podcast. So the great marriage? Yeah,
JT 20:56
yeah, no, it was great. I, we got to be respectful of your time since we weren’t this morning or earlier. But if you if you can, because we didn’t get to hit on this very much. earthquake, sorry. But if there was one piece of advice you would give to a W two employee who wants to start this and thinks that maybe they don’t have enough time, or what is the number one piece of advice for somebody who’s working a full time job to get into this real estate investing thing.
Brandon 21:23
First thing is time blocking. So make sure they get the balance, right, I got a young family, I’ve got a W two, I’ve got the real estate, I’ve got some other stuff on the go. It’s just, it’s time blocking daily to say, Okay, this, these two hours, I’m going to work on real estate. And when those two hours are up, Real Estate’s over, don’t get looped back into it, and then you go to the W two, and then you five o’clock turns around, and I’m not great at this, but shut your phone off. It’s family time, right, just committing to the time blocking for the balancing of W two and your side hustles. And then the most important piece of advice in our group lives by this is just move the needle every day, you may not be able to conquer the world tomorrow, but you can do something for real estate that you can just move the needle a little bit forward, whether that’s reaching out to an investor, sending an email, getting on a podcast, just doing something that’s going to push you forward. Because as you move those needles as you just build it brick by brick, eventually you’re going to have a house right? So that’s what happened to us eight months ago, we just started moving it daily hadn’t keeping each other accountable, moving the needle daily. And now deals are starting to close for us.
Melissa 22:39
That’s great. Great advice. I love that.
JT 22:43
Well, yeah, me too. That’s a matter of fact, I just wrote it down. That’s gonna, we’re gonna Yeah, we’re gonna live that move the needle every day. I love it. Brandon, we really appreciate you being some of those things down. Those are complicated if you made it seem super easy, but we know that they’re complicated things to explain, especially to new investors. So I’m sure a lot of people are going to take a lot of value away from that. We really wish you the best success moving forward and we can’t wait to hear your guys’s story. Yeah, for sure. Thank you Have a good one.
Thank you for listening to the real estate jam. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. For more information, check out our website for real estate jam. com or find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at the real estate jam. If you have any questions, feel free to drop us an email at the real estate jam@gmail.com See you next episode.
Over the last 10 years, many of my family, friends, and colleagues have asked, “how can I get started into the real estate game like you?” Depending on the environment the follow on conversation could have ranged anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours and a few beverages. I wanted to take a few minutes to put my thoughts and previous conversations to paper and shed some light on how anyone can get started investing in real estate and hit a few key talking points that always make their way into the conversation.