Appearances, continued.

Welcome to the How Did They Do It Real Estate Podcast. Have you ever wondered how people succeed in real estate and what steps they took to get there? If so, this podcast is for you. Your hosts, Selah and Eileen Prach, interview top experts in the real estate community to share with you their real estate journey and how they achieve massive success.

Our goal is to provide you with valuable real estate resources and to help you apply it to your own real estate goal. Welcome to today's episode of the How Did They Do It Real Estate podcast. I'm your host Eileen Prach. And today our guest is Dr.

Julius Oni. And he is an orthopedic surgeon in Baltimore, Maryland and the CEO and co-founder at SITE Capital Investment. And over the past several years, Julius has invested in over 50 startups and currently sits on the advisory board of four healthcare-related startups. And within the last three years, he's led the acquisition of the company's fast-growing portfolio of more than 164 assets of assets under management.

And he's also acknowledged as a Reforbs business council member in 2021. So Dr. Julius, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

and really appreciate the opportunity to interact with you and just chat with you and share some nuggets with the folks on your platform. Just a little correction. I think you meant 168 million an asset in the management, not 164 properties. It would be nice to have a quiet 164 properties, they'll be fantastic.

But no, we've only done about six properties, totally in about 168 million. Dr. Julius, can you share a little bit more about your background and how you r got started with real estate? Absolutely.

So I'm anopedic surgeon by craft. That's my day job. And I've been in practice for about 10 years now. I mostly do total hips and total knees, and I sometimes joke around with people that the only thing I'm really licensed to do is to replace people's hips and knees.

So take everything else I say with a grain of salt. But obviously over the last several years, I've also discovered another love besides doing surgery and that is investing in real estate and educating others about investing in real estate. So my journey into real estate really started back in 2015 when I started to buy single family homes, thinking that source of passive income that I was going to accumulate single family homes over a long time, and then maybe sell them as a portfolio after they've experienced some organic appreciation over time and have enjoyed some cash flows for some time. but I quickly realized that I was a poor landlord and the cashflow from single family homes were pretty poor, at least the way I was doing it at that time.

and that I didn't like dealing necessarily with tenants, termites and toilets, you know, the usual that you have to do when you're a single family landlord. And probably could still have done it if the cashflow was fantastic, but it wasn't. And so it was around that time that I met my current partners at Excite, Capital. And they introduced me a multi-family real estate.

, I started to read a whole lot about it. And this happened probably around 2020. like just right as we were going into the pandemic and started going to a couple of conferences at those times, virtual conferences and some in-person conferences and realized that I didn't see too many people that were in the healthcare space doing real estate. You know, I saw a lot of accountants, a lot of engineers, a lot of business folks, a lot of lawyers.

And they were just wearing that many people that one looked like me or that were in the space in those rooms. And I realized how amazing the asset class called multi-family realized it was in creating wealth and creating generational wealth for a lot of people. And I was just shocked because at that point I thought I was pretty savvy. And I was shocked and I didn't know about it.

And I mean, I lived in apartments before, and I knew somebody owned those apartments. And I just like, wait, I never thought I guess because I thought it was completely out of rich, and it wasn't possible. But then when I learned about syndication, and the fact that we could pull our resources and really can just go ahead and buy these properties and take advantage of the tax advantages. The passive income advantages, the physical asset advantage, The fact is, this is a tangible asset, all those things just kind of combined together to make multifamily real estate a very exciting asset class for me to explore.

So I combined forces with two other fantastic gentlemen, Mr. Leslie Awasom and Mr. Tenny Tolofari, my current partners at XSITE Capital. And went on this journey to start to educate other folks in our healthcare communities, in our overall extended communities about the powerful asset class called multifamily real estate.

And. And I guess enough people just bought into the vision and join us in that vision on that journey. And now six properties later, 168 million in asset under management later, we've gone full cycle on one deal, which we bought for 12.5 million. sold for $17.8 million.

It's been an incredible three years. And I think we're only just getting started actually. So I guess that's a nice little summary of the journey so far. For being in healthcare and being a physician, you know, a lot of the times one of the biggest things is you guys are high income earners and the income that you're producing is highly tax also, you're in a very high tax bracket.

And so that's a lot of the things that I hear often is like, well, how do I come back some of the taxes? to the most tax liabilities. W2 is probably the worst, but certainly with the other categories, too, as far as and your compensation is dependent on trading your hours for dollars, and the only way you can expand your compensation is to put in more hours, then there's a finite amount of compensation that you can make, and you expose to the most tax liabilities. And that's why real estate has been amazing for us and the people in our community who have decided realistic professionals are able to benefit from.

And even as passive investors, the income that you're making from your real estate investments is to either tax deferred or potentially tax exempt if you were able to you know 1031 exchange and just continue to it's a growth that wealth in real estate long-term. So be in a position to educate other healthcare professionals about the incredible tax benefits of real estate has been an incredible pleasure and certainly an for me. So when you got started and you're looking at, you know, your own personal journey and also now starting to educate other people in the healthcare space as well, when you're looking at real estate, how do you see it helping to supplement or helping to increase your cash flow, your wealth, and to help you offset some of the income that you're making from health care or at least, you know, taking a look and building up that wealth on the side? So I mean, when I first started, obviously, I started as a passive investor initially, investing with those folks who were actively participating in real estate.

And at that point, for the most part, the benefit I was getting was that the income that I was making from real estate was able to be protected by the depreciation. Depreciation from those investments, those active investors at that time would do cost we would get the depreciation from those investments and I would take advantage of that. And thankfully I also had some sources of passive income at that point that I was able to upset with those that depreciation. But as I moved into more active participation in real estate, obviously the tax benefits has just compounded, because now I am essentially an active real estate participant, and my spouse is a real estate professional, so since we file a jointly, I'm able to take advantage of the status, and that's been an incredible benefit in upsetting my taxes, or my tax liabilities.

But having said that, I also run a private equity company in XSITE Capital where we provide significant employment to other folks, and that we pay employment taxes on that, and we create jobs, we create an opportunity for other people to have great livelihood, and we create great living spaces for our tenants, the tenants that we serve, and we to create wealth and also take great advantage of tax benefits. So our impact is significantly exponential. And I guess the IRS and the government sees value in that. And that's why they've made things like real estate, things like farming, things like oil and gas tax, they've increased the tax benefits of active participation in those spaces.

So I'm happy to be able to take advantage of it. So when you got into real estate and well, not just real estate, but you were doing single family and a lot of us understand how to buy the single family homes, how it's valued, the basic ins and outs of renting the house to a residence. But when you got into multifamily apartments, what was the biggest fear or the biggest concern that you had as you were, you know, investing in your first deal? And what was the turning point for you that made the light bulb click and say, this makes Frankly, the first time I heard about investing in multifamily real estate, I was like, wait, this can't be real, because I was invited to invest in a syndication.

So I was like, this is crazy. This is impossible. I mean, just like most healthcare professionals, we typically do the analysis paralysis, analysis, whatever it is, we try to just find what's wrong with everything initially, because of fear. We train to be super good at something, you know, one thing.

And we've been in that, we've had that ton of vision for a long time, and we don't get much in financial education through our training. So, you know, it's only a natural that the things that are not familiar to you, that you are a little scared of. So my initial knee-jerk reaction was just to dismiss it for the most part. It wasn't until much later that I started to do a little more research and educate myself, read a lot of books, listen to a lot of podcasts, and then one of my favorites was actually Will Barrow Profits by Jake Stansiano and R.

Gino Barrow. And that book, after reading it, I was like, wow, wait, people are investing in this. And. they are taking advantage of the great abilities to grow wealth exponentially and take advantage of tax benefits to this, and that opened my world into much more different things.

I started to read more and just open my mind a little more to learning about real estate, and that just did it for me. And just like when I started to learn about medicine as a medical student and then got into internships, I went through an expedited version of just a deep dive into learning as much as I could about a real estate and there's been no turning back ever since. Best decision I ever made because it's made an incredible difference in my life and in my finances for sure. When you met your partners, you said back in 2020, what was the siding point to wanting to get into the more active space after doing it passively for several deals.

So what really did it for me was the first time we decided to actually add no one of my partners for a few years prior to us going into business together. We worked in the same hospital, you know, he was anesthesia provider, I was the surgeon. So we worked on taking care of patients together. And so we would talk about business a little bit after work and just discuss different ways to grow wealth and to essentially educate ourselves on the different ways that we are thinking about wealth growth outside of work.

And that was when the conversation started. But when we decided to go into business together, me, Leslie and Tenny, the first day we jumped on the phone, we stayed on the phone for almost three hours. We just couldn't get off it. It was just like a match made in heaven.

we had complementary strengths. And for example, relenting who was our director of acquisition and one of our co-founders is just fearless. He can walk into a room and just talk to anyone in that room. And.

And he just keeps things, he keeps the chains moving. And Leslie, that's one of the most organized, is one of the most detailed oriented and under rights conservatively. And just like asked this calmness about him that no matter what's happening, he's able to maintain a cool and calm attitude and help us steer through all of that. And me as the surgeon and I am the CEO of the company currently.

So I oversee the larger vision, the growth trajectory of the company. I also spearhead our investor relations efforts and fundraising for the deals when they come. So we add complementary strengths And we just combined those strengths, we were able to essentially do anything that we set our minds to. And it's very quickly after coming together, we implemented traction.

I don't know if you know about the entrepreneur or operation system. So we pretty much decided that we were gonna make our meetings as efficient as possible. And we set goals and we essentially reverse engineered those goals. And those goals sounded crazy at that time, but now that we've rachieved a whole lot of them, now we don't think anything is, it's impossible anymore.

Because if you told me like three years ago that three years later would be close six deals, four of them as the lead sponsors and totally in $168 million. And last year alone, we did 60 million deals that we bought and raised $25.4 million to buy those deals. If you told me those were possible three years ago, I'd say you were a smoking crack, but we did it. And guess what?

Did we actually achieve the goals that were set for last year? No, because we wanted to do four deals, one every quarter last year. And that was in the midst of COVID going back and forth. People thought we were crazy, but we did three deals, you know?

did for those that since we sold one there so much, I still don't consider us having achieved that goal. But that's the thing if your goals don't scare you, then your goals are not big enough. So for us, we set those goals that completely scare us that makes us completely uncomfortable, because in that discomfort, lies the greatest growth. That's what we've discovered.

And another thing we've discovered in the process of growing is the fact that if we continue to give value to the most number of people, the universe has this incredible way of just giving us the most value back. It's been so true for us, because we just give with no expectations of receiving back. But that has almost always ended up creating different pathways for us to grow beyond our wildest beliefs. So that's one of the secrets to our business.

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When you decided to get into the active side of things, what did you have to do in order to get into that first deal. Yeah, that's fantastic. We got a mentor. We literally just partnered up with another more established company that had done this for some time and decided to be a co- And so we raised some funds.

We joined the asset management calls, give off feedback, learn what was happening with managing the company, you know, the every step that was required to, you know, get the investor through the journey from the decision to invest to getting your K1s and the communications that are required to keep the investors apprised of what's going on with the property, and then all the nuances of managing the property meeting with the property management companies on a weekly basis, setting cheap performance indicators, KPI's that will guide our growth and help us essentially match up with the business plan that we've set. We literally just spoke ourselves up with that knowledge and read as many books as we can and listened to as many podcasts as we can and kept asking questions from those people. I that have been doing this for a long time and just got as much data point as we could and then what you start seeing is the common themes you know with all those people that have achieved significant success in us and those themes are what we kind of locked in into and that has been kind of like the foundation for us but after doing that first deal by the second deal we were actually the lead sponsors and general partners eight months later. So, that just kind of tells you that we just dive deep in it and then went for it right after.

What was the biggest common theme that you saw? So one of the biggest common themes that we saw. One, the successful folks were givers. They gave of what they had.

And they just gave education, they gave resources, they shared abundantly. And when you have that spirit of abundance, right, knowing that there's more than enough out here for all of us to be successful, then, and that you don't have to be in competition with others where you have to kind of step on others to get ahead, then something miraculous happens when you have that mindset. And the most successful people also do have a spirit of honesty and integrity. When they say what they mean and mean what they say, and always just make sure that they are doing right by the people that they represent.

And that has been one of our core values. Another thing I noticed about them is they were persistent. They were determined. You know, they didn't- necessarily the undulations of the business take over, you know, their focus.

Because, I mean, the line to success is never really a straight line. It's usually, you know, filled with some wins and some losses, but for the most part, if you just stay consistent and you have your highs fully set on your true north, then no matter what happens, you were able to navigate it and eventually achieve significant success. And that also is one of our core values, persistence and determination. So honesty and integrity, persistence and determination, the spirit of abundance.

And one of the things that we also then decided to do for ourselves was we asked ourselves, how do we separate ourselves from the pack? And one of the things we said you know what we're gonna dare to be unique we're gonna you know if everybody's doing it this way we go into try to think a little bit outside of the box and try to figure out all the ways that we can still achieve success without necessarily you know so if everybody was charging for this thing we just give it freely for example we have an underwriting class every Tuesday that provide significant value for people in our community. And we invite everybody to join it. And people come in, they learn how to underwrite, and now they go out and they're able to buy underwrite deals themselves and go out and buy deals themselves.

setbacks, and really learn through that process with us without charging them anything for it. So those are some few examples of just how we just decide to just give significant value. And even though those people may not even invest with us, interestingly, because they remember how we've made them feel, they usually are our best fans and they're usually the ones who are a referring folks to us to invest. And those are the stuff that we still continue to learn as we grow in this business.

And how did you get from Koji peeing with another sponsor and then going on and doing few examples just to kind of crystallize this. When we decided to do this, one of my partners said, okay, we've decided that the Southeast US is our target market. So North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and the rest of the Southeast and Sunbelt states. It's like, okay, I'm going to sell my house in the DC area and I'm moving my family down there so that we can have boots on ground that and we can actually compete favorably with the brokers.

Because the brokers, they own about 90% of those deals in the end. You did it. And so when one of your partners is sacrificing that much to ransed out calls, the rest of us had no choice but to sit up, right. And our first deal we got because he drove three hours a 15 minute meeting with a broker at the meeting and drove three hours back home.

And the broker was like, wait, did you have something else to do in this area? It was like, no, I came just for this meeting at the meeting and drove back and the broker then called later and was like, you know what, that's a lot of dedication. I'm going to give you a shot. I'm going to give you this off market deal.

If you do well on it, then great, we'll continue working together. If you don't do well on it, then you may as called Churchill when we, at St. Andrews when we bought it, we rebranded it to the VU at St. Andrews and we bought it at $12.5 million, 21 months later so they had 17.8.

So we are essentially now out of proof of concept for our investors that you know what we're not just telling you that this is that we can do that this is possible we've done a and now those investors that were able to take advantage of that and now the biggest raving fans they are sending other investors to us, sending family members to us, and they are going and doubling down on investors. With us on subsequent deals and being able to do all of those things. I like the things that have been able to sustain us even with this difficult market conditions where you know there's poor deal flow right now, interest rates are going up, cap rates are obviously expanding, and it's a tough market for everyone in almost every sector. But, do you think about multifamily real estate?

You can do it through every market conditions. You just have to stay diligent, understand the macro and the micro economic indicators, continue to study and learn, and keep on looking for deals because the deals are out there. People are still close in deals. You just got to find the right deal for you and your investors.

And then in Q4 of 2022, you guys were able to close three deals by the end of Q4. That's a pretty significant feat. Yeah, it was crazy. It was completely nuts.

I think in Q4, we did three deals. We a sold one and close to and that was and with a pretty small team too and that was incredible. I mean after that I needed a little bit of rest because that's stretched us to our limits but just like I said earlier, in those very uncomfortable moments, that's when you experience your greatest growth. Because, yeah, we closed down our deal, Stone Mountain in Georgia.

At that point, we were branded to ascend that Stone Mountain and also bought our first deal in Baltimore, Maryland, which is 101 Elwood, and then sold the view around the same time. So it's just in one quarter. And up until that quarter, we had just closed only one deal, that's land bank loss. And our goal was to do four deals that year.

And we didn't stop believing the entire team just said, you know what, yes, it looks bleak right now. But we're going to keep putting one step in front of the other and going to keep doing what we need to do to close the deals. You know, we continue to underwrite a lot of deals, send out a bunch of LOIs, contact as many brokers as possible continue to educate our investors,- just to keep them engaged and warm. We continue to give value through our meetups, our underwriting class, through investor meetings, we went to conferences, we presented at conferences, we just kept doing the work even though the deals weren't really forthcoming at that time and then boom in the fourth quarter R everything just took off.

And when that preparation met the opportunity, we had the success. What did it take to manage all three deals at one time without allowing something to fall in through the cracks? An amazing team. Absolutely.

We have the most incredible team at XSITE Capital. We have people who have just completely bought in into what we're doing. I mean this folks, they just believe so much in the larger vision and everybody's locked in and everybody's pitching in and no one is too big for any task. And when people need help, they are calling other folks to help.

And it's this entire team has been incredible. You know we have director of marketing and Macy Price, we have Miles Hill, we have Heather, Bob Piper, we have Jessica. I mean, we have all of those folks who just continue to work, together, - million is one of those three deals was a sale. So obviously, that was an incredible moment for XSITE Capital.

So as we were closing deals. We were also selling a deal and that was amazing. So Julius, how has real estate investing impacted your life? incredibly.

travel, international, teach the things that I do and also perform some of my charity operations that run. And so I love what I do. I don't necessarily want to do it without necessarily having to depend on it for my sustainability is the best way to practice. So.

That's the been the biggest thing that real estate has done for me. But in addition to that, I've met some of the most incredible people in real estate. Some of the most incredible minds, some of the people with the strongest and most amazing mindset. I mean, to go into real estate is to essentially start a personal growth journey because there's like an underbelly of personal growth in real estate.

You have to have a very strong mindset. have to, you know, develop great habits because without great habits, you can't necessarily stay persistent and stay consistent and just show up every day even when it's not necessarily fun, you know. So through real estate, I learned about the Miracle Morning, like the Howard error book, and I read that book and started to engage with the savers, you know, silence, affirmations, visualizations, exercise, reading and scribing. I don't do all six of them, but I can tell you that at least three of them I get to almost every day.

And so those things kind of fortify your mind and get you just ready to approach the day. And even though I'm spread everything and I'm constantly being pulled in different directions. It's really helped me to still stay present and to still give my best to my patients and certainly give my best to our community of investors and the larger community. So real estate has done some incredible things for me and continues to expand my mind beyond what I thought was possible.

So I'm thankful for that. Well, Dr. Ulyas, this was an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you, Eileen.

Really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you, for sure. And for our listeners out there who want to find out more about what you're doing, where is the best place that they can go? Absolutely. They could reach out to us at xsitecapital.com.

That's X-S-I-T-E, capital.com. And I'm on LinkedIn, Julia Sony. You could just type my name in, I'm right there, or on Instagram, same thing, you can just type my name in, Julia Zoni, I'll be right there. And certainly my email, if you want to reach out to us, you can also just email me directly.

This is Julia Zoni, my first and last name at xicapital.com. So thank you so much for that. Thank you so much. It was our pleasure.

Yeah, I really appreciate it. And thank you for listening to our podcast today, brought to you investors. At bonavestcapital.com forward slash checklist, sale and I created this checklist for ourselves as we evaluated different multifamily syndication opportunities as a passive investor. So we would love to share it with you so you can use as a resource as well.

Download your free copy today at bonavestcapital.com forward slash checklist. Lastly, to learn more about us, you can go to bonavestcapital.com and fill out the contact us page so you can speak to us directly. should be considered as specific personal advice. Please consult your legal, tax, and real estate professionals for individualized advice.

Welcome to the Modern Real Estate Investor to capital erasers, real estate entrepreneurs, to provide you with the tool sets, the mindsets, and the skill sets for you to conquer yourself, your life, and your and use real-estate as your wealth creation vehicle so that you can achieve financial freedom. Director of Acquisition and co-founder of Ex I'm excited to talk a little bit further He has spent several years. Leading and building a sales team in one of the fastest growing financial services company. So that's some of his experience and right now his main thing I believe is XSITE Capital investments and they help investors build wealth through their through real-life investments.

And right now it's any has acquired over 168 million dollars. He has over 160 million dollars in assets under management that he has been able to acquire in the last three years. So he's a husband. He's a father.

He's an entrepreneur. That's why he's here. He's on a on this journey of having it all and becoming modern king. So Tenny, I'm super excited to have you, man.

Thank you so much, Alex. with our real estate investing journey in 75 seconds or less? Yeah, it's pretty simple, man. I came to the United Rates in 2010, went to grad school, We had masses of cybersecurity.

We started working in a corporate world. 2018 meant to one of our partners. We had a conversation about building businesses, to bring our community together. When I say community, I mean healthcare professionals because two of my partners are in the healthcare profession.

I'm in cyber security. You know, IT medical professionals, we wanted to bring that community together. Brown and black folks, underrepresented minorities, we observed that a lot of them don't have access to these asset class when it comes to multi-family related investment because they don't have the awareness of the possibility of doing it. So that's how we found the XSITE Capital to be able to bring that awareness to our communities and have them understand that numbers, you know, there's strength in numbers.

When it comes together, we'll be able to achieve greatness. I love that man. R. So actually, I want to dive a little bit deeper into that.

So your why, and I love that you started with why, man. That's pretty rare, right? So the why behind your company, XSITE Capital, is getting your communities to come together. What does that mean exactly, man?

So there's strength in numbers, right? Well, what we observed is a lot of people in our community, I'm originally from Nigeria, born and raised. And we all professionals, I've been doing cybersecurity for the past decade. And a lot of us are successful in IT, in medical field.

And everybody want to do things in their own way, which is I want to buy my own assets, manage it, make my own money, and then just be in my own business. But for the community to have an economic power, people usually come together to get that done, right? And what we've observed is in- , is a lot of other communities, , and that's what it do. And that's what we decided to do at XSITE Capital.

Cool. So then your ideal investor would be a minority who's like a professional then, who's like in the medical industry or in the IT industry or like that. Hello, modern kings and queens. I'm sorry for the interruption.

I know you're enjoying the episode, but I have something super important that you must listen to. If you've been following this podcast for a while now, it's because of. Number one, you aspire to have it all to unlock your potential across all areas of your life and achieve true freedom physically, emotionally, spiritually, sentimentally, and of course, financially. And or number two, you're a real estate investor or an aspiring real estate investor who has chosen to use real estate as your wealth creation vehicle to achieve financial freedom.

My mission as part of the Modern Kings and Queens movement is to help as many people as I can achieve financial freedom using the vehicle of real estate. And I believe that networking can be an incredibly powerful tool to help you unlock your potential across all areas, but more importantly financially, and more specifically in real estate. I believe that in real estate, your net worth is your network. This is why I created the four step capital racing networking system to help real estate investors propel their growth by using a reliable system that will consistently help them connect with their ideal investors, build trust, add value, get their investors to promote them and put them in front of more investors and raise more capital faster and in a much more effortless way so that they can become successful, not only financially, but across all areas of their life.

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And I hope you enjoyed the rest of your episode. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. All right, yeah, so let's see.

Oh yeah, so man, so then your term profile would be someone who is like a professional, works in the IT or works in the medical industry. And it's a minority as well. Is that like who you target? Well not target, but is that who you help?

invest in real estate and use real estate as a wealth creation vehicle? Yeah, we work with anybody that is willing to, or that is looking to grow their wealth using real estate, right? We do not say, okay, this is the person or this is that person that we wanna serve. We serve anybody that comes in our sphere that is willing to wanna learn about it.

The number one thing that we do is once we get in contact with you, We have to educate you about what we do, but why we started the company is because if I look around on myself, my friends that we all went to grad school together, a lot of them don't understand of that we can all come together and go by us a hundred unit deal. They didn't know about it. So my immediate community are the folks I want to first serve. Now that of course we have first degree, second degree, third, and fourth degree connections, right?

Now, as that expands, we're able to serve more people. But the reason why we started the company, we started a company to serve that community. The IT professional, the medical professional, and any entrepreneur or business professional that doesn I have the time and energy to go look for properties. We help them look for this property, manage the property and provide great returns for them so that they can grow their wealth through cash flow and wealth acceleration.

I like that man and what do you think would be some of the main reasons of or maybe factor some of the main factors behind. behind your ability to take to start from scratch right it back in 2018 about three years ago and now having over 168 million dollars in assets under management what do you what 2020, that's what when me, Dr. Delgoni, Leslie, I was among myself, came together as a force to take ExactCapita to the next level. Basically, that's when ExactCapita actually started launching and growing.

If I can attribute one thing to success, to our success so far, I would say is partnership, leaning on each other's strength. When it was just me, Leslie, when we were struggling with growing the company. When Dr. Oni came in, boom, the company excelled, right?

When it was me and Rlesley, I couldn't do the underwriting. Rlesley was the one that knows how to do the underwriting. On that part, he understood that he can do the operations and he can manage it, right? I'm the director of acquisition.

What I thrive is building relationship with folks and having a conversation with the brokers. I thrive in going out there and looking for the opportunities and bringing it to the company. So with that trifecta that actually helps the company grows. I would say partnership was a key to what we've been able to do so far.

Partnerships, okay, cool. This is a revolving theme, right? That keeps on coming. On every single interview that I have with any successful, real estate investor, commercial real estate investor.

This concept of partnering up, right? this concept of knowing that you don't have to know everything to get started because you can partner with the people who do know the things that you probably don't and can help you with. So I would ask a little bit more about your partnering experience just to see how that looks like so the audience can have like a first-hand look into how partnering looks like, how to find your partner, how to determine if it's a good partner and how the partnering process looks like. I want to go a little bit deeper into that.

But before I do, let me ask you, man, what would be the main parts that a beginner real estate investor would have to partner up with? So like, for example, on the writing, building relationships, right? Like those are two parts right there, finding deals with our three. So what would be like the main things, the main parts that a real estate investor that is beginning would have to be covered and could cover with partners?

It's pretty simple. It's your weakness. You just look for your weaknesses, look for somebody that can cover that part. For example, I didn't have interest in doing that writing when it comes to reviewing our deals, right?

So Leslie was there. He's my partner. Boom. He knows he loves to do it.

So he does that part, right? Leslie doesn't like to go out there and talk to brokers. I love to do it. Boom.

That's my part right there. We struggle with raising capital. You see what I'm saying? We're struggling to raise in capital and Dr.

Oni has a huge network and he has, he's a visionary, he understands the future and some of the ways we can ship the company to become a billion dollar company in the future, right? He has that, I that's what he brings to the team. So at the end of the day, you have to outsource your weaknesses and that's what we've done here at XSITE Capital. source our weaknesses.

For example, we have a team of about total, we have about 10 people in my company right now. And a lot of people have different roles. We have the marketing strategies on writing specialists, you know, acquisition, associates, investor, relations, all of R these guys have specific skills that we don't specifically have. And we're continuously outsourcing those different skills, leveraging other people's skills, what they're good at.

there's a saying that says give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar you know what belongs to Caesar give it to him and everybody's happy you know so that's what I attribute it to leverage you leverage other people's expertise and our social weaknesses yeah leverage other people's expertise time knowledge skills basically everything all of that yes and then you have social weaknesses Cool. So can you enlighten me with how the partnership process looks like, man? There's someone out there who's just learning about, this is probably their first interview, and they're like, damn. In three years, he went from zero to building, you know, XI Capital, which is a company that is managing over $168 million.

You know, like, I like that. I want to do that, right? And, you know, there's probably someone out there who also comes who's also like a minority whether they're Mexican, whether they're from you know some other part of the world and they're looking at this part they're watching they're listening right now and they're R inspired right by how fast. Someone can make progress and they're like okay I get it I don't have to know anything I can I don't know I don't have to know everything I can partner with people that do and that can complement my skill sets.

So but then they're like well where do I find these people and then all of these stories start in their mind, right? All of these stories as to why they can't or why they wouldn't be able to or why no one would be able to partner with them. So can you enlighten me on how you did it, man? Like how do you go about finding partners and then what do you tell them?

So partnership, you know, if you're looking for a partner, they're not going to come to you in your house, right? You got to go seeking and you got to go seeking until you find, right? You could be going into, you know, They'll go into networking events. You could be going to, for example, you know, if you want to learn how to swim, right?

Where do you go? You go to where they have a pool and then where they have a coach, right? And then you start seeing people that have know how to swim there. And then you guys start having conversations about swimming and the different techniques and all of that stuff, right?

The same thing with building partnership and building any kind of business. For real estate specifically, if you want to, learn how-how to partner, you want to go to the place. Where are our investors really go to, right? And everybody that comes to that common ground have strength and weaknesses.

You want to know what you are good at. And whenever you meet any other investor and say, hey, this is what I'm good at. This is where I'm going. And I'm looking for this.

You want to be specific and know exactly what you're looking for. So that when the person appears, you will know immediately that this is what I'm looking for and that's a missing piece. Of course, you don't wanna jump into any kind of partnership right away. You wanna spend some time to know your partners, right?

You wanna make sure that wherever you're partnering with have the integrity and the reputation for you to that you wanna work with. Because remember, you know, maybe investing in deals and taking a lot of people's money or raising capital, you're putting people's money at risk if you don't vet whoever you're partnering with. know what they're good at, what they're not good at, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are. And then you have to put in the work to get to know them.

And then when you know them, now you can say, okay, maybe we can do something together. I'm sharing that because that's exactly what we did. Me and the way I met Leslie was through his wife. When I was doing financial services, I went to a doctor's office to do a presentation and I met Leslie's wife and Leslie's wife said I should meet Leslie.

I came the house, met Leslie, and that's how we started having conversation. And we started meeting every Friday to play the a cash flow board game by Robert Kiyosaki. So we played that game every Friday. And that way we started building relationships and we started seeing each other's weaknesses is our strength.

And then we decided to start XSITE Capital, right. As we're going in that journey, Iles.ly has been talking to our CEO, current CEO right now, Dr. Oni in the hospital R because both of them work in the hospital about what we're doing. And Leslie knows him very well.

And with time he observed that Dr. Dr. Oni could be a great partner. So when Dr.

Oni said he wanted to be a partner at XSITE Capital, we say absolutely. Because Leslie knows him very well. All they needed to do for me was just to give me a call. I had a conversation with Dr.

Oni. I'm like, man, I really like the energy. My gut feeling was like, this is the person who would need to be a part of this company. And boom, we took XSITE Capital to the next level from there.

So again, if I have to summarize, is go to where the people you wanna, the investors are where you wanna build whatever kind of business you are, you're trying to do, go there, network, put in the work to, know people and then with time, you'll be able to know if you wanna partner on that. Cool, so get out there, know what your weaknesses and strengths are, and just do the relationships with people. With time, you'll get to know what they need Tell me a little bit about that monthly meetup that you have, and tell me who is that for and what is it about? So the monthly meetup is just another way that we add value to the community that we serve, people that come across us on the internet and through our network.

We just serve them with all the resources that will come across. In Novice, when it comes to investing, it could be somebody as a next part. go through the process of sharing information about the mind, sharing information about wealth strategy, sharing information about multifamily, sharing information about any kind of practices that we at XICAPA we use to help grow our mind and grow our wealth, that we see that we're beneficial to our community, we share that information. For example, the person that's going to be on our next meet up.

His name is Bob Burke. He is the guy that wrote the book, the is the a go g, right? And his philosophy has five principles in there. So he's going to be in that podcast, right?

I said podcast in that meet up. And the reason why we're bringing him up is because we've read this book and we saw that the teachings he has in that book is useful to our community. And if anybody could bring some of- of those principle, they will be great in their life, right? So we'll bring him to that meetup to come and share those principles that people have an opportunity to have questions.

Again, we're bringing real estate experts, tax advisors, coss-segue experts, folks that talks about the mind, how to set goals. So we cannot go through all the different growth journey for an entrepreneur. And we're trying to bring in these different keynote speakers. And we do that every first Monday of the month.

And we'll do for about an hour and a half. I really liked that, man. I really liked that. That's really inspiring.

And then I was like, I got a little bit excited because I love that book, the Go-Giver, right? Yep. So just give, right? I really liked that- Yeah.

And I'm really excited for, you know, to up for your monthly meetup. So who attends like, is that more geared towards like, multi-family related investors so that you can teach them about mindset, about how to get started, about businesses, or is that towards like people who want to invest? You know, like capital investors? Yeah, so it's open depending on what, because we have a huge database now.

For example, if we were talking about the philosophy of giving, if that's not what you are, you probably would not attend, right? So we at XSITE Capital, our tagline is grow your mind and grow your wealth. In order for you to grow your wealth, your mind has to be strong, right? You know, you have to understand the different challenges that would come, and then you want to look for ways to fortify your mind in order for you to actually grow wealth, right?

So we look for resources that can help people either do the growing of, they're growing their mind, and then we look for resources to help them grow their wealth, right? So in growing their mind, we talk about philosophy, we talk about goal giver principle, we talk about setting goals and all of that stuff. And then when it comes to growing your wealth, We share with them the different asset class when it comes to investing. Talk about multifamily because that's what we do.

We'll r a talk about what's going on with the market and the industry and all of that stuff, right? So it's geared towards anybody that's an investor that's looking to grow their mind and grow their wealth. Any topic that we're bringing into that platform will help you in that whole process. And that's what we try to achieve.

I like that, man. And it's like me, right? Like all of the people that I'm connected with resonate with the message of being on King, right? Of having it all, of pursuing true freedom and wanting to become the best that you can be across all areas.

And I like that, right? So everyone who goes to those meetings or who's connected to you probably resonates a at some level with your message of, working, growing your mind and your wealth, right? So it's really cool. I'm super excited to attend.

Thank you so much. I want to attend, right, if I'm interested in growing my mind, I'm interested in growing my wealth, and more importantly, if I'm interested in doing it, using real estate as my vehicle, where can I sign up, man, for your monthly meeting? So, you know, if you go to our website, xsitecapital.com, hosted free underwriting class that basically help Ryou understand the financial model when it comes to buying more of a family real estate and it's free of charge we don't pay you don't have to pay anything is it free resources that's one of the additional value we add to our community because what we observe when we started this business is if you're buying a hundred units apartment is like you're buying a business and in order for you to buy that business you want to know if the business is growing or that or is dying. Does the property produce enough income to service the debt and for you to be able to give it investors return.

Is the expenses ridiculous or is it you can reduce the expense, right? So we do that financial analysis in order for we to put in office on deal and buy deals. Without you understanding your writing, you cannot win a deal or you will you actually lose your investors' money. So we use that approach of, how we do our deals to educate our community.

Now there's lot of people that have come to us and say hey, let's, I want to learn how to do this business, we walk them through that on the writing class and say, hey, this is how you do it. And that on the writing class is every first Tuesday, every Tuesday at 8pm Eastern time. and it's free of charge. So anybody that wants to be a part of that community, reach out to us at excitecapita.com and we'll make sure you are in the class for free.

And then our monthly meetup, just go to excitecapita.com. The link to the meetup is there. And then you'll be able to get to add the other resources that we have as a company on exactcapita.com. Cool.

So you have an underwriting class every Tuesday at 8pm. At 8pm Eastern time, yes. I like that. And everything we can find on your website.

And then the other thing, the monthly meetup is the first Monday of every month? Every month, correct. 6pm Eastern time. Cool.

I really like that. So... And now for people that are in Charlotte, I'm about to start up in person meet up here in Charlotte because I currently live in Charlotte. So I'm about to start a networking event here in Charlotte.

My first one is going to be on Thursday. So I'm hoping that, you know, with that we can bring like-minded individuals, like I said in the podcast, in order for you to grow in terms of your network, you got to go to where the people are that you're looking to network with, right? So people in the child area need to come out, let's network and see how we can grow our wealth and grow our mind and then grow our wealth. Awesome, man.

So for these meet RPS, Are they live or are they pre-recorded? The meetup that we do every first Monday of the month, that is virtual right now. And we started- But it's live? Oh, it's live.

Yes, it's live. What about the class? The unwriting class is live as well. Cool, so then people have the opportunity to like engage and ask questions.

Ask questions, correct. Correct is live. I'm gonna attend one of those classes, actually. Yeah, just- Actually, one is happening today, right, later today?

Yes, one is at 8 p.m. today. So send me your email. I, I'll give it to my admin to add it to the list , a little, send the information to from that direction.

Cool. We, then But we have just one That, B.- that is because he really wanted us to help. Again, if we find somebody that says I really need your help, we definitely can have that conversation at that time. Okay, cool.

So I do end my interviews with asking a couple of questions, three questions actually. But before I go there, man, I just I want to shift gears, a little bit, and ask you about some of the like, what are the investments that you got going on right now? I mean, what type of investments do you do? And then what are some of the investments that you've got going on right now?

So you typically, XSITE Capital would buy between class A all the way to class C type of assets. Usually, they call them value add. Value add means you buy a property that needs some kind of improvement. We go into that property.

We add value to it. And when we add value to it and add value to the community of our tenants, they see that if a increased rank, don't be able to give us that extra rent increase, because they see that in the community we've actually improved it. So by improving it and increasing the rent, we automatically increase the value of the property. And our business plan is usually between three to seven years.

So we identify a property, we wanna make sure the property won't draw on the right end that the property cash flow from day number one so that we can provide returns to our, investors. And then we're going to this property, We have value too, right? And then we increase the value of the property. And then between that five to seven years, we exit.

Cool, five to seven years. Then any investor that invests with Excite Tabroom could look at benefits such as taxes, right, they could save on taxes, they could cashflow like you said from day one, which is very important. And since you hold the property for like five to seven years and you add value to them, they can actually benefit as well on the appreciation side. Appreciation, exactly.

For example, we had a deal that we exited on December 17th of 2020, 2022. We had that deal for 19 months. We were able to give our investors a reasonable returns of almost 30% average on our return. But when we got the deal, our projections was like around 18% average on our return on that deal, right?

It was way better, we exceeded our expectation and we're able to return capital to our investors. And a lot of them were able to think they wanted to a newer, the new, the deal that we had that would close in December 30th of 2022. Currently, we don't have any live deal. We, you know, we were looking for the next acquisition, but again, deals are gonna show up this year.

We're actively looking for deals on the writing deals.. Of course, the market is a little crazy right now with high interest rate. A lot of sellers are holding onto their deals looking to sell because it's cash flowing. But again, we're going to be presenting deals to our investors pretty soon.

All of them are pretty much waiting for our next deal. Cool. And what structure did you use to fund your deals? So we use the 506C, the Reg D 506C, business for accredited investors.

And we use the syndication model, where we pull resources together between our investors to be able to fund the deals. Okay, cool. So are you project? Oh, yeah, the market is a little bit weird right now.

Right. So, um, do you project having any deals on your pipeline? Any, anything? Absolutely.

We'll put it in offers. I put in an offer yesterday. I'm the director of acquisition of the company. So I have a pulse about the deal flow that we have.

Uh, we review close to, you know, things that slow down, but on a regular review, like 40 deals every week just to review and then out of those for about 46 deals we on the right about 12 or 13 of them out of that we usually submit about three to four offers every week on a regular day or regular season now with things kind of slow and sellers holding off holding back on selling things are a little slow but it'll continue to aggressively pursue deals and of course we will not buy any deal until it meets the returns that we project for investors and they're in a good market, and of course they support our business philosophy. So my question is, knowing what you know now, what piece of advice would you give yourself at the beginning of your real estate investing journey to help you have faster, easier and smoother success? Just put in the work. Dream big and put in the work.

There's a lot of, you know, if you want to go into an environment that you're not familiar with, you have to go in and let the people in that environment know that you're serious. And that's everything that you set your goals, make it very big. If somebody told me four years, five years ago that I will be negotiating a $30, $50 million deal, I'll probably be like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about. It's not possible.

But right now, I'm in a position at the XSITE Capital as a company is a position where we're saying, this year we want to do $200 million of assets this year. That is the kind of dollars. Yeah, so we're going, we're trying to get a $5 billion in. In the next three years, we're looking at the billion.

So, with all of those in mind, you know, we dream big. Of course, if we don't hit $5 billion, we can probably hit $3 million, you know, that's not bad. Yeah. You know, so but there's a hurt for you to dream that big.

And as you dream that big, the universe is going to put the people and the resources. For you to actually Rachib it. And you will put up your mind to the resources that's available out there in the. Wall for you to get it.

So dream big and put in the work. Right. Awesome. And I like that.

So the next question is built building relationships and networking is It's key to be successful in the real estate investing game, raising capital, finding deals and all of that, partnering up. So when networking strategy or advice, can you give on that? It's pretty simple. Go to where the people you're looking for are.

If you want to find, you're looking for deals, go look for the brokers and go meet them, buy them breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You're looking for investors, the specific kind of investors you're looking for, go to where they are. Excuse me, if the IT professionals go to IT conferences, if the medical professionals go to medical conferences and go to them and tell them, hey, this is what I'm, do you want to be a part of it? And then if you talk to 100 people, you probably have one person that say, yeah, I like your idea, let's see if we can work something out.

Right. So you got to go out there and meet the people that you're looking to attract to your business or your business model. So if you're working, if you're looking for deals, talk to investors, if you're working No, if you're looking for deals, talk to brokers. Talk to brokers, all right?

If you're looking for investors, go to where the investors are. Yes, you have to know exactly who your investors are. What if you're looking for someone that helps to raise capital? What if you're looking for capital raises?

What do you go? So, for capital raises, it's still the same thing, right? For example, you go to real estate conferences. If you go to real estate conferences, a lot of them have network of networks, right?

And you go there, you have a conversation, those guys capital that wants you to be actively participating in the activities of the property. You don't Awesome, man. The last question to me is, what is the Ralif belief that maybe you had, or that you see a lot of real estate investor beginners have that holds them back, man? I think the main one I hope people back is they don't believe that it's possible, that it can get it done, right.

Sometimes when you see so one of the big one is a lot of people Yeah, they want it, but they don't want it bad enough. They're not willing to put in the work and they sweat and tears to get it done. That's one of the big things that I've seen in there, right, that holds people back. You want it, but you don't really want it.

You don't really want it. If you really want it, you put it in the work. They don't want it enough. Yeah, they don't want it enough.

They don't want it bad enough. There you go. Exactly. Mm-hmm.

Cool. Awesome. Well, man, I really, enjoyed this talk with you. You've provided a lot of value to me.

I'm sure that anyone out there also got a lot of value from you and from this Interview in general and if people you know resonated with you They like some of the tips They maybe want to attend one of your monthly meet-ups. They might they maybe want to attend one of your weekly Class writing class on the right and they just want to get around you They resonate with your message of growing your mind and growing your wealth What would be the best place for them to get ahold of you, man? I'm on LinkedIn, really active on. add value to you.

Awesome. We'll have all that information added to wherever disappears, it will appear everywhere. And I'm super excited for men. Thank you so much, Alex.

for this opportunity. Appreciate it, man. I'll see you later. Absolutely.

Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the modern Real Estate Investor will be impacted positively. Send it to someone who you know is interested in real estate and dreams of having it all and being the best they can across all areas. And if you thought this episode was really valuable, share it on your social media as a post or a story.

We have a special gift for all of those who contribute to the Modern Kings and Queens movement. So for those of you and I'll see you later.

EPISODE 1578[INTRODUCTION]Leslie Awasom (LA): Number one is persistence. And we've been very persistent in going after this asset class or building this platform. Even when in the beginning we didn't have any results. We believed in the value that we were trying to create for the community and we stayed with it.

Our “why” was bigger than any kind of financial gain for us so and that “why” remains bigger than any kind of financial gain or assets or whatever that we acquired and that has been the driving force keeping us persistent along this journey.Sam Rust (SR): This is your daily real estate syndication Show. I'm your host Sam Rust joining us today as Leslie Awasom. Leslie is the Director of Operations and Co-founder of XSITE Capital Investment LLC. He manages the company operations, market/data analysis, cash flow, and budget analysis.

Leslie bought his first investment property in 2017 and transitioned to multifamily investing in 2019. Leslie is a trained Nurse Anesthetist and entrepreneur who lives in Hanover, Maryland. Leslie and the XSITE Capital team host a rapidly growing multifamily-focused meetup in Maryland where they provide resources and add value to individuals interested in growing their wealth and changing their financial future. Leslie is a husband, father of two beautiful girls and a son, and loves to spend his spare time reading and flying drones.[INTERVIEW]SR Welcome to the show.

Leslie, thanks for joining us today.

LA Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you so much for having me.

SR Fantastic. What is the drone of choice for you? If you're enjoying flying around?

I'm curious.

LA I have the Mavic Pro, which I like a lot. I think it's the Mavic Pro 2 that I have. And also, I recently got the Mavic, like the Mini, because it could give me around anywhere. I could take it to some places where the bigger drone is not allowed to.

So yeah, I love those drones.

SR I don't have one. But I've had the privilege of flying some friends. And there is a lot of fun, especially with the FPV. LA Yes, it's a lot of fun. SR Oh, that's fantastic. Well, as much fun as drones are we brought you on here, Leslie to talk about real estate.

You were a guest on episode 498, back in February 2020. A few things have changed since then. But, I'd love, maybe just a brief sketch of what you were doing up to the time we interviewed you last time for those folks who may be new. And then, what has happened over the last three years for you and Xsite Capital.

LA Sam.

Again, thank you, guys, so much for having me. And thank you again, Whitney and yourself for this platform and for having us, having me here three years ago. Three years ago when I was on this platform is when it was like the early phases of our journey into multifamily investing. We just started Xsite Capital a few months earlier to focus on multifamily acquisitions.

And one of the key differences three years ago is I didn't wear glasses because I was much younger, but I've gotten home given out on me for spending too much time on screen. LA So, since then it has been an amazing journey of growth since then. You know, we started Xsite Capital Investments because we identified a need in that community. But we definitely underestimated the need. And the growth that we've had over those years as is approved the underestimation of that need that we had in the beginning.When I was on your platform earlier, it was just my initial partner and myself, Tenny, hitting the ground, trying to figure this multifamily game out.

And right after your podcast, I did reach out to CEO right now to be an investor with Xsite Capital. And after he became aware of what we're doing, he decided that it's such a great value to bring to the community that he wants to be a partner, not just an investor. LA So, we have grown from one from two partners to three. Then we've been blessed to acquire over those last three years, we've been blessed to acquire about $160 million of real estate assets, both as lead sponsors and as co-general partners. We onboarded over 250 investors.

And I've given out distributed, over $3 million to our investors over those two years as well.  We've successfully exited one day, we've gone full cycle on one of our acquisitions as well. And we provided education to more than 1,000 people. I think that's all the stats of all everything that has happened over the last few years, that's one piece that we're very proud of – the amount of people that we have educated along this journey. So it's been a great journey of growth over the last few years and really grateful to be sharing that journey with my partners and our community.

SR Oh, that's fantastic.

Congratulations on such tremendous growth. I was reading through the transcription from your interview a couple of years ago. And as you mentioned, you're at the very beginning of your journey with Xsite. You know, to get to almost $200 million in assets purchased over that timeframe in over 250 investors, that's a ton of growth.

What do you attribute that growth to obviously, it's been a pretty optimistic, you know, good environment to be investing in over the last couple of years, but there are a lot of groups who have tried to get started and have had nowhere near the success. What are some of the specific practical steps that you guys have taken that you think have led to the outcomes?

LA Number one is persistence. And we've been very persistent in going after this asset class or building this platform. Even when in the beginning we didn't have any results.

We believed in the value that we were trying to create for the community and we stayed with it. Our “why” was bigger than any kind of financial gain for us so and that “why” remains bigger than any kind of financial gain or assets or whatever that we acquired and that has been the driving force keeping us persistent along this journey. LA And the other piece that I will say has been very key to our growth is the attitude of giving. Giving, giving, giving. I will say the three keys to success are to give, give and give more.

Along the journey as we've given value to people, the little that we know we share, we function under the principle that there's more than enough for everybody, we don't lose anything by sharing everything we know with the next person. So that has been the attitude that we've taken as we build this company. And it has given us back 10 times in return. So I'll say those two things, and many others have been like the key to our growth in ourselves so far. SR Yeah, that's fantastic.

I was browsing through your website, and you guys have a cool partnership with skill Bridge, which I think is part of your giving back. Could you outline that a little bit for folks listening?

LA Absolutely. As part of our giving back, we mentor a lot of people, one of the mentees that came to our platform was military was part of the US military. And he brought to our attention the opportunity to provide a platform for ongoing service members that are getting ready to step out of the military to transition into the civilian world by working with a civilian company for about three to six months.

So that was a natural fit for us because we value the work ethic and the value that this servicemen bring to our community. So we reached out to the US military and applied and signed up for the skilled bridge program. And we are blessed to say that we've had some really talented service members have passed through a platform, we actually ended up hiring one mouse, I'll show you touch base with mouse. He's an amazing guy.

And we look forward to continuing in that partnership and continue to provide value to service members.

SR I wondered Leslie, if we could dive in on a deal as browsing through your LinkedIn profile, you mentioned that you guys sold and went full cycle on a deal called the view. I assume it's the view at St. Andrews and Columbia, South Carolina. Is that correct?

LA That is correct, Sam. SR So I'd love to kind of walk us through from when you got the property to operations to the exit.

You know, what were the obstacles along the way? What was the opportunity? Let's spend a little bit of time here on packing this. And it can give our listeners a little bit of a sense of what a lifecycle in a typical investment deal looks like?

LA Oh, that's great.

So we when we acquired a property was actually called Churchill Lesson Andrews, what attracted us to this property. First of all, prior to getting this asset we had, like I said, stay persistent working, we had identified Columbia, South Carolina as one of our main markets that we're going to focus in on. So went down to Columbia, South Carolina, and we build that team down there. One of my partner's telling total fairy actually sold his house in Maryland and moved over to Charlotte, North Carolina, so he could be closer to Columbia and all of our other markets in that area.

So Teddy did a great job of building relationships on the ground with our property management team. LA So every deal we'll have, we'll run it to our property management team and our boots on the ground to make sure that it fits our criteria, what we're looking for the viewers and I just came to us to a broker relationship that 22 Director of acquisitions have been working on. Another evidence of that persistence is he actually had to drive three hours one way and three hours another way for a 15 minute meeting with a broker in order to get this deal. Because we had to do we've been on the writing a bunch of deals, and nothing was penciling. So once we had this deal on the road, and the numbers made sense, our property manager was very excited.

She's local to Columbia, she had that burst of excitement about this property and the possibilities that we can bring to it. So at the numbers made sense. So we went in put in an offer, and who awarded the deal. And this was a first deal as leads, for instance.

So you could imagine the excitement and the nervousness that came along with that. SR Yeah, what was the overall if you could just briefly purchase price What did you underwrite investor returns to be and how much capital did you have to raise?

LA Absolutely purchase price was $2.55 million. At that point, it was about 95,000 per door is 132 unit building. And we on the road investor returns at that point to be 7% of cash on cash, and 18.5%, average annual returns are 16.1. Ir, those were our projections initial plan was to go into a value add 88 of the units 7500 per unit in renovation Cost and value add rent of $150 very conservative on rent growth because we bought this property right around the COVID era.

So there was a lot of uncertainty of where the market was gonna go at that point in time. So we're very conservative on the numbers going in. And we had to raise our $5.3 million for the closing of the asset. SR Oh, that's fantastic. So you close on this asset in roughly summer of 2021.

Is that correct?

LA So we closed on this asset in April on April 21 of 2021. We executed this transaction in 60 days as required by the contract. And that is, thanks to the work that our CEO, Dr. Julius oni had been doing on the investor side or during the investor base.

So once we had the acid, there was a lot of excitement from my investor base. And we're able to fund this quickly.

SR And so you raise the capital, he closed it in April. Operationally, how did the plan change once you actually brought the property on board? Nothing is ever as it seems on paper once you actually get into the trenches.

So what went right? What went wrong? Would you learn?

LA Like I say, all the time, you got to have the humility to admit that your pro forma is always 100%. Wrong.

But you want to make sure that is wrong in a good way that protects you and your investors. So the first thing that happened, Sam is after we close on this deal, we had a meeting in Atlanta. So we're in Atlanta, celebrating with the team met with the brokers, and we're all excited driving back to Colombia, to go meet with the property management in that week after we closed. And our property management team called us.

Well, we're about an hour away and said there was a fire in the building. LA So you can imagine the thoughts that are going on in our heads, you know, at first, I thought it was some kind of a joke, or some kind of late April Fool's joke, but there really was a fire in the building. So we jumped straight to the property. Thankfully, it wasn't as severe, nobody was hurt. And it also gave us an opportunity to observe our property management team managing a crisis situation.

And needless to say, we left that they really impressed and really grateful that we're on the ground to witness this. So. So that was the first maybe the only big surprise that we had on the operation side. One of the great positive surprises that we had was the rent growth, the organic rent growth that happened over that time, there was just a lot of demand for units and the building and rents were growing significantly.

We also found that the previous owner had some leases on there that were way on the market. And we're able to bring those to market and bring those to market. LA Our value our plan liike I mentioned earlier, we were projecting to renovate units at 7500 per unit 450 Rent bomb. But when inflation came in, the cost for construction went up a little bit. And we ended up averaging about $10,000 for unit construction.

Thankfully, we had enough funds in reserves to cover for any surprises. Other things is like the a lot of things also worked in our benefit because underwriting the deal. We underwrote the deal with a ton of reserves. We have reserves that were required by the lenders, because at that point the lenders required COVID reserves and all these other reserves the deal still pencil with that and a lot of those reserves that returned back to us after about six months of operations.

SR What kind of debt did you place on the property? LA We had a fixed that Fannie Mae fixed that three years interest only with a prepayment penalty, yield maintenance prepayment penalty.

And that was also one of the things that worked to our advantage, because with the interest rates going up on exit, the prepayment penalty was next to nothing. So it will to exit without any significant effect on the investor returns on the yield maintenance cost. But this property did really well. I'll say credit to the team that we put on the ground.

But I'll have to say that's probably the biggest secret to the success of the managing of this asset because we partner with experience operators, and we all manage the assets together. credit to our partner Steve, Chris lento, with em capital, which was my partner with on the asset management side as we manage these assets. LA So that thing, we ended up renovating about 40 of those units and renovated units, we're getting an average rent boom of about $200. And a lot of the other units were getting organic rent boom of anywhere from 100 to $150. So we're able to significantly increase the NOI over time, and we exited the deal after about 21 months.

During those 21 months, we want the beautification hour as the most improved property in Columbia, South Carolina, with significantly changed the look of this property improve the leasing area from the 70s that it wasn't like a more modern apartment complex will build like nice play areas for the residents. So we were not only increasing on the NOI side, but we've significantly increased the value that we're giving to our residents in that area, which is something we're very proud of.

SR Oh, congratulations. So I assume that your original plan was to renovate the units and hold this for a five year term. What led you decide to explore a disposition early?

LA Well, at that point in time, the numbers made sense for from a disposition perspective because we had met our exit projection price and so by ask that, right.

So we were already there on the exit site, the deal was doing very well. And we had a relationship with the buyer who came into the market, I was looking for the deal. And he gave us an offer that made sense that we thought also made satisfy investors to work with at this point in time, so we decided to exit. SR Yeah, that's fantastic. So, you know, obviously, you saw some expansion in the cost to renovate units, we've seen that as well.

Our first property, we were able that we bought back in 2018, we were able to renovate units, small one beds, but still for like 40 505,000 a unit. And now it's much closer 10 to 12, depending on the size of the unit. How many of the original ADA, did you actually renovate? Did you get through the full amount in the 18 months that you held it?

LA No, we ended up renovating 38.

SR Okay, now, and maybe walk through why you chose to go that route, I have a sneaking suspicion, it's related to leaving some meat on the bone for the next buyer, and natural rent growth, but maybe explain why you didn't go through the full renovation plan and opted to sell instead.

LA Part of the problem is we didn't have enough units to renovate, the occupancy stayed really high.

And we were getting organic rent growth from some of the units so and the occupancies that really are most of the tenants were not moving. So with the initial plan was renovated about four units a month, but we could only get by to two units some months. So that is part of the problem, then the organic growth. And you got to understand our renovation plan was to do all of that over three years for the increase in occupancy and then the lack of units to renovate.

So we were just able to do those create over the first 24 months of ownership. LA And our strategy usually is to start from outside in. So going in, we focused on the exterior capex work that needed to be done, which was the leasing office, the pool area, doing some repayment landscaping, we rebranded the property, changed all the signs and all that stuff. So that was our initial capex, Gordon in the first few months of ownership, then, by the time we moved into our unit renovations, the market started turning, there was not enough units to renovate. And we did leave a lot of meat on the bone for the next buyer for sure. SR Yes, that's awesome.

And a lot of times, it's kind of counterintuitive, and in some ways, but you actually get more or you can get a better purchase price. If there's room for the next guy to come in and maybe get that 150 to 200 bucks, a unit pop on renovations that they do allows them to stabilize it potentially a higher cap rate and purchase at a lower cap rate coming in. So there's $1 amount or a ratio there that you want to keep an eye on and then just a time function as well, both the time required to renovate those units, and then the management time and the overhead required to manage that level of a project.

LA Absolutely. right on point. SR So did you guys end up offering a 1031?

Or did you return the capital to investors? What was the final story for investors and what level of return did they achieve?

LA So I investors achieved 29% Average annual returns back to them over a 21 month period. And yes, we did offer 31 On to the asset we just closed on December in one on one Elwood in Baltimore, Maryland. I know most of our investors elected to our territory one over to the new asset, there's some of them actually excited to pull their phones out.

SR Now, it's fairly standard, you're gonna get a bit mix of both of those.

So I'm curious, Baltimore, Maryland, I saw that project in your portfolio list. You know, there's a lot of folks that are syndicating in the southeast or in Texas, you guys your portfolio, Columbia, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, but then you're investing in Baltimore, which I think is pretty close to where you live, but it's not high on a lot of people's lists for metros to invest in. So why Baltimore?

LA Because it's a market we live in. This particular property is in an area that I know and understand my partner.

And I wouldn't want to understand very well because like I mentioned to you earlier, I am our healthcare provider. I'm a nurse anesthetist, my partner is orthopedic surgeon. We met at Johns Hopkins Bayview Hospital, which is five minutes away from this property. And we have seen the transition that this area of Baltimore is going through and has been going through over the last seven years, the East Baltimore area, the Canton area, there's a lot of growth that is happening in this area.

And we know what the Johns Hopkins medical system, the amount of investments that is putting in this area over the next few years. So it's a very unique area is an area that we're very familiar with. LA We see what is happening on there, and we see what's coming and on this property, we actually have a few of our colleagues that live on the property. So the property that we saw, it made sense, we realized that it was really on the Manage that was poorly managed and it came as an opportunity as a basis entry basis that made sense. They have This market, and that's why we're going after it.

And it also made sense for four to five investors, because it's a unique opportunity that is rare to find.

SR Yeah, that's fantastic. What do you see as your focus for 2023 moving forward, Leslie?

LA I go for 2023 is to acquire $200 million of assets in the southeast. So we have been blessed with a significant amount of growth, we do understand that the economy is changing and things are the market is changing. We're keeping a pulse on the market and the changes that's happening, but we're forging straight ahead, being pushed for in acquisitions, looking for deals, underwriting deals, even more deals than we did before.

Whatever comes to market, we're taking a look at it that meets that criteria. We are looking forward to presenting so great and unique opportunities and investors infinitary. SR That's fantastic. Well, Leslie, I really appreciate you joining the show today. Thanks for sharing your story going deep on a deal.

Before we jump out of here, what's a habit personally that has contributed to your success.

LA So many that have built on over the years, Sam, but I have to say one of the biggest habits that contributed greatly to my success has been meditation. When I got on this journey, or real estate investing, I never knew anything about meditation. But when I started reading about a lot of successful people that are wanting to mirror, learn that a lot of them spend a lot of time and spend some time in silence with themselves in the morning. So that's something that I started doing.

And it's just been amazing how much power it has over your mind and the way you carry the rest of your day. So I've to say for me, it's meditation. But there are many other things too, that are habits that I've built over the years that has been very helpful. SR That's awesome.Well, again, appreciate your time, Leslie, if folks want to reach out learn more about what you're doing and Xcite capital, how can they get in touch with you.

LA So the best way to reach out to us is you can go to our website, which is www.xsitecapital.com and we can reach any one of us from our website. Our contact information is available on there.

And we encourage you to reach out, engage with us engage with our content or come be part of the community. We look forward to providing value to you.

SR Fantastic. Thank you to our listeners for joining us on another episode of The Real Estate Syndication Show. This is your host Sam Rust signing off.[END OF INTERVIEW][OUTRO]Whitney Sewell Thank you for being with us again today.

I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I hope you’re telling your friends about Real Estate Syndication Show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to LifeBridgeCapital.com and start investing today.[END]

Welcome to the Multifamily by the Slice Podcast with your hosts, Dre Evans, and Ike Eke. On this show, you'll gain unique perspectives from investors and professionals on all aspects of the apartment investing space. Do you want to achieve legacy wealth and live a life of financial freedom? Well, all it takes is that first slice of wisdom to get you started on the journey to building your empire.

Please subscribe to the show, leave a five-star review, and pass it along to a friend that You can benefit from a slice of multifamily knowledge. Now sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to another episode of Multifamily by the Slice. Today we had Julius Oni on the show and it was another fun show with a doctor, which I can say that when we started this podcast, I didn't think I'd be speaking to that many doctors, but here we are.

He's an orthopedic surgeon, but he also is a real estate investor and he's been doing it for seven years. He's built a community of over 200 investors, over 1000 students, and has also built a portfolio as well. So he's the guy with a lot of information for you guys out there in the audience and a lot of slices of information. Or your thoughts Chi?

Yeah, I'd have to agree, I think, you know, I'm such a philosophy junkie and I just really loved how many slices of wisdom he dropped on us. I think one of the things I really liked that he said is the fastest way to get what you really want is to give without expectations. And I think that is what lent to his velocity in the industry, being able to be a doctor and being able to be a very successful real estate investor. And I just really liked his story.

It was a lot of the strength and creativity of the human spirit. And I liked all the mindset that he had around it because he had an identity shift during COVID, which was really interesting. So I don't want to ruin the whole thing. So without further ado, let's get into it.

Welcome to the multifamily by the slice podcast. I'm your host, Dre Evans. I got my co-host here, Ike Eke and Chi Nguyen. We've got a very special guest on the show today.

But before we introduce them, I got to check in with Ike, I got to check in with Chi. What's a going on?. Amen. Another beautiful day here in San Diego, although it's been raining a lot.

so, you know, us San Yegas reason we're here is because we like to be. outside who like to do be one with nature, but haven't had the opportunity to do so at least in the usually sunny San Diego that said, I'm enjoying the rain. We need it out here and I'm happy to have it. She doing good.

I also love the rain. I'm actually normally a sunshine person. That's why I live in the finest city in America, but I am really sad. I can't surf this week because there's beach closures because of the sewage in San Diego.

So I'm a little bit bummed. Yeah. All my surfing buddies and I, but besides that busy, crazy. I was just telling you guys right before this running on fumes a little bit had two eyes asleep last night, but we're gonna do this.

Gonna have a great show and I'm excited. Wow. Yeah. Maybe we can go golfing.

I think Ike, you went golfing last weekend, right? Well, another thing with the rain. I was supposed to play a little bit of golf on Sunday. So what you saw, I posted on social media for those of you that Don't follow me, it's IKEKEH underscore at Instagram, that's a little plug there.

What you saw was me practicing, you know, wiping off the dust so I can get into the golf season and then we were rained out the next day. So, you know, I'm a love-hate relationship with this rain right now. Yeah, we had to play one day. We got to play, man, we got to play.

Yeah. Without further ado, allow me to introduce our guest, He is the founder, co-founder, sorry, and CEO of XSITE Capital Investments. Julius, how are you? I'm doing fantastic.

I can't complain. Thanks for the opportunity to chat with you guys today. Absolutely. Absolutely.

We are excited as well. Please tell the audience a little bit about yourself. How you got into real estate, into business, how you grew your business, and all things in between. Fantastic.

How long do you have? I'm just joking. So yeah, once again, I'm Dr. Julius Oni.

I'm an orthopedic surgeon by day. And I used to say I realized I'd invested by night, but now it's actually day and night. So, but I started in my business journey, really. When I started practice.

So I've been in practice now for about a decade. So this is my 10th year, I've been an orthopedic surgeon, I, you know, I always tell people I'm only licensed to replace people's hips and knees and everything else, you know, you should probably consult your financial professional. So but more importantly, you know, like any other highly paid skilled worker, I started to think about other ways to make passive income around probably year seven. And in my, you know, experience, I had tried, you know, playing in the stock market with, you know, mixed returns.

I tried angel investing, and that was actually really successful. But, you know, in 2015 and 2020, I invested in a little over 50 companies. And I would say about 20% of them is still alive and still kicking with valuations of anywhere between 10x to 40x of what I invested. So I think when those eventually turn out, they will work out.

But obviously, angel investing is a high risk, high reward type of play. And you cannot rely on that to replace your cash flow. So I also tried single family. And I was like, you know, that's what I thought.

I thought I wanted to buy one single family home for the next 30 years and then maybe sell at the end of this 30 years as a portfolio. Once they've organically appreciated over time and I quickly realized I didn't like being a landlord. And when I tried to use property managers, I felt like they were taking advantage of me a little bit. You know, changing the knob will cost a hundred bucks, changing the light bulb was custom 50 bucks.

I was like and they would show me receipts too. I was like, y'all colluding against me. So anyways, the cash flow wasn't impressive. R It was around that same time that I discovered multi- a family actually towards the beginning of COVID.

My current partner, Leslie Awasom and Tenny Tolofari had started XSITE Capital, but they had not done any deal yet with it and they reached out to me and I looked to the deal and started researching about multifamily real estate. And I was like, man, how did I not know about this all this time? And eventually dove real deep into it and really started learning a lot about real estate and eventually decided to partner up with this two fantastic. And the rest, like they say, is history.

Over the last two and a half, three years, we've acquired an asset under management of 168 million, and six deals with four of them being lead sponsors. And we were only able to do that because of the power of community. We literally just thought we were going to be educating people in our network about investing in multifamily real estate. And we went out there, started talking to people just like us, who worked in the same industry as us.

Because what. We start to notice when we went to all the conferences there, we didn't see people that worked in our industry in those rooms. We didn't see healthcare professionals. Because one of, my other partners is a CRNA.

We actually met in the operating role. She was putting, it was putting my patients to sleep when I was operating on them. So we didn't see any healthcare professionals in these the gospel of multifamily into this communities. And that was the beginning of our story.

I guess enough people saw the vision and bought into it and has come on this journey with us. Now we have over 200 investors that we have and growing. We've contributed to educating over 1,000 people just in the last year alone. So it's become a passion of mine.

I didn't realized that I was these boys. Certainly I found another shown interest in real estate, but you know more than I do, not only the amount of time it takes to practice, but also the amount of time that you contribute to practicing after you've been credentialed. It's monumental. So my question to you is how did you find the time?

How did you manage your time and how, did you stay sort of disciplined to get to the level you are now in investing while also being a practicing doctor. Yeah, that was a million dollar question for a long time. People always ask me the same question, but I would actually say that this was one of those few situations where COVID was actually a blessing. In most situations, that period was period of sorrow, obviously, for a lot of families.

And certainly, as I had my share of sadness, but certainly for the first three months when everything was shut down, I had a little bit of an identity crisis. And for several years before that, my identity was cemented really in being an orthopedic surgeon. And all of a sudden, the tap turned right off. you know I couldn't be in the operating room I was stuck at home doing like you know tele-medic I and dance about nature and I was just completely lost I was walking in the woods as much as I could and reading a whole bunch listening to a podcast and that was actually the moment when I decided you know what I'm just gonna put myh my entire energy into creating something else that would still continue to grow regardless of what I was doing, regardless of if I was on vacation or doing anything else.

So those periods, when things were slowing down somewhat, gave us the opportunity to really, my partners and I, the opportunities to really dive deep into real estate. And you need that period of like just complete immersion almost to really, you know, learn the lingo. It's always like a quick, you know, it's a to really engage with folks in the industry to, you know, to get out there and do it. And at that point, there was a lot of fear, you know, in the industry, people they really didn't know what was happening.

So, we just dove Ed first right into it, partnered with Mentor on the first deal that we had. It was a 49 unit in DC, you know, we were tasked with raising about a million dollars for. So we just dove right in. I created a long list of potential investors.

I started calling and sharing the little that I knew at that time about multifamily real estate. So you ask how I manage it now, I've come up with a nice little system. I mean. Most of my weekends and nights are spent, as you can see right now it's 9 p.m.

I'm talking about real estate. I spent doing real estate and during the day I mostly focused on hips and knees, but I think I can see a future where things start to even out a little bit as we grow because our company now is growing pretty fast. We've gone from just the three of us co-founders to now a team of eight and counting. So now it's literally running into, you know, full business on the side and it's been exciting.

I barely get sleep, but I'm trying to get more sleep in 2023. But it's, I guess it's all about what you want. You know, people always say if something is that important to you, you're always going to create some time to make it happen. So that's the bottom line.

I've also been able to leverage my partners. That's the important importance of partnership. because both of my partners, I've just been amazing and I trust them so much that I trust them to represent the core. The core values of our company wherever they go.

And so, I have no doubt. And when they come short of that expectation, we have shared our egos so much that we can call each other out. we could make sure everybody is accountable, including myself. So that's how we've been able to do it.

If I didn't have them, obviously, this is almost impossible. But I have my partners, they have me, and we are like the three legs of a tripod. And Julius, I was sitting here with like the biggest smile on my face because my older sister is a general surgeon and my younger brother is a dentist. And I just had him over for dinner less than a R week ago.

And he was like, what was that, Jake? I'm like, hey, all y'all family members, this. I was like, what the fuck? That is nice, worth at least accomplish, that's all.

Yeah, you know, that's a start. Maybe Elizabeth is smarter once. You know, yeah, oh, no, yeah, my sister regrets, I don't want to say she regrets it. You know, if you're in surgery, you got to love your job, she loves her job, you know?

But she's like, you know, honestly, if I had to do it over again, I'd probably do it when you, your guy. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I was also pre-med and I was like, I don't want to do that. But I had my brother over going back to the story just a few days ago for dinner, him and his wife.

And he was like, whoa, I am giving up six figures to the government every year. And I was like, he was like, do you have any ideas for me? Cause he always comes to me with like financial questions. And I said, well get it to real estate, you know, and he was like, what do you, how does that work?

And so, you know how it's like when it comes from your older sister, they can be a little bit like, so I'm just easing him into it. I'm going to like give him a few books, Like you just hearing you talk about that, like that gives me so many ideas. And the other thing you said that I really like is you guys check your ego at the door. I think that is so crucial in any partnership because when you're able to do that, then you get real work done, so.

I've so, Absolutely. enough to is that. It was a lot of. Negative self.

, to them to invest. And You've dropped a little nice little knowledgeable quote on this and talking about the only solution to fear is massive action. I actually wrote down both for the first I sent for my listeners. The first thing is that something is that important to you.

You always figure out a way to make time. I really love. I think a lot of. People in life.

I think the majority of our listeners, you know, there's only so many people that are truly financially free and the majority of people are whether you're start you already started a business, scale that to a level where it could be more passive You can put a manager in place and walk away, or you're working that nine to five job, whatever it is. I think, and then there's that group of people that just haven't started yet. And I think the majority of people that, you know, they make excuses. They make reasons for why they cannot do it and get it done.

And I don't care if it's 30 minutes a day, at least you started. You're making progress towards your goal, what you're trying to do. So I guess we can say for this episode, just 30 minutes a day, just 30 minutes a day. Absolutely.

And take that witchew, take that mantra with you and move on forward. But I do wanna backtrack, though. You talked about the first deal, which was what, 49 units in DC? Yep.

And your team, you rose capital for it. Yeah. How did you become connected with the general partnership team for that deal? And how was that relationship built?

And the reason why I wanna ask that question, is because one of the things, you know, Ike and I have been doing this for a while. And we see a lot of patterns with people. And so at the things that people really struggle with most and want to have questions about. And one of the things that we've heard, pretty common theme is building that relationship with a senior partner, how that's established, how they're found and the value that you bring.

Obviously the value brought was raising capital, but how did you find them with that conversation and go like, that's a great question. and I'm told, I was lucky that both of my partners already had a pre-existing relationship with this particular GP group. They had tried to raise capital for that group before and unfortunately couldn't, but that group was kind enough because they had provided some value to that group, you know, and introduced them to some other folks that invested with that group, so they were willing to give them another shot pretty much. And at that point was when we when I had joined and we just said, you know what, let's combine our forces and go all out with this opportunity.

But I mean at that point we just wanted an opportunity to get behind the curtain and really see our asset is taking from acquisition to essentially the asset management portion of it. So we wanted to be able to jump on the asset management calls and kind of see out the troubleshooting, all the challenges that occurs. We want to see what the conversation with the lawyers were around the time of acquisition. We want to see what the potential challenges were.

And we got everything we wanted. We really got to come behind the curtain a really learn We became it was eight months later and we did it and we were the lead sponsors and with that one We had to raise five point three million and we ended up doing in less than 30 days And we couldn't believe it. But we only were able to do that because in the ensuing eight months between that Last deal and the deal where we would lead sponsors. We just gave value We just educated as many people as we could you know, the fastest way to get what you really want is to give, you know, so, the fastest way to get what you really want is to give, you know, so, indeed, to go again.

I love it. Say that one more time for us, Julius. I mean, the fastest way to get what you really want is to give, you know, so that has been the greatest truism for us because all we did was just like give value. You want something, whatever we needed, we add, we gave it.

Even if we didn't have it, we'll find someone who has it and introduce you to that person with no expectation of ever receiving anything from you. So we just gave without necessarily the expectation of ever receiving anything back and somehow the universe just made it such that when it was time for us to raise void deal, people just already kind of knew us as those folks who just would get it. So and you know, the power of reciprocation is unbelievable. I mean you don't think it works as dramatically as it does but that first deal, every single co GP we had on that, except for the lead spot, the KP's, you know, we were the lead sponsors, but we brought in some KP's because at that point we couldn't take down a $12.5 million property by ourselves.

So now we can, but at that point we couldn't. But, uh, and so every other co-general partner on that deal, it was their first time doing it. And they were like, just people that were like interested. They heard us talk about multifamily real estate, you know, they were like in a group, with us, we were like in almost like a mastermind together.

And we were like the most experienced of this, you know, of this mastermind, even though we had only just co-gibberied on one deal. And so, and we just taught everybody as much as we knew. And when it was the time to go, everybody just went, you know, all out to raise capital, XSITE Capital raised about half of that capital. The rest of the folks brought the other half, it was actually we raised about three male, everybody else brought like 2.3.

And yeah, it was, and that was a wrap. And from that point on, you know, it's, you know, like problem is only some, it's a challenge that's outside of the realm of your control, you know? The moment you were able to figure out a way to solve that problem, right? That problem, that now becomes your new realm of control.

Because now you can solve similar problems, right? So now, a problem to you will only be something else that is actually bigger than that, because you've figured out how to figure that out. And the most successful people are people the people who have kind of developed the capacity to solve the largest problems, if you want to think about it that way. So every so often, we keep being challenged, keep going into these positions where we're in maximal discomfort, which is where the most growth that happens.

And the more we expand, the more we realize that there's bigger problems to solve. And that's really the secret to the growth of the company so far. We should rjust call this the philosophy episode. There's so much of life philosophy, and I agree with so much of it.

One of my favorite things that I say is I'm most comfortable when I'm uncomfortable, because that means you're always pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. So, and you're all more and more capable. I love the way you kind of showed it with your hand gestures. And that, that's really, well, it makes me think you're really like Cosmo.

I get a little too excited talking about this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, normally we will go into the legacy round, but we do, we are on time crunch.

Now. Now, Julius says, and we do have another guest. And so we're going to jump into the Giordano round. Now Julius, this is my favorite round, okay?

Okay, that don't work, why do I- this is the most I think about a slice podcast and we don't play games about pizza, okay? Geodana loud geodana is the number one piece of spots. Chicago is known for its big meaty slices of pizza Yes, that's right. I know nobody you know, I have things I train in Chicago Yeah, Karras, that's where I get my fellowship These questions are gonna leave our listeners with a mouthful So I myself and she are gonna go back and forth six of them rapid fire The, first one, you're on the top of the highest mountain in the world these are, the last words you could scream out to the world before you die, what will you, julius scream out to the world and want them to remember you, i feel like yours about to be deep no pressure no, wow i would say i played fool out you know i lived it to the fullest that would be my yeah that would be what i would be screaming as i go down love it Okay.

All right. Number two, if there was one slice of wisdom you wish you knew when you got started or advice you could pass on to others, what would it be? I'd say like the mind, the body, and the spirit are all very important and making sure those are healthy are going to be very important to determining how successful you go into being. So, one of the things that I quickly learned over time is that just as I was growing in business that I had to make sure that I was growing physically and staying healthy, saying my PCP, I just turned 40, I just turned 41, staying healthy physically, meditating, reading a.

So developing my mind and spirit, you know, meditating and really been present. I think those are like great qualities that are always going to set you up for success. Obviously other qualities are things like, you know, sick and mentorship and surrounding yourself with folks that are doing it much bigger than you are. Like if you're the smartest in your group, then there's a problem with that because you are not going to expand.

So anytime I feel like the smartest in the room, then I need to start seeking out folks that are doing it much bigger. People that are doing it the way that I dreamt it only could be done. And I've learned so much more from those folks than from education that I paid for. And a lot of them are just happy to share what they know because of the interest that I've shown.

So, I'd say mind, body, spirit, being healthy, super important for success. And seeking mentorship is super important. And then the one, the extra one that we'll add then days, give, it's super successful. You're going to be super successful if you do.

Number three, vocab, what are your favorite or three most critical real estate terms multifamily investors should know and why? Three? Three of them. Oh man, that's gonna be a tough one.

I could rattle of 10, rattle for you, but I would say one of my favorite is cost segregation. I like it. because I mean, when I discovered cost segregation, it just changed the game for me. I'll just tell you that my wife is a real estate professional now and tax time is like a sight in time Ramiro.

I know I'm about to recoup some of those, you know, losses, you know, through my W2 job. So, but cost segregation for those that don't know is when you bring in cost segregation experts,. usually a CPA and an engineer, and they depreciate everything from the land to the building. I mean, everything besides the land in the building.

And typically in an average syndication or investment like with my company, if you invest 100K, you can, sometimes you're able to depreciate anything from 20 to $60000,000 depending on what that cost segregation expert allows for. Like for example, our most recent deal that we closed in on December 30th, 2022. that the cost segregation experts told us, you know what, you could take $41,000 for every $100,000 invested. That means you could offset any passive income you have with that money, and especially now that you could do 100%, the price down, bonus depreciation.

I mean, that's amazing. Because if you have all the passive income from either rentals or businesses. You invested in, that's great. And then the way becomes really powerful is when, you have a spouse or you yourself, if you're not a full time person or able to be a real estate professional, now you can use that amount to offset any earned income, 1099 income, W2 income, whatever it is.

And it's just unbelievable. I mean, I don't understand how real estate is so tax advantage, but it's one of my favorite things about it. Second, I'd say, cashflow. Cashflow is king.

Most of our deals with structure is such that people get a certain portion of their returns in cashflow, and then they also get to participate in the upside, either during the refinance event or during the sale event. And yeah, so when we went full cycle on our first deal just this past December, and we sold the property that we bought at $12.5 million in April of last year, we sold there for 17.8 in November of this past year. And 19 months later, we were able to give our investors 30% average annual returns, but they had been enjoying about 8% cash flow up until then, you know, annualized. And in that experience alone really won us a lot of raving fans, because now of r, three to five years-.

this is and then number five, what. most important skill to build to be successful in real estate investing. Sales and marketing. And I'm still a work in progress.

But yeah, because I really didn't realize that you could b and you could be a business operator by just doing it without sales and marketing, by just extending into your network. And you would be the one kind of doing the hard work and good doing a guerrilla style all day every day. But once you have a well-established sales and marketing structure, then you really could stop becoming the business owner. Now you could really start working on the business and the business could pretty much run So I think sales and a marketing are probably the biggest skills than answer.

I like that. I see some common themes when you talk to multiple people. Those common themes are I think things you want to latch on.'s to you and we really do appreciate really appreciate that to our a listener is because when you I'm a part of a show. continues to get ranks and likes.

It helps us. it helps us just pass that torch. It helps us. It helps us give back.

and we just want people to learn and be successful in their invested journey. So thanks again. Be blessed. See you next time.

Thank you for listening to the multifamily by the Slice podcast. Be sure to subscribe and leave a five-star review. Lastly, check out the show notes for links to topics discussed as well as website and social media links for Dre, See you next week!

You're listening to PTC point of view brought to you by preferred trust company, the preferred custodian for all alternative investments. We're here to provide retirement savers like you with the tools you need to succeed. Need a confidence boost when it comes to investing outside of the stock market? Do you want the power to build a tax sheltered nest egg that will last through your golden years?

You've come to the right place. Turn up your speakers and turn off cruise control, because we're taking you on the alternate route to investing with your IRA. Thank you, Leslie, for joining us today. Leslie is with XSITE Capital, and we're really glad to have him here today talking a little bit about who excite is, what they do, and how you can invest through your IRA.

So, Leslie, why don't you tell us who is excite and why was it started? Absolutely. Thank you so much, first off, for having me. So XSITE Capital is a private equity real estate investment firm registered here in the state of Maryland.

The primary reasons why we started XSITE Capital was because we discovered the power of wealth, the wealth building power of the multifamily asset class. And we realized that as working professionals, as healthcare professionals, as immigrants, we had no preview that this asset class is available to people like ourselves to invest in. Because when we discovered the power of investing in multifamily assets as a wealth building tool, we started asking ourselves, how many people in our community, in our healthcare profession, do not even know that there's a possibility to invest in this asset class when you get a job? We traditionally told about the other paths of investments, which is like a traditional 401K plan.

We did not even know that you could create something like a self directed IRA to put your funds in there, that you'd be able to invest in this. So that's how. That's the mission behind creating XSITE Capital. We created XSITE Capital to go out there and educate our members of our community about the power of pre investing in multifamily assets, to be able to bring our choice assets to members of our community and give them that opportunity to grow their wealth as well.

So tell us, what are the benefits of working with Excite? Well, the great thing you get working with Excite is you're working on a company founded by three professionals that put in their everything into this. Prior to starting excite, we all had successes in our different careers. So we bring some of that variety into the company here.

Pay very close attention to the kind of assets that we bring to our community. Focus more on quality over quantity. It takes us a long time for us to find an asset that we know the members of our community, because a lot of our investors are like first time investors. These are people that work with us in the hospital.

These are people that we know how hard the work to save the $50,000. Although they are credited as a professional ourselves, we know the amount of work that it takes for us to save the amount of money that we have. We make sure that whatever we bring to the table, to our investors, it's of high quality that has high opportunity for reward and very low risk. We build a very strong team around ourselves, of the best professionals in the market, in the industry, to help us take down this asset and to help us manage the assets as we go through our business plan.

We're also focusing on making sure that our investors are adequately updated on everything that's going on. Because for us, it's not just about creating opportunities to grow wealth, but also providing education. We want the investors to be aware of the power of this asset class, to learn how they could take advantage of this as well. So we do a lot of communication, a lot of education, partner with companies like yourself to diversify out of the traditional investment vehicles to invest in alternative assets like this one.

So if someone is interested, they hear this podcast, they're interested in getting started with excite. How do they do that? The fastest place to get started will be our website, which is www.xsitecapital.com. that's x as in xylophone.

S as in samuelite. That's xsitecapital.com dot. You'll be able to take a look at some of the assets that we have. You have access to some of the events that we do.

And you'll be able to reach out to any one of us or schedule a call with a member of our team. We would love to connect with more people, and I'll provide more value to more people. So please reach out to us. What is the minimum investment amount?

That seems to be the hot topic. What do I need? How much do I need to be able to invest with excitement? The minimum investment for most of our asset is $50,000.

And are there fees associated with it in order to invest? On the excite side, are there fees? So for every deal that we take on the contract, we charge an acquisition fee, which is the fee that the sponsor charges for putting the deal together. Because, as you know, it costs a lot of money looking for this asset and bringing it together.

So that fee kind of covers most of our acquisition expenses and for doing, the management of the asset management team charges a 1% asset management fee as well. And so that is all written in the operating agreement and presented in all the presentation decks that we provide to our investors. One more fee, a capital transaction fee, which is a fee that gets charged on exit so that we able to pay the brokers, whoever is involved in the capital transaction as well. So other than that we don't charge any additional fees and just invest and then you get your returns.

Awesome. Okay, so do I have to be an accredited investor to work with you all? Yes. For most of our deals right now, it's registered under the 506 c exemption, which means you have to be an accredited investor.

But in the future we do plan on bringing in some assets that would allow non accredited investors to invest as well. So just be on the lookout. In order for you to gain access to those kind of opportunities, you have to be a member of our community already. So if you're a non accredited investor and you want to invest in some of our future assets, please come join our community so that we could establish that relationship which the SEC requires and we'll be able to share those opportunities with you in the future.

So if you're not an accredited investor, it's okay to get started now because you might be able to invest down the line. Absolutely. We have a lot of non accredited investors in our community that we educate and a lot of them have been pushing us. So we are going to bring in some assets in the future that allow for non accredited investors to invest in as well.

Okay, great. Well, that kind of leads me to my next question. Where do you see XSITE Capital in the next ten years? Well, we have very ambitious goals.

It's like when you see a need and you see like a huge community that needs that and you know that you're doing something great to fulfill that need. You don't want to stop. So one of our goals is to get to 5 billion of assets under management within the next ten years. So when we get there, maybe we'll shoot for 20.

The journey has been an exciting journey of growth for all of us. It's just incredible to be in a business where you're able to provide a tremendous amount of value to members of your community. The North Star right now is 5 billion of assets under management and be able to give value to more than 1000 people. So once we get there, then we shoot for something bigger.

So what do you think are some of the biggest challenges that you face or have had to face so far. So I'll say, especially this year, with the debt market being as volatile as it is right now, that's probably been some of the biggest challenges we face. So for finding deals that actually work now we go into the experience where a lot of sellers still have expectations from when interest rates were down in the 3%. It just takes a lot more work, which we don't mind doing the work, to find the assets that actually makes sense.

So that's probably one of the biggest challenges that we're facing right now. And so what do you recommend, or what do clients, what do you do to help mitigate the risk for clients, and what can clients do? We're very conservative in our underwriting when we buy these assets. Now, as I alluded to earlier, we'd rather go without buying any assets than just to bring an asset over to our investors.

So it takes us a lot of time to find those assets. And even when we find those assets, we manage them very conservatively. We make sure we keep very close eye on how the management of the property go now want to under promise and over deliver. They want to put their money out there and just let it work for them and don't even worry or know whatever they're investing in.

But we highly encourage all of our investors to at least get a minimum understanding of how these assets work or how assets are underwritten. You know, how the projections are made, because anybody can make any projections. The question is, can you meet those projections? So one of the things we do is we teach a class on how to.

On the right, we do it every Tuesday night, every night in the evenings for anybody, and it's free for anybody to listen in, attend. So you get a basic understanding of how the numbers in this business work, because it's a numbers game, it's a numbers business. Once you understand that, even as a passive investor, you'll be able to identify a deal and say, maybe the risk here is a little bit higher than what I can tolerate, or this is the perfect deal for myself as well. So that's one of the things we encourage members of our community to participate in, to give them that knowledge base so they can be able to make good investment decisions.

That's awesome. Knowledge is key, for sure. And performing your own due diligence on the companies you invest in is super important. So we appreciate the education piece.

Definitely. You're listening to PTC point of view brought to you by preferred trust company. Due to the current economic conditions, people will ask us a lot. You know, is this a good time to invest in real estate?

How do you respond to that? Every time is always a good time to invest in real estate. Again, it's just about, like you mentioned, investing in the right markets and investing with the right sponsors and finding the right deal. Because especially now where there's a lot of uncertainty, this is probably one of the best times to find some real steals in the market.

So although the deal flow is very low, but though the people that stay active and keep looking and just stick to the fundamentals, we'll be able to find some real germs in this market, and that's what we intend to do. So I'll say just stick to the fundamentals and know what kind of investment you're making. And there are going to be some great deals coming in the horizon. So we definitely excited for that.

And if nothing else, educate yourself right now because there's some great deals coming down the pipeline. So do you want to tell us what investments and offerings you have available right now currently, if someone's looking to invest right away? Oh, absolutely. We have an amazing asset here in Baltimore, a class A property 101 Elwood, one we're very familiar with because it's like five minutes away from where our CEO doctor judo Zone works.

It's an area that we've known for a long time, and it's one of those deals that we're getting at a significant discount because of where the debt market is at. We're really excited about this one. And that's one deal that we have open right now, and we just closed on another deal in Atlanta, on Mountain Vista. That one was closed a couple of weeks ago.

One. One Elwood is open. Anybody that's interested, if you go on our website, you will see it as a pop up. Just mark your interest and one of us will reach out to you and answer any questions that you may have.

Great. All right. Is there anything else about XSITE Capital you want to tell us today? And make sure you get out there before we finish off today?

Well, we are just grateful to be in the business that we're in. XSITE Capital was founded by my co founders, my partners, Doctor Julio Zoni and myself, to serve our community. And we're just grateful to be out here doing this. We would love for you to come be part of our community and we can learn from you and share whatever we know with you guys and hopefully provide some opportunities that will be of value to you and your journey to growing.

Well, thanks, Leslie. We so appreciate you joining us today. And you guys, if you have any questions, make sure you reach out to Leslie and XSITE Capital. Make sure you check out their website again, it's xsitecapital.com dot site, capital.com.

capital.com. Make sure you check them out. And we appreciate you being with us today, Leslie, thank you so much. Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for joining us. For another episode of PTC Point of View, where retirement savers meet alternative investments. Know someone who's struggling with their retirement strategy? Tell them about our show.

Can't wait for the next episode. To learn more, visit our [email protected], or give us a call at 888992.

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, start. Take a, Welcome to the best ever show, the world a longest running daily commercial real estate podcast, our hosts interview commercial real estate. experts every day to get you the best advice ever with none of the fluffy stuff. Best ever listeners.

Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I'm Slocum Reed and I'm here with Julius Oni. R Julius is joining us from Baltimore, Maryland, where he is a full time orthopedic Surgeon specializing in hip and knee replacements at Johns Hopkins. He is also CEO of XSITE Capital Investments, which encourages all who qualify to passively invest in multifamily real estate.

In his portfolio currently, he's GP and an LP in over 125 million in assets under management. Julius, can you tell us a little bit more about your background and what you're currently focused on? Absolutely. Thank you so much, Bykom.

I really appreciate the opportunity to chat. So I am Julius Oni just like you said, an orthopedic surgeon in Baltimore, Maryland. And the name of our company is XSITE Capital, where we collaborate with our community of investors to buy cash flowing multi-family properties. And we started buying properties somewhere in early 2020.

In the last 20 and a half years, we've been able to accumulate an asset under management of about 125 million, and by the end of this year, we'll be at about 170 million. So I am very proud of what the team has been able to do over the last few years, and our growth has been a testament to the power of community, to the power of partnership, and to the power of what people can do when they pull their resources and go after a mutual goal. With regards to my personal background, I'm an immigrant, originally I'm from Nigeria, came to the US in 1999 when I started college. hips and knees.

And I usually joke that the only thing I'm really licensed to do is really to replace people's hips and knees, particularly when I'm doing my webinars for our real estate deals. And for people to double check everything I say with their financial professionals. But obviously over the last several years, I discovered multifamily real estate in collaboration with my two partners, mr. Leslie Awasom, and mr.

Tenny Tolofari. I was super fortunate to find two other guys that were just super passionate about creating legacy wealth through investments in real estate. And over the last few years. We've been able to educate and get a significant number of people to join us in this vision of collaborating, pulling our resources and buying cashflow and multifamily real estate and creating legacy wealth for us and our families.

Julius, two months before we are recording this and likely four months before it airs, my interview of Leslie Awasom about Excite published on all of the podcasts and locations. So good to have a catch up with you. It was a conversation about data-driven analytics and how that data a driven analytics informs and fuels the underwriting and the analysis that you all are doing at Excite. You started a little over two years ago.

You have 125 million in asset center management now, you're headed to 170 in the next couple of months. Yeah. Before the years end. Yeah.

That's fast. Of the deals that you're set to close in 2022, in 2022, when did you get the last one under contract? That's a great question. The most recent one that we got on the contract, we put on the about a month ago.

So we're talking towards the end of Q3. Yeah. 2022. So all of the same things are relevant now that were relevant.

Then about the economy and a crazy downturn and inflation and interest rates. And have you guys had gotten anything else under contract since then? No. Not yet.

Absolutely not. But we've been pretty busy because we actually slated to close a deal prior to that on November, actually this Friday. So this Friday we'll be closing the deal prior to that. And then almost immediately we're going to be going right into the next deal.

This most recent deal that we're going into, we actually had been pursuing for some time. We went into the best and final and we're second, but for some reason the first group backed out and here we are. I always joke with my partners. We like to be second place, because I would say three of our last five deals, we were second place.

The first group backed out for some reason. It didn't work out and it came to us and we closed the deal. So anytime we're second place, we usually like, yeah, this sounds like it's going We're actually going full cycle on it and we closing on that one on November 8th and selling it after holding it for about 18 months. And we're going to be giving our investors some fantastic returns, at least 1.5x equity multiple on that one.

So super excited about it. You guys are value add apartment investors, correct? Yeah. What are your targeted metrics?

Is it equity multiple? Is there a targeted cash on IRL. look into deliver at least 6% and cash to our investors at, apartments, what markets are you targeting and what types of properties or locations within those markets are you buying? That's a great question.

So typically, we are looking in the southeast US. So we've been mostly focused on North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, we certainly have looked at some of the Sunbelt states, Texas, Florida, but the competition in some of those states are pretty stiff as you well, no. So we've gotten some good traction in Columbia, South Carolina. We're just closing on our first deal in Atlanta, actually our second deal in Atlanta, Georgia, but first deal as the lead general partner.

So we are slowly but surely breaking into the markets that we are interested in, but we constantly looking mostly in the Southeast US. And the reason why we are that interested in that part of the US is because of obviously the population growth, the median household income growth. The diversity of employers that are moving down there. The increase in rent growth in those markets and certainly the increase in just the general migratory,atory trend of people just moving down south from the northeast from the west sometimes and has really encouraged us to explore those markets.

And it's a good effect. We've really found some great deals and doing very well for our investors on those deals. Julius, within those markets, , do you find yourself targeting A, B, C class, all of the above? That's a great question.

So we have mostly played in the B and C classes, but occasionally we've actually done all. What am I talking about? Our last close prior to the one was an A class property. Now all depends on one, the particular property and if the underwriting checks out and the numbers work, then we go after it.

The A, B, or C class property. As far as there's some business case to be made for some value add, then we'll go for it. Because some of the older class A properties also could use some value add. It may not be a heavy value add we would do for a class C property but it could be something like smart.

for the units, for an updating of the pool area, upgrading of the business center, add in some co-working spaces within the property or something along those lines. This is another type of value add that we've done on some properties, but for the a class properties then obviously we do the heavy value add, improve the curb appeal, do the full shebang on moving the classic units to more modern units. Julius, within Excite, what do you focus on? What are your responsibilities?

That's a great question. , so I'm the CEO and co-founder, obviously at XSITE Capital, and I'm mostly focused on the investor relations and the overall vision of the company. So Leslie, I was some of my fantastic partner who you have interviewed is the numbers genius, is the guy that does all the underwriting and oversees our underwriting, And. Also does all the operations and oversee the fundraising process.

So we are three legs of a tripod, and without one, the tripod cannot stand. So we work very well with each other and have complementary strengths. That makes a lot of sense. Knowing that you're focused on investor relations, Julius, we're recording at the beginning of November, 2022.

Have you noticed recently any change in the interests, behaviors of your investors or the quantity of investors who are looking to get into your deals? Absolutely, no questions about it. Everybody's booked, at least the vast majority of people are. And even the most savvy investors are a little more reserved about going all in on deals, and doing even extra due diligence and deals that they're going into right now.

And that is for good reasons. So we finding that we are having to educate the investors. More about what we think our assumptions about with the, what we think our assumptions are about where cap rates are going to go within whatever markets we are. What we think our assumptions are about the supply chain dynamics with regards to all the value add that we need to do.

What we think our assumptions are about what's going happen in the different markets that we operate in. So, a lot of these things and all of the things that we're doing to essentially create cushions in the deals, we have to educate the investors about. And we found that to be more than sufficient for the investors because yes, it's a little harder, particularly because a lot of people really add a lot of the challenges in the stock market. So because of that, some of them are reluctant to obviously pull their money out at the bottom so they are keeping their money in the stock market and therefore have less liquid to play with.

But for the most part with all the education that we're doing and with people seeing us as their preferred investment partners, at least the people in our community of investors, we've not really had too much issues with closing our deals. Got, so investors are spooked. Yesterday was Halloween. Great word to use there, Julius.

But also you're seeing a lot of investors who right now are looking to keep their money in the stock market because they feel like whether or not it's bottoming out the value of their stock portfolios dropped considerably. And so instead of pulling out at the bottom, they're looking to stick it out and see. Absolutely. Gotcha.

That makes sense. Yeah. So some people are even doubling down to the point more in, if they truly believe in the diversification of their portfolio or the choices of their stocks, then some people are doubling in and just going right into the stock market, hoping that it doesn't drop down any further and hopefully rebalance their portfolio that way. But what we try to tell our investors is that multif bamily real estate has traditionally done well, even in recessions.

This is one of those recession resistant type of asset classes and as far as we are underwriting appropriately and having super conservative assumptions and then we are very confident that we are still going to do very well for our investors and for ourselves. We'll get back to the show with a first of sponsors I'm confident and you'll find value in learning more about. Everyone is looking for a recession resilient investment. How can you try to prevent from losing money by picking the wrong fund and sponsor?

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They have an average project level IRR of 33% in just over 3.5 years. Visit besteverreliant.com right now to receive the 10 things to consider in a real estate investment fund and get access to the latest investment opportunities. That's besteverreliant.com B-E-S-T-E-V-E-R-R-E-L-I-A-N-T.com. Julius, I know you are not involved in acquisitions as much, but with the recent economic and global political volatility that we have experienced now fully into the fourth quarter of 2022, Are you all changing the way that you look at deals, analyze the offer on deals right now?

Some of the things that could b impacting your decision making, of course, interest rates, the slowing of rent growth, which of course is felt in different classes within apartments and in different metro areas in different ways. Are you all changing or adapting to any of this? And what are the fundamentals that you're sticking to that you're not willing to back down off of right now? Absolutely.

rate yet we are having to be much more careful about how aggressive we are with our offers so also we are projecting a slower ranked growth in almost all of the deals that we underwrite in at this point and we are also projecting that we are going to exit at a much higher cap rate than we typically would have so instead of that it's only 40 or 50 basis point higher than what we entered into the deal with, we would project that we would be 150 basis point higher in many cases. So being that conservative, and we still build a lot of cushion into the deal, and the deal still checks out and still pencils, and fewer and fewer of them are doing that nowadays, then we put a fair offer on the deal but we are certainly doing everything in our power to make sure that we are protecting the downside for our investors and us. Underwriting for more conservative growth and a more conservative cap rate on exit. Are you all making any projections about recession would go and how long it would last?

Yeah, that's the million dollar question, right? I think a lot of people offer their opinions on this. And I've read a lot of economists and their projections on how long the recession may be, and how long the feds are going to continue to bump up the interest rates, and how quickly they're going to ease off of quantitative tightening and maybe possibly start QE again, no one knows. But I think in the most conservative quarters, what I think is that the Feds will probably stop increasing interest rates sometime in 2023, maybe 2024.

Who knows? I think it should top out hopefully sometime in 2023, but the effects of that, it's hopefully going to be eventually fell sometime in early 2024. is that it would then start to drop at some point in maybe mean to late 2024 and by 2025 things would start to train down again where we have in decreasing interest rates and hopefully pressing cap rates again but obviously who knows where it's going to be dropping from is it going to be 10% you know of course is it going to be 7%? Yeah I wasn't asking you to pull out your crystal ball as much as I wanted.

I just wanted a lead in to this question, which is,, given that in that you are aggressively pursuing deals right now, what kind of debt are you looking to take on? How much is the current economic climate factoring into your decisions about debt? Got it. Obviously, Fannie and Freddie are just not willing to give any significant LTV at this point.

The last time we checked it was 50 to 60 percent loan to value ratio, which means you were going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting with raise and a lot of these deals. So we've actually been doing a lot of assumption deals recently. So a lot of deals with long term debt, because obviously some of the fundamentals is that you want to get into long term debt. You want a cash flowing property.

So two of our last three deals, including the one that we're going into to assumption deals. So we are just getting some supplemental loan to move on those. The previous one that we closed this year was a F nny loan, but obviously at that point, we still had some favorable interest rates. The most recent deal we are closing is a bridge loan, but we bought a pretty aggressive rate cap of 1%.

So we're still lucky enough to lock it in at 4.2%. 0.2 percent. Oh, wow. Yeah.

How long? 4.2 percent plus so far, but then we 3. So yeah, open to write out whatever the recession. was going to present to us.

So we. We have determined that loan was 3 plus 1 plus 1. So I hope and I think we are completely within our conservative baseline to hope that whatever is going to happen with the interest rates, it's going to hopefully be done in three to five years, hopefully, and that we will be hopefully back in a more favorable environment at that time. But we've stress tested almost all of these deals to seeing even what would happen in a worst case scenario.

And our first goal for all of our deals is cash preservation is to preserve our investors principle. And then we certainly also wanna do well for them. So we tend to try to under promise and put their hopes of over-delivering for them. But going back to your question, yeah, we're still willing to explore some bridge debt, but obviously, if we're going to do that, then we wanna buy a pretty aggressive rate cap and the deal still has to work with that before we would consider it.

But yeah, the deal we're going into right now is more of a management play. We are doing a debt assumption and just going to manage it a little better. Reduce the expenses, expect relatively flat rent growth and the deal still works. So it's a beautiful thing.

Nice. Well Julius, are you ready for the Best Ever Lightning Round? Why not? Let's do it.

Great. What is the best ever book you recently read? I just actually finished Sapiens. Yes.

And that was incredible. That's a book that completely changes your perception of the world we live in and the history of mankind. So I truly enjoyed it. Yes, you've all know Hararei.

Same, you have a great book. Yep. What is your the best ever way to give back? I'm fortunate to also collaborate with a couple of other orthopedic surgeons and we have a nonprofit called Operation Standwalk Run where we perform free knee replacements for people who can afford it in Africa.

surgeries where people can afford it. And it was so rewarding. And the beautiful thing about it is the XSITE Capital was one a the sponsors of that trip. So in those cases, my two worlds kind of come colliding where we are able to use some of the your real estate investing?

What is the biggest mistake you've made and the best ever lesson that resulted from it? That's a great question mistake I've made. So I would say probably the biggest mistake sometimes is my experience investing in real estate so far. The biggest mistake I've made so far is thinking That a single family real estate was going to create legacy wealth for me personally.

Because initially I initially when I started learning about real estate. I initially thought that I was going to buy one single family home every year for the next 30 years, create a small portfolio and then sell them as a portfolio eventually. But then I quickly realized that it was just a little too time intensive, energy intensive, and the cash flow wasn't as impressive as I expected. And I certainly realized quickly that I was in a great landlord at least to single tenant rentals.

So it was after that I segued into multifamily in collaboration with my partners. And I'm so thankful that I was able to make that pivot. So for me moving into multif family was the best thing that's ever happened to me in real estate, but certainly thinking that single. Family was going to do for me was the biggest mistake.

And I lost starts with the first step. So stop thinking about those things that you're So start educating people, start seeing where partnership can take you. Figure out to get to those deals, how to underwrite them quickly and efficiently, figure out how to get those investors that are going to come together and help you acquire those properties. So for me, once I realized that was a game changer for me.

Awesome. And Julia's last question, where can people get in touch with you? That can.

Brad, we got Leslie on the line here, what do you want to ask him? Why would you partner with me if I was bringing you that deal on something that you may have already seen? You being there as another person, it's another head to do some of the work and an experienced person coming in and being a KP on there, they get a piece of the deal as well. You know, and they get to benefit from the piece of the deal and get to benefit from the work that you're working.

And you know, the multi-family space is today as a newbie is we're probably going to be the person that you're partnering with tomorrow to take over a 500 unit property. So it's all about building these relationships- Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor podcast with your host, Brian Griscoe. In this podcast, we bring some of the top professionals in the apartment investing field to discuss various aspects of the apartment investing journey, with the sole purpose of educating listeners to make wise investment decisions. The Diary of an Apartment Investor podcast is sponsored by Four Oaks Capital, bringing you high yield returns through apartment complex investing.

This is journal entry, number 151 and part of our Ask the Experts series. Today, we bring on experienced investor Leslie Oleson and aspiring investor Brad Smith. Keep listening to learn how to attract experienced partners and whether to do a 506B or 506C when you're raising money. And now, the show.

Welcome to the Diagon Apartment Investor podcast. I'm your host, Brian Briscoe with Foroaks Capital. Very excited for today's show. It's one of our Ask the Expert episodes.

We have two amazing people on the line with us. We've got a man with a ton of experience in this business and other businesses, Leslie Awasom or as I like to say, Leslie Awesome, and a very motivated and energetic aspiring investor, Brad Smith. All right, Brad Smith, there we go. So first of all, Leslie is the Director of Operations and co-founder of XSITE Capital investments.

And I'll put all the bio in the show notes, you guys can all read it. But I'd rather just introduce Leslie and let him tell you about himself. Leslie, welcome. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. Thanks, Brian. Thanks. Thanks for having me on your podcast and your platform.

Yeah, this is awesome. So for everybody else, you know, Leslie and I have known other for probably about two years. Now, Leslie, did a held a meet up in the DC area that I would try to get to as often as I could. So Leslie, great to have you on the podcast, finally.

Thanks. Thanks. Hopefully, things are opening back up and we could get back to having some of these meetups again. Yeah, there's nothing like.

You know, physical meetups. Zoom is nice. You can talk with people across the nation, and there's nothing like face-to-face meetings. I'm happy that we're at a point where we're able.

We're able to do that in some areas again. Anyway, enough about that. Leslie, tell us about yourself. Tell us a little bit about your background, your history, and what got you into apartment.

Again, Brian, thank you for having me on this platform. I'm Leslie. My journey into apartments, you started with me asking questions, you know, it doesn't matter what background you come from or where you come from. At some point a at some point in your life, you got to make some tough financial decisions.

And that was where I was at when I discovered our apartments when I got into real estate investing. Back in 2008, I was a new graduate, just ran out of nursing school got a great job at one of the prestigious hospitals in the Maryland area. And that was around the time when, the financial crisis happened. And I got to experience I saw some health care providers that I was working with, lose a significant portion of their retirement.

Like I remember the one senior nurse that I was working with getting ready for retire to retire losing about 60 to 70% of our nest egg. And the one that she had on our face that looks stuck with me for a very long time and I just kept asking myself questions if this is really it like if I'm going to end up where I have this job I work for 24 years and then I end up as something like this happens to me and happens to my money and at that point I work all day encourages you having a 401k and doing this so I started asking questions I wanted to seek alternative methods and background 2008 I learned about real estate but then at the same time, I looked around me, a lot of people that I knew had gotten into real estate with the craziness that was happening back then. And they were beginning to lose their properties. You know, so now real estate too was scary for me at that point in time, I wasn't quite sure what to do.

So fast forward a few years later after going back to school and having more degrees which is what we thought that if you need to make more income, more stability, you get another degree, got an advanced degree in anesthesia. Again, that same feeling came back when I was sitting at work, I'm making a good salaryary, but sitting there and asking myself if this was it for me did not seem right. So at that point, as luck would have it, a was scrolling to my phone, I saw an article on Yahoo, it said, the author of a famous book, Reach That Poor, that has published another book for millennials that talks about managing money and dealing with student loans. I'm like, this is exactly what I need.

So I purchased the book. The name of the book is, Second Chance at Your Money and Your Life by Robert Kiyosaki. I purchased the book and I started reading it and it just felt like I had this mentor that I'd been looking for was talking exactly to me. So I started following the steps that Robert listed in that book, which was me encourage investing in real estate and then going out to networking events and meeting people.

And that's how I started going out to networking events. my first rental property in 2016 did a BR model on it. That worked tremendously well. You know, I had a good return on that.

Then so I said this real estate thing works. So let me deep dive into it more. And as I was doing that, I met my first initial partner, Tenny Tolofari. And we decided to partner up together to focus on real estate.

And as we were doing research to decide what area of real estate to focus on. We came across multifamily real estate and everything about it just made sense to us. So we started XSITE Capital Investment, started meeting the ground running. I think that's when we started meeting Brian at the different networking events, had a couple of failures and in the beginning, then kept going and then things started looking up towards 2020.

We had a third partner coming and things just took off from there. And right we find out about ourselves in a position, where we feel very grateful and blessed to be where we are acquiring properties, and could be an example for other people too, that have been to our situations that have jobs that are looking for better alternatives out there. Yeah. You know, a lot of things that resonate with me in your story.

I mean, It was a Robert Kiyosaki book that lit the fire in Romeo's, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, probably a decade before you read that, but it just took me a lot longer to get into apartments than it took you. And the other thing is just how volatile the stock market can be. And that's something that in 2008, when the stock market crashed, my dad was getting ready to retire and his 401k equivalent and took a gigantic hit. So it's something that affects a lot of people.

And if all you have has is that nest egg in the stock market, people a talk about diversifying, but unfortunately a lot of people talk about diversifying, they're talking about diversifying your stock portfolio. But man, you really need to a diversify a lot to R things like, I don't know, real estate, right? Absolutely, yes. So you bought a single-family home, just curious, where was a single-family home that you bought?

It was in Greenbelt, Maryland. It was actually a con. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Real close to where you're at. So.

So good enough. And so you met Tenny, you started XSITE Capital and hit the ground running from there. So let's talk about one of the projects you guys have done. I know you guys have done a few of them right now, uh, you know, pick your favorite one and give us kind of the rundown of, you know, how you found it and, uh, how it's doing.

I have to pick the one we just closed recently, which is, uh, the view S and a stretchy lesson Angeles we just rebranded to the view at St. Andrews. This is a 132 unit property, Class C property in kind of like a B neighborhood. And the way we found this property is I give a lot of credit to our Director of Acquisitions, Tenny Tolofari, again.

And I also want to point out our other partner, Dr. Julius Oni, who is the Director of Investor Relations and CEO. So Tenny, when we started brand, you know, both of us lived in D.C. and we were running the middle in D.C.

So doing the research to identify the markets that we wanted to go into the southeast seemed like the best place for us to invest in. So. wanted to focus our tensions in the Carolinas and Georgia. And we were reaching out to brokers, talking to people, trying to build these relationships.

But then we found that we were not making a lot of leadways. So Tony decided to sell his house in Maryland, move his own family to North Carolina, so that we could be competitive in that market so he could start interfacing with brokers and when he got to Charlotte hit the ground running going out meeting with brokers having these meetings and onto finally one broker decided he was going to give us a shot and that was again from his efforts because you talk about somebody driving three hours to have a 15-minute meeting with a broker and that really impressed the broker that somebody would take this amount of time to do that. And he was like, I'm going to give you guys a shot. And if you get this one shot, you mess it up.

You know, that's it. You know, so we got this off market. It was an off market deal and took it down. Everything went well, 132 units again in Columbia, South Carolina, value at property.

Yeah, you know, in St. Andrews, I love that area, you guys are actually on the right side of the freeway, you know, because the other side of the freeway of St. Andrews is C class and maybe a C minus area. But my wife grew up in that area.

And that's one of the areas that we target as well. We have an asset in Columbia. But yeah, when I saw that offering, I started looking at it, put it on the map. I'm like, yeah, that's going to be a good one.

That's going to be a really solid play there. But yeah, congratulations on that one. So you say 132, right? Yeah, 132.

Nice. And that's a nice application. A lot of put us to our property management company because that one put us sourcing deals down there because we had a lot of deals come to us from Columbia and they kept saying, nope. Like you said, it's on the wrong side of the freeway.

And then this one came along and it hit all the pieces that we needed. So we went aggressively. Yeah. Yeah.

So, and that's a key right there is having somebody with local knowledge. I mean, you get 10 who's close, but you talk with that property manager who has, you know, one level deeper of knowledge and you really got to know those areas. To be able to make sure you're getting the right asset and being able to use that property manager to guide you to, yeah, not that one. Yes, this one is a perfect asset is absolutely key.

And I think the property manager is an integral part of any team that you got that any successful team in multifamily. So yeah, so that said, Leslie, got a question for you. What is your big burning why? What motivates you in this field?

We got into multifamily investing and started learning about how you could really generate wealth and we started going out. To conferences and meeting other people. We realized that there were not too many people in the business that look like us that are from immigrant that have the immigrant background like we do. We also realized that in our medical profession, I have a background in healthcare.

Our CEO is a medical doctor. We realized that in the medical profession a lot of people did not know that this asset class existed out there, that you could actually use this as a. Most of the people that were interacting with usually followed that traditional path of getting , and hoping that the stock market keeps going up onto the day you retire. So we saw that need, that there was a need for us because I could have stayed at my job and make the money and make an investment in apartments and get the great returns because it's a great investment vehicle, building this company takes a lot of hard work and effort, but we saw that there was a need for us to bring this in our community.

So the why of Excite is really to create that vehicle where we could go out and teach people and let people know that this opportunity is out there and it exists for them to take advantage of it if they wanted to. And on top of that, or just to have people have that exposure to financial education. Because for me, growing up, I a probably didn't know what an investor was until maybe I was in teenager almost 20 years to actually understand that somebody could actually invest in other people. Yeah.

But now I can pass those not knowledge over to my kids. I have two young girls and a son. And my daughter sit on my zoom calls and she knows what an investor is. She knows where an apartment is.

For me, that is the reason why as that's what gives us the energy every day to go out and keep doing this you know yeah i love that there's a lot of things about that i'd like to unpack i mean number one you're right you know you go to the big conferences there's not a lot of people like you know i applaud you for what you've been able to do in this field you know you're an immigrant and you're a minority and you go to most of the conferences and it's a lot of guys that look like me and look like brat you know there's not a lot of minorities there's not a lot of women so um for you to do what you've done in this field Just because of the way it's set, it's harder for you than it is for a guy like me R. And, incidentally, you mentioned you and Tenny or immigrants. Where are R. I were from Cameroon.

two partners are from Nigeria. and applaud see the authenticity and the genuineness in whatever it is that you're doing. So now we're having a lot of interest of people in our community that want to learn and know more about the multi-family investing. So what's next for us is to keep educating our community, keep providing the right opportunities, finding just the right opportunities that we could expose the members of our community so they could continue to grow their world.

And just keep growing. Real estate has been really good to me in particular. and my partner, so we continue to grow in this space and. give back to our community as much as we can and give back to other people that are hoping to learn how to invest in multi-family or build their own businesses as well.

Yeah, love it. All right, well, we're gonna do a slight transition here and we're gonna bring Brad on the show. So Brad Smith, welcome to the podcast today. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Brian.

So, same first question for you. Tell us a little bit about your background and your history and what got you into apartments. Yeah, well, I live in Minnesota and I work currently for a large general contractor in the Twin Cities. It does over three quarters of a billion in revenue a year.

I've been working there for 15 years. I actually started as R laborer, pulling the hard ground work. I remember jack-hammering sidewalks when I was in college. It was some brutal work and then managed to make my way into being a project manager, been doing that for quite a while.

I've managed over 330 million in almost exclusively healthcare. So it's kind of funny that Leslie's on in the healthcare industry, that's awesome. Yeah. And I have a wife, two kids, one three-year-old, one eight-week-old.

We love to go out west and ski. I hope my boys will be skiers someday, otherwise I'm really screwed. What's your favorite place to ski? I got to ask that question.

You know what, you just moved to Idaho Falls and guess where I went two years ago, was Jackson Hole. Okay, love that place. That's not too far from I grew up in Salt Lake City and I mean the license plates in Utah say- best snow on earth and I'm somewhat of a ski snob so interesting. Park City is a great place and it's huge so don't get me wrong.

Yeah it is. Incidentally I lived in Twin Cities for a little while and moving from Salt Lake to Twin Cities looking around for ski resorts. I think there's one in the Twin Cities metro area and it's like 300 feet vertical drop. It's like the bunny hill.

You spend more time on the chairlift than you do on a hill. Absolutely. But anyway, go ahead. Getting into real estate, I actually started back in 2009, just accidentally, where my best man and my wedding and I split, bought a house together and we just did a live in flip, R sold that and then my current wife and I bought another house and we did a live in flip.

And then actually, last year, we just bought our first short-term rental in the Smoky Mountains. Nice. So, you got a couple of single family short-term rentals, what drew you to apartments? So as soon as we bought that short-term rental last year, about exactly one month after we closed, I told Jordan, my business partner, that, I told Jordan that we need to scale this.

I mean, this is great, right? This is going to be awesome. And we're already doing well on the books already, and I'm a visionary. So I was already like, we have to do this faster, because short-term rentals just wasn't going to get us there fast enough.

And I said, we need to do some research on apartments. So we did a bunch of research. We actually invest in a mentorship program in October, and we've been doing that ever since and trying to learn the ways of getting into the completely different realm of apartments versus short term rentals. It's been a great, it's been a good learning experience and a very interesting learning experience to get us to where we are now, which is, right, we're still very early in our venture.

Yeah. Incidentally, for those listening, Jordan Grigg was also a guest on this show a couple months back, and got an email from him this morning, and some good news. You guys put an LOI out this morning, right? We did.

We put it in, and we're pumped. We hope it has a chance, we'll see. Yeah. Well, tell us a tiny bit about the property you put the LOI in.

Where is it at? How many units and whatnot? Yeah,. So it's located right smack dab in the middle of the Twin Cities.

It's not Minneapolis proper, and it's not St. Paul proper, which we didn't necessarily want to do. It's got a fantastic location. It's two buildings, one that's multifamily, has affordable housing and market rate, and a senior housing building right next to it.

So they're selling these together. Total, it's 175 units. Nice. Well, good luck with that one.

And definitely, let me know how it's going for you guys. So once again, my favorite question, I have a lot of favorites. My favorite question on the show is, you know, what's your big burning? Why?

What drives you? So really what got me motivated to buy that short term rental last year was the project that I was on about three, it started three years ago for a large hospital with a complex project, $80 million, 54 phases, renovation and new build. The client was a real bear, like really hard to work with. They made it very difficult to manage it on top of how difficult it was already.

At the same time my son was born and we weren't that lucky in that he decided he doesn't like to sleep. And so I was, I'm tired. And I had a very difficult client to work with working seven to five. And it just created an atmosphere where I was just not happy for three years, right.

And actually, at the time, you're like, gosh, this really is unpleasant. And I hate it. I want to quit. But, you know, looking back at it now, this was a couple years ago, but it really motivated me to move to the next level and say, do I really want this for my life?

Kind of like what Leslie was saying is this what it's going to be about. Working seven to five, you have young children, you come home and you're kind of cranky just because you just burned up all your mental ability already for the day. And then you come home and you're short with your wife, your kids, like I just don't want that. So I want a different life where we can create passive income and have ultimately, I guess it comes down to time, right?

I want to have time with my family, time to go skiing, time with my kids and teach them kind of like what you were saying, Leslie, I want to be able to teach them everything that I've learned so far and even more to that, not necessarily working seven to five every day is not the way to go, and then have your 401k lose it in 2008 like your dad, Brian. I mean, that's awful. And how many people are really stuck in something like that if it happens again, which is why this gets so exciting when coming into this side of the investment world. Yeah, a lot of stuff there.

I mean, a lot of people have the same type of story, and it comes down to the things that matter to you most are usually your family. The people, your children, your spouse, and a lot of times, you want to spend your time and your with the people that matter most to you, but sometimes that job gets in the way. I'm not saying that a nine to five job is bad or a thing, but it's necessary for the world to work, for people to work in jobs. But when it takes away from that thing that's most important from you, I think a lot of people start looking for other things.

That's what I did, that's what Leslie's doing. And Brian, that's what you, you're doing as well. So you know, and it's funny that you guys were mentioning kind of that diversify earlier with the 401ks, right? We actually just pumped out an article that I did some research and like the three legged stool.

And if you Google that, it pumps out the old school adage of pensions, social security, and personal savings, right? And it just goes to show you how much has the world changed in just 20 years, or even 30 years, where the social security was created, what, 1935, and the average life expectancy then was 61. Well, look what people are making now. And to survive on social security, it's just so not realistic, right?

And that's one other way, diversification, it's not just paper assets, get into real estate. And. That's exactly where I'm passionate about what Leslie was saying too, is I'm passionate about hopefully, helping other people get to their retirement goals so that they can have a life too, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely awesome. Well, Brad, I'm gonna hand the mic over to you. And here's my favorite part of the podcast. Not my favorite question, you know, like that, lots of favorites.

But Brad, we got Leslie on the line here. What do you want to ask him? You know, my biggest thing right now is we're raising money from our personal network, Leslie. And we're sending out educational content through my LinkedIn, we, we're trying to get people kind of off to our website.

And we just started this about a month ago, it's been okay. And our target is working professionals. You know, I guess for me, I'm connected to a lot of construction professionals. So that's really what we're trying to go after is people, architects, construction professionals, people like that.

But we're not getting enough traction through that route. What has been your best method to reaching out and raising money for what your company's goals are for like the healthcare industry, right? Absolutely. By the way, congrats on the LOI and I hope you guys get that deal as well.

Thank you. Yeah, so we kind of had a similar journey doing the newsletters reaching out and feeling like we're not getting enough traction. but what we realize is people read, they just don't respond sometimes and just stay with it and one important thing is give, continue to give value and being identified as the apartment guy and soon enough some of those people that are seeing your content we start reaching back out to you and asking questions. So that's what we did for us.

A lot of our growth came from watermelon. Our very first opportunity that we had an opportunity to code GP on a deal very early on in our journey and we could not even raise $5,000 and that was not because We So When you If you've got the mindset that you're asking for money you're not going to get a lot. If you've got the mindset that you've got the best. In the world, and you want to share that with others.

People are going to open up their checkbooks and start writing checks. And, you know, similar to what Leslie said, you know, I started making r on social media. And a lot of people that, you know, 10, 12 years that I 200 people and 200 people for man, 200 a people for money and see, mentioned people at work know you as the, know social media platforms and going on podcasts, putting those podcasts on social media then people started asking questions they would talk to them about it. We had the meet-up that we do.

That platform is very important right? It gives you that they invited more a lot more people to our meet-up. I don't know meet-ups, more about giving value, educating people and even trying to sell something or trying to push people in one direction or the other and those people usually turn around and even come to gravitate towards you. Are you doing that?

Just like what Brian is doing with the podcast and all the other platforms that he's on. Yeah, podcasts, LinkedIn, people see that. Something else is, I mean, when you show up to work on Monday morning, it's a very common question, how is your weekend? Just throw something real estate in there.

Hey, well, my weekend, I looked at a couple of properties. Or if you take a couple of days off of work, and that's what I did. In the last three years, almost every I've taken off of work has had something to do with real estate. I was either driving down to South Carolina to look at properties or underwriting properties.

When I come back after three or four days out of the office and people say, hey, how was your time off? The answer was, hey, it was awesome. I looked at 104-unit property in St. Andrews, Columbia.

I looked at a 72-unit in Greer, South Carolina. I looked at a place in Spartanburg, I looked at a place in Greenville, I talked to the brokers, and your excitement gets through, and word gets around. Everybody at my office, which I don't work at anymore, knew me as the real estate guy. I had several people at the office buy me lunch just to talk about real estate.

It was like, hey, I want to take you out to lunch so we can talk real estate. Slowly, you get the reputation of being the real estate guy. And it's going to come if you stay consistent. Don't be discouraged if you're not getting the results that you want right now, right?

It's going to come and it's going to feel like it's happening exponentially because all of a sudden, everybody's gravitating towards Brad. Oh, I hear Brad is doing this. Then you start getting all that interest. So just stay consistent with it and it will come, no doubt about it.

Consistency. That's the name of the game, being consistent over long-term. All right, thank you. Another quick question with your experience now and where you're currently at, Lesly, are you raising money via 506B or 506C and then I guess why or why not?

So both. Our last deal was 506C, but probably next deal is probably going to be 506B. And one of the reasons why we did 506C is because we wanted to take advantage of that marketing aspect such that we could get the brand have brand out there to more people, even some where the people that are not investing. So we have that authority to market the deal as much as possible, to reach out, because we want to reach out to more people and let them know that these opportunities are out there.

And the reason why we felt comfortable going to 5 or 6C as well, is because most of our investor-based credit investors, because of the avatar that we target. But we do have members of our community, like I had a lot of people that reached out to us that not invest on our last deal, because it was 506B, and we're looking forward to the 506B deal on our next acquisition so that we could bring some of these people on board being or stick with 506Bs because there's a lot of people that we want to Absolutely. It could help more people with a 506B for sure. It's not a bad idea.

As long as you've been doing the pre-work before the deal comes, then it shouldn't be a problem which you're raising the money for. So as you know, we threw in our first LOI, but we're working on finding that first deal. And obviously, for us, we feel it's really important to team up with somebody that's experienced when we get into our first building, just because you learn a lot about in these programs, how to underwrite, how to purchase, and how to get to the But then after that, you really don't know how to operate a building, right? So we're focusing on trying to find that key partner.

And we did with this last time, well, I went Matt Bronner, Brian, who you interviewed not long ago, and we feel really strong with him. And luckily we somehow convinced him to partner with us. So that kind of is my question is when you come up with a joint venture with somebody, because let's say you're taking out a larger deal, as a newer investor, what would you look for out of them to bring to the deal in that partnership? That's a good question.

So it depends on what your needs are. You got to identify what your strengths are. It doesn't matter if you're new, but you got to identify what you strong, when it comes to the business as a whole, what your strong suits are, what you're weak at. Then you find somebody that is going to fill out those areas that you're weak at that cannot be copied by, that cannot be covered by all the members of the team, like the property manager, et cetera.

So when you identify that, then you can bring somebody on board to come in and because it will not make any sense for you R to bring an experienced operator that e s strong in the same areas that you're stronger and that is weak in areas. So you want to supplement this field that you're weak at. And then obviously you want to find somebody that your values align, you know, and you guys are looking at this at the same way. For some people buying apartment complexes is just to go there and to squeeze as much money out of the tenants, as much as possible and then exit out.

Some people may have that kind of a slum lot mentality, others don't. So you got to figure out exactly what your vision is, what your ideas are. I know like Brian and the folks guys, they do an amazing job in some of the properties that they I'm going even uplifting some of the property is not necessarily for the income base. That is a great mindset.

that's the kind of mindset we have to. So if you have that kind of mindset. Then you wanna align yourself with somebody like Brian. If you're on the other hand, it's somebody that doesn't think that, oh, this probably, I'm not gonna renovate anything unless it brings me money.

Then, that might not be the right mindset that you work in it. And you guys might butt heads when you start going into the asset management things. Yeah, I mean, I don't have much to add. I mean, I think Leslie's answer was great.

But the one thing that I would focus on, is where you want to get. So we had to partner with somebody on our first two properties to be able to get the loans. I mean, that's just how the world works right now in multi-family, is you have to have somebody with experience on that loan. And we wanted to operate.

We wanted to gain the experience of operating. We wanted to be able to build our name and our brand. And so what we were looking for was somebody who could serve as a strategic advisor more than anything else. There's four of us.

I mean, there's four of us that founded for Oaks Capital. We've got five partners now, but there's four of us that founded in our a abilities and our personalities and our skill sets covered down on everything we needed. We just didn't have the experience. So what we were looking for more than anything else was somebody who could be that strategic advisor, somebody that could hop on the phone with us once a month and fill in the little gaps that we had.

So some people are looking for somebody to play a more active role. We were looking for more of a strategic advisor. So look at your goals, look at where you want to get. And Leslie already said that, but just had to throw my two cents in.

But, great answer, Leslie. Great question, Brad, too. And looking at the time, we got time for another question. What do you got, Brad?

Okay, let's say it was an on market deal, you saw it but you passed on it and I brought it to you. What value would I bring to you by doing that during the due diligence in the period? Like I'm saying that wrong, I guess, but I'm trying to figure out if what I can bring to you, why would you partner with me if I was bringing you that deal on something that you may have already seen? Well, you being there as another person is another head there to do the work, to do some of the work away.

And me, let's say, an experienced person coming in R and being a KP on there, they get a piece of the deal as well, you know, and they get to benefit from the piece of the deal and get to benefit from the work that you're working. And you know, the multifamily space is a team sport. From my mentality is you never know the person that you're helping today as a newbie is probably going to be the person that you're partnering with tomorrow to take over a 500 unit property. So it's all about building these.

Sometimes people would do it because you bring in tremendous amount of value by going and finding the deal on the writing, making sure everything works, then doing all that work in the first place and presenting it to somebody else. And if that do make sense for them and their vision as well, then they're agree. Part of your question that you asked is if it's something we've seen before, I would say it depends on why we passed on it. We want to get a certain unit count.

If we're looking at the 100 plus properties and you bring a deal to us, it's a 40, that's still a good deal. It may not meet our criteria, but your criteria is going to be different than ours. When we're partnering with somebody else, if we come in as a key principle, our criteria investor base. My criteria.

For Oakes criteria for partnering is we got to like the deal, and we got to like the team. That's really what it is. If we like the deal, we like the team, we will partner, we'll come in as KP's. That also means signing on the loan and putting our reputation on the line.

That's why we have to, we're going to bet the team, we're going to bet the partner. Like Leslie said, in order for it to work, we are going to get a percentage a benefit for us, you know, as long as we, like I said, we like the deal, we like the team, there is a financial benefit for us to come in and do that. So yeah, end of the day, you know, like the deal, like the team, and you know, if those things align, we'd be happy to partner with people and the benefit you bring, like I've said, like Leslie said is we get a piece of the pie. So I got to start being more likable.

That's my problem. I see Now, that's exactly what I wanted to hear because I think I needed to hear something like that and why you guys would even consider working with somebody who doesn't have that experience and that was important. So thank you. Yeah.

So, and everybody had to do it. I mean, that's just the nature of the game. We had to, yeah, I was in the same coaching program. You were, I mean, three years ago, I started the same coaching program you're in and it was one of the coaches in that coaching program that came in as KPNR deal.

So it's a circle is how it works. like the Lion King circle of life. At one point you're the student and then you end up being the teacher at some point. Well, we're about out of time so I'm going to ask one last question for each of you.

Leslie, you get to go first. What's the best way our listeners can learn more about you. All right, the best way is to reach out, If you're interested in reaching out to Leslie, just hit the show notes, you know, tap and go. Brad, same question for you.

How can listeners learn more about you? and show notes as well. So, you encourage you to reach out to these guys. It's always good to hear somebody who's heard you on a podcast and wants to learn more.

So thanks so much to the I- the two of you for coming on the show today. I appreciate your time. how to invest in apartment buildings or want to be a guest in our show, visit our website at foreoakscapital.com slash podcast or, email us directly. If you're still listening, you obviously like the show, so pull out your phone, tap subscribe and leave us a five star rating on your

So, you want to be a real estate investor, but where do you start? and I am joined today by Leslie Awasom. Leslie is Director of operations and co- changing their financial future. Leslie is a husband, father of two beautiful girls and a son and loves to spend his spare time reading and flying drones.

Leslie, welcome to the show. Hello, Jonathan. Thank you so much for having me. Great to have you very excited for the conversation.

Excited you're willing to take a I think it's in challenging times like this that strong companies are made. I do believe that going to challenges like this makes you better and it improves the process and just gets you ready for the moments when it's not as challenging as it is right now. So as difficult, as it is, we're excited for the challenge and look forward to taking it on. Absolutely.

Likewise. I love that energy, but let's kind of rewind. Let's go back to the beginning here. We kind of alluded to it here, you bought your first investment property in 2017.

Take us back a little before that, what you were doing and what caught your attention about real estate. Oh, absolutely. So like most people, Jonathan, I was sold there, the American dream of going to college, getting a great job and then saving money and retiring. I'm an immigrant.

So when I moved over to the US land of opportunity, I came in with a lot of zeal. And enthusiasm and went on and started working and chasing that American dream.ocre dream. You know, so I got to the point where I had a career. I got done with college in 2008 actually as local habit.

And I was hired as a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Ss And a few months after starting the crash of 2008 happened. And I remember I observed like one of the nurses, one of the most-experienced nurses in my unit, she lost a significant amount of her retirement during that 2008 bubble crash. And just the look on her face gave me like really nightmares.

I kept, then at that moment I kept asking myself, you know, I'm going to be like her, I get this job, work all hard, you know, and then get to the point, and something like this can happen and wipe me off completely. Like this is criminal. something does something is not right, you know. So that frustration is kind of the similar stories that my partners had to as well.

It's like, it doesn't matter, at some point in life in your professional career, you're gonna be forced to make some changing decisions. So 2008, fast forward a few years later, during that time, I'm still questioning, she's trying to figure out what to do. And the traditional growth that I could get from my career. So I started asking myself, asking questions like, what else can I do?

And fortunately enough, I came across a book by Robert Kiyosaki called Second Chance at Your Money and Your Life. That book, when I read that book, it completely changed my life. Because it explained to me some of the questions that I had about the 2008 crash. It really explained to me how the American financial system was.

And it gave some suggestions, some guidance on how you could get out of that rat race or how you could move forward and move yourself forward. So I just followed whatever it was that he recommended in that book which is like get out read more books on personal development go out to networking events you know find people that you know you could learn from and grow from and associate yourself with them and that's what I did with my partners you know I actually sought and. I'm a single-family B.R.R. model.

That worked out really great. After that property, that's when I met my partners. We decided to come together focusing on multifamily real estate because it provided an opportunity for us to take an asset class that is not very known in the community that we're working in, the community that we're from. And to take that opportunity and go preach this gospel of multifamily investing to members of our community and get more people involved in it.

So in 2019, we founded XSITE Capital Investments and it's been an amazing journey ever since and I look forward to keep grinding on this journey. Awesome, I love it, what a great story. And so often, you know, so many careers can be traced back to some Robert. Usually rich dad, poor dad, but yeah, he's kind of the godfather, if you will, for a lot of us, I think for our generation, for sure.

Absolutely. That's really cool. That guy has influenced so many lives. It's really amazing.

I think is the way he teaches the concept that he teaches it really lights up the light bulb in your head. Yeah, so I'm really grateful that I came across one of his books. Yeah, it's kind of a parable style, you know, so you kind of like, you know, associate with the characters and, , but of course you're learning along the way. Yeah R.

So awesome, I love that so much. So you mentioned, you know, kind of spreading the gospel in the community of multifamily, I love that. Did you invest in Maryland area as your first investment? Yes, the first rental property was here in Maryland.

So when I started, used to go out to a lot of networking events, a lot of meetups, join a local RIA, like a real estate association. You know, I started taking classes in real estate investing. So then finally got the courage to go out and take down. the property.

And during that whole experience I actually took like two weeks off of work to work on that property, to project manage that property. And it was like one of the best two weeks of my life. You know, so, and just imagining that there's a possibility of me doing this every day, you know, work that doesn't feel like work, you know, work that you actually enjoy doing that you see yourself being creative and creating something and making it look nice and then seeing somebody moving in and appreciating it, you know, so that whole process was just like a great experience for me. And I'm glad that, at least right now, I'm on that journey where I'm able to do this more often and do it more like my daily habit instead of being in the hospital all day.

Yeah, I don't blame you. And you got out just in time too, because as soon as COVID hit, man, that would have been, shout out to all of our nurses and everyone. Did you go back? No, I'm not out yet.

I'm still working, but less and less. I'm still going out, so I was there during COVID. I got to experience it very challenging time, but it was a good learning experience for me as well, but the great thing about the real estate is like the growth, the personal growth that I gain along the way, right? The mindset growth that I gain along the I.

So when this whole COVID thing came, the scary, all the craziness that was going on, I wasn't as much as affected like the rest of that. I was more of an observatory role, really to observe, to see how the world is going crazy, how people going crazy in the hospital and able to be some sort of support to some of my colleagues as well. So I'm so grateful for my real estate journey, for the other benefits that has given me in life and going to that COVID experience well one way is that actually rebuild it to me. Awesome.

I love that. What a great attitude and well I appreciate then you grinding through all of that for all of us. I know that I have a lot of nurse friends and friends in the medical field and I know it, it's a very challenging time. I mean it was challenging for us who weren't having to deal with that so we can only imagine being on the front lines but let's kind of get into Excite.

So you guys, you did your first multifamily investing in 2019. Is that when Excite was founded? No, it was founded January 2 2019. We invested as limited partners in November of 2019.

Then our first property as a general partner was in July of 2020. But during that period, but we kept grinding, kept working, kept pushing forward, kept doing whatever needs to get done, the company forward. I love that. And what, where was your first investment?

It was here in Washington, DC. It's a 49 unit class A property off of Georgia Avenue. Wow. Straight to the top, Washington DC class A.

Okay. So let's talk about that. That is a very unique market for sure. I don't know.

Think I've only ever talked to one person who's in that market. So talk about what that marketa's like and kind of the process for Class A there. So Washington DC is a great market. If you look at every single report, Washington DC always features there at the top somewhere.

It has been one of the most resilient markets throughout every cycle. Even in 2008, you barely see any fluctuations in the Washington, DC market. but it got a little bit affected by COVID and we bought this property right in the middle, right in the beginning of the pandemic. So it was an interesting time where people were moving away from the city to the suburbs.

So initially we struggled a little bit with the occupancy and Washington DC is one of those states that has very tenant friendly laws. We had a couple of tenants that were just, sitting in there and would not move out. So we had to deal with that as well. So, but it's a market that's growing for sure.

A lot of jobs coming over there. Of course, the federal government is there as well. Amazon came across the corner as well. So there's a lot of development in the area and this property came along and we thought it was a great opportunity because we know the area, we're familiar with that area.

of the challenges in the beginning, but now the property is doing really well. Awesome. I love that. And did you raise outside capital or did you guys front it all yourself?

No, we raise outside capital. Our model really is building a community of investors because when we discover multi-family investing, we realize that a lot of members of our community, that's our community of underrepresented minorities, our community of healthcare professionals never even knew that this asset class existed. So our goal, our vision is to expose as many people to this asset class, to educate as many people to the asset class, to provide opportunities for the members of. to provide the opportunity It's a look at the population that's going in And find these deals.

So again, it, it's just based on the data based on the numbers. We see a lot of growth coming to this market. And there's a lot of this too projected growth over the next 10 to 20 years in this market. So buying a deal in an area like that and managing the property wall, and return do you guys stick to, Class A, as well there or, you know, and So we have a class C, we have one class deal in Columbia, South Carolina, but we're more focusing our efforts now on Class B and Class A properties moving forward.

But we will look at classes in some markets and if it makes sense, if it's in a good area, we'll take it down as well. Awesome, I love that. I love that. So, you know, not often do people go straight to class A and even class B.

So I love that you guys went straight for that. What's kind of the theory behind that, you know, the B and A? So it's obviously- Heavy value add, I guess. So it comes down to the numbers, right?

It comes down to the numbers. So we make that, that's what we use to make our decisions. we we're not going to go for a value add deal just because it's value add that is producing lower returns. If we see an opportunity for class a deal that is on the price in the market that we know that's growing that we know it has less risk and it's still able to provide like class C type returns to investors we're not going to turn it down because it's class A, you know, so that's the philosophy we go behind it and that's exactly what that Washington DC deal was.

Because we're familiar with the area, we knew during that period there was a lot of fear in the market, you know, and those are when you see some of the greatest opportunities. So that's how we were able to get that property at a very good going in value. So we excited that we were able to bring some of our investors on it as well. Awesome.

I love that. What are some of the reasons that class B and even class A are underpriced currently? And right now, it's tough to find a class view, a class A deal that is underpriced. To find any deal that is underpriced for that matter.

But not saying that it doesn't exist, every situation is unique, especially right now with a lot of deals getting retraded, at least that's what we're hearing from the brokers with the debt situation. You might find an owner that is on a floating rate debt, and that is struggling with the cash flows because the rates are floated up to like really high numbers. And, someone that bought a deal maybe when the rates were like 2%, right? Our floating rate debt without a cap, you know, there's now sitting at a rate of about six to 7%.

So that definitely changes the numbers on that deal. So somebody like that might be motivated to exit at this point in time. And you might be able to get the deal at a good price. But just because there's so much liquidity and so much capital chasing deals right now, it's almost impossible to find an undervalued deal right now in this current market.

Gosh, that's a fact. Like I said, that's what has driven me towards development. So I totally get that. So when you're looking at a deal now, then what are some things you're looking at that will catch your eye?

Obviously, you mentioned hard to find undervalue. So what is it that you look at now that you're willing to take down. So we maintain our same standard. Number one priority is usually our investors who put our investors first to see what kind of returns or what kind of safety measures are in place for them on the deal.

So we have our return metrics that we seek for our investors. If the deal is able to meet those return metrics with enough questionnaire with our conservative on the writing, we take it down. Needless to say 99% of the deals are not even coming close right now. But we're looking at other markets.

We're looking around the area. So I'm spreading our wings a little bit. And we're looking, we know it takes is going to take a whole lot more work to find a deal that makes sense. But we've never been shy to put in the work.

So we're just going to keep grinding and it was going to come. We know that for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Like we mentioned in the beginning.

Right. This is going to be the time when that sort of, you know, notes the grindstone, really, you know, being lean and nimble is going to be the most important. And, you know, I think we're going to kind of shave off the excess. You know, I think a lot of people have been able to kind of trip and 2x their 2x their deals, right, just based on I'm not to say they're bad operators by any means, right?

But certainly there's, you know, we've had a nice bull market and that's certainly starting to shift.'s and so you mentioned that you're starting to look in other markets. And you're kind of the analysis guy. But you studied nursing. So what was it about analysis and numbers and all that stuff that stuck out to you that really got you wanting to, you know, focus your efforts there.

So I've always been an analytical person. Actually, my initial major when I moved to the US was computer science. But that was in 2000. And I and that was when the dot com crash happened.

So you just love catching things right as the crashes on my life in the US has been significantly influenced by . Crashes. I think this is the first crash that I feel like I'm ready for what's to come. So yes, I was studying computer sales, that crash happened and I was like, man, you know, I can't go to school and end up not having a job, so I switched majors.

But I've always been an analytical person and my career in anesthesia, it involves a lot of analysis, right? In anesthesia, we spend a lot of time analyzing coming up with all kinds of scenarios that might go wrong when a patient When I discovered multifamily investing, the whole aspect of looking at numbers, looking at data and coming up with a story, that just connected with me. Like that was like music to my ears. You know, being able to look at a T, T12 over the years and be able to pick up and figure out, okay, this is something was wrong here.

What's going on here? And figure out and identify areas where you can move things around and make some kind of games. You know, that just fascinated me. So I love that part.

And I don't even wanna do anything with a number. So we had no choice. Somebody had to do the number. So it ended up being.

And I love this so much. And I just went along with that journey. But the other downside to the career. The analysis in the career that kind of transferred over to real estate is in health care, you analyze everything that could go wrong so that, something doesn't go wrong.

And initially, when I transitioned, I found myself always looking for reasons why the deal is not working instead of finding where the opportunities are. So it took a little bit of a mindset shift for me to be able to recognize, become aware of that mode of thinking and focus more on being just objective instead of looking at the fault and everything. So it has been a lot of growth. It's been a lot of growth.

So that's why I'm enjoying it so much. I love it. That's so awesome. What a great perspective.

And obviously in one aspect, right? Nursing, you still have to have that perspective. and then, you know, and like you mentioned, you know, more of a objective view on the other side. So with that, was there any one moment or any one deal where you kind of, the light bulb went off and you're like, okay, I'm looking at this wrong.

a day before the deal makes sense. r we analyze deals, analyze, there's nothing is penciling. Then finally, a deal pencils. That's an off market deal that we have.

And I'm like, wait, something is wrong here. Where's the fault? Where's the fault? So I got to call my partners, Dr.

Gilles Oney and Tanya Toto-Fari. I'm like, guys, listen, I think something is wrong with this deal. You know, I think I'm missing something here because this deal is penciling. It doesn't make any sense.

Like, yeah, Leslie, that's what we want. Exactly. And, you know, and finally, my partner's authority and tell you like, listen, the numbers work, man. You said numbers don't lie, so the numbers are not lying.

Relax, you know, so. And so, it helps to have all the members of the team that see. Things from a different perspective than you do. And my partners are like hard charging, go getters kind of guys, you know, while I can be like the sit back analytic kind of guy in the background.

So I'm really grateful for those guys. You know, I'm really grateful that I get to go on this journey with them. Awesome. I love that so much.

That's a great story and why it's so important to have a complimentary partners, right? That, you know, you all bring a certain skillset to the table that's required in order to be effective and grow. So kind of along those lines, you know what does the future hold for you guys? What are, you know, do you have a specific-acquisition goal this year or, you know, what kind of goals have you set for yourselves?

Yeah, so I go to usually big and audacious and we said big audacious goals that push us to grow because I believe is that the purpose of a goal is to grow to become the person that is capable of achieving that goal. So that's how we set our goals. And for this year, we set out a goal to close on four deals, like about $100, rme, worth of deals. deals are you guys analyzing before you know one pencils for you right now?

Last year we were analyzing about we analyzed about reviewed about 100 deals. So we're analyzing about we're reviewing about 100 deals then on the road about 60 then having like three or four penciling. Right now it's we've gone over about since this quarter started we've gone over about 120 deals that So that's a challenge now. There's a lot of liquid cash from smart money that is buying and scooping up these deals.

R- Is that. That an institution probably? Yeah. Yeah.

So because everybody does a lot of liquidity, there's a lot of liquidity chasing yield and multi-families still giving some yield. So yeah, but so it's more challenging now, but the grateful thing is we've grown, our team has grown, our acquisition team has grown. So we have more people now reviewing a bunch of deals like that machine going through and filtering through deals that might make sense. So we are very confident that we're going to have something soon that pencils.

So we'll just keep digging. Yeah, I mean, that's all you can do, right? Just keep plugging along. By no means do you want to step out on the sidelines right now.

And again, you know, I know we brought this up but this is that time where we're really going to see who, you know, who can weather the storm. Yeah. And, you know, certainly deal flow. Well, I guess deal flow is not slowing but the deals that make sense are slowing, but I was talking to someone earlier and at some point there's gonna be some distressed assets, on the market and that's when operators like yourselves who are nimble and lean can really start to capitalize, because it's gonna be a short window, because there's gonna be plenty of operators who can jump on them and then, you know, so.

Yeah, so what predictions do you have any predictions for us, pull out your fuzzy crystal ball. The sun is going to shine tomorrow. No, you know, I, but the prediction I'm going to make is, no matter what happens, America is going to continue to grow. You know, in difficult times like this, and I've been guilty of this.

It's very easy to see the darkness and very easy to see what's going wrong or and focus more on that. But one thing I've learned over the past few years is like human ingenuity, always wins. Right. We always find a way to get better, like this transitional periods, I have always happened in history.

So no matter how bad it gets, right, this is gonna get better on the other side. So there's anybody that's listening to this might be the moment for you to get yourself ready to prepare yourself if you're not yet educated. Use this to get that education and go in with the greatest optimism that things are gonna get better because that's one prediction that I can make. It might take, I don't know how long it's gonna take but it's gonna be better on the other side for sure.

Gosh, I love that mindset so much, it's so true, right? And all this is a cycle. And we go in cycles and history shows us and there's nothing to be scared of, you know? I mean, we're not going to see O8, at least in the housing market.

At least in my humble opinion, not that I'm some expert by the means, but even the experts are saying that, you know, we're not going to see as detrimental as O R8,. a lot of these crises are when some of the greatest reaches are made. And one thing I've learned by studying some people that have been successful during these times is the difference between them and the rest of the world is that they train their minds to see the opportunities and to always look forward and say it's going to get better, you know, because we can all get caught up in the sensationalism. and by looking at the news and all the doubt is down, this person is losing this crypto, lost the money.

This person in real estate, you know, and you feel like, you know, bubble of nothing going well at all. So, but, so it's just about maintaining a positive perspective and realize that, you know, we all as a human race, we always find a way to get better. So, and I think we're going to find a way to get even better after this. Couldn't agree more.

I love that so much. It's, you know, what as cliche as it is, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. And this is gonna be, you know, I wasn't set up in a way, you know, I'm a little bit younger, in a way I was graduating high school. So it didn't really affect me, right?

I didn't really understand it. Certainly a few years later, I was starting to, that's starting to understand real estate as an investment, but I still missed out, right? I didn't invest in anything. And so now, you know, potentially we'll have that opportunity, who knows?

Maybe everything will correct itself in three months. and we all sound crazy, but that's kind of how it goes. But as we wind down here, I wanna give you a chance, we mentioned in the intro that you have an awesome meetup that's growing there, so talk to us about that. Yeah, absolutely.

One of our core missions is again, is to preach the gospel of multifamily investing. So we have an educational platform where we invite each and every person that's looking to learn more on how it means that they could grow themselves and grow their world. Join us every first Monday of the month. with you again, you can connect with any one of us.

We love talking to people, learning about you and your journey. So come be a part of the community, let's continue to grow together. Awesome, I love that so much. Cool, well, that takes us right into the final five, my last five questions for all of my guests.

First question, what's the best advice you've gotten from a mentor? The best advice I've gotten is take action. And take action. I was stuck in analysis paralysis and mentor said, just go take action, I don Yeah, mindset shift is probably the biggest thing that I hear for sure.

What is it about your career that makes you feel like you're fulfilling your why? Well, you know, Jonathan, I get to wake up every day and talk to people. When I'm referring to a career, I'm talking about my career as a multifamily investor now. I get to wake up every day and talk to people and educate them on something that they never heard about and create opportunities for collaboration, for people to work together to provide a tremendous amount of value to society.

And to see, to have that ability to help somebody grow their world or to help somebody grow their minds to a level where they could see more possibility for themselves. You know, for me, it's like I'm living my purpose. Like I mentioned to you in the beginning of, this show I'm a growth-minded personI love I love to be able to contribute to the growth of somebody else. And I get to do that every day, you know, in XSITE Capital.

So, I can't think of anything better than I would enjoy doing. So, I do feel like, too, I'm XSITE Capital, I'm living my purpose. I love that so much. I can just hear how passionate you are.

It's so contagious. I love it. Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

my visional accounting. You said code of the extraordinary mind. Yes, fascinating. Okay, they just break down.

It gives you a huge mindset ship, you know, it makes you understand that what you think is reality. It's just a button is just what has been given to you know that there can be more out there if you open your mind up more to see more. And there are certain examples over there that gave me like a huge mindset shift, the power of words, you know, the power of our thoughts, the power of our actions and how that influence or the power of our culture escape, like the environment that we're growing on how we become the people that we are. And once you start challenging some of those stories, and once you start questioning some of those things like it's like a whole new world opens up in front of you and that book had a huge influence on me awesome i love that that's great uh if you could have any superpower what would it be uh geez man that's tempting maybe a superpower to find a good deal in this market yes foresight i would take that superpower right now you know I know, it's so hard when you're just so anxious to do deals, you know, you have so much energy, and the market's just like, Yeah, you got to wait, though.

And you're like, No, I know. Yeah. Cool. You kind of talked about the meetup group.

But what's the best way for people got a whole view and learn more. Yeah, the best way to get a hold of me or any of our partners is through our website. Like I mentioned, www.exactcapital.com, right on our website.. We have a sign up for you to sign up to join, be part of our community.

We also have our contact information over there. You can reach out to any one of us. We love hearing from a lot of people that are seeking to grow as well, so reach out to us. We're here and we look forward to meeting more people and growing together.

Absolutely. We will link that website in the show. Now it's Leslie, I cannot thank you enough. I know it's late over there.

Thank you so much for all of your insight and your passion. Jonathan, thank you so much for having me. It has been an amazing conversation and I wish you all the best with everything you're doing. Keep me updated on the development stuff.

Absolutely, likewise. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. Listen guys, I know it's cliche, but please don't forget to like, subscribe, please leave a review.

Would love to know what you guys think of the episodes. And while you're still here listening, don't forget to go to investwithkatani.com and download my free ebook, Is Commercial Real Estate Recession Proof? Thanks so much.

Today we have Julius Oni on the show. Julius is a surgeon who specializes in hip. And knee replacements. After learning how to invest in multifamily with his own funds, he decided he did not want to hide a great opportunity.

So he began to educate others how to improve their financial wealth. Now he gets to help more people than ever. Right. Educating them on how to do the same.

And as an added bonus, he gets to continue doing backslash Learn, and R How many people have Now, on the show. Hello, everyone- everyone. Today we have a very special guest. We've got Julius Oni.

Julius appreciate coming on the show. It's my pleasure, thanks for the opportunity. Fantastic. a little bit on how we know each other so we both were speakers at a multi-family conference in Charlotte, MFI and con put on by Dan Hanford.

And we're, you know, we were just at one of the after hours events and then, you know, got to know each other. And I'm, like. Look, man, you're Look man, you I enjoyed immensely, and being in the operating room is actually my happy place, but at the same time I quickly realized at some point that I'm still a highly paid skill worker, even as North Creek Surgent, and even though I thoroughly enjoyed what I did, I wanted to be able to do it purely for the passion, not necessarily because it pays my bills. Also, I wanted to start investing in things that I can actually pass on to my progenies, you know, like assets, you know?

So I wanted to start investing in things that can create legacy wealth. So it didn't really take long before I quickly realized that multifamily realized there was going to be that asset class for me. For some people it's stocks, for some people it undercut the asset classes. But for me, multifamily real estate in particular makes sense.

It's tangible. and I mean we. r we can talk about all the different advantages of it, including the tax advantages and everything that multifamily real estate brings to bear. But it was a very easy decision to start investing in multifamily.

How long ago did you start investing? So in multifamily 2020, but in single-family real estate 2015. So I started actually with single-family real estate. I initially thought I was going to buy one single-family property for the next 30 years.

And then at the end of 30 years, I have a portfolio of about 30 properties that I've organically appreciated significantly and then maybe I'll sell them as a portfolio and you know that was the initial plan but I quickly realized that I was not a good landlord and I certainly did not enjoy the process of dealing with tenants you know termites and toilets you know so and then I tried to outsource that process and quickly realized that it still wasn't working out. The cash flow, one, wasn't impressive. Second, everything cost so much. Changing the doorknob was 50 bucks.

Changing the light bulb was 60 bucks. It was like, I was like, how is this so expensive? But I guess that's the price to pay for outsourcing those types of things. But most importantly, the cash flow was not what I expected.

And When I started to learn about multifamily, I realized that, you know what, when I had vacancies in those single family properties, then there was no, I mean, I had a hundred percent vacancy. Right. That's it. If I mean, I was on the hook for the mortgage.

You go from a hundred percent to zero percent. Exactly. Exactly. So occupancy was like zero percent at that point, right?

So, um, and so it quickly made sense to me that if I wanted to be smart about this, I needed to scale a lot faster and what better way to scale by just buying a multi-family property. And so, yeah, and that's how our company, XSITE Capital was born. That's awesome. And you mentioned, you know, tenants, toilets, and termites and, you know, for people listening that maybe they are in single family or they haven't gotten involved in real estate investing yet at all, that's one of the things that scares off a lot of people is having to deal with that.

And then when you go to multifamily, if you buy in large enough properties, you actually have on-site management. So they're leasing up the property. If there's an issue with one of the maintenance, there's a maintenance person on staff. So you don't have to a deal with it.

So it takes away those headaches. That's the beauty of it. property makes enough revenues to pay for the people that are going to take care of it and that's the beauty of it and more. So I've had a few doctors on the show prior and I want to get your take because kind of the consistent theme that I've heard from people that are involved is that in the medical space you know doctors they spend quite a bit of time honing their craft and learning their craft and educating themselves on the medical profession, but they don't necessarily even though they are highly paid, they don't necessarily want to spend the time understanding how to grow their assets, how to grow their wealth.

Do you find the same situation? No, there's no questions about that. I think we are trained to be. rate of focusing on just one thing, you know, and just completely narrow our focus, you know, become a cardiologist, become an interventional cardiologist, no, become a structural interventional cardiologist, you know, not just become an orthopedic surgeon, but become a joint replacement surgeon, you know, not just become an orthopedic surgeon, but become a foot and ankle surgeon.

And that's all you do. to own that craft, become a master at one thing, and then literally outsource every other thing. So, and we take that same approach with our finances, for the most part, you know? We are trained to essentially max out the 401k, which is great, and maybe put some money away in some brokerage account, which is great.

But when it comes to other active investment strategies, or even passive investment strategies that just require a little bit of active work up front, things slightly differently. You have to actually actively decide that you know what I'm going to figure out ways to grow my wealth in a more accelerated fashion instead of just what we get with trading our times for our hours for dollars. Yeah, that's huge. And there could be different levels to that, right?

I mean there's certain people that I've met that have made the transition and Hey, I'm going to allocate some capital to real estate, build legacy wealth, like you mentioned, and I want to get on the active side and be involved in deals and also bring other people into deals and educate other people. But then there's the other side of it where there's a lot of highly paid people that whether they're doctors, or sales reps in software companies, or whatever the case may be, athletes, and they can take some of that money and they don't have to put it all with a financial advisor in the stock market. They can diversify and be passive. So, can you explain how that works?

Yeah, and even worse, some of them don't even put it with a financial advisor in the stock market. They put it in a savings account. Oh, what's the return on a savings account? I mean, it's like, if you're very nice to them, maybe 0.09%, maybe 1%.

But guess what? The moment you drop that money with the bank and deposit it in the bank account, it becomes a liability to the bank, and they put it to work for you. Well, not for you, for themselves. Because really, they put that money to work, they're getting 3%, 4%, 20%, 40% on it, and they're giving you just a tiny little bit of a percentage on it.

And even worse, if you're having a checking account, you're getting nothing on it at all. Actually, it's losing value with inflation, particularly, with inflation being in 5, 6, 7, 8% nowadays. So, I mean, besides your emergency funds and maybe some extra fund, depending on who you are, whatever makes you feel comfortable to have in the bank, you should be putting that money to work so that it's growing for you know? And it's, the risk is actually sometimes they're not putting that money to work because it's losing value, right?

Yeah, and I mean, that's a hard one. You know, a lot of people can't get their head around that one that, you know, look, if I put a hundred grand in the bank account, next year, it's a hundred grand, like I didn't lose any money, but you lost purchasing value, right? Right? Absolutely.

Based on inflation. Absolutely. So, talk about how, you know, what are the alternatives for these people in investing in real estate passively? I mean, for passive investments, and this is how I started, you know?

Just to kind of really get my feet wet, I was like, okay, I'm going to put $50,000 syndication, put it with someone that I trust to do it and how did a get to trust them because I saw their track record of buying this realistic properties generating income for them and their investors and them sending out distributions to them and the investors participate in on the upside when the properties are sold. So when I realized that I was like, okay, I'm going to try this too. So put in that investment, I started to get my distributions. And I was like, oh, this is quite fantastic.

I'm getting monthly distributions, my money is working for me, and I'm not So I was like, this is great. And then they talk about the cost segregation and tax benefits of it. All of a sudden out of that $50,000, I have about $35,000 in depreciation, like paper losses. This is not, the property is appreciating, but I'm getting paper losses that I can apply to any passive income that I have, So, and I quickly realized that I didn't see, when I started to go to all the conferences, I didn't see healthcare professionals there.

I saw a lot of MBAs and business folks and engineers and accountants and people from all facets of life, but I just, healthcare professionals were very glaringly absent. And also, I didn't see a lot of people that looks like me, you know, there were a lot they weren't very great underrepresented, minority representation in the conferences that I went to. So, at that point, I knew there was an opportunity here to take the gospel of multifamily and take it to the folks in the healthcare community and say, listen, you do not just have to be limited to playing in the stock market. You do not have to be limited to playing in single family real estate and particularly if you're too busy of a professional and you can't do that, you don't have to just focus on that alone.

There's an alternative asset class, there's an opportunity for you to also invest in some of these apartments that you drive by, lived in the past, that your children currently properties and you could do it passively without necessarily actively doing any work, you're just putting your money to work for you. And that message has resonated with our community. And that's the only reason that our company XSITE Capital has gotten the type of experience, the type of growth we have in the past 20 years. I mean, in 25 years, we've acquired asset under management of about 125 million.

and we have another property on the contract right now. And we literally started from just three people coming together and saying, you know what? We're going to take this word out to people in our community. One of my other partners is Leslie Awasom, a CRNA, certified registered nurse and anesthetist.

We actually met in the operating room. It was putting my patients to sleep. Yeah. It was putting my patients to sleep.

I was operating on them, and you know, at the end of the day when surgeries are done, we'll just talk business a little bit. And you was the one who introduced me to multi-family. And initially I brushed it off like, ah, it sounded too complicated. I mean, how do you go after $20 million deals and $17 million deals?

Like, it sounds impossible. And then when I started reading more and we started talking more, I was like, oh my God, this is possible. We can't actually collate our resources. We could pull resources together.

Yes, I alone may not be able to take down a $20 million deal, but I can get a bunch of, you know,, people in my community of my professional community. And my daily, you know, community and my immigrant community, my underrepresented minority communities, and pull them together and say, let's pull our money resources together and go purchase these properties. And guess what? That's what we did.

And we've had incredible success doing it and continue to. And the message is resonating and people are believing in the vision and joining us on this journey and I cannot be more thankful for it. That's fantastic. I'm so glad that you've had that experience.

Look, I a got involved probably about four years ago and it was very similar. I was like skeptical and I was scared and all those things. And I went out first, you did single family for a while. I bought one duplex and I was scared to do that duplex.

And then, afterwards, I went searching for a way to go bigger and I found syndications and I was scared getting in as a passive on my first syndication. But here's, what I want listeners to know, and this has happened to you, I could tell is that. You know what? you started out, a was about growing your wealth, right?

Yeah. And you look, you still want that as part of your goal is to build legacy wealth. But now, you're bringing it to your community, you know, and you're expanding and you're teaching other people, both within the medical field and within your network of people. And that's what I would say to listeners, like look, you it's scary, you know, there is a certain, you know, you want to do due diligence and get to know the people you're doing business with.

But at the end of the day, anytime you do something new. It's going to be a little scary and there's going to be a little bit of a leap of faith. But after you see the results, then. It's like, you know, if you knew the, you know, the cure to cancer, you's going to tell people about it.

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You just don't want to keep it to a self. Only selfish people work well because I mean for me, particularly, I'm an academic surgeon. So I teach residents, I teach, you know, medical students, fellows, and things of that nature.

My identity for a long time was embedded in being an orthopedic surgeon and it was really difficult for me to start identifying as something additional to that. A real estate investor. And it was also extremely difficult for me to actually share about what I was doing with other people because I was like, wait, if I start talking to them about real estate, are they going to take me seriously anymore? You know, are they going to take you seriously as a doctor?

a doctor exactly like are they going to you know think that I'm like maybe not serious about my craft as an orthopedic surgeon and so you go through those mindset challenges and what helped me get over that was the fact that I was like, listen if I do not share this with them, then I am literally hiding a. a great opportunity from them to expand their minds and hopefully grow their wealth. So if it's worked for me, why shouldn't I share with other people? And let's be frank, I actually don't share that work because of, you know, it's just not a, you know, because things are very structured in my workplace, so I don't ever talk about real estate while I'm at work.

But people, I mean, they see what I'm doing on the outside. So people actually reach out to me just randomly, like, you know, either from my workplace or from other places. And now the word is just out there. And when people want to hear about, you know, real estate and growing their wealth, real estate and how to go about it, they reach out to me.

And I'm just more than happy to share those things that I've learned with anyone who is interested. That's huge. I mean, look, our health is, you know, paramount. I mean, right.

You need to have fantastic health. But, you know, your finances are also an important part of your life. Oh, yeah. And so, you know, some people may neglect, you know, either their health or their wealth.

And I love what you said about you said hiding a great opportunity and I have never heard anybody say it like that, but it is so true. You know, there's a little bit of, because there's so many, there's mentors out there, there's gurus out there, there's so many podcasts, there's books, there's all this, you know, social media. So some people can become cynical like all these people are just out there just to make money, but look, a lot of people are out there to try to help other people achieve the same things mobility. And now with real estate, I help people restore their financial mobility.

And so there's a lot of parallels in the two worlds. And that's why I'm just as passionate about real estate and growing wealth as I am about replacing people's hips and knees. And if you were to come into my operating room, you would understand what I'm saying because I am I incredibly love what I do and the proof is in the pudding. The outcomes of my patients, proof that I'm doing the right thing and that my philosophy of practice is to treat my patients like I will treat my family member or myself and so and that's the same way that I've just transferred a lot of those same nuggets to real estate.

So to treat my investors or people that are coming along with me on this journey just the same way I would treat my family members or myself. So and we as a group, myself, Leslie Awasom, Tana Tolofari, my two partners, we just share those same core values and that's what drives us, that's what determines what decisions we make when it comes to managing the properties, when it comes to dealing with investors and things about nature and it's just as far as we've stayed in that lane and have just been investor focused and always thinking about, how can we make the experience of the investor better? How can we improve their education? How can we expand their minds?

And how can we help them ultimately grow their wealth in a significant fashion? That is, I mean, we've just grown, amazingly. We thought that we were just going to start just with the education, but quickly, that seg it right into actual investments. And now we are now a property and I can't believe it myself.

It's huge. Look before when you were saying in the beginning, you said, you know, when you're in the operating room, and you're in your focused on hips and knees, that you're in your happy place, like immediately, I thought to myself, well, if I had a problem with my hips and knees, I want a guy like that. He loves what he's doing. And the outcomes are great, right?

And so to take that same philosophy in the real estate is fantastic. You said something else that I want to expand on a little bit. You said the experience of the investor. So, look, I've been in the business for the last four years, and I feel the same way as you in terms of, you know, investors and making sure I do everything possible.

But I think of it in terms of the return, okay? So I'm a business guy, I think of it in terms of like, I want to maximize the returns for investors and do everything in my power to achieve that. But when you said, the experience of the investor, I kind of felt like there was more to it than just maximizing returns. So I want your definition of that.

That is great. I definitely meant more than returns. Because yes, everybody is going, especially nowadays, everybody is definitely going to promise great returns. And certainly some are going to deliver great returns.

But what really separates, at least what I would love to separate us from the pack is that we care so much about our investors that they almost like an extended family to us and so the way and for us our avatar like people that don't know much about multifamily real estate so they need quite a bit of hand over them they need quite a bit of education. They need quite a bit of TLC, so to speak, if you will. So we pride ourselves in our efforts to like really approach them with care and push them in a way where we just like tell them, listen, we just want you to know about this. Now your decision to invest is yours.

You don't necessarily have to invest with us. And guess what? We have one of our core values it's the spirit of abundance. So, we actually don't care if they can go invest with the next guy who they think is more, you know, experienced and things like that.

We are still very happy if we were the ones who planted the seed. We're still considered that a win. So, we actually track the number of people that we've educated to. So, because that is a KPI for us so for us it doesn't matter if we're able to plant the seed in you and then you end up getting educated and you then go invest with a Darren with someone else fantastic right we me we are done our job there and but guess what we found that by using that same approach people want to say people want to stay with us.

And people actually are now bringing other people and saying, listen, I've got this great group of guys. They just want to educate. We have a free underwriting class, for example, on Tuesday nights, every Tuesday night, 8 p.m. And people just come in, learn, leave, send other people in, leave, you know, and come sometimes, just to underwrite their own deals, things of that nature.

It's great. We have a monthly meet up on every first Monday of the month, you know, where we bring industry experts , to share, you know, everything that like different on different realistic topics, and sometimes, personal development topics, and people come in, enjoy that. And we're not asking them for anything. We're not asking anyone to invest throughout all of this, but obviously, when people are learning from you, and you were exposing them to a completely a different asset class that they did not actually think was possible for them to invest them before, then you start to become their thought leader.

You start to become the person that they know, like and trust, and they are willing to eventually invest with. And it's just happened for us. And also my partners and I have all been successful professionals before we even came together to start this business. So I was an orthopedic surgeon.

My other partner is a cybersecurity professional, and the third one is the CRNA, the registered nursing anesthetist. So, and so, and we've all in our respective world built up a lot of goodwill and a lot of, you know, integrity and a lot of, you know. Good relationships with people over time. So those helped us in those first couple of deals in the sense that people knew who we were.

They knew we weren't gonna, you know, put them all their hard-earned money at risk, at least, not knowingly. They trusted us to go ahead and pull those resources together and go ahead and invest in those first couple of investments. And guess what? Those guys are super-active right now, because we have some people that we call our Excite unicorns.

Those are the people that have invested in every single deal with us. And there's a ton of them. We have about 67% reinvestment rate from deal to deal. But those guys, and the first time they gave us maybe 50K, which was the minimum glared.

And then by the second deal, it's like 100, you know, 150. And by the most recent deal, we get in like $500,000 checks from people. And sometimes I can't believe it myself because I'm like, wow, this, I mean, we co-invest with all our investors also, no questions about it, because we have to have skin in the game. This is part of one of our goals with every single deal.

But I'm just like so amazed that like the response of the people, they feel like, man, You guys are opening our worlds up to a completely different asset class that we had no access to. That's just been a blessing, to be a vessel in that way. That's huge. Talk about some of the returns.

In the stock market, maybe you hear averages of 78% annualized over a R long period of time in the stock markets. What type of returns have you been seeing on the real estate side? Absolutely. The return says certainly over 15% average annual returns to 25% on average.

When you hit home runs, I've seen some sponsors end up with 40% average annual, 60% average And obviously those are like great Omerans and those, especially in the last, you know, three years or so, we've seen a lot of those. But I would say conservatively, even in this environment of rising interest rates of increasing inflation R of ultra competition to get this deals, because the cap rates are like, you know, It's still somewhat compressed, at least the sellers are still not willing to sell cheaper prices, and there's still significant competition for deals, but even in this environment where the stock market is going back and forth and being pretty volatile, where some of the other asset classes are not doing as well, where crypto is completely gun downhill, Real Estate continues to be a solid investment, and particularly multi-family Real Estate, I mean, where else are you going to get, for example, in the process of disposing off of property, and when we close that deal, our investors at that point would have made about, I think, between 36% to 40% average annual returns. That's crazy. We promised them 19%.

Right. So I'm okay with just under promising and over delivery. And guess what? There may be some properties where we get humbled, where we may just maybe hit it or maybe come below promised returns.

I completely realize that without risk there will be no return. There's definitely some risk. but the risks associated with multifamily real estate is the low average for sure. And the returns are above average for sure.

No questions about it. And our first goal is capital preservation. So our goal, first of all, is just to make sure that, you know, we get your principal is preserved so that at the least we're doing better your check-ins account. And then the next goal is to hit the return that we promised you.

But really, our actual goal is to surpass that return by a mile. And so far so good. But I am humble enough to realize that, you know what? We may not get it right every single time.

and I'm willing to live with that fact, but I am willing to bet that we will get it right 99% of the time, or 90 something percent of the time. So I'm invested in a lot of multifamily deals, and I've had similar returns And I'm a believer, that these returns, you know, are realistic and they are happening where people that are listening that maybe have not invested, you know, can think, well, oh man, that's pie in the sky stuff, but why do you think, and I have an answer here, but I want to hear yours. to and that's. That's bottom a R R on their way to.

depending on what the capital of the market is. I really, leverage. Leverage, it's different in these multifamily deals than buying — if you go buyant. Amazon stock, to double your money, the stock price has to double.

You don't have leverage, but in a multifamily property, you know you're getting a loan anywhere from low leverage 60% to in the heyday day, 80% people aren't getting typically 80% today. So you have that leverage. So you're buying a $20 million deal, but if three quarters of it is financed with a loan, you don't have to double the value of the property. You just have to double the value of the equity that was put in.

That was put in? A $20 million property. Say it was $2 million of CapEx. So a $22 million in it.

And you got to end up bringing in another $7 million. So $, $29 million, you've doubled everybody's money. You don't have to sell it for $40 million. Absolutely.

Absolutely. The other thing that, and I come from kind of a loan trading background. And, you know, one of the safety factors for me, too, is that, okay, look, we're going to underwrite the loan. I mean, the deal, we're going to put up, you know, the sponsors are putting up hard money that they're putting at risk.

They, you know if the deal is not good, they can't track the funds. They're going to lose that money. And then it has to go to the lender. And so, let's say, it's agency financing.

Well, the agencies, Fannie and Freddie, have been doing these loans for all across the country for years and years. And they have so much data. And so if they approve the loan where you were underwriting the loan, that's just to me another checkbox. They are not in the business of losing money.

I'm losing money. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That was one of the things that made complete sense to me because I was like, there are so many stops and so many checks, you know, because we are underwriting multiple times.

The bank is underwriting multiple, or Fannie is underwriting multiple times. Very often, the broker, the money is broken. I mean, the real estate broker who is brokering the sale of the property has underrode it too, you know, using their own terms and their own assumptions. assumptions.

And so multiple people have underwrote this to come up with their evaluation. And usually for us, we would just not underwrite it. We'll also send it to a third party underwriter to just double check it and make sure that the assumptions are completely correct. And then after that, we then stress test the deal to make sure that okay, there are multiple ways that we can cover up for surprises that come up in the deal.

It gives me so much comfort when I know that we've gone through all of those checks before going to the investors. To get one deal, we usually have evaluated over 100 deals. We've put in LO, LOIs and at least 30 of them, we've been pet best and final on at least seven. And then we eventually get one.

So it's like, you whittle everything down to like the one that really works. And so it makes sense. Absolutely. So your investors come to you and they say, Julius, what's the biggest risk in investing in multifamily or investing in this deal?

What's your response? So I would say one, the biggest risk is the fact that it's a relatively illiquid investment. You just cannot come to me six months later and say, hey, that money I gave you six months ago, I want it back. Even though we've gotten that too, and we've found ways to bring in other, because of the demand for this investments, we just replace those people with other folks and got them out of the deal.

But for the most part, when you invest in these deals, you invest in with the expectations that the you're going to wait it out for the entire business plan.. That's one. The business plan is typically how long? About three to seven years.

Three to seven years. So when you're investing in these deals, that is one of the big differences between real estate and the stock market. You could sell the stock at any point in time. But you're in the deal for three or seven years.

You're in it. I mean, you're making money while you're in it. Right. You're in it.

Right. So, but the other risk is, obviously, there are some things that we can control. We can control the way we manage the property. We can get insurance on the property.

Like, for example, one of our first properties that we bought, we had a fire within a month of it. But guess what? Guess what? We had insurance and that was covered and we actually got enough money to renovate that property and that particular unit and other units also because of the insurance that was paid on it.

But so there are ways that we can mitigate for those types of risks with regards to the property and that is our responsibility. But there's also the external factors, the market, what the economy is doing in general with regards to real estate. But when you actually look at the history, when you actually look at when this country took big hits, like for example in 2008, yes, was there some hit to the returns for multifamily? Yes, but very quickly those bounce back.

And when you actually tracked out multi-family did around that time, it was one of the better performing properties compared to what stocks did compared to r single family, you know, the complete crash of the single family housing market, multi-family and commercial real estate in some ways still kept their value through all of that. You know, so he makes complete sense to me. I'm a believer just like you, complete believer. And so, for me, yes, there are risks.

And obviously, if you do invest in a market that is not growing, that where employers are an accident, where. There is no diversity of employers where you're just dependent on one employer that essentially is responsible for 70% percent of your tenants in that particular, property. Yes, you could be playing with some, you could be rolling some significantly a risky dices there because obviously if something. happens to that employer and you lose 70% of your tenants, that goes from a stabilized property to a super depressed property.

So I mean, but the ways to mitigate against those risks are to make sure we're going to growing markets with this increasing population growth, this increasing median also there's a diversity of employers, there's desirable attractions in the area that people want to be part of, you mitigate those risks with that. But still, if the entire country's real estate and economy completely crashes, well, at that point, I guess we'll probably all be in our homes and not doing much anyway. I think this will be the last of the asset classes to go, if that was to happen, and I don't foresee that happening, that I can only make decisions based on what information I have available to me, and based on the historical precedent of this asset class, it's a fantastic option, too. And it's definitely gotta be part of the portfolio of any serious investor.

I agree, and I don't know if you owned property through COVID, but like, you know, I did, and when it first happened, everybody was so scared that nobody was gonna pay their rent, and you're gonna still be responsible for the mortgage, and what I found was our delinquency definitely went up during COVID, but we were cashflow positive every month. people, you know, it became apparent to me that, look, that was something that we could never have planned for, right? You own an R apartment complex and then all of a sudden COVID happens and the government says, you know, you can't evict people for non-payment of rent. And so you're like, holy cow, what a man do.

But people, for the most part, there were people that, you know, tried to take advantage of the system or were legitimately sick, but there were people that just paid their rent. You know, they buy food, they pay their rent, they pay, you know. And I was amazed how it performed in an environment that you couldn't even fathom happening where the government says you don't, you cannot. You know, even though you're in a landlord friendly state, you're not allowed to evict for non-payment of rent, you know?

Well, I was one of the crazy, we were one of the crazy people that went in, just right at the beginning of COVID. Oh you did, well then, right? I mean, because a lot of people were scared to get in there, right? Yeah, we went right out of the fire, then we were running into the fire One of the other risks, and I want to get your take on this, that I think of is, and probably comes from my background in trading loans, is the financing.

On a single family home, most people are accustomed to getting a 30-year fixed rate mortgage. Maybe if they're in a good financial position, they trade it out for a 15-year for a lower rate. But in the multifamily world, you can't get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, so the longest term you can get is like a 10 or 12-year loan. So, every loan has a balloon feature, and over the last two or three years, a lot of loans were bridge loans with kind of a 3-1-1 type of structure.

So I think that is a... Some of them without a cap. Yeah, some without a cap, right? Some are floating with no cap, some are floating with a cap, but I think that's a risk for people that, you know, the loan, and I saw it in my other business when in 2008, when things shift, lending environment kind of shuts off.

And like, you don't wanna own a property, I think, and be forced to have to either sell or refinance in a terrible economy. So what's your take on the financing piece? I couldn't agree with you more. I think the way to mitigate that and consistent with what I was saying earlier that we try our best to mitigate this risk is to always try your best to go for fixed long term debt if you can.

. And if you're going to go the bridge route to at least purchase a cap, that still works regardless. So for me, I just feel like even though those fixed debt don't go more than 10 to 12 years, but most cycles, most realistic cycles don't last that long either. So if you're able to weather the storm.

Yeah. I I'm with you. I kind of think five to seven years. Five to seven years.

If you can get in that five to seven year range, but three years seems too short to me, but we're a lot of syndicators kind of shifted to that and was okay with that was because they had other properties that had 10 year debt on them. And then all of a sudden interest rates dropped. And now the prepayment penalty was so high that even though evaluation wise they could sell the property at a huge gain, such a big portion of a gain was going to be going to the prepayment penalty that they felt like they were stuck. So they said, I don't want to do that again, you know?

So they started doing, you know, shorter term, you know, type loans. That's it. Well, the opposite happened to us because we got the property at a pretty nice interest rate and then the interest rates started going up. So the maintenance, obviously- Yeah, You got in at the right time where the opposite effect is happening, so good for you and good for all of your investors, right?

So, hey- Thank you. Talk about some people, so we talked about passive, but look, you're going to get into this. Is it easy? Do you want a deal?

No. No, it's not. So talk about that. So yeah, I mean, if you decide that the active life is for you, then I think you just have to be, you have to understand this is a team sport, right?

I it's a team sport, and any team sport that has a lot to do with a relationships, right? It's, uh, it's a relationship sport, too. You gotta develop a lot of relationships with brokers, with accountants, with lawyers, with potential sellers, with other prospective buyers when you eventually stop acquiring properties and you want to sell. So it's a relationship business you have to also be willing to very clearly articulate what you are presenting to your investors on the investor side.

I do think that you need a good operations person just to make sure that the day to day the company is going well and that's who Leslie our somehow co-founder is to me to us and then you need a good acquisitions person someone who is pounding the pavement with the brokers who is consistently reviewing deals and as a good system for deal flow where you obviously part of that is in the underwriting team and things about nature so you gotta be able to find the deals. You got to be able to funnel them and figure out if they match your criteria or not. And for those ones that match your criteria, you got to be able to, you know, underwrite them efficiently and get feedback back to the brokers as quickly as possible. I think most importantly, the first part of this should be education for you, educate.

For us another thing that we did was to pair up with a more R experienced sponsor and just be a co-general partner on one of their deals. That was our first deal. I think that's huge, you know, be a passive investor first, you know, so you understand it. And then, you know, your first active deal if you want to get active, partner with somebody that has a lot of experience.

Yes. Because then. You get to see what goes on behind the closed garden. You know, you get to see how the asset management goals, you know, how the deals are broken down between sourcing and asset management and, equity raise and, you know, key principle and, you know, all the different and E-M-D and this nature.

So you get to see all the different facets of the business and you get to also start to discover where your strengths are, wherever the partners in that business are, and don't be scared to get partners. For me, I'm only able to, because I'm still R full-time, total joint replacement surgeon, I'm only able to do what I do because I have fantastic partners and a fantastic team. Now we've grown to a team of about eight people and we, I mean, it's incredible what you were able to do when you have a group of people just focusing in the same direction and being very clear to eye on what our vision and our focus is. So I would say create your systems pretty early on and just, you know, and what we did was we created what our goals were and then we reversed engineer and reversed engineered what we needed to be doing on a weekly daily you know monthly quarterly basis and we also adopted the EOS the entrepreneurial operating system and we run our meetings really efficiently and every one person is responsible for one thing and everybody keeps each other accountable.

And so that has really been the secret to our success. And I a think what I would advise for others who are interested in going active to adopt. That's fantastic. So you talked about goals.

Like what is your next big stretch-goal, man? You got 694 units. in to the fire when everybody was running away. So what's the next thing stretch goal?

So we want to get to at least, we want to get to a billion in asset under management. To a billion? Yeah, to a billion in asset under management. And ultimately, our goal at Six Eye Capital is five billion by 2027, and we think we can do it.

Five billion by 2027. That's awesome. I love when I talk to people and they have huge goals. I that's, look, you already did so much, but in two and a half years, you, you've got 125 million, you 694 units, but you now your mind is on 5 billion.

Because I mean, by 2027, that's huge. I mean, I think about people that you're helping, you know, you're helping all those investors, you're helping all and all the students and those properties. Absolutely. That's huge.

Absolutely. What do you like to do outside of work That's for fun, my man. I love spending time with family. I have two daughters, young daughters, 24-month-old and an eight-month-old.

Oh, wow, young. Yeah, I love my wife. She's incredible and so supportive. And so I usually really love to spend time with them.

And I love music. I love to listen to music. I dabble in playing them occasionally, playing the piano, a little bit of guitar, And I also love one of my biggest life's vision is also to increase access to musculoskeletal care in lower to middle income countries. Starting with Nigeria, where I was born and raised.

So a lot of my work has been focused on trying to do that. And one of the motivations actually for going into multifamily was to buy some of my time freedom back to be able to do more of that work. So I was just in Nigeria in March doing some free hips and knees and new replacements for people who couldn't afford them. And guess what, XSITE Capital was able to be a major sponsor for that trip.

So it's my world finally starting to come together and life just, you know, has so much more purpose. And I'm you know, I'm just living full out. And this is one of the things that real estate has been able to help me do. So yeah, that's fantastic.

Holy cow. That's like, you know, most people like in you did talk about the assets under management, most people talk about, you know, how much they want to grow. You know, but the fact that you want to go back to your country of heritage and give back in a way to people that can't afford it and that part of the wealth that you're going to be generating and the resources to be able to actually do the surgeries or offer the surgeries to the people on ground. So the reason why I went into joint replacement in the first place was the fact that my paternal grandmother had end stage arthritis of both.

And she was pretty debilitated in the last three years of her life and there was no one there to learn how to do the surgeries. Unfortunately, she died before I became a surgeon, but now I get to replace other people's uncles, aunties, fathers, mothers, you know, friends, you know, and family members, you know, knees and hips. And that gives me so much joy. So, but one thing I still know is that the access to this elective surgeries is still very unattainable in that part of the world.

And so if I'm fortunate enough to have that much resources to be able to do a larger scale than I'm doing it right now, then absolutely, that would make life worth it, for sure. I mean, life has much more purpose, you say. I mean, that's awesome. Hey, so if people wanna get to know you, your company more, what's the best way for them to do that?

to get to join the Exide family and let us continue to grow our minds and grow our wealth together. That's fantastic. So this guy is a very sharp guy and, unless you're watching it on YouTube, if you're listening to it, you can't see. But when I met him, this guy's a sharp dresser too, man.

This guy is like smooth. So, in any event, hey, I hope you check out his website, Julius, I appreciate you coming on the show, listeners, I hope you enjoyed that one. Thank you so much, Darren, for the opportunity. You are very shocked dressing yourself.

I really appreciate that shirt. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity, and hopefully we can do some deals together soon. Absolutely, I'm game for that.

So listeners, until next week, signing off. Thank you for listening to Darin Batchelder's real estate investing show at darrenbatchelder.com. If you liked the episode, please provide us with a five star review on Apple Podcasts or your podcast platform of choice. If you already provided us with a five star review, then thank you and please share the show with a friend.

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Whatever decision or whatever goals you have, just get up every day and take action and it's all going to come to you. Welcome to the best R show, the world's longest-running daily commercial real estate podcast. Our the best real-estate investing advice ever show. I'm Slocum Reed and I'm here with Leslie Awasom.

Leslie is joining us from Han. over Maryland. He is the co-founder and director of operations for XSITE Capital Investments LLC, which focuses on multifamily syndications. Their current portfolio is just around 700 units totaling 125 million in assets under management, also an LP and two deals.

Leslie was also a guest on this show, episode 2163, anesthesiologist to real estate with Leslie Awasom. That would have been about three years ago. So Leslie, can you start us off a little bit more about your background and what you've been up to the last three. Oh, absolutely.

Thank you for having me on this platform. Again, I'm really grateful to be back here. really enjoyed the conversation I had on the platform a while back. And it did a lot for our business.

So I'm Leslie. I was some by day job. I'm a nurse and a status co-founded XSITE Capital investments with two other amazing partners, Dr. Gillazone and Tenny Tolofari, where we found the need to share the gospel of multi-family investing to members of our community.

When we came across the asset class we realized that a lot of us did not know that these opportunities existed and I'm referring to colleagues in the healthcare industry and members of our community. So we created a XSITE Capital in 2019 to go out there and educate more people about the amazing wealth creation opportunities that exist with multi-family investing. It has been and amazing journey of growth so far. I'm grateful to say that as of today, we have $125 million of asset on the management and we have a community that is growing tremendously.

We've grown over I'm making some assumptions based on what you just said share investing opportunities with communities that they come from that don't have any other access or even recognize that relations? That is absolutely correct and that is the best part that I like about this business is the operation side. Not just focusing on the asset but our company as a whole keeping track of all the numbers. I love the numbers part of the business making sure that we're meeting our projections and making changes along the way as we see the numbers coming in.

So I'm focusing on the operation side part of the asset management team making sure that our So that's where my primary focus is in our company. Gotcha. I want to ask about that from your intro though, a point I feel like I need to ask on 125 million on almost 700 units, average is about to 180,000 a door. That's a much higher average than the majority of our apartment cinder caterer guests have.

Where is it? And what is it that you guys are investing in? So we have one asset in DC that kind of skews everything out. And that's what almost everyone says, everybody says, well, we've got this one anyways.

Go ahead. It's actually a 49 unit building in DC, but we purchased that for $19.1 million. So, it's on a per dollar basis. It's an expensive asset, but it's a great asset.

DC is a great market, lots of appreciation and the asset is doing well as well. For most of our other properties a lot of properties. We have two properties in Columbia, South Carolina. the I will say the down and data to tell you a story about what's going on that seems like there are some direct corollaries between anesthesiology and the way that you are doing the operating of your business plans.

Has that been your experience? Absolutely. I think with anesthesia, you have to be a critical thinker because you have the life of somebody in your hands. And anesthesia, I like to say that we imagine every scenario that could go wrong so that something doesn't go wrong when you have a patient under your care.

And that was initially the kind of approach I took in business when I started multi-family investing, but there's a downside to that because they can get you stuck in analysis policies, you're looking for the negative things that could happen. Whereas there's so many, positive. So over the years, I've learned to be able to balance that a little bit, but to keep serious attention to details, look at the small picture as well as a bigger picture to figure out what works best for every single situation and trying to treat every property as a unique property and looking at it from that perspective, instead of just looking everything as a whole. Leslie, give us a story where this mode of analysis, that was a little bit outside our big primary market.

so income in that area is growing. The median also income is solid but then when you dive in a little bit deeper to that particular little MSA you saw that the population was declining. Then some other red flags that are showing up, we saw that this particular area or this close to a major or market is not really part of that major market because it's a little bit of a distance and this area is dependent on one industry only and that's one of the red flag that. We never want to go into a market that is single industry dependent.

So we had to pull back from that deal, and this was one example where data and looking at the different aspects of demographic data like Joe teaches in his book can make a difference in an investment decision. That's a decision you guys decided not to invest. Exactly. We'll get back to the show with the sponsors.

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I'd like to introduce you to my good friends over at passiveinvesting.com, a private equity real estate firm based out of the Carolinas. Passive investing.com makes it easy for you to start investing in real estate. They focus on acquiring institutional quality apartments and self- and self-storage facilities with private accredited investor funds. They also have a real estate debt fund that offers hard money loans to local fix and flippers across the US which currently has a 0% default rate.

With a portfolio of over $700 million in assets and controlling over $250 million in equity, they know how to secure the best deals and how to avoid the red flags. If Leslie, you spoke earlier about how the style of analysis helps you adapt your business plans after you had closed and we're executing on your value add. Can you give us some examples there of some things that you have found in your business plans and in your performance after closing that you were able to adapt to? Yeah.

For example, one of our deals we close our assumptions were based on pre-inflation numbers and we were made assumptions on the renovations and some the expenses based off of our pre-inflation number. But as things started changing in the economy and we start seeing some of these expenses going up, so now we have to go down deep into the numbers and see where you have cushion on expenses or where you have cushion on some of our assumptions to make adjustments accordingly. We're going to go ahead and renovate the 80 units that we were projecting or we have to renovate less than that. And thankfully, as the expenses are going up, the rents are also going up.

So we look at all those numbers and then we made adjustments accordingly to see that we can still meet our income projections on our R business plan or actually surpass it by not renovating the full amount of the units and even with the increase in expenses that the expense cost for innovation we're still able to outperform our projection. So that's an example of one of those instances and this is something that we apply pretty much on a weekly basis looking at all the numbers that come in from our property even from occupancy or leads, the number of leads that we get every week and how we could make adjustments on our marketing plan depending on the number of leads that we're getting. If we start seeing trends going in a single direction, we want to start asking questions and pointing our team, especially negative trends, so they pay attention to it and make adjustments accordingly. And we've seen that when we do that, our team is able to adjust and get us back on track.

Leslie, one of the things that you just mentioned is an experience that a lot of apartment investors that I know and that I've interviewed and that I've heard on the podcast and other podcasts are having is that we're not professionally experiencing too much negativity from inflation because with our increased costs is coming increased revenue. In the form of the rent increases that we're able to charge because wages are up to at least, you know, again, I said, I focus on C class in Cincinnati. Wages are definitely growing in that segment, but also with my A class stuff here too. When it comes to the execution of a syndicated value add business plan in apartments, Leslie, where one of your chief aims is to deliver a return to your investors.

The past couple of years during COVID is especially in early 2022 where inflation has skyrocketed. Have you noticed within your portfolio a tendency when it comes to, We were talking about the balance of how much do you renovate to get how much reward in revenue, and do you have to do all the renovating? How is inflation, both in expenses, but also in rents, affecting the ROI on renovation. Have you seen within your portfolio, Leslie, a particular shift that seems to be leading to higher returns for your investors, are you finding that Choosing not to renovate and increasing rents less, but still increasing them.

Is that working better or worse than going ahead and renovating and getting R units in that particular market. So we are renovating and we're still able to get a premium on top of that. Now that premium is helping our returns increase higher than where we are right now. Although we're not going.

To renovate the total number that we initially plan on renovating, we're still renovating a certain number of units every month. And. And that gives us opportunity a opportunity to live a lot more back on the asset for the next owner when we do this exit. So it gives us an opportunity to have a better story to sell when we getting ready to exit out of the property as well.

Gotcha. So you're deciding to renovate a smaller percentage of the units, but you're still doing as much of the renovation as you had originally planned. Yes. We still doing the same renovation package, a little bit more expensive, but we're doing less the units.

Gotcha. I know this is getting into the weeds here, but do you know what kind of impact that decision has had on your returns for your investors? It hasn't like I mentioned earlier so. Our organic rent growth has covered a lot of the changes that has happened.

So we're actually exceeding and projecting projected returns for our investors, although with the slowdown in renovations that we've done. So again, we are really grateful to be in this business, especially in this time of the economy and being able to be able to distribute and still give our investors more than the returns that we promised, even when everybody is struggling in other asset classes. So that's one of the great things about being in this asset class. Absolutely.

Well R the argument made about the Disney finite and infinite games by Simon Sinek in that book is a reason to be a long-term buy and hold investor and not syndicate you. When I'm thinking about whether or not I want to get into syndication and my style, and when I think about what is it I'm willing to wake up early for, what is it I'm willing to leave the house before 6am for, it's because I have the infinite mindset and I have yet to figure out how to pair that infinite game mindset with anything other than long-term buy and hold, which is one of the reasons I'm not syndicating yet. So it's interesting to hear an apartment syndicator come on and say, they're talking about being in a game with Simon Sinek. Do you wanna give us a little bit about what you got out of that book?

Kind of the same thing, right. That's one of the reasons why the whole aspect of multifamily investing kind of attracted me because I'm a growth-minded person and I wanted to be in a business that keeps me continuously growing. It's not a business that I want to perform for two years then stop doing it, it's something that I want to be doing for a very long period of time. So that same concept while playing the infinite game, the long-term, is something that makes sense to us.

And this is a conversation like you mentioned about the long-term buy and hold investing that we've been having as partners within our company. And then with the thought of along the way, having some assets where we have our investors in there for much more long-term, because we in the business of growing wealth, not just necessarily of getting rich. So having that assets that continues to cashflow that you go hold on long-term and pass along for one generation. It's another generation.

It's something that we definitely exploring and definitely that we opt to. But the whole. Idea is building a business for a purpose that I'll last you. And that messaging in there really connects with me and connects with what I truly feel should be my purpose.

Absolutely. Awesome. Well, this hasn't been a very lightning, best ever lightning round. We're still have the first question, But, Leslie, what's your best ever way to get back?

We go out to some advantage areas and perform joint replacement surgeries. That's part of our giving back. Our CEO, Dr. Gila Sonya, is an orthopedic surgeon.

So,, we did one trip to Nigeria in March of this year. And that was probably the one of the best weeks of my life. So, I love doing that. Nice.

Yeah. Awesome. Since the last time you were on the podcast, Leslie, in your commercial real estate investing career, what is the biggest mistake that you've made and the best ever lesson that resulted from it. Obviously, the biggest mistake is not buying some assets because there are some assets that we are usually on the road and got scared and backed out of it and now it's looking.

Like a bad decision back then. I got to tell you, Leslie, I'm going to disqualify that answer. It doesn't put us in a position to add value to our listeners. Tell us about something that went poorly and how you adapted and improved from that so that we can learn from what you did to improve our bad situation.

That makes sense. I'll give you the example of the deal that we talked about. We moved ahead. I had moved forward with the deal without doing a deeper dive in the market, without going to the market and actually doing a foot walk on the market and seeing if that's a market I want to.

And that was a big learning experience for us. We improved our process in such that every time we're going into a new market, we have to go over R there and tour the area, really talk to people. And one of the things that made us back out of that market R was we actually called the economic development of that market and that's something that we typically do but we didn't do in this particular case. So that was a big mistake on our part and it could have been worse than it did but we learned from it.

Gotcha. Leslie, what is your best ever advice? Just take action or whatever decision or whatever goals you have, just get up every day and take action and it's all a gonna come together. And where can people get in touch with you?

The best place to get in touch with me is our website, www.exasinsylophonessinsamioitecapitol that's xicapital.com. On there you have all of our contact information and you can reach out to me there directly as well. That link is in the show notes as well. Leslie, thank you.

Best ever listeners, thank you as well R for tuning in. If you've gained value from this episode, please do subscribe to our show. Leave us a five star review and share this with one of your real estate and investor friends. you know we can add value to through this conversation.

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