Perhaps your life is like mine was in 2011. Back then, I was a lawyer with a Wall Street law firm.
Oftentimes, during dinner, my wife would say something to me. But I’d be somewhere else. Staring blankly into space. A dark expression overtaking my face. Not even hearing what she was saying.
When it first started, my wife would ask what was wrong. After a while, she no longer had to. She knew I was thinking about work the next day. And dreading it
I dreaded being at someone’s beck-and-call. Not knowing whether I would be home at 6:00 for dinner. Or whether, at 4:00 pm, someone would call with a project that had to be finished by the next morning.
I dreaded the lack of control over my time and my life.
I dreaded the inability to choose what I was working on.
And I resented the fact that, even though my salary was good, most of my effort was enriching someone else. With no guarantee my hard work would ever pay off for me.
I dreamed investing in real estate could somehow save me from this life. During down moments at work, I would browse real estate websites, looking at triplexes and quads in small towns near New York City. And fantasize about freedom.
But, one day, I actually ran some numbers.
And the numbers told me that triplexes and quads would never set me free.
I assumed I could invest my maximum annual savings, about $50,000 a year. And that I would get a 10% cash flow return each year, and my investments would grow 10% each year. (Pretty aggressive assumptions, I now realize.)
Even at that rate, it would take me more than TEN YEARS just to get to $100,000 in income.
And that’s if nothing went wrong. Nothing major to fix, ever. No recessions causing tenants to lose jobs and not pay rent.That realization crushed my dream. Because I did not know any other way to invest in real estate, other than using my own money to invest in these small properties.
The turning point.
Then, a turning point came. I was downsized from my job, because there just wasn’t enough work to justify my high salary. It was then I met someone who changed my life. My first partner in real estate.
She asked me to join her in a startup investment business. I assumed that we were going to invest in small properties in New York City.
But what she told me blew my mind. We were going to use other people’s money to buy 100+ unit apartment complexes in the southern United States.
We would be doing something called “syndication.” And by syndicating deals, we could earn fees and profit shares that would be much, much more than we could ever earn investing our own money in small buildings.
Just a few deals would be enough to provide me with a six-figure income.
But things didn’t exactly go smoothly at first. We found deals and couldn’t close them, even though we had plenty of investor equity lined up and ready to go. After 18 months of dwindling savings, tens of thousands of dollars of fees and costs down the drain, and disagreements over direction, we decided to break up the partnership. Determined to make this business work, I formed a new multifamily investment business in 2013, called Two Bridges Asset Management LLC.
Over the next several months, I struggled to get brokers to show me good deals. But at the end of the year, I hit upon a formula that worked and finally got a deal that closed.
Over the course of 2014, I closed four deals for 400 units, worth $17,000,000. Those properties are now worth more than $26,000,000.
That fast success got me a lot of attention. I’ve interviewed on all the big real estate podcasts, including Bigger Pockets, the Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever Show with Joe Fairless, Wheelbarrow Profits with Jake & Gino, and many many more.
Now I host my own real estate podcast, Real Estate Launchpad. And my free Facebook group, Multifamily Investment Community, with more than 5,000 members, is one of the biggest (and some say the best) real estate investment groups on Facebook. When I am not overseeing my real estate deals, hosting my podcast, teaching students, or giving investing advice on Facebook, I’m hanging out with my family here in Brooklyn.
If you join me in this investment journey, I promise one thing. I will never sugarcoat this business or make it sound easier than it is.
The rewards are there for those who are willing to put in the work. My job is to give you the best education, show you where the pitfalls are so you can avoid them, and accelerate your learning process as much as I possibly can. The rest is up to you. And I know you have it in you to succeed.
Passing my knowledge onto you.
Choosing markets, understanding deals, performing due diligence, running a syndication with investor money, managing managers - these were all things I had to learn when I got into this business.
There were some real estate gurus around in those days. And I used their materials. But usually they were very surface-level. They left more questions open than they answered.
And, to get the good stuff, you had to pay even more. Usually something like $25,000 or $40,000 a year!
I thought that was crazy. Everyone should get the good stuff, even if they can’t pay that kind of money! So I made a decision that, one day, I was going to offer instruction that was higher-quality and lower-priced than the gurus.
Now, after all these years in real estate investing, I have gained the knowledge, experience, and wisdom to guide others who want to break into this business. And do it the right way from the start.
Without the time-consuming, money-wasting rookie errors I made along the way that slowed my progress.
Errors that would have been avoidable if I’d only known to look out for them. But none of these pitfalls were ever addressed in any real estate book or guru program I found.
To help you accelerate your progress towards freedom through real estate, I created the Multifamily Launchpad program. It boils down all my experience, all my methods, all the wisdom-creating mistakes I made, so you can get your real estate investing business off the ground fast. And right.