GI288: Transforming Distressed Properties with Grow Inn Homes

GI288 Transforming Distressed Properties with the Colettis

Anthony, Camila, and Vince Coletti are single-family and multifamily real estate investors located near me in South Florida. Anthony began his career in real estate wholesaling and investing in 2015. Since that time, his brother and his wife have joined him in the business. They have successfully bought properties via direct mail and have a true passion for growing fruit and native Florida plants at all of their properties.

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Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have Anthony, Camila, and Vince Coletti . They are single family and multifamily real estate investors located near me in South Florida. Anthony began his career in real estate wholesaling and investing in 2015. Since that time, his brother and his wife have joined him in the business. They have successfully bought properties via direct mail and have a true passion for gro wing fruit and native Florida plants at all of their properties . Thank you so much for being on the show.

Anthony:
Thank you,

Camila:
<Inaudible> up. Thanks for having us.

Anthony:
So

Charles:
You guys have a, a unique business and how you source properties, how you do it. I’d like to go through kind of, if each of you can give us like a short background on yourselves and what you did kind of before getting into real estate and what your kinda role is at the company now. Alright.

Camila:
I’m Anthony. I’m the CEO of growing homes. This is our company right here, our logo. Prior to real estate, I pretty much played baseball for my whole life. Played college, high school division one baseball. Ended up having a few different sales jobs before real estate and before getting into the investment side, I was a realtor for about two years to kinda learn the business and get more involved with like the contracts and just kind of the language of it. So that’s kind of a short background

Anthony:
Go. My name’s Vinny or, or Vince, whatever you wanna call me. <Laugh>. I’m the COO of growing homes before real estate. I’m seven years younger than Anthony, so I’ve been kind of involved in the real estate from the beginning, but more on like the manual stuff, like helping inside the properties. I played college baseball as well at Florida Atlantic University and Palm Beach State my first two years. And then I got drafted by the Oakland Athletics and spent three summers playing professional baseball with that organization. You know, I called it, I retired a little early with some arm issues and hopped right into the real estate full steam ahead. So that’s a little short bio about me pass over to Camila.

Vince:
Yeah, so <inaudible> making his wife. Before growing homes I used to work in sales too, and I also used to work with my dad, the general contractors. So all like with the permitting stuff and client management and all that fun stuff. Right now inside the company I do property management. I screen the tenants, I talk with the tenants and anything that they mean, and yeah, I’m like the bridge between the company, us and the tenants. And I know like we all do like a hundred things more, but it’s just like a short

Anthony:
Summary.

Charles:
Yeah, no, that’s great that you guys have everything kind of sorted out and everybody kind of works and stays in our lane. So, Anthony, I always like to ask when people come on the show, since you were the one, kind of the ringleader here of getting everybody involved in the investment portion, why did you choose real estate as your investment vehicle? I know you were a realtor beforehand, but why go over to the the other side, the, the dark side of investing? Yeah,

Camila:
Great question. So I became a realtor to become an investor, so I always had that end goal in mind. You know, I figured it would help you know, being a realtor, kind of seeing that side of the business and, you know, it really helped me. You mentioned earlier sourcing deals. We find a lot of our deals, you know, from relationships that we’ve built with realtors and being able to be coming from that background as a realtor, knowing kind of, you know, the ins and outs and having that you know, experience and kind of lingo with a realtor. You know, we’ve been able to do a lot of good deals and make a lot of good relationships with realtors. But but yeah, how I got into real estate, it’s just, you know, I’ve, I’ve I’ve had some friends, you know, family, friends in the past that have fixed and flipped homes and, you know, I I, you know, when I was in another job I had was yachting. I was worked on yachts as a deckhand. And when I was in that business, I’d, I’d meet and connect with a lot of the owners kind of briefly, and I would say eight or nine outta 10 of them were in some form of real estate. So, you know, that’s how I was like, all right, I need to get into the different business and get off these boats and, and really make something of myself. And that’s how, that’s pretty much real how I got into real estate. So

Charles:
Yeah. That’s pretty interesting. I’ve realized that too. And I think a lot of people interview on the show. It’s it the first clash they have with true wealthy people, right? And they’re, they have some sort of involvement or exposure to real estate in some capacity on the investment side, right? And then also they own a business or a partner in a business or something like this in ownership stake in business or businesses. And that’s really a recurring theme I found as well over the years. Yeah,

Camila:
For sure.

Charles:
So as you kinda work through what you guys are investment strategy is, and I mean, as I as I kind of throw out questions here, feel free for either of you to take ’em and add to ’em as you’d like. But what is your current real estate investment strategy with your firm? Now? I know you guys you know, are doing single family, doing multifamily. So what type of property do you really target and what’s a typical business plan look for you? Yeah,

Camila:
So on the real estate side we’re, our main focus is distressed properties. That’s kind of what we did. That’s what I did coming in, you know, finding great deals. That’s probably the hardest thing when people ask like newer investors, you know, what’s, what’s some of the challenges and that’s sourcing deals. You know, I’ve always been great at that in the beginning, and that’s kind of our strategy now is, you know, we are looking for larger mid-size multis, you know, those 50, 40 unit sized deals. But you know, as you know, they’re, they’re tough to come by. So, you know, what, what we know is, you know, what we’ve been involved in is single family homes. We’ll, we’ll flip smaller condos townhouses, villas. Now we’re starting to, maybe we’re starting to keep some of the single family homes as well.

Camila:
We just purchased our first one last week we got a great deal. Instead of flipping it, we’re gonna be keeping it as a rental. So we’re in the middle of fixing that up now. So to summarize it just really distressed properties, you know, whether it’s very distressed you know, the property’s in bad condition or, you know, maybe the owner’s in a distressed situation where they really need to sell and sell quickly. So that’s kind of our, you know, our wheelhouse is, is properties that are, you know, we purchase ’em below market value because of the distressed situation. Yeah.

Anthony:
We’re not afraid of the work, like Yeah. Or work. Bring it on.

Camila:
Yeah. We bought in some very, very distressed properties. So this one we’re clean right now is, yeah, this was, was probably the big, one of the biggest projects. Our,

Anthony:
Our house. Like, oh, so we’re been living,

Camila:
Yeah,

Charles:
I saw the before and after pictures and I saw some of the other deals you’ve done and you guys do a great job on ’em. So it’s, it’s no doubt why you guys are able to make good returns on ’em when you sell ’em. Yeah.

Camila:
Appreciate it. What,

Charles:
What are some of the marketing strategies you use now? You have, you’ve been sourcing deals, I know when I met you, Anthony, maybe 20 18, 20 19, something like this, you were sourcing deals for wholesaling primarily through realtors. Right. Which I feel is something you’re still using as a, what, what other marketing strategies are you using outside of realtors that have you, you found effective in, in buying properties?

Camila:
Yeah, so I would say realtors is one of our main focuses, but we’re starting to get more involved in, in sending mailers direct mailing direct to owners. That’s mostly on the multifamily side. We were able to source a great deal so far this year from that. Camille and I just got back from a property. We just met an owner today, actually from a letter as well. Some of the other strategies we’re using is social media. You know, we just started that vin’s really taken a, a big big yeah, role, a big role into the website and social media and connecting all the different landing pages.

Anthony:
Yeah, we did like a little bit of like the field of dreams approach, kind of like if you build it, they will come, like in the beginning, we know like a lot of marketing people say, like, try to be omnipresent, try to be everywhere. Like when, when, and then when you’re everywhere, let people know like what you do. So sometimes we skew a little bit on the growing food side. So on the social medias, we gotta remind people that, hey, we’re buying real estate. That’s our primary thing. And with social media and all the SEO with Google and all that, it’s a longer term, you know, gain. You might not get the leads right away from that, but the more you keep showing up and posting, we’re starting to get some dms and some interest. A lot of, like, we had one realtor that showed us a property last week that his son’s into growing food and he’s like, dad, these people buy real estate. He is showing them. And we ended up teaming up and we’re seeing what we could do on that property. But yeah, that’s like the longer term game, the social media, SEO, all the Google fun stuff like that.

Camila:
Yeah.

Charles:
For what you guys are doing with direct mailing. ’cause This is something that I’ve done before and I always get calls from it. It’s a really powerful it’s not cutting edge as you know, social media or some other platforms, but it works. I mean, can you explain a little bit about this, because I’ve had people on the show before talking about it, but I believe you’ve closed two deals, multifamily deals from this, is that correct? You got both deals from, or one deal that you got from direct mail?

Camila:
Yeah. One deal within growing homes, but I’ve had multiple deals in the past with direct mail. But what we’re doing now that’s unique, that seems like it’s setting our our letters. ’cause You know, obviously owners get a lot of different letters, you know, so it’s like, Hey, how do you stand out? And one thing we’re doing is we are adding, you know, kind of what we’re doing with our, or with our company you know, is not just buying real estate multifamily properties, but we’re also adding food systems and, and edible plants to help feed the tenants that we have and, you know, this community and pushing towards more sustainability. So we’re adding that into our letter each, each time we’re sending a letter, we’re adding a, a picture, like, kind of like a new picture of our property, the, the plants that are growing.

Camila:
You know, we’re usually all in the photo or my wife and I or me, kind of switch it up a little bit. But yeah, we’re, we’re telling people, you know, we’re, we’re also investing towards, you know, we have a vision of helping change the world, you know, in a positive way. More people grow with our own food. Yeah. More people to grow their own food and bring it local and provide good quality food for people as well too. And, and teaching. You know, if you, if you follow, if you guys check us out on social media, you’re, you’re gonna see I would say 70%. We’re trying to get it to like 50 50, but right now, maybe 70 to 80% is all about growing food and teaching others how to grow food. So it’s something unique that we’re adding to all our mail pieces. And, you know, something we would recommend to others is, you know, find that unique niche and yeah, some things that’s you’re passionate about and try to figure out how you can add that special touch to your, your letters at your site.

Charles:
How do you normally package it when you send out that letter where it’s gonna get opened?

Camila:
Yeah, good question. So we’re working with a third party company right now that, you know, there’s a bunch of them. You, you know, I would recommend, like, like anything, when you’re doing a renovation project, get some different quotes from different direct mail companies you know, whether where you live and whatnot, it might be, it might be a little bit better on price, but we’re working with them and, you know, we send them the list of, you know, the owner’s address, the owner’s name, address then the mailing address all that good stuff. They’ll, they’ll let you know kind of the, the format. But you know, they’re we send letters that you know, they kind of look like they’re, they’re written and yeah, handwritten, ah we like to use blue font just, you know, kind of a basic piece of faith we’re not using for the envelope.

Camila:
Yeah. For the envelope. You know, we, we put our, another thing we learned too on the, on the first mailer that we ever did you know, there wasn’t a return address. So you make sure you, you, you tell them like, Hey, put the, put a return address just in case they wanna mail you back, or, or you get, sometimes you’ll get mail that’ll bounce back you know, and you want to try to do a little bit more digging. Usually those properties could be, could be, you know, a great opportunity because a lot of other people aren’t taking that extra step. Yep. Step to finding the new bounce back mail. So, or address.

Charles:
Yeah, they’re, they’re not going all the way through. Do

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Charles:
So you talked about creating your list and talking about fine tuning it when you’re getting a mail coming back, I mean, how do you, how do you pull your list? Are you pulling them off of through the city, you know what I mean, through the county and doing that way?

Camila:
No, we use a software called Remy and it’s, the way they, they have it set up is you’re allowed to pull each month a thou you can pay for a, a larger subscription, but, well, the one we’re on right now is you’re able to pull a thousand properties. You know, you could, you could make your specific type of search. You could do like the year of the, the buildings, you could do the size of the property, you know, how long the owners owned it. So we kinda have our, our you know, our special way of properties like to, to, you know, make a, like our specific list. And then what I started doing too, you know, ’cause we were, the way we were doing it before, we were kind of sending about three to like two to 3000 letters a month.

Camila:
But you know, what we’ve done in the last for the last mailer we’ve got a couple good calls on it is, you know, we’re doing something unique with growing food on our properties, so we have to source properties that actually have land. You know, some of these multi-family, they only have concrete, just everything’s zero escaped out. So it’s like, you know, when an owner calls and they’re like talking about their property, you look it up on Google and you’re like, there’s no, there’s no grass, no nothing. So, so what we started doing is I, I kind of just do this in my, in my spare time is like, I’m looking, you know, I’m, I’m going through our whole list. You know, we had a pretty wide range of where we were. Like, we were doing two hours north and two hours south of where we live. So now I’m kind of narrowing it in more, like more about an hour each way. And I’m, I’m literally going through the list and seeing like what properties have a little bit of land and we’re building now a, like a preferred property list. So

Vince:
Ask somebody that see, has seen him work the list, like a lot of it, like what he said, the manual part, he has also like hunting, like going through Google map, like seeing the properties, bulk up properties that we fit what we are looking for. And he is like, Hey, this is not even on the list that we had. So system,

Camila:
Yeah, I’m, there’s, I’m finding way more properties and I’m like, I type it in in Remy and it’s there, but when I would pull the data, it wasn’t there. So yeah, that’s enough.

Vince:
We, what you’re looking for. And like we go in that extra mile.

Camila:
Yeah. Big roofs, like looking for the bigger roofs. That’s, you know, yeah. What

Charles:
I, what I found is that when we built lists, we used to use different services for it and then now we would pull ’em just from the city and the county and you get everything that way they’re not, they’re not missing someone on their tax list. So that’s what I found the bo be the most accurate. There’d be other people I’ve had before that they’d pull list for us and they’d be missing stuff and you like cross reference it and you’re like, how am I missing where? So, you know, if you’re looking for properties built, you know, I don’t, 1990 to 2010 or something like this. I mean, obviously they’re not building any more of those. So you can find it. And that’s gonna be a set list that is never gonna have to be updated just to owners, you know what I mean? Just to check who your recent owners are. So yeah, it’s really cool that you’re doing that because obviously the properties won’t change even if they change hands. So once you have the address, you can always run that through again and see who the updated person is, you know what I mean?

Camila:
So you go to the the county and they give you the whole list. Is that what you’re, what you do or you ma email,

Charles:
You can pull it right off of the, you go to the website and like, you know, the assessor’s website, you know what I mean? And you can pull ’em, you figure out exactly what the town size are, you know, the not town size, the property sizes are you’re looking at. And you can pull ’em and they’ll be like, I mean like garden style. They’ll have different like unit sizes and you can just pull that right off. And then I found that as the, I mean, obviously that’s the most accurate because that’s the, that’s where everybody’s pulling their information from and there’s gonna be ones that are gonna slip through there, especially if you don’t mind working with some older properties that are more unique. Right. Obviously if something’s built in the last 20 years, it’s pretty straightforward, right? There’s not gonna be like hitting apartments or something else.

Charles:
Like, you know what I mean? Where if you’re dealing with something that’s built in the sixties, they might have done something with it, right? Or something got, you know, transitioned in the sixties to more units, you know what I’m saying? They might fall through the cracks, but tax ban is probably gonna be able to probably has the correct information or somewhat correct. Right. And so you’re gonna be able to do that. So it’s really just getting the address once you have the address and once you know that it’s like in the area you wanna buy it, now you can add to the permanent list and now you’re just kind of like you know, I’m having a VA and they can just pull the right addresses, you know what I mean? And obviously you can’t be a hundred percent ’cause it’s like 30, 90 days behind, you know, someone buys Right.

Charles:
And you know, they might put their attorney on there or something like that as the owner’s address, you know, you’ll never get to them. But for the most people, when you run it, it’s gonna be accurate, you know, and you can find it. And then you can also search that down more and see the last time it’s sold. And that’s good for seller financing type stuff of, of how I’ve like manipulated the system before to kind of get what we were looking at. ’cause You buy someone that’s like in the last three years or something, they’re not gonna have probably, you know, you’re not gonna get any deals there for the most part. Right. You know what I mean? For the most part. But it’s something that if you’re going back 10 plus years, you might find someone that passed something paid off, or it’s paid really down, or maybe someone is not the same person doesn’t own it, it’s now a family member that’s running it.

Charles:
So stuff like that, you know, we just keep in touch with ’em. That’s how I found out and get in touch with people. But everybody’s, every time you send out a you know, property mailers, I would always get calls on ’em. You know what I mean? And you work through the whole system of doing it. So sounds like you guys have, and you have your own niche of doing it. So now we got the, we got the, we got the phone ringing, right? What, what’s your process with someone, you know, responds to one of your mailings, probably calls you ’cause they’re opening up mail. I mean, what, what happens from there?

Camila:
Yeah, so I’m right now handling all those calls. And my goal is just to get to know the person a little bit more before kind of talking about the property. You know, sometimes people want to go right at it. Oh, you’ve said you’re gonna gimme an offer, what is it? And usually you know, those people usually text though. Like, there was a person not long ago text me like, Hey, what’s your offer? And I was like, Hey, I we’re, if I’m gonna offer you a million dollars, like at least let’s talk on the phone. And long story short, they didn’t ever, they never text back. So, you know, I gotta, I’m gonna probably call them here soon. But yeah, it’s just more about getting to know the person, you know, why they’re want, why they’re wanting to sell you know, getting to know their story, how long they’ve owned the property you know, and try to get the rents, like what is it currently renting at, you know, I’m not too worried about the expenses.

Camila:
You know, usually their expenses are gonna change. You know, when you’re the new ownership, the taxes and the insurance, usually all that’s gonna change. So more about getting to know, I would say 80 20, you know, 80% talking to the person. Like, you know, you’re building a relationship and a and a friendship with a person versus like, Hey, what’s up? You know, tell me about your property. What’s going on with this, this thing? You know, why are you like, you know, thanks for call. Like, you know, instead of just asking all these questions about personal Yeah, more personal, you know, instead of getting into the property, like, you know, find out the, the, the reason why they’re selling and you know, their story first before

Charles:
Build that rapport and they’ll open up. Yeah, I like the idea of it because it’s difficult. I mean, let’s be honest, if you’re for small multi-families, the paperwork you’re getting, the financials are just really not that good. I mean, they’re just, they’re, I mean, they’re all over the place, right? I, I can show I can show like financials. I’ve gone from beyond like, you know, spreadsheet. It’s like over here, it’s over here, it’s on a different sheet. It doesn’t, I mean, it doesn’t really make too much sense. It’s really like you’re saying is that it’s really finding out. They’ll know the rents ’cause they’re collecting that. So that’s something they’re gonna know off the top of their head. They’re not gonna know what their insurance is probably off the top of their head. But it doesn’t matter ’cause you’re gonna get a quote for that.

Charles:
It’s really, you can, I mean, for the big expenses I’ve found, you know, your property, property taxes, your insurance, you’re gonna figure this out yourself and you’re gonna put that into your own numbers, right? Because you’re buying it for a completely different price of what the assessors have that on. You know what I mean? Their sheet for. So you’re building rapport with ’em. And just to give like context of how long you build it. ’cause I remember Anthony one thing, like I remember speaking to you the first time I did some direct mailing afterwards, maybe like, so the first time, you know, when we spoke 20 18, 20 19, you were kind of explaining how you went. I’ve definitely lengthened my call times with people calling in on direct mail and you’ll get the people that are like, Hey, I, I know I I know you’re not gonna, you know I had one guy, I was like, I just gimme a value of the property.

Charles:
I know you’re not gonna buy it from me, but like, can you value it? And I was <laugh>, he’s like, I know it’s like I paid too much for this, or something like this. So you get all types of people reaching out to you, but hey, I mean, they’re interested at some level and you can always follow up with them. You get all types of people reaching out. But like for, to give context to people listening, knowing that this is a long term pursuit. It’s not like sending out one mailing and you know, buying five properties or something. What have, what have you found for timeframe from the time you normally, and this could be on single family, it could be, you know, before your curtain company, whatever, multifamily from the time you speak to ’em, to the time you’re actually closing on a property. Yeah,

Camila:
That’s a great question. It’s all really different, but I would say like average time, you know, for a multi-family owner, at least 15 to 20 minutes. But sometimes longer. There was a, the, the woman we met today my wife and I that went to go tour the property I actually spoke with her for two hours the first time she called me. And it was two and a half, two and a half hours. Yeah. I had headphones on and you know, I was, I was, I was involved in the conversation. You know, but yeah, I think I, I don’t think, actually, I don’t think I was doing too much multitasking. No. we were working at another property while, yeah, we were, we were cleaning out another house and you know, I just kind of sat on the old couch that was there, had my headphones and ’cause it was, it’s a nice property, you know, that, that she has.

Camila:
And so I wanted to get to know her and she told me a lot about the property and the story about it. You know, she’s owned it for over 20 years and, but I would say the average call 15 to 20 minutes right in there. But in, in regards to like actually closing it’s even longer. Usually you know, we like to meet meet the pe if we’re interested in the property, we like to actually meet the people you know, meet the owners or try to at least see the property with them or meet ’em at a coffee shop first before just kind of making a random offer. You know, with, with, sometimes when we work with realtors though, it’s, it’s pretty quick. You know, the realtors kind of, I’ve already done that leg work with the owners and they’re like, Hey, the, the person wants this, you know, send, send us an offer.

Camila:
You know, ’cause it with, as you know, with single family and residential properties, it’s more about you know, price per square foot, like what stuff’s selling for in that area. So it’s kind of cut and dry. So, you know, when we’ve done so many of ’em that we know are numbers really good. So we could do that. We could just send an offer. Especially a lot of realtors now, they’ll, they’ll send us videos which really help, will send us like a walkthrough video of the property. So from, from start to like talking to ’em to close to getting it under contract. It could be within 24 hours on the realtors. On the realtor, I’ll more of like the smaller residential stuff. But multifamily, you know, the last one we bought, I think we had, you know, all three of us actually met or no, I went to go look at the property first.

Camila:
Because another thing, you know, as you probably heard a lot of multifamily owners, they don’t want you to come there as the owner. They want you like I was the where is I as the buyer? Sorry, they don’t want you coming as a buyer. ’cause Then, you know, their tenants will get all flustered. So I think that day I was the inspector for the insurance company and some of the, the tenants were actually even asking me insurance, how long you been doing it? And I was like, ah, me <laugh> kind of new at it. And yeah. But anyways, so yeah, I went to the property. We all met the owners in for coffee I think once or twice. And then that third time we actually got the, the property under contract. So, you know, some people have that like, Hey, go right at ’em. You know, bring the contract all, I mean, you know, that’s, that’s some people’s style, but that’s really, we really like to, you know, build the relationship and be win-win for everybody. You know, on, on that side,

Charles:
I find that it’s different between single family and multifamily. ’cause The thing with single family is, I understand when I speak to people that are like, well, we’re emailing out people that have utility cutoffs or something, or like behind on taxes, that’s a completely different motivation than someone calling me to sell 12 family that they’ve had for 20 years or whatever. And it’s cash flowing. You know what I mean? Like, how do you just like strong arm, like you gotta sell this. They’re like, no, I, no actually I don’t have to sell this. It’s like, you know what I mean? It’s performing. Like I can put a property manager here and move away. I don’t need it. I’m just, you know what I mean? So I feel it just takes more of a relationship for that because there’s not, in certain times, there’s not an immediate need to make a a decision right now. Does that make sense? Oh yeah,

Camila:
For sure.

Vince:
And it’s also the fact that like, they want to have it easy with the tips because a lot of times they’re living there themselves, so they don’t want the confrontation of you’re selling. And now it’s weird, the environment, they’re there, they don’t, I don’t know, like the foreplay is like, I don’t want the guy to shoot me because what the other tenant, because you know, that’s are situations that can happen. So having that understanding, that patience with them, that life, we understand that this is one of your priorities that you don’t want the tenants to not. Yeah. And

Charles:
It’s, I, yeah, and I’ve sold small multi-family before, so I understand what you’re saying because you have to think of it from the seller’s point of view. They’re not trying to be mean or anything, but like, if you don’t buy it now, you’ve just stirred the whole pot that’s gonna take months to settle down. You know what I mean? Because they’re gonna be like, is are you selling it? And you’re like, no, I already told ’em. Like, they’re, you know, and like how do you explain? It’s just you keep on saying it and you’re like, oh, you’re actively trying to sell it now. You know what I mean? And you, you’ll, they’ll never get out of that. So it’s just something that I totally see what they’re saying. But yeah, you guys have a great way of working around it. And Anthony, you do look like an insurance person, so you’ll be fine. So you guys have been in the game for a long time. I mean, what are mistakes? You see, you guys talk to a lot of real estate investors, I imagine. I know Anthony, you’re telling me people reach out to you all the time for investing in real estate, wanna invest in real estate passively, actively. What are mistakes you see? I mean, you guys are part of a lot of masterminds. You talked to a lot of real estate investors.

Camila:
Yeah, so I mean, not like, let’s before talking about we mistakes we see it’s, we’ve made mistakes ourselves. Let’s like bring it there. It’s you know, some of them being you know, you think this is gonna cost x, but then it costs this, you know, it’s a whole different price. Way more than you thought. Another thing that we’ve got that we’ve had to learn the hard way in the past is like, we’ll do this repair before we did this repair, and then we have to redo it all because this should have came first. So you know, between, between those mistakes and, and you know, knowing your numbers you know, closing fees, like you talked about insurance taxes you know, that that’s right there. Those few things alone, like as you know, brought us a lot of learning experiences, you know, and, and the timeframes as well too.

Camila:
That’s another thing. You know, this like a certain project like, you know, this contractor didn’t get done, so now you have to call like three other contractors to say, Hey, you can’t come in at the time that I told you because this person didn’t finish or they got sick, or whatever the story is. So, you know, being able to, to to navigate you know, project management, that’s been one of the, one of the biggest things is one of the biggest challenges. You know, I would say number one is sourcing great deals. And number two is the, is the project management. And now you know, the, we we, we’ve done a lot of flipping in the past. Like a lot of flipping this past last year is really when we’ve started buying and holding and building out our portfolio.

Camila:
So now we’re learning the wonderful world of landlord being a landlord. And it’s, it’s, it’s great. You just, my advice, and Camille could give you guys some advice after I’m done is, is be patient. You know, we’re, you’ll get a lot of calls, especially if you, you know, we’re, we kind of go old school with our properties. We put out a lot of signs for rent signs kind of all over. Yeah. All around the city. ’cause You know, in this sort of market, it’s and, and some of the markets that we own, multifamily properties, it’s not like, you know, they’re renting really quick. So we’re, whatever it takes kind of people. So we’re putting out signs, we’re putting ’em on Zillow, Facebook you know, Craigslist to try to find great tenants. And, you know, that’s been a challenge, like finding great people that, you know, don’t have evictions and don’t have a lot of different histories and past the baggage that they’re coming along with. So, so advice there is just be patient, you know, find the right people and, and connect to answer your main question, like connecting with other investors you know, that owed a lot of properties, they say the same thing. Like, Hey, you know, our piece of advice is, is find good people to, to, you know, for your properties, you’ll have way more headache if you put the wrong people in your property than you will if you wait a little bit longer and find you know, the right type of people. So

Vince:
Yeah, asking them a lot of questions. The tents, they repeat the questions times we, because times it’ll change their answers. Yeah. So like, you need to be like, what is their story? And also don’t fall for the sub stories. Like, as a woman, I think we tend to be a little bit more emotional all the time, but there is a reason why that it, they’re in that situation. It is not like you don’t wanna be humane, but it’s just that if you, they bring that headache into the property, there is a headache for you. And then they’re gonna be an eviction and it’s a whole thing. So just asking them a lot of questions, why are you moving? What happened? What’s the story where it’s living with you? How many people are living gonna live with you? And like Anthony said, it’s better for you to have the property vacant for a couple months than getting the, the wrong person in there. And a lot of times people have the debt, like they have to pay the bank, they have to pay that person that load of the money. But it’s better if you take it out of your pocket if you can, than having to then go to the eviction process and then the tenants destroy your property unit. So yeah,

Charles:
It, it’s difficult. That’s the one plus about having third party property manager. There’s a lot of ’em. But one of the main ones that I’ve noticed when I handed the keys off the first time was that the emotion was gone, right? My property manager doesn’t have to make the mortgage payment anymore. I have to make that so I, he’s not rushing to fill it with trouble, right? So it’s like you are separating that whereas you’re trying to make a deal ’cause you wanna pay your, you know what I mean? You don’t wanna go into your pocket for this month or what, you know, all this stuff that new landlords do. I, I mean, did it for many years. So it’s just something that yeah, it’s a thankless job and you guys are doing a great job at it, but it’s like, these are all mistakes you make as a new real estate investor. And I made, made ton of ’em. So I mean, it’s just I always like to see what other people see and usually the lines right there. But before we get into like the real mission behind what your company is, you, we’ve been talking about a little bit about financing. Can you just like briefly tell us how you guys normally finance your deals? You’re doing singles, you’re doing all these different things. You’re doing long-term holds now. I mean, how do you do financing for these?

Camila:
Yeah, so we’ve always used either cash or hard money. You know, we, we, our parents is my brother. I, I’m the I’m sure you guys have heard that, but Vinny and I, like our parents really taught us about saving as you know, growing up. Yeah. So we’ve always been good at saving and just kind of, well, and you know, in my instance, I started a little before Vinny on the real estate side, but just rolling our proceeds into the next deal. And, and that’s kind of really what, how we’ve done it. You know, we’re getting everything in line right now you know, with the properties that we do own outright to, to start doing refis come 2025. You know, we’re hoping the rates come down a little bit and, you know, we, we start exploring and getting into, you know, building relationships with lenders and more, more banks you know, smaller credit union style banks for the type of deals that we’re buying right now. But yeah, in the past and until to this day is mostly just our own cash and then hard money loan. Yeah.

Charles:
So if you have to go to the hard money section, I mean, you’re, you’re going now to holds from hard money. There recipe be, usually there’s some sort of conversation in there about how it’s going to permanent loans. So that’s where you have to go to the bank usually. ’cause They wanna, you know, they wanna relo that money out and get points and that’s their business. But that’s very cool. Yeah, that’s very interesting. So let’s, let’s break down here. You guys, you know, buying real estate is only one element of what you guys do at your company. Can you explain the story and the mission behind growing homes? Your company of what you guys are doing? Ben,

Anthony:
You wanna take that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So back in 2020 when the world changed a little bit we started digging deeper into our health and we realized that growing food was the healthiest you could be, you know, going right from the garden into your mouth. So that spiraled into learning more about growing food. And we got super, super passionate about it. You know, we all, all three of us liked the outdoors and before growing food, we liked to, you know, fish and hunt in the water a spearfish. So it kind of aligned very perfectly with that. And then with the real estate side, we’re like, wait, we got, we got land on some of these properties. There are most of these properties. So it’s like, hey, we could start growing food on the properties. And like, a big thing, a big thing about it too was, you know, we wanted to get more into the social media side, but the real estate content gets a little saturated.

Anthony:
So it’s like, how do we, how do we mix this up and get more people like to be, you know, to be fans of what we’re doing and, and, and inspire more people? So it kind of all just intertwined and and yeah, like now we just leaned into it more and we have a pretty good following that really looks forward to our videos every day. And, and that’s another, you know, that, that’s another thing too. We had to build out a whole media team to sustain the amount of content we try to put out. So, you know, it kind of just kept evolving day by day. And we have a lot of, a lot of ideas too, like that we gotta kind of calm down on. But

Camila:
You’re saying, huh?

Anthony:
He

Camila:
Has a saying for, yeah,

Anthony:
I have a saying the ideas come way quicker than the implementation and we have a big old a GH water, an like, Hey, let’s do this. I might put it in the idea jar. We got 10 things we’re working on right now. So it’s just a balance between, you know, the real estate side and the growing food side. But the growing food side opened the door up to, you know, more a bigger market. ’cause A lot of times real estate investors don’t get too good of a reputation. You know, the media talks more about the bad side of it and people taking advantage, which we don’t, we don’t like that side either. So it was just a way to kind of like a blue ocean. You know, they talk about blue oceans where, you know, real estate is kind of a red ocean. There’s a lot of people in it.

Anthony:
So we ventured off into the bluer seas of growing food, which is still kind of new to people. And then we put our twist into it. You know, we, we watched a live of Alex Zi who talks about that, how your brand isn’t just like your one thing. It’s like a, it’s a combination of all of your personalities and your passions and, and people really feel it. So it’s really easy, you know, to, to talk, you know, it’s really easy to support growing homes ’cause it’s just deeper, it’s deeper than the real estate. Like, it’s, it’s our life.

Charles:
That’s awesome. Yeah. Capitalism and growing your own food. Two things that you usually don’t hear about in the same video. So that’s, that’s great to hear. So as we wrap here, guys, how can our listeners learn more about you and your business?

Camila:
So any, any social media platforms we’re on Instagram, Facebook TikTok even. So YouTube you go to our website, ww dot rowan homes.com. Here it is right here. Yeah. And then there’s, if you guys want to connect or grow in or call, yeah, grow in G-O-N-O-W-I-N-N-H-O-M-E-S. And if you want to call to hop on a call, call the number. If you just type in grow in os.com Yeah, you’ll see our number pop up. Vinnie will probably answer that one. Or you can

Anthony:
Scroll down on the website, book an appointment. You’ll, you’ll book one with Camila

Camila:
Book an appointment or, or info app Growing Homes taxon. This is our, you measure our email. So yeah. And

Anthony:
Yeah, and a little side note too. So this main property we’re at right now, this was our first growing homes. We call it Growing Homes headquarters. It has all our whole nursery for what we plant at our different properties. And we actually got into a little niche of selling sugar cane, which we could have a whole nother video about that. But if you guys and growing something that’s really easy and grows amazing in Florida, what is delicious? Yeah. Florida’s one of the top places in the world of Grow Sugar Cane. We’ll ship it right to your door. So you’ll see that on our website too. You know, growing homes.com.

Charles:
Thank you so much for guys for coming on today. All those links how my assistant put ’em all in the, the show notes here. And yeah, thank you so much for coming on. I’m looking forward to connecting with you here again and here in the near future. Oh, thanks for having you. Thanks again.

Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.

Announcer:
Nothing in this episode should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Any investment opportunities mentioned on this podcast are limited to accredited investors. Any investments will only be made with proper disclosure, subscription documentation, and are subject to all applicable laws. Please consult an appropriate tax legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of Syndication Superstar incorporated exclusively.

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About The Colettis

Grow Inn Homes is a family-owned and operated real estate investment team located in Florida. We buy distressed single-family and multifamily properties. On our Grow Inn Homes multifamily properties, we grow fruit trees and native Florida plants for our tenants and show people what is possible.
We plan to add at least 10 more units to our multifamily portfolio and purchase 6 more single-family homes by the end of 2024.
We use the resources we acquire from the Real Estate game to grow food, raise awareness of growing food, and create content to teach others about growing food. We feel growing food is a gateway to healthier habits, healthier people, and a healthier planet.
We specialize in purchasing distressed single-family and multifamily real estate. By combining our knowledge and experience in property remodeling and growing food, we aim to improve communities and inspire people to start GrowInn. We will be a model for a more regenerative future that benefits both people and the planet.

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