GI294: Purchasing Over 1500 Apartments with Adrian Salazar

GI294: Purchasing Over 1500 Apartments with Adrian Salazar

Adrian Salazar is a full-time real estate investor who began his career by purchasing over 60 single-family homes and then transitioned to multifamily, where his company has purchased over 1,000 units over the past three years.

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Transcript:

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast. I’M your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Adrian Salazar. He is a full-time real estate investor who began his career by purchasing over 60 single-family homes and then transitioned to multifamily, where his company has purchased over 1,000 units over the past three years. Thank you so much for being on the show! Yeah,

Adrian:
Thanks. Thanks, Charles. Appreciate the invite. Looking forward to sharing some, some, some insights and some value.

Charles:
Yeah, no, thank you. It’s, it’s gonna be great. ’cause I think you will, we you know, we have all different investors that come on the show here. You started at a very young age, so can you tell us a little bit about your personal professional background, if any, before getting involved with with real estate investing?

Adrian:
Sure. Yeah. So I grew up around sales. My father sold cars for 17 years, so I was always kind of inclined to, you know, go into the dealership, you know, hearing his pitches, seeing how he’s, how he overcomes objections and how he doesn’t let people leave the office and stuff. So I was around that a lot. And then I was, you know, selling little things here and there at school. And then my senior year of high school I got introduced to a network marketing company where we’re able to sell products. You know, some people are a fan of it, some people are not. But either way, I, you know, I guess that’s really where I realized that, you know, through personal development and through you know, relationship building and through you know, studying and becoming more self-aware about yourself, that you can build a business around pretty much anything.

Adrian:
Right. So I got really good at that. You know, with that organization built a, you know, a huge company. We had people all over the world ordering product. And, you know, that’s where I learned public speaking. I, you know, I picked up the book Think and Grow Rich. I picked up Robert Kiyosaki, Jim Rohn, Bob Proctor. And so that’s really what sparked my interest to this entrepreneurship, you know, journey. An hour I, sorry, a year after that I I got introduced to real estate through a meetup. And so very early on I got put into these rooms with very successful people that I realized I can, you know, I can do the same thing. And so I just took massive action and I started learning and did my homework and you know, stayed consistent. So that’s where I’m at now.

Charles:
How did you get started in real estate? How did, what was your, what’s your journey to where you are now? Let’s just talk about like, strategies and what you were doing. Yeah,

Adrian:
So I got, like I mentioned, I plugged, I got plugged into a meetup in San Antonio. So I was in San Antonio studying construction. And I went to this meetup and they were talking about flipping houses, pre foreclosures off markets you know, how you can find them, how they’re public records. And so I got really obsessed with the idea of finding motivated sellers. So I felt that was really my niche. I didn’t have a lot of money. I didn’t have good credit. I didn’t, I don’t come from real estate. I don’t come from a background of people with money, you know, but I had drive. And so, you know, really that’s what you need to find off market deals, whether single family, any, any type of deal really. You know, you need some drive and some hustle. So I, you know, I remember getting in cars, driving neighborhoods, knocking on doors, putting flyers out, cold calling, you know, showing up to people who were behind on payments, trying to convince ’em to sell the house to me.

Adrian:
And I got really good at it. So I ended up being the meetup people’s favorite because I had a bunch of deals and a bunch of leads. And so I got plugged in with a couple guys. You know, we worked very well together. We built a company for about four and a half years. I was the lead sales guy, acquisitions and we were, you know, hunting deals all over San Antonio. You know, we were looking at primarily single family you know, off market deals. We were wholesaling ’em, we were subject to you know, structuring subject two deals, owner finance. And I was just getting really plugged in with the organization and the group and I realized like, hey, the more I learn, the more I earn. And you know, the more I learn too, the higher, you know, people that come into my network, the higher level of people that come into my network. So, you know, I got really obsessed with it and I’ve been doing it for 11 years straight. So it’s been fun. So

Charles:
When you made the switch into kind of multifamily properties, what were some of the things that you took from, say, wholesaling and you were able to transition? ’cause People will say, and it’s kinda true, a wholesaling’s not really investing it’s more of like a marketing machine, which I mean, I guess most businesses are. But when going into multifamily, what did you bring with you be into that kind of realm? Yeah,

Adrian:
So I brought the ability to find deals. You know, I think when I transitioned from single family to multi about six years ago, I, you know, brought the same idea of how I find these owners. Because, you know, one, they tell you to talk to brokers, they tell you to, you know, go to broker events and stuff. But I was, you know, very young, 19, 20, 21, you know, and so these brokers weren’t taking me very seriously, right? So I had to change my approach and I had to, you know, look for the deals myself. So I would send postcards, I would make cold calls, the same exact thing that I was doing in single family. I just pulled a list for small multi ties. At first it was like 12 to 40 unit deals. And I, you know, started gonna appointments, making offers, and sure enough, I started getting some deals.

Adrian:
I wholesaled a couple apartment complexes first, just to kind of see the process. See, I mean, it’s a little bit of a different process than closing a house. So I wanted to get, you know, familiar with the process. Did that made, you know, we did to this day I have seven, six figure D six figure fee deals that have wholesale on apartment complexes. But, you know, after I did my first two, when I moved into multi, I was like, Hey, you know, I got the third deal. It was, it was a really good 16 unit off market. It was like 30,000 a door in a very good area. And I was like, Hey, like, that’s really when the, the, the moment hit where I was like, I’m, I can’t keep wholesaling, you know? ’cause Like it’s just putting me back in the same position, right?

Adrian:
I mean, yeah, more money in the bank, but it’s putting you back in square one where you have to go out and find another deal. So, you know, I was, I’m a big believer in life by design you know, and do what you want, where you want with who you want, whatever time you want. And wholesaling wasn’t really gonna get me there. So, you know, I, me and my business partner looked at each each other and said, Hey, let’s buy this 16 unit. Let’s raise the capital from friends. And we did it, it was one of the hardest things we did, but we raised $150,000. And then, and you know, fast forward after that, we started buying, you know, larger complexes. So at some point, you know, about a year ago, we were at 1500 doors under management. Wow.

Charles:
Very cool. Awesome. when you’re going direct to owner with multifamily versus single family, when you’re speaking to the owners, can you give us like a, what you found in your experience, some of the differences between IT conversations? Sure. Yeah,

Adrian:
Good question. So I think, I always tell my sales guys I have, you know, a team of myself and, and you know, new people come in and people underestimate how much the education piece is important in this business. Like, knowing the language because an apartment owner is different than a single family owner, you know, so, you know, on single family it was being a therapist, you had to help ’em move, you had to help ’em find storage. You had to help ’em find, you know, tend to their problems. And it was, I was a therapist. And on this side of the table, I like it a lot because you’re talking money, you’re talking deals, you’re talking business. Most of these people that own apartment complexes are millionaires. You know, they value their time, you know, most of them too are open to the idea of selling.

Adrian:
It’s not so much just like, no, my house is not for sale. Like, you know, sometimes these business owners are actually open to doing deals. So I like the conversations, but I think, you know, one piece of advice, or one thing that, you know, I tell my team is to educate yourself, right? Like, there’s a bunch of podcasts like yourself, you know, there’s multiple people have that have multi-family podcasts that have amazing information. You know, like this podcast we’re doing right now. I wish I would’ve heard it, you know, when I started, you know, when I started off. But there’s a lot of free information out there, books you know, even on YouTube, you go on YouTube, you watch videos of people structuring deals, how Fanny Freddy looks at deals, you know what’s a, what’s a rate cap? You know, what’s, what are different ways to do deals, structure deals? And that way when you’re talking to these owners, you don’t sound like a rookie because it’s very, I can catch when someone does not know what they’re talking about in this multifamily business. So if you, at least if you haven’t done the deals, plenty of deals to be able to have that track record, I suggest that you go online, look for research, practice speaking the language, because that will help you win deals, in my opinion. When

Charles:
You are, you know, you’re, you, you touched on about before, but when you’re mailing out or contacting outreach to these people, is it, is it, how does the, the marketing piece change? Because it’s one thing that when I’ve been successful sending out direct mail to multifamily owners it would be, you know, we would just send out, like, it wouldn’t be a postcard, but it’d be like a card inside an envelope, and we’d have a pretty high return rate just on one sending, and then obviously continue with that. But how about for you? Like, what if you found to be some of the most successful methods for reaching out to owners directly? Number

Adrian:
One, number one, cold calling. So I, I still believe in cold calling tremendously. I think, you know, getting on the phone you know, speaking with the other person, you know, just building a relationship, talking, you know, goes a very long way. And not a lot of people are doing it. So, you know, ’cause like me, myself, I have multiple deals. No one’s calling me, like, no one’s calling me to try to buy my deals. So the competition is very, you know, few people out there. So I think, and it’s cheaper, you know, and, and it really makes you a better investor getting on the phone. So so yeah, I think cold calling is my number one. Number two would be, yeah, postcards. But the, my approach really is more of building a relationship rather than like, wanting to buy their building. So that’s kind where it’s at. Yeah,

Charles:
You’re building that rapport. And when I’ve, when realized it before, like getting to literally the finances, it would be several, several months, many months, maybe a year down the road that you’d actually get to that with multi-family, you know what I mean? They’re not, they’re not, they’re not stressed. Like, Hey, your utilities just got shut off <laugh>. You know what I mean? Like, kind of thing like that. It’s like they have cashflow coming in, you don’t have, they don’t have to sell in most situations, you know what I mean? And that’s just kind of like, is, do you see the same thing when you would reach out to people? It’s just building that rapport and then going back to them. Yeah.

Adrian:
You know, I think I still try to go for the close. Like I still tried to do, you know, the Gary Vayner show, quote unquote jab, jab, jab, right hook. Like there has to be a right hook at some point. So, you know, I think I still pitch it. I let him know that I’m buying in the area that, you know, I have a management company, I have a whole team ready to go. But my target, whenever we cold call and send mailers, it’s more towards the people who have balloon payments coming up. You know, I, I do some research on the owners, you know, maybe a little bit older age. You know, so, so I do try to get specific with my avatar of who I’m trying to market to. But yeah, I mean, it just depends. It’s really just chasing the conversation, laughing, smiling, standing up, like not being so salesy and not reading a script. And then just building a relationship and then just put ’em on a follow up.

Charles:
Yeah, that makes, that makes perfect sense. One thing I found, I’ve never purchased multiple properties from owners, but have you ever done that before? So you reach out to one of, you’re buying, because one normal thing I would find is like, you know, a I have a 12 unit here and then I have this like 16 over here and a six unit here, and it’s like a whole bunch of properties they put together over a 20 year investing career.

Adrian:
Yeah. I’ve had that multiple times. Probably 50% of the deals that I have found the owner sold me another building, or the owner invests with me on another deal. There was a deal where I, you know, went out to the owner’s house, convinced him to sell it, we bought it, it was 300 units and he 10 31 into another deal, and now we own it. So you know, that, and you know, I’ve also had owners carry interest in the building that I buy, you know I, you get creative. ’cause Again, going back to it, these guys are deal makers. Like they, they want deals, they wanna make money. They don’t necessarily need all that million in one chunk, you know? And now what I’m, another thing I’m doing to get creative is doing deals with no money down. So there’s a 30 unit that we’re purchasing with no money down.

Adrian:
Getting the seller involved and assuming his note, you know, in the beginning, you know, there’s gonna be, his note is doing like three years. So, you know, we have three years to do the renos and, and do our thing. And then, you know, the property’s really not gonna cash flow for us as GPS or owners as JVs. But once we refi out and through years, then we’re a hundred percent owners on the building. And so that’s kind of the model I’m trying to go towards. More of, of getting creative to find ways to own more of the building.

Charles:
Yeah. Real estate is you, I guess when you deal with like, traditional lending, there’s kind of like a, the scope of how it has to work where it’s 25% down, you know what I mean? 75% loan to value. And my dad was a real estate investor and I remember one of his old partners was buying a property and they like finagled something where someone’s old BMW got put into the contract. Like you can do pretty much anything for down payments or anything. Especially if you’re, it is, it is a very interesting situation where you can think outside the box like you’re doing. Can you like, talk a little bit about how you’re doing this 30 unit? You talked about taking back the, their mortgage, I take it they have no mortgage on the property, that’s how you’re doing this, is that right?

Adrian:
No, they do, they do. They have a loan on it, but we’re assuming the loan three years. Yeah.

Charles:
So how are they doing it? What are you putting down in the sense of giving them assurance, even if it’s not financial, that you’re gonna be able to, within this timeframe, renovate the property? ’cause I imagine you’re bringing that money to the table for all the renovations. Correct.

Adrian:
So, yeah, so it’s gonna be a mixture of a few different things. It’s gonna be assuming the loan, ’cause she has like a 3% interest rate on it. So we’ll assume the loan, we’ll get her to, to carry some interest and do full recourse personal guarantee. So basically it’ll be a guarantee on some of our assets rather than a lien position. And then, you know, we have lines of credits for, you know, with banks and institutions to do the rehab. So so I, I mean really the, the idea is to do no money down deal, but we have debt, right? So we have debt at interest that we have to be paying, but the true money isn’t gonna be made until we pay off all that in three years, refinance. And then we own the deal a hundred percent, but we put no money down.

Adrian:
So that’s kind of like the creative part. You know, I’ve, I’ve had owners, I have a 42 unit as well that I bought two and a half years ago. One investor put, you know, most of the money, the seller, seller financed it to us. And then we’ve been slowly buying out my money partner. So, so every year we own more of the building. And it was all an agreed upon interest rate that he, that he, you know, set for us. So you know, that’s kind of the way, ’cause you know, five, owning 5% of the deal, 10%. I mean, I’ve done syndications full blown syndications that we own, you know, five, 10% of the deal and we do all the work. We raise all the capital, we put all our risk. And I mean, it’s just, it, it, it made sense at that time. It just doesn’t make sense anymore for me, to be honest. You know, I’m at a point now where I just want to get more ownership of the deals and, and implement my own strategies. So yeah, the

Charles:
JV thing JV kind structure is great because you have, you don’t have the passive investor. And so if you’re teaming with two other people, that’s when you can with, you know, you don’t really wanna go back to investors with syndications, you know what I mean? And do like capital calls. Hey, we need a new roof. We didn’t think about this. Or We need a roof in five years. We have to now raise that X amount of money right now and it has to sit in this bank account. Whereas when you’re doing JVs, it’s something where we do need a new roof in five years is everybody like, is everybody gonna be okay to bring $15,000 each to the table at that time to do this? Or whatever it might be? And so you can be a little bit more lean because you’re dealing with people that are active in the deal. And that’s just some of the things that I found when doing JVs versus other type of getting into syndications. And now you have a whole nother part of the business, not just the SEC, but like a whole bunch of passive investors that once they put their money in, they like have something in their mind of I’m looking for payments to start almost like a, some sort of like dividend in this amount of time. And I don’t want that to be struck. Yep.

Adrian:
And, and I mean, I have nothing against it really. You know, I do enjoy, I have plenty of deals that are cash flowing. Investors are making money, they’ve gotten tax benefits from it, you know, they, they drive by, they, you know, take pride into it. Like, I love seeing that and I love being able to help people that, you know, these deals are not open to the, because really, I mean, as a syndicator, these deals are not necessarily open to the public that a lot of people know about. Right? And so, and there’s so many benefits to it. So I do like the idea of putting this in front of, you know, my, my passive investors. But, you know, I just, I think 80% of my time, I wanna spend more on JVs. You know, and, and I mean, just business speaking, my 42 unit makes me more money than my 300 unit portfolio, like on, on some certain syndications, right? So, and, and I, I like one investor, you know, I, I don’t know, I’m just getting more simple, you know, I have my own management company, so, you know, I, I kind of want to keep it all in house. I don’t want to necessarily be spreading myself too thin. ’cause It is a lot of work. Like you said, all the K ones that we have to send out you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s intense, but we get paid for it, right? So it’s

Charles:
One thing that you’re really getting paid on the back end, you know what I mean? Whereas if you’re doing a jv, you can structure it, you can take refinances, you can all this different ways, you can kind of recoup a lot of your capital a lot sooner. And then also have cash flow upfront. ’cause It’s kind of, you’re keeping that, it’s not being sent out the other way. Do you have money sitting in the stock market and you’re worried about it? Or worse, you have money sitting at the bank not keeping up with inflation? My name is Charles Carillo, founder and managing partner of Harborside Partners. And since 2006, I’ve been investing my money and my family’s money into income producing properties. These are real assets, real properties with real addresses that produce real cash flow. At Harborside Partners, we provide passive investors who love real estate with a turnkey investing solution.

Charles:
If you want to put your money to work in real estate but can’t find deals, don’t have the time to get funding. And the last thing that productive people want to do is manage real estate. We find the deals, we fund the deals, and we manage the tenants, the termites and the properties. Partner with us@investwithharborside.com. That’s invest with harborside.com. Go to invest with harborside.com. If you love real estate, you like the idea of passive income and believe that income producing properties will appreciate over time, go to invest with harborside.com. That’s invest with harborside.com. One thing you’re talking about with sourcing deals and you’re talking about, well, I’ll put ’em on like a follow up. Can you talk about some of the softwares or some of the program that maybe you utilize to be so successful at direct to owner marketing?

Adrian:
Sure. So I’ll, I’ll talk about the one that I have bef I had before then where I’m going now. So, so I used to use software called Podio for as a CRM. So I would track all my leads, I would have lead statuses so I would upload new list to it. And with apartments, you know, there’s not thousands of addresses in your cities like the, like in single family, right? So you know, I would scrub ’em every three to six months, get new information in case they would sell. And then I would go down deep into the owner’s names and, and not me, but I would have a VA do it, go down all the way into who, you know, could be a managing member find ’em on LinkedIn, find ’em on Facebook you know, Google. So I would, I would really try to find everything about those owners and then put ’em on a follow up.

Adrian:
So it would be a phone call. It would be a text, it would be a voicemail drop, it would be a newsletter, it would be a postcard. So it was, it was a drip campaign that would go out once a week to all these owners. And then I would use a software called CallRail to make the phone calls. It would record ’em, you know, and, and it would, it was a very good call tracking software. And we just hit, hit it hard using also mojo dialers. We would call three, three phone numbers at once. And we had a pretty good team going. But the thing is that we started buying these deals. And so that kind of slowed down, right? So whenever you have a, an influx of deals that you’re under contract on, I mean, finding new deals necessarily isn’t always the, the most important thing.

Adrian:
It’s, it’s, it’s taking care of what you’re closing. So then we st you know, we close on ’em. And then, you know, in the beginning we hired third party. Long story short, didn’t like ’em, so we st we built our own. So it kind of started slowing down. You know, because we’re doing bigger deals, if you do bigger deals, you don’t need to do 20 a year. Like you just need to do five, right? So but now I’m ramping it back up. Now I’m using HubSpot, so I’m creating a a workspace with HubSpot. I have a team who’s, you know, designing all my flows for me using aircall for the calling software. I would use VAs from Fiverr for skip tracing. And I would just, you know, send my mailers to Office Depot. Like I would give ’em the design that I wanted and then I would have ’em print it.

Adrian:
And actually I would, I would basically write it like, so it could make it look handwritten. I would write it and then have her Office Depot scan it, print it, and then it looks handwritten. So so I would kind of go that approach. And then there’s voicemail drops and texting. There was a time where we were texting people in the middle of the night like, Hey, if you’re in charge of, or if you know anything about 1, 2, 3 Main Street, let me know. This is urgent. So like two, three in the morning, they’re getting a text, you know, that this is urgent. So they would call our callback was extremely very well the next day. So just getting creative, not one thing works. You know, I think, you know, I’ve, I’ve called owners on Facebook, like I find ’em on Facebook and I, you know, it has a call option, so I would call ’em to there, you know, there’s so many ways. It’s just a matter of how bad you want. It really, you know, I see a lot of people that just wait and play defense. In this business, you gotta play offense. You gotta go out and attack. And same thing with lenders. You gotta go find lenders, you gotta go find new ones. You gotta find, I mean, you gotta go, go, go. It’s not a matter of just sitting there behind your computer. So that’s, that’s how I, you know, we bought 1500 units in two and a half years.

Charles:
I read that you cold called an owner and then flew out to confront them and finally purchased a $21 million property. Can you, can you tell us that story?

Adrian:
Yeah, so so it’s a deal in my city. So I grew up in, in, in a city, in my city here, 17 years Macallan. And it was a deal that I knew very well. I passed by a lot since I was young. And so I finally, one of my sales guys got ahold of the owner. He was in California and he wanted like 22 million. We were back and forth. And and then, you know, this was a time when I had so many investors calling me ready to go. So I felt very confident about the money raise. It was a very big raise, what, 8.5 for me. I mean to, to a lot of people. It’s not that much, but it was a lot for me. And so but I just, I bet on myself and I say, Hey, you know what?

Adrian:
Like, I don’t know how, I don’t know when, I don’t know from who we’re gonna get this money from, but we’re gonna make it happen. And, and so the, the owner called me saying he was working with a broker that was gonna pay him 22 5 or something. And he was like, Hey, if you can’t get there, I’m gonna go with him. And so, you know, we’re back and forth. Long story short, I found out his address, flew to him red Eye. I went to his door and I said, Hey, you know, this is me, it’s Adrian. We’ve been talking back and forth, you know, I really wanna buy the deal and, and I’m here ready to, to make a deal happen. And so he liked that. We sat down, we got a deal done, signed the contract right then and there. And then he told me like, Hey, you close on this.

Adrian:
You know, I have money at 10 31, I don’t want to take this out ’cause I’m gonna have to pay taxes on it. So go look for find a deal. Go find a deal for me. And who knows, maybe I might put it there with you. Right? So we not only did the deal there and saved all my earnest money that I was about to risk ’cause I had a lot of money at risk and then came back home, closed it. We actually helped him manage it before we closed just because he, it was just going down. And yeah, we, we ended up finding another deal for him. I mean, there’s, there was another scenario where another completely other deal where the owner didn’t want to extend the contract for us. And same scenario, we had a lot of risk capital and I found his address flew to him on Thanksgiving and convinced him, you know, but it’s, I don’t know.

Adrian:
Now I, I see, I see it as normal for me because I know now what it takes to get a deal done. Like, especially in a market like this right now, I mean, it’s challenging. A lot of people are in this business, a lot of people are facing struggles and a lot of people, you know, think their properties are worth more than what they’re worth, right? So, you know, there’s a lot of challenges for you for people to get deals done. So you have to go above and beyond, like, so now it’s like normal for me now. It’s like if someone’s giving me crap and like they’re not responding to me or something, I’m gonna find out where they’re at and I’m gonna go, you know, like, and I want them to tell me no. If they tell me no, then I’ll walk away. You know, I’m not gonna invade anyone’s privacy, but tell me no, you know, I want, I wanna just be able to come back home and say, Hey, I did everything I could to find out this deal. And some people just stop. Like, once they, once they find out, you know, that deal is owned by an LLC and they can’t find the owner, like they stop and they go to the next one. It’s like, no, like go on Google, go to page four, page five, go to SPIA white pages, like look for va. Like, try to find some information, you know, because I also believe that if it’s limited information that they show on public records, those are the best deals because not a lot of people have access to ’em when

Charles:
You’re making out your criteria. What is, what are some of the things like just like age of property, size of properties that you really, I mean, obviously you’re buying all different types of property sizes, but how do you kind of narrow it down for your buy box for like JV deals, let’s just say? I mean, where do you cut off on ages? Where do you, like, how do you kind of figure out all of your different filters, parameters when you’re looking at properties or before you even build your list?

Adrian:
So I, right, I mean, at the, like a couple years ago, a year ago, I was pretty much buying 1970s, 150 units plus. That was kind of my target, but now I’m really trying to get more towards the forties to sixties, the eighties, 70 twos 30 twos, like the solid, literal, you know brick building, monopoly type style 1980s plus 85 plus. I want something newer. I I’m, I’m, I’m done with the seventies, sixties. Yeah, I see, I you, you’re probably, you’re probably know what I’m talking about. So I, I, I just, it’s, they’re very unpredictable, you know, the, the, the tenant class it’s just a lot. It’s a lot. Especially that pools too, the underground plumbing, showers behind, you know, it is just, it’s, it’s a, it’s a headache. So I’m not, I’m at a point where I don’t wanna deal with those headaches anymore, to be honest.

Adrian:
And I wouldn’t mind paying a little bit more money for a nicer deal. 85 plus 20 fours forties, 32, 60, 70 twos over a hundred. It gets a little bit, I mean, it’s, it’s hard to do a JV with over a hundred units unless you have a really wealthy investor. But I’m also working on that route. But but yeah, I mean, that’s it. And then, you know, people who’ve owned it for more than 10 years you know, people who, you know, potentially have a, a, a loan that’s a suitable, I always ask right now when I’m cold calling and when my team cold calls is, Hey, what kind of loans, you know, is your loan assumable right now? What kind of interest rate do you have? What when’s your balloon? Because you know, most people got a lot of properties. Yeah, 2021 with, with low rates and they floated, but you know, people still bought in 2015, 2016, 2017 when rates were low, and you could still assume those loans. So you gotta get creative, you know, and so really any, anything over 1985 smaller build in, in primary secondary markets, other than my, the market I’m in right now is more considered tertiary, but primary secondary markets, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio you know, between Austin and San Antonio you know, even those college towns, college station, Kingsville, Lubbock. So, you know, Texas is a very good market. I live in Texas, so I don’t wanna really spread myself too thin. Yeah,

Charles:
It makes sense. How do you do your management on it? You said before you had issues before third party, you brought it in house, but it seems like so many different properties, different size properties, so some of them are gonna have onsite, some of ’em are not gonna have onsite management. How do you handle that all as self-management in-house? Yeah,

Adrian:
So now I have, I mean, now I have a district manager now I have, you know, certain managers assisting in other properties, and we bill those properties, you know, proportionately you know, we have virtual leasing agents, we have you know, bookkeeper. So I guess now the economy of scale is easy for me to handle that. And in San Antonio, we built our team. So we have a team in San Antonio of onsite people, and then we have a team here down south with onsite people, and they all help each other. But in the beginning, yeah, it was tough. But, you know, I guess in the beginning, I, I played a big role. I was the manager myself. So yeah, I mean, I, I don’t know. I don’t know how like, starting off in like a random city how I would do it, but I know I would figure it out. But I guess right now is I just really have my team set up already, so, so it’s pretty, it’s easier. Yeah. Yeah.

Charles:
With more units it becomes easier with pretty much anything in business, especially with managing properties if they’re close to each other. What I found over the years. So Adrian, as we’re kind of wrapping up here, last couple questions before people learn more about your business. What are some common mistakes you see real estate investors make over these kinda almost a decade of being involved with real estate investing?

Adrian:
So a few things came to mind. One is people underestimate the power of going to networking events and meeting new people and putting yourself in the right rooms. Like, people think that they can do deals just by sitting in their house or their office all day and not go to any networking events. Like most of my capital that I’ve raised, most of my amazing operator partners that I have today that I can just call and ask a question to, and they’ll answer like, I’ve met through going to NMHC, going to, you know, a bunch of different conferences, family office club, masterminds you know, I’ve had to pay, I paid, I think last year my most expensive mastermind was $45,000. Like, there’s no way. Like, I, I mean, that’s a lot of money, you know? And so for a mastermind, and so, you know, I, I had to squeeze myself outta my comfort zone to put myself in the rooms of people that were gonna help me get to the next level.

Adrian:
You cannot expect to just sit at home, not go, you know, to networking events and meet new people and be successful in this business. That’s one of my opinions. Number two is education. I think a lot of people sleep on you know, not staying up to date with the economics and where rates are going and you know, being able to have those high level conversations with people. Ken McIlroy has been a huge help for me. On, on, on his podcast. He talks very high level economic stuff, multifamily developments and being, being able to speak the language like I was mentioning earlier. You know, I think that people underestimate the power that that does and, and, and what that’s able to do for you to grow your business. So meeting people, education and taking action. I think there’s a lot of lazy people out there, to be honest with you, <laugh>. Like,

Charles:
You know,

Adrian:
There is, I mean, people, people come into the business and fall out and the only reason why they fell out is because they quit on themselves. You know, like there’s, it’s, it is proven. You call people, you get leads, you know, if you don’t call people, you don’t get leads. So, or talk to brokers or have meetings with brokers, people who are quitting. I ask ’em how many, you know, meetings of brokers? Have you had, how many investor calls have you called? Have you, how many new outreach, you know, emails, have you sent it? It’s the proof is in the pudding, you know, so you gotta take action.

Charles:
Adrian, some great advice there for aspiring investors. So how can our listeners learn more about you and your business?

Adrian:
So you can find me on LinkedIn. You know, you can may, maybe on your show notes, you can put, you know, my email or something. My Instagram is Adrian Salazar with an underscore. I’m on Facebook. I tend to not be too, too much on social anymore. I have a lot of things going on, but you know, send me an email, reach out on LinkedIn and I’d love to connect with you. Alright,

Charles:
Well thank you so much for coming on today and to all your success in the future. I look forward to connecting with you here and the future sometime face-to-face.

Adrian:
Thanks Charles. Appreciate it.

Links and Contact Information Mentioned In The Episode:

About Adrian Salazar

  • Full Time – Accredited Real Estate Investor
  • Graduated from The University of Texas at San Antonio
    • Bachelor’s in Construction Science  Management
    • Minor in Business Administration
  • Currently controls over $85MM in Commercial, Single, & Multi Family Assets
  • Founder of Optimum Buyers, LLC
    • Closed on 60+ Single Family Real Estate from 2014 – 2018
  • Co-Founder in HomelyEscape, LLC (Short Term Rentals)
    • Currently operate and co-manage 7 short term rentals via Airbnb
  • Co-Founder in Two Ten Management, LLC (Acquisitions, Property, Construction, & Asset Management)
    • Closed on over 1000+ units in the last 3 years
    • Co-own & self-operate property management operations for the multifamily properties we currently own and lead sponsor (851 units)
    • Lead on site construction & property management operations for our multifamily projects
    • Help target off market opportunities for our portfolio –
  • Lead Sponsor & Key Principle
    • Oak Ridge Apartments: 16-unit – McAllen Texas – SOLD – Nov 18, 2020
    • Sonterra on McColl Apartments: 32-unit – McAllen, Texas. -Refinance at 3X Value in 2021
    • Valencia Apartments: 9-unit – Pharr, Texas – SOLD – October 2021
    • Plaza Royale Apartments: – 88 Unit – McAllen Texas
    • Onassis Retail Plaza: – 15 unit – Brownsville, Texas
    • Darwin on Ware Apartments: – 42 Unit – McAllen Texas
    • Weslaco Garden Apartments – 43 Unit – Weslaco, Texas
    • The Luke & The Monark Apartments – 279 Units – McAllen, Texas
    • Arcos Apartments – 117 Units – San Antonio, Texas
    • Domit Apartments – 235 Units – McAllen Texas –
    • Tamarack Apartments – 100 Units – Under Contract Closing December 2022
  • Limited Partner
    • Flint at 290 – Houston, Texas – 192 Unit Apartment Complex
  • Experience working with Architecture / Construction / Engineering Professionals since 2010

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