Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host, Charles Carillo. Today, we have Cory Jacobson. Cory and his partner, Ryan, have built a real estate portfolio comprising over 80 units across multiple markets, including long-term and short-term rentals, multifamily apartments, and a large multipurpose resort. Their passion for entrepreneurship led them to create The Wealth Juice Podcast, which is a top 1% podcast globally with tens of thousands of monthly downloads. Additionally, they have built a community of individuals who are striving to grow their real estate portfolios and achieve financial freedom. Thank you so much for being on the show!
Cory:
Charles. Thanks for having me on, man. This is awesome. Thanks for the, for the warm intro, and it’s good to see you again. I know we had you on our podcast, you know, maybe six months back or so, so thanks for thanks for the time.
Charles:
Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. And you know, you guys did a few things before getting involved with real estate. Can you give our audience like a little background on yourself, both personally and professionally prior to jumping in and starting your current real estate company?
Cory:
Yeah, so I’m 33. I’m gonna be thir actually by the time this podcast episode comes out. I’ll be 34, so that’s a little scary. But I, I started investing in real estate when I was 26. And prior to that, what I was doing actually is I’m in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I went to Temple University. I actually worked for the 76 ERs. I don’t even like to say that out loud these days because of how sorry they are, but I I was making a whopping $35,000 working for the 76 ERs running their youth programs, so like running their camps. It was the most fun I’d ever had at a job. It was awesome. I got to meet the players, the whole nine. My boss could not pay me any more than that 35. He said, you know what, I think what we can do is we can get you up to 40, maybe 45.
Cory:
And I was like, well, you know, I’m 26, so I, I don’t need a ton of money. But that wasn’t exactly thrilling to hear. So he said, you know what you should do though, Corey, what you should do is you should buy a five bedroom house and you should rent for the bedrooms to the, to the sales associates or other people that work here because they’re always looking for roommates and they’re also not making a ton of money at the beginning stages. And so it was interesting because he actually had a portfo, a rental portfolio on the side of his job. So I didn’t exactly took his, take his advice, but I bought a three bed, two bath, lived in one of the bedrooms, rented out the other two bedrooms, had roommates that I was renting with, they were my friends. They came with me, they’re like, I’d rather pay you than pay our existing landlord.
Cory:
And for the first time ever, I was able to live for free. So I went from living paycheck to paycheck to being able to save over a thousand dollars a month. And that is what springboarded my real estate investing journey to the point where I could have a little bit of like less desperation about what job I took. And all of a sudden I’m, I I, I was able to buy a duplex and that sprung board, and I can talk about the portfolio, but I since had left the Sixers, I went to work in sales. I worked actually at my family’s business, which I have since left to do to pursue real estate investing being an agent full time. But yeah, I mean, that was my ent entryway into real estate, and it was the single best decision I ever made, which was house hacking and I can get into that more, but that, that it changed everything and it was the, the catalyst that got the ball rolling down the
Charles:
Hill. Yeah, that’s awesome. It’s a funny side story. My brother went to Temple for a couple years before going back to Yukon originally from Connecticut. So, but anyway, yeah, I’ve been to that that’s, that’s a tougher area, Philadelphia when I remembered about 20 years ago when I was down there. But
Cory:
It is still a tough area. Phil. Yeah, Philadelphia. I love, by the way, Phil, I love Philadelphia and it gets a bad rap nationally, but it is amazing. It’s a great place to live. There are pockets of Philadelphia, like Chicago, like New York, like anywhere that you wouldn’t wanna live in. Where I live at Temple was one of those places that I wouldn’t wanna live, but I did it. So,
Charles:
So let’s talk about like your house hacking journey. I got started in house hacking as well, a little bit, a few years before you did, but it was something that I don’t know if I was really cash flowing on it. I just remember when I had, everything was like rented out. It was like the three family house I was rent, I I had done it, it was I mean it was cost me like 40 bucks a month, so obviously saving several hundred dollars a month on rent, at least if I went like a was a roommate at, in someone’s apartment. So the thing though was that tell us about how coming before we get into what you’re doing now, a little bit background about how you structured that and maybe some mistakes you made or kinda a little background on, on the whole process.
Cory:
So how’s that? This is very simple. And this is why I tell people the best time to invest in real estate was yesterday, the second best times today. And you, you can’t go wrong if your idea is to hold on to properties. I really think that this cashflow game, it’s all about defense. You play defense enough of the appreciation principle, pay down, and to make you a bunch of equity and make you a lot of money. That’s, that’s how this game works. In the house hacking world, what I did is I bought a $250,000 three bed, two bath in 2018. So that property today is worth about 4 0 5. So all I’ve done is just held onto it, but I was paying about a thousand dollars a month in rent with these two roommates, and I said, guys, why don’t you just come with me?
Cory:
You know, I had the master bedroom, they had the, they, the two of them were in two separate bedrooms. They shared a bathroom, they were already doing that. So they’re like, fine, you know, my mortgage was like $1,500 a month. They paid both, paid seven 50. So I was pretty much break even before utilities. And the structure was, Hey, I, you know, I’m asking these guys to help me do a favor to start building my, like having my wealth building journey get started. So like, I’m not gonna raise the rent over a couple years at all. And I didn’t. And you know, after that I had my ex-girlfriend had moved in with me. So like I did it for three or four years, which allowed me to springboard this to buy this second property, which was a duplex in New Jersey. That cash flowed $300 a month and it was $125,000 purchase, which was, you know, nothing to write home about.
Cory:
I made all the mistakes possible, like it was raining inside my property. Day one, I, I was getting texts from a, from my tenants on a flip phone, I didn’t even know you had to fix windows when they were broken, all these things went wrong. But over time, I fixed up some bathrooms. I fixed up some kitchens and that, that property, the, the duplex is what really taught me the power of real estate because I sold it three years later for a hundred thousand dollars profit. And I, I thought to myself, Charles, I was like, hmm, the chances of me saving an average of $33,000 a year from my job was very, very slim. I, I couldn’t do it. So then I turned, took that equity and put it into another property, and then you start the real life monopoly game. But what the house hack taught me is that even if you’re not able to cash flow in your, in your first property, in your house hack, you can have a personal cash flow difference.
Cory:
So for example, today, how does this relate to people in 2025? That’s what people wanna know. Well, if you’re paying $3,000 a month in rent, which by the way in some cities is cheap and others that maybe that’s on average. Instead of trying to look for the perfect house act that you could live for free, what if you were able to cut your living expenses in half? What if you were able to spend $1,500 a month towards your mortgage and have the tenants pay down the rest? And then you have a personal cashflow difference of $1,500 a month, which allows you to save up more money and you’re getting the tax benefits and you’re getting the principal pay down and your property is appreciating at three to 5% based on the purchase price, not the down payment that you put in. So that to me is why real estate change. It, it just started to, to shift everything where I put $20,000 into my house hack down, right? But I’m not getting three to 5% on my 25, $20,000. I’m getting my three to 5% on the $250,000. So to me, I don’t know if I directly answered your question, but that was how things started to shift in my head, like the Rich Dad poor dad moment where I was like, oh wow, these assets can go to work for me while I still work my job.
Charles:
The other thing too is that not that we’re really worried about this, if you’re making 40,000 a year, but your taxes on selling that after one year are gonna be a lot less percentage wise on that a hundred thousand dollars than they were gonna be on. And it was a personal residence, so you didn’t have to pay anything, but if you wasn’t an investment property, you’d be paying a lot less via capital Gaines versus, you know, earned income. So yeah, it’s a very powerful thing, but I always found like the, the pay down, it’s a big thing. I remember it was like three 50 or 400 when I was doing my numbers. So you’re pretty much like, okay, well like that’s kind of like the fee I’m paying myself. I’m putting it kind of into savings, you know what I mean, kind of a thing as I’m like managing this.
Charles:
So there’s a lot of different things you went through there, a lot of benefits and like you said, you went through a duplex, I think it was my second property I bought and it was just like, I’m like, oh, this is how it’s supposed to work and this is how it’s supposed to cash flow. The first one was just like, it was fine, but it was kind of a little bit of a mess. The second one, I was like, all right, now I started making money a lot sooner in it and all this kind of stuff. And it was, I was like, okay, this is like, this is what everybody talks about. I like, I I find I, you know, I figured it out a little bit. So yeah,
Cory:
Without a doubt. I also think Charles people, the mistake that people make is they’re looking for real estate to be the escape route from the job or the thing that they don’t like that they’re doing. And I do not think that’s the best way to approach real estate investing. Now, if you wanna start a flipping company or you want to be an agent or you wanna be a wholesaler, that could be your potential active income escape. The real estate investing is going to pay you dividends on dividends, on dividends, but it is not going to work the way that you want it to work until five to seven years. And I know that’s not what people want to hear in an age, in an age where you can press a button, right, and get something delivered to your house in three hours. But I’m telling you from somebody who’s been in the game for just about that seven years, this last two to three is when things have exponentially gotten significantly better.
Cory:
For me, I was in the mix for the first five years thinking, hmm, this is not spitting off as much cash flow as I really thought. This isn’t exactly allowing me to escape. I still have to work until I flip the script in my head. Like, I’m not trying to escape the job. I’m trying to escape the desperation of doing a job that I don’t want to do. What I am doing is trying to wake up every day and do something that I love and have the real estate work for me so that instead of if I did want to put it down and retire, which most people that pursue financial independence, you’re not really gonna retire. But if I did want to do that, maybe it’s not 65, maybe it’s 40, maybe it’s not 65, maybe it’s 45, but I can just do what I want every day. That’s the way that I would approach real estate. And there you mentioned there’s so many different benefits this year. The tax benefits have been like the, the biggest benefit that I even, I didn’t even realize until year seven in the game, you know? Yeah,
Charles:
Yeah. No, I, I spoke to an investor many years back, I remember him telling me this decades back and he would tell me like he’d call it like the I call it like the 10 year kinda 10 year law of real estate investing. You know what I mean? If you’re in there for 10 years, if you start screwing with that and you start trying to, you know, really push trying to push numbers and push things and get cute with your financing, all these type of things, you’re gonna run the risk. If you can hold a property for 10 years, it’s very, very difficult to lose money in real estate. You know what I mean?
Cory:
That’s exactly it, dude. That’s exactly it.
Charles:
And when I see people that are very successful in, especially we’re talking about like apartments here and stuff like this, but kind of any type of commercial real estate, let’s say including multi-family apartments, it is something that they have money and they put it in there as a ’cause people use, like it’s a store of wealth. That’s really what the thing is. It’s difficult to not have any money starting real estate, like you said, it’s very slim cash flow in the beginning, especially because you’re gonna have a lot of people that don’t need that cash flow, that wanna buy good properties, that don’t mind overpaying for good properties if they’re keeping it for 10, 15 years. So that becomes more difficult. That’s why you’ll see a lot of people that are like agents and investors, brokers and investors or have, or property managers and investors, whatever it might be. So they have some active income coming in and then they store money they’ve made in it, and then that’s where they come back and they look at it five, seven years in the road like you did. And you’re like, wow, like I think really went up in value, like all this work I did, you’re getting paid. That’s what equity is turning into actual equity in your deal when you refinance it or when you sell it.
Cory:
Yeah, that’s exactly it. And by the way, I am an agent. I still have several avenues of active income. We’re starting to get paid significantly on our multifamily projects, but I would, you know, for years we’re paying back our limited partners, like we’re paying back our investors and as general partners, we’re not taking a lot of profits. So, and that’s fine, that’s what I want. I want my investors to be taken care of. But I’m an agent. I run a mentorship, I teach people how to get it, get started in real estate investing. That’s what I love to do. I’m a coach at heart. So the active income is still a big, very big part of my life, seven years into this game. So I don’t, by the way, if you wanted to maybe escape your job and just live off the investments after seven years, I’m not saying that’s impossible, but it’s harder than most people think. So continue to work in the field that you wanna work in, and to me it’s just all real estate adjacent. It makes so much sense. And I like being an agent. I really like people helping people get into investment properties or getting into their, into their dream home or their starter home. Like I, I’ve seen how much that affected me in a good, in a positive way mentally and financially. So I like doing this. Okay, so
Charles:
Like ley. So let’s kind of move forward here a little bit to what you’re up to now. I mean, tell us a little bit about how you started really scaling your portfolio, whether it’s your own investments and then kind of how you build that. Because after you get the first deal, and usually there’s favorable financing, whether you’re veteran with VA or FHA three and a half percent down after that it gets a little bit more difficult. ’cause Now you have to put up some, some serious, you know, sizable down payment. So kind of how did you get through that on your, on your, you know, your second, third properties down the road? Partnerships
Cory:
Were everything for me, Charles. This is the, the key that I’m gonna share with people. So inevitably you run out of your own money in real estate investing, it just typically happens. I actually put 10% conventional down on my, my first property, right? And then I went 25%, 25% like on these multifamily, these small multifamily in New Jersey. And it was me and me and my partner Ryan, saving up, deploying our cash, saving up, deploying our cash. And that was how it worked until the first about eight units. But one thing that we did that I would recommend to anyone is I used the term build in public. So start documenting your journey and talking about the story because we started our podcast and our social media platform that’s wealth juice official on Instagram. When we had, I had two units, so I was nobody to talk about real estate investing.
Cory:
I just wanted to share my story and hopefully people would follow along in the journey of fixing this house or this problem that came up as opposed to thinking about it from a lens of, oh, I built a thousand units in 1996, which is what a lot of people on the internet or, you know, these multimillionaires are talking about and it’s hard to relate to. So we started our podcast social media platform and our real estate investment company, essentially when I had two units we got to that eight unit mark just deploying our own cash. And then the partnership started to form ’cause be because we were able to organically network with people that we met through our podcast and through our social platforms to buy larger projects. That’s when Ryan and I that did, like, we discovered this power of investor relations and marketing and underwriting and being able to raise capital from individuals who knew like, and trust us.
Cory:
And we said, Hey, these are the deals that we did. Check this out. I would risk my own money first and now I’m in a position, Hey, if you wanna come invest with us and get double digit returns back by our real estate, let’s do this thing. So we bought a seven unit with a partner. We bought a 43 unit that’s the boutique hotel that you’re, that you mentioned in the intro an 18 unit and then a 10 unit. And, and, and we’re looking, hopefully this week we’ll have another eight unit under contract. So we’ve played in this field of like five to 50 units because it’s not institutional, doesn’t really touch it. And it’s a little bit above mom and pop. And we found that that is where our partnerships meet the skill sets so we can combine. And then, you know, Ryan and I have put up our own money for some of these deals.
Cory:
We’ve raised investor capital. That’s the way that we figured we were able to scale because I thought to myself, am I gonna be able to compete with the people that are doing this full time and should I just continue to buy duplexes and triplexes? You should start that way if you wanna get in involved in real estate investing a hundred percent. But then to me, I was like, I’d rather have 20 or 30% as a general partner of an 18 or a 40 unit than have a hundred percent of another duplex. ’cause I didn’t know how to go buy these myself. So that was how things started to scale for us. And I can attribute it all to personal branding really.
Charles:
Okay, The one of the things before we get into kind of raising money from investors, you mentioned you’re buying duplexes and triplexes and I started the same way, and it was one of the things is that how did you handle your, your your property management on those deals?
Cory:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So at the beginning until that six to seven units, we managed ourselves. We used a product called a Rent ready. And if anyone’s heard of Rent Ready, they’re like a property management software. It’s like 10 bucks a month and you could collect maintenance or do maintenance request right through an app, collect rent payments. And it made it pretty, pretty easy for us to manage. But once we got to that like eight, around eight units, I deci I, I kind of was like, what is my dollar per hour task and should I just offload this after that 18 month or 36 month seasoning period where these properties start to make a little bit more money, I can take a little bit less profit, hand it to a property manager and let them handle the maintenance, let them handle the tenants, let them handle the issues that come up inevitably in real estate investing so that we could focus on what we were good at, which was branding, going and buying in more deals, starting our starting and, and continuing our podcast and just meeting and networking as opposed to like having a contractor and trying to negotiate with them over $500.
Cory:
That was how things started to change. So for us, it was about that six unit mark that I was like, okay, I think this is better to hire a PM and have them handle those things. So yeah, hopefully that, you know, painted the picture a little bit for you. Yeah,
Charles:
No, it’s, it’s a very difficult because people, I, I didn’t have this, I luckily bought properties that were near each other. So when I self-managed them up to like a dozen units before bringing in property management, something like this it was a little easier, but it was very time consuming. And I offloaded a lot of stuff off my plate to different handyman and contractors, but it’s something where I think you have some that made their house hacking a duplex or triplex, whatever it might be, and then, you know, a mile away they find another duplex then a mile past that they found, you know, and now you’re like, oh wow, I just have like, these are great deals, but I have like four properties that are like, you know, it’s 20 minutes to drive to here to here and stuff. And it’s, it’s becomes more difficult and difficult and if it’s difficult for you, you’re not gonna have property managers in my experience lining up to take those off your, off your plate, you know what I mean? It’s gonna be a much more difficult sell versus you’re like, Hey, everything’s right here and within this like five blocks and you know, you can keep properties, you know, everything here in this storage place and over here, over there. But I mean, what was kind of, what have you heard with people in your community that maybe have been able to work through that like you guys did?
Cory:
Well, building a team is probably outside of like understanding how to, how to analyze deals is probably the single most important thing that you can do in real estate because if you make yourself the entire team, then you just bought yourself another job. So one of the things that happened to us, Charles, is that I’m in Philadelphia, but I started buying properties in South Jersey. It just felt the taxes were a little bit higher, but there were more duplex, there were more small multifamily options at the time in South Jersey. And what ended up happening is that these properties were like 30, 45 minutes away. And once I started to put the system in place where I didn’t have to go to these properties, I then started to think,
Charles:
Hmm,
Cory:
30 to 45 minutes away, what would it be like two hours away? What would it be like a plane ride away? Could I create the system if I’m not going to these ones that I didn’t have to go to the properties at all? And our community, actually, it’s very interesting, our community as we have a number of investors in Philly and New Jersey and some of them invest in a place like Augusta, Georgia, or they invest in Detroit, Michigan, and they’ve been to these places once or twice and they’ve built a solid team on the ground, the right agent, the right contractors, the right property managers, the right handyman, you know, you build this team and actually it alleviates you from even being tempted to go to these properties and do the fixes yourself, which if you are a business owner, you want to get away from.
Cory:
So I mentioned I sold that, that first duplex that I bought for a hundred thousand dollars profit. My fiance went to University of Tampa and I visited down there with her a couple times, not when she was in college, but just like in the last couple years. And I just fell in love with Tampa. So I took that equity and I bought a property in Tampa, Florida that I get to go down and visit, but I use it as a short term rental. I’m not managing that prop. Like I’m not taking on the responsibility, especially a short-term rental to go manage that property. So that taught me, okay, if I can have, if I can be in Philadelphia and own a property in Tampa and have it run a, aside from a hurricane coming, which is out of our control and have it run with our our management company, could I buy properties in other areas?
Cory:
So our portfolio now is actually we’re selling off some of our last properties in New Jersey and pa just ’cause we’ve owned them for several years. Our 18 units in New Hampshire are 10 units in Vermont, and we have some properties in the Pocono Mountains. I’m not advocating for people to buy in 20 different markets. Not at all. But I’m saying if you can establish yourself in a, in a solid market that fits your buy box, the world’s flat you can buy in any market. I say say the world more of the country, I wouldn’t, I don’t know anything about buying internationally, but you can buy, you can live in Philly, you can live in New York and you can buy in in Ohio and you can buy in Missouri. Absolutely. But it’s about putting the team together. So
Charles:
Let’s talk about that with, I mean, the biggest part of that team is you’re gonna be your property manager and your property management company. So what advice would you have for, you know, our listeners on vetting, finding, vetting a potential property manager, because this is something I’ve struggled with in the past and I’ve worked through referrals mainly from other investors, getting referrals from brokers haven’t been really the best, but other investors in the area that owned similar sized properties and class properties to mine, I’ve been very successful in giving good kind of good names off that and vetting them and bringing them on board. So how about for you guys, how you’ve done that?
Cory:
This is why it’s so important to surround yourself with people who are doing what you’re doing or doing what you want to do or a couple steps ahead. If you can put yourself in the rooms with people that are like, Hey, I’m trying to get my first or second property, but I’m hanging out with people who have four or five, six, cool, if you’re hanging out with people that have a thousand, but they might not be able to relate to you. So if you can put yourself in those rooms, because you’re absolutely right, Charles, having the investors give you the referrals has been the biggest thing for us on the property management side. The property manager, it can make or break your deal period. If you have a bad one, it can break your deal. If you have a good one, it can allow you to scale a lot quicker.
Cory:
What I like to do is, as I’m looking on Zillow or I’m chatting with an agent, or I’m looking at properties, I call property managers in the area and just say, hey, and pick their brain. If, if they would take this on, you know, and, and you’ll know, you’ll start to learn neighborhoods by saying, oh, I would, no, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t manage that property. Okay, this is probably not a great neighborhood or an area that they want to go collect rent or an area that they want to manage. So that’s been one of our ways to, to even before I’m ready to buy, just pick the property manager’s brain. The other thing is that once a relationship is established with a property manager, that 10 unit deal that I mentioned came to us from our property manager because we’re constantly talking to them like, Hey, if any of the other owners that you have wanna offload, we are looking to buy, we’re in growth mode.
Cory:
And he brought that deal right to us and our partner. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a art not a science in terms of the vetting process with the property management teams, I would say chat with a number of them, but they can be your biggest ally if you do it right. But like you said, the investors getting around other investors who are buying in the market that you wanna buy in or just buying in general, that is how the referrals come and that’s how good property managers find their wins to help grow their business. And it can be a really collaborative win-win scenario. Yeah,
Charles:
That for sure, for sure. So kind of going a little forward into what you guys are doing now, you’re raising money from investors. Can you give us a little bit of a breakdown of your company’s current investment strategy?
Cory:
Yeah, so I mentioned this a little bit. What we’re doing is we’re buying this like five to 50 unit multifamily and typically we’re focused, our number one focus is on the northeast and this is Vermont, New Hampshire. And I’ve, I’ve found that it’s basically because we have our best team up there, like our partner Sean is, he lives in Vermont and he is so good. He’s lived there his whole life. He’s so good at finding the right deals. Everyone’s chasing deals in the Sunbelt or chasing, you know, deals in, in Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas, but I think an overlooked market is actually in the Northeast and people would probably sit, stay away from that. But our strategy, what it has been is typically value add multifamily. However, of this most recent deal that we’ve done, we actually bought a 10 unit that an investor had flipped and he needed to liquidate cash.
Cory:
So this is interesting, it’s not exactly in our typical buy box, but he needed to, to liquidate to get out. He, he flipped this property. So we’re buying at turnkey in 2025, which is not exactly the strategy that I would recommend for people, but we are 15 minutes from Dartmouth Health, Oracle Strava, there’s like this tech interesting tech hub in the northeast that people probably don’t necessarily know, but lemme go back to Dartmouth Health. We’re 15 minutes from Dartmouth Health. So we’re renting out our 10 unit, our, there are two beds and one beds to traveling nurses that are direct, getting direct stipends from the healthcare institution. So they’re able to get a, we’re able to get a premium on these rents where a two bed would typically rent for 2200, but we’re able to rent it for 3000 because the traveling nurses are around six months or four month timeframes at these, the healthcare institutions.
Cory:
And we get stipends directly from them. The key here is that the vacancy rate in this area that we’re buying in is like 0.4%. So there is just a supply imbalance with the amount of demand that there is looking for properties in an a class area that we bought this property in. So it’s funny that you ask about our strategy. I have a geographical strategy in a number of doors in terms of like a five to 50 unit, but our strategy within, in terms of whether we’re gonna go section eight or whether they’re gonna go traveling nurses, that has shifted because the 18 unit in Manchester is completely section eight. So I think it’s about real estate is about having like your buy box to a t to a point where you can have a geographical area, number of units that you buy, but then be flexible with the strategy that you use once you acquire these units. Because what’s going to bring you the best yield and bring your investors the best returns. So it’s changed a little bit, but that, you know, the northeast Vermont, New Hampshire, five to 50 units is like what we focus on.
Charles:
Nice, nice. So Manchester, Vermont, you’re saying?
Cory:
No, Manchester New Hampshire.
Charles:
Manchester New Hampshire.
Cory:
Okay. Yeah. And then which is right like in the there Southern New Hampshire University is right there. And then, and then Vermont, Quechee Vermont is where our 10 unit is.
Charles:
No, I say ’cause being from a New Englander every state, we use the same town names in every state. Yeah,
Cory:
They have the overlaps. I know, I’ve noticed this too. It’s
Charles:
Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and everything’s so close. So that’s why I was asking. So there’s
Cory:
Gotta be a Manchester Massa, Massachusetts as well, I’m sure there, there’s
Charles:
Definitely one in Connecticut. I know that for sure. Yeah, so it’s, I mean there’s, there’s all over, there’s a Salem, Connecticut, Salem, Massachusetts, I mean, so it’s, and there’s probably more but it’s just one of those things. So you have to really everything being so close you have to really when I talk to people, it’s something you have to save the state too. So, but anyway. That’s awesome. Yeah, Vermont and New Hampshire, beautiful places and definitely a lot of growth, especially since COVID. So it’s it’s awesome. It’s awesome that you guys have that. I know of one other investor that has a similar strategy or similar kind of time kind of marketplace of where you are. Actually a couple of ’em, there’s, there’s not too many, like you said, most of ’em are down Sunbelt and stuff like that, focusing on, on properties down there. So with what you’re doing, I mean, you’re sourcing from deals from your partner up there, sourcing deals from agents. Is that how it is usually on market?
Cory:
Actually most of them are off market. They’re coming from lending relationships and they’re coming from our property management relationships. So that, that’s typically how we’re sourcing these deals where Orion and I come in and we do the underwriting back the underwriting, we do the marketing we help do investor relations and we bring our expertise of like the, the, like I, like I said, really the marketing aspect of this and getting eyes on our property. And then we manage the property manager and he manages the construction, so he’s doing the rehabs and all that stuff, and we’re managing the property management team together. So that has proven to be like the mesh of skill sets that I would recommend anybody start to think about what are you really good at, at what can you bring to the table? Maybe you’re the boots on the ground, maybe you have the time, but not the money. And our partner has a lot of money too, but he’s been in the game for 10 years. But it’s more so the, how does your skillset parlay with another person’s skillset? And by the way, partnerships are not for everyone. They don’t always work. Some partnerships have gone sour, but I think it’s the best way to scale if you can match the core values of your core values of what you bring to the table with somebody else. That’s, that’s what we found has been the best way to, to go upwards.
Charles:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. The property manager is a great source. I’ve, I’ve a number of times been offered properties from managers that you work with and who’s gonna be first to know, yes, you can send out like 10,000 letters and then find someone that’s ready to sell or you hire a property manager and you are gonna be, they’re, they know, they’re, they know that you wanna self this thing before the owner spouse knows they wanna sell it, you know what I mean? And they’re gonna reach out and try to, because they wanna keep the business, but they’re gonna reach out. And it’s a perfect, if you have them manage your property as well. It’s just like keeping the owner on as you know, during the ownership process because of, with you as a partner, because they know so much about the property, they know all the different issues and they’re most likely not gonna bring something or, you know, try to sell a property back to another client of theirs if there’s a lot of issues with it. ’cause They’re gonna have to be the one that manages it versus if they’ve had it for 10 years. Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative>.
Cory:
Well, think about the incentive, Charles. Yeah, the incentive for the property management team or company to keep it within their sphere. They are like, well, if I’m gonna lose this 15 units and that’s gonna be, you know, at 200 or 300 a door, that’s significant for them in their, in their business plan, maybe I can keep it in house. Not only keep it in house, but sell it to another investor who’s gonna improve the property and then I’m, as a property manager gonna then make more money on it. So I think their incentive to to, to move them in, in their own sphere is, is huge. And that’s why some of the best deals come from property managers, which I don’t think a lot of people utilize, you know, to build a relationship with your property manager. Property management is like the thankless job of real estate, you know what I mean?
Cory:
Like, they’re, they’re like, they’re always in a bad mood be and rightfully so because they’re getting yelled at by tenants or not getting paid. And then every time they call an owner, the owner’s like, what’s this? What is a property management? What are they calling me about? Can’t be good. You know what I mean? They can’t be depositing more money in my account. It’s gotta be a bad thing. So, but developing a true relationship with them is the key where you, you know, you high highly and you over communicate and then before you know it, you have deals falling into your lap from them. Yeah.
Charles:
And you can bring ’em on. We’re talking about sourcing deals from them. They’re, they’re probably not gonna give you deals before you buy a property and have them manage it. However you can bring them on much earlier in your relationship too, to have them vet deals and, you know, and pay them for this obviously, but to vet deals that maybe you have Lois accepted on or something like this, or you’re thinking about putting numbers in or to have them review your budgets and and you know, offer to pay everybody. But it’s just one of those things where you have someone that is, knows better than your agent, better than broker, anybody kind of what the pricing is for this on the street, you know what I mean? And it’s the, it was the best thing. ’cause I’d have, if I needed to roof for something, you have a property manager and we can ask them, these are the quotes we got, and they, and they, they’ll pick out, they’ll say this, this is a fair price, this is too high.
Charles:
I don’t know how this person can do it this low. You know what I mean, type of thing. And then it’s you, you’re utilizing that information and they’re helping you tweak it. And property managers, they should be saving you money. I remember they’d be like, oh, you gotta structure it differently and make sure you keep like this X percentage as a whole back after the roof’s done or after this project’s done, things that I wouldn’t have thought of. And they can negotiate into the contract and you’re like, wow, that he was right. That person didn’t come back and clean up the shingles <laugh>. So it’s just like, you know,
Cory:
Yeah. I, sorry to cut you off there, Charles. Most of the time property managers are investors themselves, and they got into property management because they had a, a hard time with their property manager, right? So they’re like, they’re seasoned. Most of the time it’s, i I think it’s very rare. I haven’t met many property managers that don’t own real estate themselves. Some of them, some of them don’t just focus on that, but they own the real estate and they’re like, you know what? We’ve gotten big enough, we’ve gotta bring this in in-house and then we can start to manage other people’s properties. So they’re like highly seasoned and great people to network with.
Charles:
Yeah. So as we’re kind of wrapping up here, I mean, what would you say with your community, with your own business, with your partners, what are common mistakes you see real estate investors make? And this doesn’t have to be just multi-family or short-term rentals, but maybe anything in the sphere of real estate investing in general.
Cory:
I think that people think that they have to be a lone wolf and that they have to do all this alone. And it’s like, I, you know, I, I have to hoard the cash. I can’t talk about what I’m doing. You know, I, I I, the scarcity mindset, I think that’s the biggest mistake people make, truly, because I think that you can go far alone, but you can go a lot further together. So not having somebody, a mentor, a community of people that are doing what you wanna do, if I would’ve had that sooner, I would be a lot further along. And you’re seeing it over and over time and time again, if people in our community where they, they join our community when they don’t have any properties where they have one unit and 10 months later they have seven units and it’s because they’re talking every day or every week with individuals who are a few steps ahead of them that are literally giving them the, the blueprint and the roadmap.
Cory:
And I think people have a false sense of what money is and it’s abundance. There is a ton of, there’s enough money to go around and, and if you are a giver and you put your message out there and you wanna help others, it’s gonna come back to you. So the mistake really is just not getting around the right people early enough and thinking that you gotta go do it alone. I mean that’s, that’s what we do now is we run a community of investors teaching people how to buy their first or next rental property in the next three to six months because it’s helped us in our journey. Having that person that was a couple steps ahead of us that I could call when there was, it was raining inside my house, or I could call when I had an issue with financing or every single step of the way. And just knowing what to do and what not to do can turn 30 or $40,000 mistakes that would turn people away from real estate into not a mistake at all, or maybe a $2,000 mistake. And that, I think is where people miss the mark on anything business life, just surrounding yourself. It’s not about the journey of the destination, it’s about the company. Like, who are you doing this with? That’s what has been most important to me.
Charles:
Interesting. Well, Corey, thank you so much for coming on today. How can our listeners learn more about you and your business?
Cory:
So the best way to follow along in our journey is to follow us on Instagram at Wealth Juice Official. That’s me and my partner, Ryan. We post every single day. We have for just about six years on social media, motivational quotes, stuff about our specific real estate portfolio, our journey, throw in some humor every now and then and there. And then if you wanna listen to us more longer form, hear about our journey listen to people that we’ve had on our show, like David Green or Brandon Turner, Tarik El Musa, the Wealth Juice podcast, that’s, we’re coming up on six years doing that as well. That’s so much fun. We have great guests on there. So those are the two places that are the best way to get in touch with us. Yeah, if you wanna hear more.
Charles:
Okay, well thank you so much for coming out. We will put those links into the show notes and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future.
Cory:
Thanks, Charles. I really appreciate your time, man. Thanks for having me on.
Charles:
Talk to you soon.
