Real Estate Investing Differently with Frank Iglesias

Catharine O'Leary: Hey everyone. Welcome back to kickstart conversation on Catharine O'Leary your host. And today I'm very excited to have Frank Iglesias with me, he's a real estate entrepreneur doing business in multiple states. So he's in the US, having done hundreds of deals, spanning a variety of strategies in wholesale deals and fix and flips rentals and new construction. And he can work with a variety of deals to ensure the best outcome possible on any deal. Being solutions oriented, he's created results for all parties involved, even when solution did not appear to exist. So true entrepreneurial, basically will pivot and maneuver and make sure that it's a win win situation for everyone. And Frank, you and I were just, we're just talking a little bit about a unique way to think about marketing and, and real estate when you're buying a real estate property, maybe for passive income or something like that. Because I know that our audience out there is growing their businesses, you know, there's money starting to come in. And you know, some investment strategies may be on their minds to start to start at least thinking of So, Frank, tell us a little bit more about about yourself and who you serve. And then maybe we can dive into this, this idea of marketing a little bit more.

Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having me. And yeah, I've been doing this for 15 years, we've done a number of deals, as you mentioned, in a variety of different spaces, primarily in the single family space, some small multifamily type things, but basically, under the residential May, and we've seen a lot, and it is quite a ride, it is quite a dynamic ride, sometimes referred to as the wild, wild west of real estate. And because it literally feels like anything could happen at any given moment. And that's generally true. So we've seen all sorts of deals at all sorts of price points, all sorts of benefits, strategies. And so yeah, we can definitely talk about marketing and what makes it tick.

Catharine O'Leary: I liked. So you talked about exit strategies. And this is where, you know, businesses that as they grow and scale, they start to think of exit strategies themselves, potentially, of how to, you know, grow a business to seven, eight figures, and then and then exit it. But you know, what, when we were talking just before the cameras started rolling, we were talking about, you know, Airbnb, or like passive income as an exit strategy, I think is what you said. So maybe you can maybe you can just elaborate on that a little bit. Because I think that that's, it's a different way to think of a real estate.

No, for sure. So typically, when people get involved in real estate investing, they want to do one of a handful of things. There's the wholesaling where you take a contract and run it to the next buyer, you get paid a fee in the middle and carry on. There is the fixin flip, which everyone knows and loves, perhaps maybe not love, but seen on TV shows, so forth. New construct is exactly what it is you, you know, you start from the ground and build something new, maybe you tear something down, maybe don't. And then you have rentals, which now you have subcategories of rental, right because you have your typical long term rental, put a tenant in for a year or two years, whatever. You now have short term rentals, which is your Airbnb or VRBO. Now you even hear about mid term rentals, which is people that are renting three, six months. It was here traveling nurses or corporate rentals is the terms you hear most, you also hear multifamily. And then if you get into commercial large scale multifamily, so you have all these things and people I'm going to do something on the list I just said, yeah, in reality, all of those are just an exit strategy. And what I mean by that is they're you're laying the groundwork for how you're going to leave that deal. The only difference is time. So on a wholesale deal, you're gonna leave the deal immediately fix and flip your net and you're gonna leave the deal it might be three months, six months, maybe it's a year, new construction, typically a year when you get to the rentals. You're gonna leave that deal at some point. The question is it's usually just farther out in time. We did a deal once where wif will and I'll use an example who's going to be an Airbnb and so we made it one and after four months we got rid of it. Why because even though it worked as an Airbnb, the clientele where it was located was not desirable for our criteria may be able to work for someone else and work for us that's okay. But at the end of the day, they're all exits. The key is how do you get in? And that's this part where I like to say you have to live you know, succeed in real estate invest thing, you have to learn how to buy, you have to learn how to be your own Acquisition Manager doesn't mean you're gonna do it yourself, you can certainly hire that out in the future, but you first have to do it, how do I buy? What goes into that, because that because once you get that, right, you can pick any of the, the heads that you want, do whatever you want, if you know how to buy into whatever you want, if you don't know how to buy, when it's time to exit, your options become limited, and that's when bad things happen.

Catharine O'Leary: Okay, so So the exit strategies are tied to how long you're going to, like, you know, kind of be dealing with the property. You know, whether it's an Airbnb and its short term, or long term rentals, or, or, you know, it's a wholesale conversation, but the acquisition or the actual buying of the property. And this is where we started talking about marketing, and you need to know how to market to buy. And that's where I got a little bit lost. I'm like, Well, wait a minute, if I'm buying RNA, RNA, that consumer of the marketing, like, aren't, aren't I watching The Marketing to to figure out what I want to buy like MLS or something like that. And I think that you go deeper than that, then in learning that, what that marketing is, so that you're, you're a confident buyer.

So I liked that phrase, you use consumer. And it's like, a lot of people when they say, I want to invest in real estate, your first thing to do is follow religion. Right? Perfectly natural, nothing wrong with it. But right off the bat, your Word of consumers exactly on point, you're gonna consume whatever that realtor gives you. That realtor is going to give you stuff based off a list of properties called the MLS that they have access to. And the MLS is nothing more than a bunch of people that said, hey, realtor list my house on some cases, they have a thing called flat fee. But the vast majority are listed by realtors. But that's not market. That's, you know, just someone they give you a list. They're not marketing somebody smarter. It's not more it's just a list. It's a premade list. Yeah, you can go on the MLS and put variables in and filters. But again, that's not really marketing, because you didn't generate that there's no realtor generating the list of properties to pick from. It's generated by the people that raise their hand and say, hey, I want to sell their house and I got a Mr. And Mrs. Realtor down the street, can you get me exposure, and we call that marketing. I guess technically, you could call it marketing at a high level, but in terms of being a marketer, using true marketing stills, that's not what that is. A true marketer is not a consumer, there are 100. Now they are looking for opportunities, which means I have to learn how do I generate these opportunities? The reality is, there's 1000s 10s, hundreds of 1000s of people every year that sell their home, without the MLS. If we went into the commercial space, it's no different. There's people selling multifamily office buildings, strip malls, whatever, that never hit any kind of realtor or listing service. It happens every single day. But we have to learn the skills to go find those people. How do we communicate with those people to either communicate to them or send them material that generates enough interest for them to communicate with us. So that we can now have a real conversation to solve a real need, and includes with a deal being.

Catharine O'Leary: So then, as a person that is say, say I'm going in and I'm looking for, you know, a summer home, or you know, like something, you know, part time on the beach, that, you know, maybe I can rent it when I'm not using it. I need to become the marketer to find that property. Is that what you're saying?

So what I tell people is do you have to become a marketer? You don't. But you just have to know that when you're limiting yourself primarily to MLS deals. You're rarely going to get the best it's very rare. Can it happen? Yes, there's exceptions to everything. But generally speaking, you're not gonna get the best deal and five most of the time you won't even get a good deal. Now we, we have to define what good is right? Because good is going to be different for different people. If I'm going to buy a property with the intent to hold it for 30 years or maybe even 10 years. I don't may not necessarily need as good a deal today, because I'm banking on long term appreciation, stability, markets, whatever. But if I was a fixin flip guy, I'm dead nine times out of 10, I'm dead. Because generally what's on the market is almost always too expensive to fix and flip to be worth the time and effort put into it. So to offset the fact that when you go on market, again, most deals are just not going to be good at rare very young hear lots of very successful real estate investors say that they never buy on market, you will hear some say that there is a way to make it work. And it is true, and you can get into creative financing and some things. But a lot of work goes into it. And at the end of the day, the vast majority of your quality deals are going to be off market days. So which now goes back to when I learned how to market to go find them to go get them or, or the other thing I can do is also if I don't want to become a marketer, I do have another alternative. I can network with people that wholesale properties, and some more savvy agents, and sit down and be like, Hey, let's go find these deals that I really want to pick up on. And get because I don't want to do the marketing work, but you're already doing it. So the wholesalers are usually already doing what we're doing. The question is, are they good at it? Right. But if I develop good relationships with them, then what will happen is, it's like anything else, right relationships is everything, you have great relationships with some of these people, sometimes they will bring you exactly what you're looking for.

Catharine O'Leary: So as somebody, so let's take me as a case study, and pretend for a second that I want a second home that I am going to use as a retreat center. So I'm going to use it sometimes. And then other times I'm going to rent it out. So I'm looking to generate some income from it. And then I want it to be on the beach. And like it's actually probably doesn't matter. But I do I need to become the person that develops the relationships with the wholesalers? Do I Find somebody like you who has those relationships? Or do I need to plug in? Like how do you plug into these off market deals, which I know is a bazillion dollar question that everyone has, but but I'm just not sure what my next step like like me as a consumer, how without spending time and getting a PhD in trying to figure out how to get off market deals like what would my next step be?

Gotcha. That's a great question. So the first thing I would do is you first have to define what good looks like for you. Before you talk to anybody. On finding properties, it's what does good look like. So I want XYZ type property. This is the price point on that. This is what I can pay for it. And it needs to generate X number of dollars per month. Key is X number of dollars per month in a worst case scenario, because everybody will pitch the best case. Yeah, the problem is far too many deals don't work. When the best case goes away. Well, if you don't real estate for any length of time, there is a 100% chance that the best case, worst case. So I would say Alright, so let's say I want my property to mate. And we'll pick a random number of $1,000 a month. I need my worst case scenario to be 1000 hours a month. I can pay, let's say up to $400,000. And, and it needs to be worth at least 600,000. Now, are those realistic numbers? I don't know, maybe they are maybe they aren't it depends on the market. But the point is you come up with this criteria. Now when you're at and the more clear it is the better. And that point then what you can do is start reaching out to the wholesalers. And I would try to find out who are the guys that have been doing this a while because there's a reason they've been doing this a while because they've had the success to sustain it mostly or down the whole center ground within one or two years. And so you want to look for those people who's been around it a while and then you start to build a relationship work because the number one thing also is looking at is are you a real buyer, because everybody says they are but when they actually find something will you execute Are you prepared? execute. So that so you know, it's a two sided Street. If you go to the realtors what I just said about institutions the same right, but everyone everyone wants to find people with execute, but with the realtors is, hey, how much are you transacting with? Investors? Are you finding pocket listings, which pocket listings are nothing more than a listing that's not on the market that the realtor knows about, you can buy before it ever hits the open market, once it hits the open market, everybody sees it, which is why the quality of that deal usually degrades extremely quickly, in most case, because the whole point is you don't want to be competing with 5000 other people. So but these, it's it really becomes all about the relationships. Now, could you find someone to go find the wholesalers and realtors for you? You could the problem is you're not paying extra money for that. Right? If you're wanting to pay that, what happens? It just becomes that much harder to find it. Because now that's another process to be paid, everybody wants a piece of the pie and so forth.

Catharine O'Leary: And, and I'm just I'm not savvy with all the terms. So real estate agents? Well, I'm savvy with they are not necessarily wholesale agents, correct?

Correct. Some so real estate agents slash realtors and wholesalers are two types of people. The Realtors real estate agents that are licensed in this trade a real estate wholesalers usually are not now, a wholesaler can be licensed. And a realtor can do deals outside of their license, sort of kind of they still have to do disclosures and so forth. It's broker by broker and gets into all that there's rules they they very much have rules that have to follow. So broker by broker state by state, so on and so forth. So, so there can be some cross in there. But generally speaking, they tend to operate in their own worlds. And sometimes those worlds cross and can they work together on a deal? Absolutely, they can. So the relationship.

Catharine O'Leary: Yeah, and a wholesaler like Like is there is like, is there a? Like, do you call yourself a wholesaler, a wholesale realtor or like what? Like, how would I find a wholesale person? Like, what do you call what? What's the moniker on the on the sign? Or is it more of a networking kind of thing. So

it'll always be networking, for sure. But as far as labels, wholesalers generally call themselves that I'm a wholesaler. Now, if an investor is not a wholesaler doesn't mean they won't wholesale, it just may not be their primary thing. Because the people that fix and flip for example, they can wholesale, it just may not be what they primarily do. But typically, the wholesalers problem self wholesalers, the realtors are not going to call themself wholesale realtors, what they're going to usually say is, I'm a realtor who specializes in investors. Or they might say, I'm an investor, friendly realtor. You'll hear that phrase. Those are typically the terms you're gonna hear. And they're usually not going to put it on their business card. They might every now and then you'll see that Yeah. But usually you have to kind of find these people. And the easiest way to find them is you can look on the MLS, and run a search that says, hey, in this community, who were all my cash buyers at a lower price point. I'm sorry, what were all my cash, not buyers cash transactions at a lower price point. And then in that report, you will see the list of who represented those buyers. Well, if you see a name that's repeated on there, chances are that's going to be an investor friendly realtor. Okay, and that's a wholesale

Catharine O'Leary: I'm sorry, that's a wholesaler.

Now that would just be on the realtor side. Oh, that's just on the realtor side. So we will clarify you will not see any sale deals shown as a wholesale deal on the MLS. Okay.

Catharine O'Leary: And so wholesale deals right if I understand this correctly, and I'm, I'm learning as we're going here, so I'm building the plane as we go. So the wholesalers are really dealing with people will not in my situation where I'm talking about, like just one house maybe, you know, as a family home or something like that, that does more like maybe a realtor thing. But if I'm trying to buy one to seven homes and or retreat centers and create a little bit of a network, that's when I want probably a wholesaler is that fair.

I mean, that's fair. So wholesalers, that phrase, it's almost like a catch all. You have your realtors, they're licensed, your wholesalers are basically anybody else. And their job is very simple, go find properties, get up, put them under contract at a discount that they can then bring to a buyer for a fee. Okay? Now, some wholesalers will focus on people that only want to buy one or two houses a year, some will be like, oh, and they want like 20 people like that. Some of them will be like, I only want to deal with two or three buyers. But those two, three buyers want to buy 20 properties a year. Right. So they don't want a ton of people, they only have their like, just give me a couple of people know what they want, I'll put all my attention on them. Some of them are more of a catch all. So there's no fixed way you'll see it, you'll see all sorts, which is why I go back to the way to be most effective with wholesalers is to be absolutely crystal clear on what you want. And then when you speak with them, as you're building that relationship, you can come to a mutual determination. Is this a good fit, because the reality is if you if you want to buy retreat centers, and you call a real wholesaler who's only dealt with residential homes, we're not gonna be a good fit, because our retreats was more of a basically commercial. Yeah. So you want to deal with people that are more commercially focused.

Catharine O'Leary: Okay, so I think that my big takeaway here to two big takeaways is one, just like a business needs to understand their ideal client in order to bring them in. As you go out to look at properties or investments like this, you need to understand your ideal property, and the proper parameters around that. And the clearer that you are, the better the deal that you're probably going to get. And the second takeaway, for me at least is there's more than one way to skin a cat. Right? So there's more than one way to go after the the best deals, and it doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily the realtor that, like you don't have to go down that path. There are other ways to to find those off market deals, and so on, which I didn't even know until today. So I think that that's a massive learning for, for me at least, this is all a little bit complicated. I think

I'll give you a real world example that just happened yesterday. I got a call from a realtor from a remote Sydney down in Savannah, Georgia, I'm income based out of Atlanta. She was referred to me by a colleague I have. Now I had no idea this person was called this was a completely out of the blue. Hey, my name is I won't share her name. But my name is such and such. And I want you know, you refer to me by such and such. And I hear you're looking for properties in this area. I would love to help you. Yeah. But it's an introductory pitch. So I called her up and we chatted. And I was well, first of all, it's kind of like, well, I'll thank them for the referral because I wasn't looking. But hey, that's cool. Like, we're not going to say no to potentially new good relationships, right? But what I did, she was like, Well, what are you looking for? So I gave her kind of a high level. But then I said, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna send you an email with real world examples of deals I've done. And when you see these deals, here's the numbers. Here's what kind of property is there. You know, all the details. That way, this is the type of deal I'm looking for. So what I'm doing is I'm going to make it easy for her to figure this out. Because what what usually happens is we'll say a few things. We'll set them free wholesaler, realtor doesn't matter. And then people they're having to figure too many things out. So what I'm doing with this lady, is I'm gonna send her the exact numbers from deals that have already transpired. So just find something that looks like this. Is it gonna look perfect? No, I mean, no two deals are exactly the same. But If you damage something that's in the ballpark of this, I will be interested. And now she's got a clearer picture in our head of what she's looking for. Okay. And that's really one of the biggest T's. So the word is, before you start looking for real estate, figure out what you want, and what that looks like. Now, here's the other part. What if you don't know? Like you mentioned retreat center? Well, what are so then the question is, I've never bought a retreat center. So if I wanted to buy a retreat center, RBI, all right. Who are any invest in I find any investors have bought retreat centers, and I actually do no trouble. I would call them and say, Okay, what are the numbers? What are my expenses gonna be? And just start just like any other business, right? What are the expenses? What is the ongoing? What's going to be required to service that? You know, what are all those variables? What should they look like? And so it's a lot of fact finding that first to help define what it is you're looking for. And I'm probably going to talk to at least multiple people that have done retreat centers. So that I know so I have multiple opinions, right? Because people are saying different things. So I understand. So and it may take me a month to figure this out. It may take several phone calls, might say it might take two or three months. But that's okay. Because I'm creating as clear a picture as I need to, I don't want to be like analysis paralysis. But real estate is one of those businesses where what you don't know can and will hurt you, and it hurts a lot. So it's okay to take a lot of time upfront to make sure we're clear. And

Catharine O'Leary: so so when in that scenario, where you're going in, you're asking the questions about operating expenses, and so on, you're the buyer, like you're you're putting yourself in the buyers position, then. So that's what you mean by being a good marketer is by going out and getting the information that you need before, before you, you actually like get all your parameters together. So that you can give the wholesaler or the real estate agent or whoever, you know, the best chance at finding the best deal.

Correct, correct. Or here's the other, there's one more Avenue here. Not that complexity actually would simplify it. Sometimes, you want to be the one that go find the property yourself. So if you love some market, you may not want to I know real estate investors, they don't want to use wholesalers, nor do they want to use realtors. And the phrase we use is source my own deals. They just want a source. They're like I know how to market I'm dread, I can do it myself. Or maybe I have an assistant in house in my company, whatever. And I'm gonna go source my own deeds. And you could do that, and that's fine. So there's no requirement to use a realtor or a wholesaler. Those are really for people that don't want to do the marketing. If you're good with doing your own marketing, you don't need that you can do it all yourself and go to town.

Catharine O'Leary: I love this. So I think that you have a free gift for us today that's going to help everyone with this if you do have further questions.

Yeah, no, I tell people, I do a 15 minute call with anybody that's interested. So you know, our office line is 678-408-2228. So people just text on their free call and where you heard about it. So reference the show. And yeah. And I'd be happy to just sit down and chat, no charge 15 minutes, and we'll talk through whatever questions you might have. Perfect.

Catharine O'Leary: So if this seems complicated to you, or you want to ask Frank some more questions, we'll put that into the show notes. He, he is offering some time to chat with you about all the ways that you can get your retreat center or your second home or your you know, apartment building or whatever, whatever it is that you're looking for, to help you as you grow your business and have some, you know, maybe some passive income or whatever, however you want to structure it. But but let's get thinking about, you know, how to, to add to your business, add to your wealth and continue growing both. So, Frank, thank you so much for having or for coming on to kickstart the conversation and I appreciate your time. Do you have any final message for our listeners?

Yeah, no, thank you for having me. And my final word would be this. Real estate is really a pretty simple business. Keep it simple. It's very easy to allow it to get complicated. And because we took use that word today it seems complicated when you really break it out. And actually, you want it to stay simple. So do everything in your power. And don't be afraid to tell anybody you work with. We're going to keep it simple. And that just makes it work a whole lot better when you keep it simple. There's a ton of truth in real estate is absolutely no exception.

Catharine O'Leary: All right, so everyone, keep it simple. And of course, continue asking those questions and keep those conversations going. Thank you so much, Frank. And to everyone listening. We will talk to you soon.