Robert Leonard: (03:14)
When you say co-sponsor, for people listening who haven’t heard of that before, what does co-sponsor mean?

Jeffrey Donis: (03:19)
It’s just typically a lead sponsor on a multifamily syndication deal. In my opinion, is someone that’s either going to sign on the loan and also someone that finds and sources a deal, meaning that they go and they’re direct to the broker. And we just brought value, in exchange we earned a seat at the table and equity in the deal.

Robert Leonard: (03:39)
Is that how you’ve done all four of the deals so far?

Jeffrey Donis: (03:42)
Yes, yes. The first four were done that way. The fifth one that we’re working now, we’re going to be lead sponsors on. We found it … I say we, my team, my two brothers, I have one of them who’s name is Kenneth, he’s focusing on acquisition, so he’s the one that’s actually dealing with the broker and found that deal.

Robert Leonard: (04:00)
For those who didn’t hear our last episode together, tell us about your why. That was one of my favorite parts. I loved the way that you and your brothers explained your experience and your thought process after you had gone to Guatemala for the first time and how being lower class in the US is still better than being there. Just kind of walk through that, your experience and your why for real estate.

Jeffrey Donis: (04:23)
As I mentioned, on the last episode, we went to Guatemala for the first time in .. It was December going into 2021, but 2020 was the year. And we hadn’t necessarily got into real estate yet. I think it was 2019, sorry. I was a college freshman, went to Guatemala, saw the humble beginnings that my mom comes from and that sparked a fire under us. When we got back, there was no more paralysis analysis. We were taking a lot of action and that’s what kind of got us into a wholesaling. Once we were doing that, fast forward, that was the main thing that got us into the space. And really we were seeing what my mom came from and we realized that she’d done so much for us.

Jeffrey Donis: (05:00)
Our real why is first to retire our mother. She’s a single mother growing up, didn’t have our father in our lives, and that really pushes us because she growing up, we saw how hard she worked in regards to providing for us. And she still does. We want to make sure we do it correctly in regards to having enough passive income to retire her and not necessarily do it with active income. We think doing it with passive income will make it so that it’s sustainable over the long term. That’s kind of the first why. Then after that, we’ve definitely developed some more why since we know that we’re going to achieve that soon.

Robert Leonard: (05:33)
What are the other whys? What have you come up with since then? I think the first one’s obviously super powerful, but what are some of the other ones? Maybe are they more personal to yourselves and kind of your own lives rather than your family?

Jeffrey Donis: (05:43)
Yeah, and for me, I look at why, and I see what drives me every day. The first one we now are bringing on investors into our deals. We want to help them live. For us, we call it a life by design and empowering their kids and the future generations to live a life by design because personally that’s what I want for my life as well. And I know how important it’s going to be for me to live the life that I’ll be not only excited to live, but that will fulfill me and make me happy and serve a bigger purpose than just going into an office every single day and trading hours for dollars.

Jeffrey Donis: (06:15)
That’s kind of what we want to instill and empower other people to do. Also for myself, I want to be able to do what I want with my time, have location freedom, time freedom, and then financial freedom. And that way I truly believe that I have a bigger purpose here. Leads me to my last why, which is, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but when I was in Guatemala the first time, I read a book called Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood. Did I ever bring that up last time? Do you remember that?

Robert Leonard: (06:42)
No. You didn’t bring that book up last time.

Jeffrey Donis: (06:44)
Cool. It’s a really good book. I recommend it. It talks about an executive who used to work at Microsoft and how he left a highly paid job at one of the biggest companies in the world to go start a nonprofit that had no real … There was no real guarantee that that was going to succeed, but he just went to Nepal one day, and while he was at the job and gave 10 books that he took for himself on the trip to the kids. And he saw how big of an impact that had. As soon as he got back, he started just emailing everyone he knew and gathering all these books and sending it over to Nepal and slow and steadily that kind of rolled into a bigger and bigger company.

Jeffrey Donis: (07:21)
Eventually he started a nonprofit that creates libraries and schools and the gist of it, and my biggest takeaway was if you’re able to educate the offspring, a female in an impoverished society, they’re more likely to educate their offspring, which means that their kids will now be educated and able to read, which will slowly pull that family out of poverty. I saw that in my own family. I have a lot of young cousins in Guatemala, which there’s not many books and there’s not many libraries. I mean, they have other things, right? But it’s just not necessarily much access to the books that I have here or the access to information. And one other thing, I know how important reading was for me in my entrepreneurial journey. If I can help them in that way, that’s what we want to do. Room To Read is the nonprofit John Wood created and that’s one thing we want to start donating a lot more money to as we grow our business.

Robert Leonard: (08:10)
We talked briefly about how you’ve done four deals so far. You’re on your fifth now. Let’s take a step and talk about how you were getting into multifamily. You have hundreds of units now, but last time we talked multifamily was really just an idea or was an aspiration that you guys had. Because you were wholesaling. That was your focus. What was your first step to get into multifamily? For someone listening to the show who wants to get started with multifamily, where and how do they get started?

Jeffrey Donis: (08:38)
We started initially with just listening to podcasts and that kind of led us to do different things. We heard about syndication through a mentor, and then we started looking it up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and all these types of things. Then we fell on Bigger Pockets and Grant Cardone. Then that led us to this book by a gentleman named Joe Fairless who runs Ashcroft Capital, which is one of the biggest syndication companies in our space when it comes to multifamily. And he wrote a book called The Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book, the first book that we read in the space was that book. All my brothers and I, we all got it on Audible and we sat down for three days and just binge listened to it. Literally all day, every day, that was the main focus was to finish the book as fast as possible.

Jeffrey Donis: (09:23)
And we took notes, we treated it like a college course and we ended up meeting at the end and discussing, “Okay, these are the action steps. This is what Joe said to do.” He touched on a lot of things that I don’t have to necessarily go into now, but that’s how we kind of learned what the syndication was at a higher level, got the gist of what the next steps were, which for us were to start a thought leadership platform, which is where you can act as a credible person in the space that you’re looking to break into. And for us that was creating a podcast, kind of like you have here, and also trying to find a mentor if possible, that can help you partner on deals. Especially if you’re looking to larger multifamily. Since we didn’t have necessarily the commercial real estate experience and most deals that we were looking to do 100 plus units are done and controlled by real estate brokers and a real estate broker only do deals with people that are confident can close typically.

Jeffrey Donis: (10:14)
If you have no track record, there’s not much reason that they would go with you, right? In regards to what we ended up doing was we joined one mastermind group for a thousand dollars and it was very, very good one in my opinion, but it didn’t give us the thing that we actually were looking for, which was the partner. It gave us an awesome course, but we were looking for someone that was willing to partner with us and kind of walk us through with any questions that we had throughout our journey. After that, we ended up falling onto another mastermind group that was a lot more expensive, I’ll be completely transparent, that one came with the team already in place in regards to what you need to do a successful syndication. The amazing thing is it had a culture and a family of other people that were also doing deals. Just being able to have access to a network of people that are doing exactly what you want to do, that’s what we had access to at this point and that’s really how we’ve been able to do the first four.

Robert Leonard: (11:05)
Did you join the programs before you had done your first deal?

Jeffrey Donis: (11:10)
Yes.

Robert Leonard: (11:11)
And what were your biggest takeaways from The Best Ever Apartment Syndication Book? I actually have it on my bookshelf. I just bought it maybe last month. I haven’t got around to reading it yet. We talked at the conference that I’m working on getting into multifamily myself, but so obviously that was one of the first books that came up on Amazon. I’ve actually been on Joe’s show, his podcast as a guest a few years ago. He’s been here. It was just one of the books that came up for me to read. I haven’t gone through it yet, but I’m curious, what are your major takeaways from that book?

Jeffrey Donis: (11:43)
Like I said, and I read it a while ago, so I should probably go back and read it again, but the thought leadership platform, we had a social media presence, but now we’re dealing with a completely different ecosystem. And initially we were in the single family space, we weren’t necessarily looking to raise money in syndication. One of the biggest things that you’re doing is raising capital. You have to come off as credible, trustworthy, and almost like an expert in the space, which is something that you will be once you start doing deals. But at the time, obviously you have to build that platform and it does take time. We had to pick a platform. One, we were already on social media, like I said, so it was really just in that regards, we just started changing the types of content we were putting out there and the aesthetic and all that.

Jeffrey Donis: (12:25)
We wanted to make sure it looked professional. That was the first step, but also to start producing content that was consistent and we could also educate ourselves by bringing on awesome people onto our podcast that were already in the multifamily space. And by rubbing shoulders with these people, it works as a social proof concept where you’re now hanging out with the people that everyone in the space knows, and you’re sharing the platform and you’re kind of putting your face next to theirs. All those things combined with build your credibility when it comes to raising capital, because a lot of people will find you online.

Jeffrey Donis: (12:56)
If they see that you’re doing all these things and you’re online and you’re everywhere, one, you’re building trust because if they can find you everywhere, you’re less likely to run away with their money. You know what I mean? They can find you easily. Two, if they know about you, if you’re putting so much content out there, they’re getting to know you and people end up doing business and people they know, like and trust, right? That’s the biggest takeaway I would say. Then also finding a mentor and the value of finding a mentor. That’s something that we’ve always done. We’ve never been afraid to spend money or to invest in mentors or mentorships and things like that. And it’s paid off in the vast, large amount of ways.

Robert Leonard: (13:31)
You’ve chosen Jacksonville, Waco, and Atlanta as your three primary markets right now, at least as of we last talked. Why those areas? What did you see in those markets that made them seem like good areas to invest in?

Jeffrey Donis: (13:46)
Initially when you’re like first starting out, that’s the first thing that you’ll typically do is pick a market. But in regards to our business, our initial thought process was we were just going to focus on co-sponsoring deals for now, so that we can build our track record, gain some education, gain some reputation, and slowly, eventually as we have that track record and we build these relationships with the brokers, then we can go find our own deals because we did try to find our own deal at first in our market, which were North Carolina, which is where I live, but we weren’t having success. And for good reason, in my opinion, it was probably because we didn’t have the experience yet. Once we ended up co-sponsoring on deals in other markets, that started to improve. We ended up focusing on Jacksonville, Waco, and Atlanta, one, because that was where we had solid relationships with the lead sponsor, who came out of our mastermind group.

Jeffrey Donis: (14:37)
We really liked the person that was leading the deal. We thought they had a similar mindset, similar values, and they also were experienced and knew what they were doing. Also, we looked into the market so Atlanta and Jacksonville are both markets that we’re still in. Obviously, I don’t know, I’m sure you’ve heard of Atlanta and Jacksonville and how crazy rental increases are going and how many jobs are moving there. Same goes with Waco. There was Tesla moving in, a lot of other amazing companies and job growth happening in those markets. In regards to a general gist of what we look for in the market, we look for a job moving into the area because where jobs go, people go. We look for population growth. We look for diversification when it comes to employment. We don’t want anything that just is solely heavily reliant on one industry.

Jeffrey Donis: (15:21)
We want it to be diverse in case one of the industries goes down, that people, that our properties are able to pay rent because they can go find a job somewhere else. These are all different things that we take a look at. Also, I mean, I live here in North Carolina, like I said, so none of those properties are too far away for us. They’re red states in regards to the tenant landlord friendly laws and all that, which is just something that we are definitely keen on finding if we’re going invest in any market.

Robert Leonard: (15:47)
The specific properties that you are looking for in those three markets are built after 1970, they’re class C and they have some sort of value add component. I want to break down each of those items and your business plan with these properties. For the first one, why built after 1970? Why not 1965 or 1980, or really any other year? Why 1970?

Jeffrey Donis: (16:13)
To be completely honest, we’re working on a deal right now that was built in the 1960s. Moving forward, though, we are looking for just 1970s and up and our thought process to be quite frank, one, we’re value add investors. We have certain investors in our database and the investors that we’re tailoring towards are looking for certain return on their investment and in a newer class, a newer type of asset, like a class A property that doesn’t need much value add, there’s less risk for sure, but there’s also less return. And in exchange, our investors are not going to be as happy investing in deals like that with our group. We’re focused on value add, which will give off a certain return. That’s kind of how we choose the vintage, and as a property’s older, typically that just comes with more deferred maintenance and more work that it’s going to need in regards to the value ad that you’re going to have to implement, right?

Jeffrey Donis: (17:01)
If it’s like a 2010, it’s just going to need less work, which means that there’s less improvements that can be made, which means in regards to the value add, there’s less you can do, which will overall impact your overall return. That’s kind of why we stick to 1970. And I would say now we’re looking at 1975, maybe up to 2000. We’ve never done a deal like you said, that’s been any newer than 1980s as of yet, but moving forward, we have deals in the pipeline that are anywhere from 1970 to 1990. It all depends on the market. It all depends on the property itself and how the current owner was operating it. There’s just a lot of different factors that go into it.

Robert Leonard: (17:40)
Is the return profile for your investors the other reason as to why you go after C class properties? And would you say you’re only looking at C, C+, are you on the closer to the B range or are you okay with going down to what some people might consider like C- range?

Jeffrey Donis: (17:58)
For sure. And personally, we look at C and moving forward, it’ll be most likely C closer to B and probably wouldn’t want get as close to A, so it probably be C+ to B-. That way there’s that value add play, and we can bring it up to a B+, and for the next buyer who has a completely different type of investor pool. Maybe he’s looking to just get a 6% cash on cash return, which will be great for him if he buys that property and his investors may not be looking to hit the ball out of the park and are just looking to preserve their cash, just looking for something that’s reliable and a great market, and that’s their play. But for us, there’s definitely a different type of approach. In regards to the question there’s C+ I would say is what we’re looking for. Then probably up to a B- if that makes sense,

Robert Leonard: (18:42)
What are you looking for in the value add component? You want it to be a large gut rehab, or are you looking for more minor renovations?

Jeffrey Donis: (18:51)
Definitely nothing too heavy. As we’re at the C+, B- when it comes to the type of asset, there’s obviously lower than C, right? There’s D and those typically are very heavy lifts where you’re going to need to either renovate a majority or all the units. There’s a low vacancy, or there’s a high vacancy rate, which we don’t typically look for. Those come with a lot of risk. That’s not our specialty. I would say we really look for properties that anywhere from 70 to 80% of the units may have only been renovated or slightly renovated or not renovated at all, meaning they’re classic in the last few years or so. That way we know that there’s some type of deferred maintenance and some potential to improve those units, which will overall increase the amount of income that we can ask in regards to rent.

Jeffrey Donis: (19:38)
That’s the first approach in regards to the value add strategy is improving the units interior wise on the outside. You can go in and do paint the parking lots, typically there’s certain properties that haven’t had it repaved in a long time or resurfaced in a long time. On a property we’re working on now, there’s a gymnasium that hasn’t been used in a few years and the current owner just never really got around to putting it back up. Our goal was to just go in there and it takes a long time to do the project like that. But at the end of it, there’s a lot of potential to increase NOI and income with different events you can throw. Getting creative with different properties that we have, that’s something that we’ve definitely been trying to do.

Robert Leonard: (20:21)
What is your general business plan when you’re acquiring a property? Are you more on the flip side where you buy it, renovate it, maybe hold it for a year, two years maybe, and then sell it? Or you kind of holding these assets, like refinance and getting your cash back, holding those assets for five plus maybe 10 years? What is your timeframe and business plan there?

Jeffrey Donis: (20:44)
Our typical business plan is to go in and initially we’re just looking to stabilize the asset and which we mean go in, do our renovations, get the property performing at a certain level within the first one or two years. That’s the goal is to just go in and do our CapEx, which are the pretty much the value add strategy and actually investing money to improve the property and its amenities. Throughout that time period, we’re filling the units. We’re trying to maintain a low vacancy rate and a high occupancy rate. That way the property is performing and we have a high NOI. Then around year three, we’ll typically try to refinance and get our investors some of their initial capital back.

Jeffrey Donis: (21:23)
Then hopefully the last two years we’re holding anywhere from five to six years, typically, which is when we project in our assumptions going in to sell. The whole period lies anywhere from five to six years and sometimes we’ll plan for a refinance year three. Now, as I’m sure Robert, you’re aware that interest rates are going crazy right now, that’s just something that you have to take the chance that there’s a chance that you’re not going to be able to refinance year three. So underwriting that in your model before you go in and kind of projecting what it would look like and what your exit strategies can be if you’re not able to refinance is definitely something that I recommend. And that’s what we do.

Robert Leonard: (22:02)
How do you find your property managers? Then once you find people to consider, how are you vetting them to make sure that they’re the quality of property management company that you need for your property?

Jeffrey Donis: (22:13)
The first thing and the awesome thing about working with partners that are more experienced than you, which is what we do, is they’ve already been in the markets that we’re looking in. They also have used property management companies in those markets that we’re looking to use. Lately we’ve been going based on referrals, and then we’ll vet the property management company ourselves. In all the properties that I’m working on right now, our partners have already used them or heard of them. And really the vetting process, one, you’re just trying to figure out what current properties are you managing now? You can go walk those properties, look at them and see how they’re managing them. Is their trash out on the street? Are projects kind of like taking a long time? There’s certain things that you can ask them in regards to what their past performance has been.

Jeffrey Donis: (22:57)
Maybe ask a property management company if you can speak with other companies they’ve used, and there’s a long list of questions that you can go down which I’m happy to share with your audience if they’re interested, but you can really just get … It comes with all the courses that you can go online. It’s very easy to find, and I’m happy to send it to you as well, but typically we’ll first go on a referral and then slowly vet and see what kind of assets are you currently of managing right now in regards to the vintage?

Jeffrey Donis: (23:24)
What kind of business plan do they have? What’s the CapEx budget? And then you compare that to your own. If it seems like, “Okay, they’re kind of already doing what we planned on doing,” now look at the submarket that they’re in. If that’s the same submarket that you’re looking in, then that might be a good fit. We always like to have one, like I said, that we’ve worked with in the past because there’s nothing that beats past reputation. If you’ve heard of a property management company who wasn’t doing a good job, then probably won’t use them. That’s typically how we approached it.

Robert Leonard: (23:52)
For that fifth deal that you mentioned earlier in the episode that you’re doing yourself, how did you guys find that deal? And how do you plan on finding your deals going forward? Are you kind of leveraging your experience with all of your wholesaling, all your cold calling, all that stuff you did previously to find these deals as well?

Jeffrey Donis: (24:10)
Typically Beau Beery who’s a well known broker in our space, I’m sure you’ve had him on the podcast or something like that, but he says over 90% of real estate multifamily deals, large and multifamily deals are done with brokers. And that’s what we kind of learned to realize. We were cold calling larger department owner owners initially and we weren’t having much success to be honest. Typically they are sophisticated, more sophisticated than a homeowner who we were cold calling when we were doing single family. We realized that it’d be more productive and efficient if we were to go just straight to the broker who was already doing that, and they had the systems in place and that they’re the experts at that. We were just trying to build relationships with the brokers. That’s what my brother does. His name’s Kenneth.

Jeffrey Donis: (24:52)
He focuses on acquisitions and underwriting. What he’ll do is the first step is to call the broker to get on their list and get their attention. You need to have access to their deals, but they may not want to send you their best deals at first because you don’t have the reputation yet. You don’t have the experience yet. Initially you just want to at least start underwriting deals and you do that by calling the broker and asking them to put you on their list. I recommend just having your buying criteria ahead of time and maybe keep in mind they’re going to ask you questions like what’s your track record and experience? Having the method that you plan on, having in regards to overcoming that objection. If you already have that in place, you’ll be more successful. For us, it was leveraging our partners’ track record. That’s something that you should definitely just keep in mind, but once you call them, you get on their email list, they start sending you their off market or on market deals.

Jeffrey Donis: (25:43)
Either way, they’re sending it to a lot of people so it doesn’t really matter, but it goes out and then you underwrite it. Initially you’ll kind of get a practice and eventually if let’s say it works and it pencils out, then you can then try to book an in person tour. My brother will go out and walk through the deal with the broker, kind of pencil in and take note of anything that he wants to tweak in his underwriting. Maybe one of the roofs will need work and he didn’t budget for that. All these things kind of very preliminary trying to see, “Okay, if this deal works at this point, next step is for us to possibly submit an LOI,” which is a letter of intent. That’s what my brother kind of handles. Then eventually we submit that. Then once that signed and agreed on after negotiations, you go to different things like you first … Okay, sorry. I kind of skipped over some parts.

Jeffrey Donis: (26:29)
We’ll also go and get a property management quote, which we already have relationships with property management companies in these markets. And at the end of the day, they’re the ones are going to be implementing the business plan on the day to day because we use third party property management companies that are on site. We just manage them. That’s called asset management. It’s really important to get a budget from these property management companies that are possibly going to be the ones managing your property to compare it to your underwriting. They’ll underwrite it themselves. Then you compare it to your underwriting and that’s more eyes on it, two people looking at it, which is awesome. That means that there’s just less and less risk of it not being a good deal.

Jeffrey Donis: (27:04)
We’ll also get insurance quote, because obviously you have to pay for insurance. Getting your insurance quote so that you can budget that into your underwriting to understand if the numbers work at this with including the insurance rate, then there’s less chance that things will change closer to closing date, right? Once you do all that, and now you’re ready to submit your LOI, you do that and it gets accepted hopefully. And that’s when you do your due diligence and I’ll stop there. But that’s kind of the process that we get through.

Robert Leonard: (27:27)
Then one of the biggest factors is that you need to raise capital. And I think that’s one of the hardest parts about real estate investing for most people, and that is not having enough capital and because they don’t have enough capital, then they have to go find or raise capital and that’s the hard part. How are you and your brothers raising capital for really big deals at such a young age?

Jeffrey Donis: (27:48)
Initially, like I said, the first thing we did was we built an online presence and I think branding is one of the most important things that we’ve done so far. And I’m not going to say we’re like crazy successful at it, but at least it’s there and I think we’re consistent and we’re trying to improve it. And honestly, I think it’s been somewhat a benefit and the reason that we’ve been able to be as successful as we’ve been so far. The first things that you can do are build an online presence, whether that’s on social media, obviously you want to have a clean and a professional website. That’s what we did. And also just small things like your handle for your email. If it’s a Gmail, people are going to take you less seriously, know what I mean? That’s one of the things we did as well, and really just setting yourself up for success and also treat yourself like you are a big company and you’re running a corporation because at the end of the day, if that’s the goal, then it should start like that day one.

Jeffrey Donis: (28:37)
Obviously you might be working out of your house or just by yourself, which is fine. But I like to say marketing is the first step in sales. Really the selling happens before you even get on the call. A lot of the times I’m able to talk to people and after they’ve heard me on five different podcasts, they’ve seen my website, they’ve looked at the eBooks that my brother’s written, all these different things. And eventually they get on a call with me. Now they’ve already heard my story. They know more about me than I obviously know about them. It’s a good thing. Puts me on that platform of me being on a pedestal, of me kind of being an expert in the field, which we have proven through the content. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest reasons and ways for us to actually successfully raise money.

Jeffrey Donis: (29:18)
Another big thing that we’ve done was leveraging our partners. Obviously we’re young, so there’s only so much that we’ve been able to accomplish so far. But if you’re able to find another partner that you can leverage who has a lot of experience and a great reputation and a great track record, you can leverage that and explain to any investor that, “You’re right, I may be newer to the space thing you’d like me to be, but my partners have been in it for over 25 years, have over a billion assets under management. Just keep in mind when you invest with us, you’re going to be invested with everyone on the sponsorship team.” That’s really what I’ve been able to do and successfully I’ve been able to raise money in that way is by leveraging other people who are on my team.

Robert Leonard: (30:01)
Once you get them interested, how do you pose the pitch? You got them interested, you did everything you just mentioned, you have a pool of people who are interested. How do you close the deal? What are you saying to them? Walk us through that kind of final step.

Jeffrey Donis: (30:15)
The cool thing about multifamily and specifically what we do with syndication is you are the prize. And that sounds so cliche, but it’s just reality. There’s not that many. Being an insider looking out, you may think that there’s so many opportunities in the multifamily space, and maybe right now during this economic environment we’re in, it is more difficult to raise capital. But I always like to keep the mindset that one, I mean, I’m giving them an opportunity that’s amazing, that a lot of people don’t have access to, especially on all kind of deals. We do 506 fee deals, so we have to have a substantial relationship with the investor, which means that it’s already limited. We’re not advertising this to everyone. You have an opportunity that not many people have. It’s an amazing opportunity or else I wouldn’t be doing it, and it produces a great return compared to other investment vehicles like the stock market.

Jeffrey Donis: (31:00)
It’s not as volatile. There’s also tax benefits that you’re possibly going to be able to receive. And a lot of people just invest because of the tax benefits, not even caring about the returns, that’s certain types of investor profiles, but just understanding that the value that you’re bringing into the marketplace is the first step. The second step really, now this is kind of going into the marketing aspect, but send out some email feelers to our investor pool. Eventually based on that kind of feedback, we’ll have a webinar. Then that’s where the real excitement I guess happens is you present the webinar with my partners, so I’m not alone when I do this. I have my experience sponsorship team that I’m a part of, all of us are on the call and we’re presenting the business plan. We’re going over the market.

Jeffrey Donis: (31:40)
We’re going over why we like the deal, what the debt looks like and what the returns look like. And as you do that, obviously you want to do that in a professional manner, which we always do. That’s how you’re successfully able to get that excitement and get investors really excited for the opportunity. Then eventually we have an investor portal that we use. We’ll just tell them to log into their investor portal, which they signed up for before they got accepted into the investor pool, and eventually they’ll go and look at the offering. And on Syndication Pro is the portal we use, there’s all the information they need. The summary, the returns, the investor documents, the business plan. All of it is there for them to look at. And eventually once they’re ready to make that investment, they’ll go in and there’s wiring instructions.

Jeffrey Donis: (32:23)
They’ll just follow that step by step, eventually fund their money in. But for us really, it’s not as much about selling as it is educating. And a lot of this happens before, like I said, a lot of the selling happens in the marketing, but once you have that relationship, it’s about building the credibility, building the trust, which you can do obviously via phone call, via meeting people in person. We like to do it via email as well, send out newsletters and different emails while we’re nurturing our investor leads, so they can learn more our company, our group, and the kinds of deals we look for.

Robert Leonard: (32:56)
You mentioned in our email discussion prior to the show that you’re using bridge debt on a lot of your deals. I’ve seen on Twitter and I’ve talked to some pretty heavy hitters in the multifamily space, especially at the conference that we actually saw each other at recently, and many of them were very concerned about bridge debt right now. Actually, Brian Burke talked about this on stage when he and I were on stage and I believe I remember seeing you in the audience. I think you probably heard about his concern. How are you managing your bridge debt during this time?

Jeffrey Donis: (33:29)
In regards to the bridge debt, I think there’s … I completely agree. I think Brian and honestly, a lot of people that I look up to Ken McElroy as well, they think you should get permanent agency debt and fixed rate debt if possible, which I completely think that’s a very viable opinion. And I agree with it in most parts, because right now you just don’t know where interest rates are going to go. But on the back end of that, I do think to play devil’s advocate with it, what if interest rates do come down and now you’re stuck with a high interest rate for six years when in fact they could have come down the next two years. I think there’s risk on either end, but in regards to how we’re managing it, one, at the end of the day, if the property’s performing and cash flowing enough when it comes year three or of our business plan to refinance, the goal is for us to do that.

Jeffrey Donis: (34:13)
But we have fixed in options. There’s different exit strategies. We could end up selling before year three. Some of our deals are performing at a rate right now where we are going to hit our year three projections in a few months and we took over last year and then we’ll hit our year five projections way before that if we’re on trend with what’s happening now. We won’t even have to worry about the refinance. We could just sell. Another thing that could happen is we have the opportunity as long as our property continues, performing that way that it has been performing, to just extend the bridge debt and for a plus one with the same terms or perhaps a different interest rate, just depending on the option. There’s a lot of different things that have to happen. You don’t have to necessarily refinance every single time. Obviously thing that we’ll have to do is communicate that with the investors, but at the end of the day, we’re just making sure that we’re taking their best interest in mind so that we can get them the best possible return for their investment.

Jeffrey Donis: (35:05)
If it makes sense to sell earlier, we would do that. That’s kind of my opinion. I think one thing that I do personally, is I just rely on and have a great team put in place before I even do a deal. I always like to be surrounded by experience sponsors that have been through different cycles, have been through many different downturns. They’ve been through this situation before multiple times, just like Brian Burke and Ken McElroy, they’re experienced, they’re saying this because they have different opinions and things. And my mentor, he’s obviously comfortable doing certain things. And I trust in that team because of the experience they have. That’s just my opinion. I don’t know if that’s worth anything, but.

Robert Leonard: (35:44)
Yeah, I mean, I guess we’ll see, nobody knows how it’s going to going to play out, right? Brian, he even said he is a little bit more conservative with these types of things. We’ll see. Who knows? The recession might be worse than people expect. It might not be as bad as people expect. Nobody really knows. And I always like to say, if people say that they know where it’s going, then you should run the other way because nobody knows where it’s going. And I get that from Warren Buffett. But Jeffrey, as we wrap up the show, I want to give you a chance to tell the audience where the best place is to find you and connect with you.

Jeffrey Donis: (36:14)
Yeah. You can find me personally on Instagram and LinkedIn, @JeffreyDonis, and then my brother’s social media handle is @Donis, D-O-N-I-S, brothers, on every platform, LinkedIn TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. Also we have a free five mistakes playbook that passive investors typically make. You can find that at www.donisinvestmentgroup.com/playbook. Feel free to visit that website as well, www.donisinvestmentgroup.com, to learn more about us and then our podcast, The Real Estate Monopoly, where we bring on other operators and different people in the real estate space. Feel free to check that out as well.

Robert Leonard: (36:54)
I’ll be sure to put a link to all your different resources and our previous episode together in the show notes below for anybody that’s interested in going to check those out. Jeffrey, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it.

Jeffrey Donis: (37:05)
Of course. I appreciate your time, Robert. This is awesome.

Robert Leonard: (37:08)
All right, guys, that’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week.

Outro: (37:14)
Thank you for listening TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Every Wednesday we teach you about Bitcoin and every Saturday we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses go to TheInvestorsPodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.