‍Investing in Multi-Family Communities Across Multiple States - Ted Patel

Thu, Jun 15, 2023 12:53PM • 29:13

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

multifamily, investing, ted, business, podcast, family, cash flow, aspect, learned, people, financial services industry, pallet, understand, property, love, life, started, gave, person, buy

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Today's conversation is sponsored by first generation Capital Partners. Life is too short. You have to have passive income to secure your family's future. You never know you might lose your job today, something never happened to you. You never know. Everything is unpredictable.

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You You're listening to the going long podcast with Billy keels, the number one podcast for long distance real asset investing.

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00:29

Welcome to the long podcast, we're back once again to continue to help to educate you so you feel much more comfortable as well as confident investing beyond your backyard. And yeah, I'm your host, Billy keels. And we're back for another super awesome episode. But before we even do that, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to download continuing to share means the world to me, you know, you're doing that on Instagram on LinkedIn, it's really, really cool. So thank you so much. And for those of you that want to leave an honest written review and rating, you can do that I've got a little video here for you on the apple and Spotify platforms. And so go check it out, check it out. And if you want to check out any of the previous episodes, which are more than 300 at this point in time, go to first ncp.com forward slash podcast and you can check out every single episode you've ever wanted to see once again, first ncp.com forward slash podcasts. And so listen, if there's anyone who has been in the financial services industry, you are in the financial services industry, you realise that, hey, listen, there's something out there that goes beyond Wall Street that you really been wanting to get into. Well, today you're going to learn about how someone from financial services got into truck stops him from truck stops into real estate. And so it's going to be really, really awesome. I really am looking forward to you hearing today's conversation with Mr. Ted Patel. We're gonna get to that just after this.

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So if you want to understand how investing in multifamily communities across multiple states can accelerate your long distance investing success, then guess what, today's a conversation you're gonna want to listen to until the very last word, you know why? Because today's guest Well, you know what, not only started his corporate career as a business analyst in the financial services industry, he also went from there for a while, and then he transitioned into project management. And you know what, after leaving the W two, every once in a while, he still likes to successfully lead projects, even while he's adding value in this new multifamily space. So I'm sure he's gonna tell us more about that. He's the host of this soon to be released. And you're probably listening to this. It's already been released. And I'm gonna let him tell you the name of his new podcast, and he is the founder and CEO of Astra capital. It gives me great pleasure to welcome Mr. Ted Patel. Ted, welcome to show man. Thanks a lot for having me. Yeah, man. Yeah, really looking forward to the entire going long family learning a lot more about you. And being able to have you tell more of of your story. But you know, here's one of the things that also happens to it. And I know we met not that long ago. But

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02:48

you know, I really like to start things out on a positive note. But I also want to help people understand who you are and where you live. So help us understand where is it that you call home in the US.

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02:58

I'm from New Jersey.

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03:01

For US cities called Paramus. It's, it's located about 15 to 20 miles away from Manhattan. So it's pretty close. If 30 minutes in Manhattan, that's it. Fantastic. I love how you put that in mileage. So anyone who actually knows the area that he lives in that 15 miles, it could either take you 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes when the night and or early early in the morning, or it can take you two hours.

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03:27

Yeah, that makes so I'd say you got to know that part of the US. So appreciate you sharing that. And you know, it said help us understand, like, what's the most positive thing that's happened to or for you in the last 24 hours?

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03:41

So what I would say is, you know, I took my son, he loves cricket. Alright, so I took my son to the game yesterday, they won the game. I just loved the smile on his face, where he performed very well, I was so proud of him. So yeah, it was it was a good moment. You know, as a team, these kids, you know, they group up work put efforts as a team to achieve something. It's a learning curve from there also, right? It's a team spirit. Yeah, absolutely love that. And being able to have quality time with your kids and sporting events, and teamwork and team building and seeing that happen on an early age. And then especially when they win, that's always a nice thing. So appreciate you sharing that with us. But I'm also going to admit something to you that most of the work not all of the going on family already knows. I'm a recovering perfectionist, Ted. And what that means is I tried to do things that are really impossible, just because it's like part of my DNA, and kind of trying to tell your entire backstory in whatever I took 1.5 or two seconds to tell you a backstory with some bullet points. I know there's a lot more to the story than that. But you know, I just tried to do that, to get everybody to know you a little bit more. So I'm going to ask for your help and ask you to please tell your backstory in your own words. And then the other thing I'm going to ask you to do is if you can also talk about some of the major decisions that you've made

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05:00

Up until this point, and then we'll see where you and I take the conversation from there. Sounds great. So I'll take it way back to 2000.

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05:11

After completing my bachelor's in electronics from India, I moved to us to do my master's in computer science. So I completed my computer science master's in computer science in 2002. And started working for major investment banks on Wall Street. So even though I was an IT professional engineer, I hardly do it did any coding, frankly, speaking, I just jumped into business analysis space, and had worked with

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work with bankers and traders on the floor, to design their applications, trading applications. So it was a it was good, you know, everything going well, you know, the high paying job.

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Moroccan 401k, growing, you know, investments,

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good family.

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And then

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2008 happened, you know, so, you know, what happened in 2008. And it was a bloodbath, on Wall Street.

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And I was one of the person who got caught into the same, you know, cycle.

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So, I got laid off in 2008. But

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while, you know, while I was away from work, you know,

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I also had

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had a certain inclination toward business, so, I didn't want it to go back to WTO, no more, I didn't want, you know, my, someone in the boardroom deciding my fate, okay, he should be hired, he should be fired, I don't want you know, no one certainly to in my life that are like that. So I

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07:07

started looking out for a business venture.

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07:11

At that point of time, I didn't knew what I wanted to do, frankly speaking, you know, I didn't knew like I wanted to get into real estate. But what I was looking for is some stable business, which can provide me enough income to sustain my lifestyle, and then you go, of course, you know, I can build on top of that. So

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the first business that I started was I brought a truck truck stop

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in Florida,

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okay, if you're, if

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someone you know, any of your listener is not aware of a truck stop is a large gas station, which allows the 18 wheelers to you know, come in fill the gas.

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07:56

So, I ran, while while I was involved in this business, you know, I came across one of my,

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one of my colleague, I will not call it I would say a friend

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who was involved with real estate, he was doing construction, ground up constructions, he used to do around a construction for

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hotels and small multi families. So, I got a chance to, you know, talk to him, I, we developed a good friendship. And I started following him means, like, I spent about, like, six months with him, just from

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like, three to four days a week with him, you know, following him what he does, how he does, I did, I was like, you know, telling me what I can do for you, and I'll do it for free. I used to burn my own gas,

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go to wherever he wants, do whatever you want. And I learned quite quite

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quite a few tricks and all the basics of you know, construction work. And then in about 2012, I, I started buying my own properties. I started buying from foreclosure.

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09:20

And the sheriff sale I would say, it's,

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um,

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when any, any property goes to foreclosure, the sheriff sale the court auctions that property so I used to buy those properties. In back in 2012. I started doing like fix and flips

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and

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small multi families like one to four family. I used to do the burr method like buy, rehab, rent and refinance. Alright, so I use that method to

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I accumulate

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small few multifamily properties.

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And

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after that, I also started

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doing the ground up construction for luxury single family homes. I still do it in addition to the multi families. But yeah, and also started building small multifamily properties from the ground up. So I that that is my active, you know, active income till date. Like I'm still involved with those. But I pivoted to multifamily investing back in 2018. So, you know, there's a thing like that is that there's some crazy thing that needs to happen in your life to some change your mindset. So, that kind of thing happened to me in 1818 when I was at one of my current construction site.

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What was that? Inquiring minds want to know what happened? Okay, so, I was building one at one of my property, I had got a pallet of marble from China. Okay, we are offloading the truck. And that pallet of marble fall on me. It was like 4000 pound pallet like 10 marble slabs in one pallet.

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It's all on my leg. All right.

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And it crushed like it. I had multiple fractures everywhere, you know, on my leg.

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Lucky enough.

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Nothing worst happened to me. You know, if if it was that pallet was like six or seven inches, just on the right. It would have crammed crushed me on my chest. So yeah. So in then, you know, while

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I was recovering,

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you know, I gave a talk like, Okay, what, what would have happened, if I was no more or, you know, something worse would happen to me.

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Just just a part about it was like gut racking, you know, how would my family survive?

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You know, what would be the financial stability for my family. So that pivoted me to

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passive investment to the back in the beginning. So, I it gave, it gave me a

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perspective of

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having a passive investments or passive income, in addition to active income. So everyone needs to, I would say, you know, because life is too short, you have to have passive income to secure your family

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as family's future.

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You never know, you might lose your job today, something major happened to you. You know, everything is unpredictable. So and so starting 2000. In 2018, I started looking for passive investments, you know, like, how I do have active income, everything going well, I do investment small multifamily is also but it gives a headache, you know, after you have smalls few small multifamily properties, you don't want to, you know, be a person picking up the call 12 in the night, hey, come fix my toilet. No, you don't. You're self managing those? Yeah, it's yes. It can be tough. And when you have small multifamily is it in certain areas, it doesn't give you a leverage, you know, like, You're hardly cash flowing sometimes. So, if you build a management company, they will take all your cash flow. So it depends on the area to area, right. So, yeah.

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So I started attending all the

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all the conferences related to real estate, you know, reading books, looking, you know, listening to the podcast, and I came across

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one person who, while I was talking, he met me at the conference. And while I was talking to him, he mentioned like, Hey, I just closed on 150 units last month, and I was he still looked young to me, you know, like, Well, how did he do that?

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He said, Yeah, you know, like, he was out of the college like he just

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graduated before a couple of years before he bought this and that he told me everything about you know, how we partnered with

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different people raise the money, and how we can take that together close the deal. And that was an eye opener for me also, you know, I never thought like I wouldn't be able to buy or in

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versed in these big deals,

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until I got some,

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you know, some details from this guy as well as after that I had, I had one mentor who also helped me to scale my business get into multifamily. So I initially started investing as a passive investor, because I didn't do much about it. You know, I just heard it, this is how it's done. But I did have no practical experience I did, I didn't knew the numbers, how the numbers work.

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15:34

So would it be fair to say you were looking to go from theory to practice and actually start to gain? real experience? Okay. Yes, exactly. So I started investing passively. But I would say like, I was the most active passive investor in the group, you know, I wanted to be in all the meetings, I wanted to be a part of the meeting with property managers, with investors, I want to be a person looking at all the, you know, rent rolls, how it is performing the property's performing.

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So I'm fortunate enough, I was able to, you know,

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invest with those operators, who gave me some insight on how the things work internally. All right. So would you say what would you say is the biggest thing that you learned from that experience from the, from the insight that you were able to gain? What was the biggest thing that you learned as a passive investor?

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How to manage the property manager?

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Yeah, you know, because because there are, there are so many things, you know, like

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the value add that you do on the property, right? If that is not managed properly,

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how to fill up the vacancies, how to advertisement, that's one of the key things, you know, to make sure you have proper occupancy above 95% on all the apartments, you always have to, you know, make sure your rents are at par at market rates, some of the property managers, if you don't, you know, make sure you know, they are doing their homework, they might try to fill up your properties at whatever rate they get, you know, they might not want to increase the market rate. So, you have to follow up with them, you know, you got to make sure this is what it is, next week, this is the change that we are going to do. Now, of course, take their input, but you have to, you know, be on top of them.

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So, what would you say is because I know you have a kind of a personal you were talking a little bit about it before but your, your personal.

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17:48

Because I know you think about things in financial terms, but also there's growth that goes beyond the financial terms, maybe talk to us a little bit about that.

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Your thoughts, specifically your thoughts of like, personal growth beyond just finances.

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18:03

So I'm a big believer in you know,

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for four aspects, mental, physical, spiritual, and financial. So, all three groups are very important to any person.

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18:19

See, and I firmly believe that these four aspects, they need to be taught in the school also, which are currently school, you know, environment doesn't teach anyone. So

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mental without a proper mental balance, what I would say is

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you cannot accelerate in any aspect of your life you know, you for the physical Of course, you need to be healthy. So, and spiritual, of course, it's not not like you have to meditate or anything, but it's a contribution towards the world, you know, how much you contribute to you know, to make

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the people around you or the environment around you

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more beautiful or

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make it better, I would say in other terms and financial aspect, of course, you know,

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as Tony Robbins says, right, there are certain six aspect

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that all people need, like certainty, uncertainty,

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you know, and one of these expect aspect is financial certainty. So,

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everyone, you know, the basic necessity is a must for everyone, right. Unless you have your basic necessities covered. You won't be able to

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take a chance or you know, you won't be able to

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gain that confidence, I would say, two

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I would say

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in the business, right, for example, if you if you have to take a chance in your business, you if you don't have a certainty about your financial

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basic necessity, then you you might you might hold yourself back in certain decisions. Once you have that certainty, of course, you will take a faith of leap. Of course, you know, you will do your homework, but you will take a chance, you know.

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So that's the those are the four most

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important acts aspect I would say I would you focus on that sounds great. So listen, I just really quickly before we get into the going long, final three, because we kind of have to get there soon. I know you've got a podcast, your podcast, talk to us a little bit about what the motivation was for your podcast, and go ahead and talk, give us the name of the podcast. And then we're gonna get into the going on final three.

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21:13

Sounds good. So the new podcast that's coming up is decoding cash flow.

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The basic, or the main motto of the podcast is

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not only

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educate people about how they can generate passive income, or cash or invest in cash flowing properties, but it takes a holistic approach. That's the one that we thought we spoke about, right? mental, physical, spiritual, as well as financial experts, it will cover all four aspects in the in the decoding cash flow. But the main focus is investments where you can generate cash flow, passive income, and

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keeping in mind, my outer is the busy professionals, the IT professionals doctors were whoever are, you know, very busy in their life, and have little time to look for alternative investments other than stock markets.

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Yeah, fantastic. Well, I appreciate you giving us that. And we're here to tell everybody about the decoding cash flow, podcast, so awesome. So you'll be able to hear that on your favourite channels. And now Ted, it's time to get into the goal on final three men. And so I never asked any of our guests and today you're our special guest. To go along fine on three unless you tell me that you're ready. Are you ready? I'm ready. Are you ready, man? Help us understand. And I'm gonna bring back I know you're over in Paramus, New Jersey, I want to bring back to this side of the pond where this guy from Columbus, Ohio is actually residing, help us understand what is your favourite European city that you've either visited or still on your bucket list to visit.

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22:53

I visited a UK, of course, but one of the city that I want to visit is Florence, Italy. I heard it's very beautiful in the Tuscany region. I would love to spend some time over there. All right, so another another vote for feeling safe for Lawrence, as it is perfect. So on to question number two. And I usually have like this big thing that I talked about. But I'm just going to ask you the question right away. And the question is, like, as you have continued to go out and do things, you've I'm sure made one or two mistakes along the way, or call them learning opportunities, call them whatever you want. I don't want you to think about the mistake that you made, I really want you to think about the lesson that you learned. And what is the one lesson that you've learned along the way through your investing that you know, you will want to share with the go along family.

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One lesson I learned is

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always

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see, there are two things.

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One, you can educate, keep educating yourself or, you know, whatever. If you want to make an investment, you want to start a business, you can keep educating yourself. But the thing is, don't

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don't get stuck into that way, you know, take action. And

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it's like don't get into the analysis paralysis mode.

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And the other thing is to cut down the time, you know,

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network, get

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get a get a get a mentor, I would say or get to know the people who has already been doing the stuff that you want to do.

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leverage their experience and partner with them. Don't try to do everything by yourself. It will, you can do it. You know, there's all the resources available in the world, too. You know, which can help you do it. But it might take five years to get to the point where you want to reach but if you start connecting networking partnering with people who are already behind

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doing it, you can leverage their experience, avoid the mistakes that they have made. And it will cut down your time to maybe from five to two years. So always

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keep networking.

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leverage

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the experience from people, you know, fantastic. So continue to network leverage the, the experience of others. And that brings us into question number three, which is all about helping us to fill our minds with knowledge. Speaking of which, so talk to us about the one book that you would recommend to us today to

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25:36

recently I've been reading one book called traction, it's by Gino Wickman. And it it, it describes on how to scale and strengthen, you know, different components of your business. It's a good book.

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And has has me also, you know,

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I've been working on certain aspects based on the understanding what I gained from the book, and hopefully, you know, it will improve some processes in my businesses also. I'm absolutely sure it will. So Jean Whitman and traction, so I tend to get a lot of a lot of recommendations. So you know, going back to the beginning, like these conversations, just like fly by Ted, and I'm thinking about you in 2000, you finish your wrap up, and India and then 2002, you decide to come over and you finish well, he's probably came over before but you finished your your Master's in Computer Science. From there, I just mentioned, you got in, you got the great job, you're an analyst in financial services industry, and then 2008 happens and you realise, well, you're a number on a spreadsheet. And you took that opportunity to say, hey, look, I don't want to be a number on a spreadsheet anymore. I'm Crystal Clear, going to go ahead and leave this corporate world behind, I'm going to take some of the skill sets so I can do things on my own.

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And I'm going to put it into practice, you started your truck stop, you realise that, hey, there was somebody in your network that was talking to you about real estate, you liked that idea. You went you learn more. And then you went from learning to taking action, you even said, hey, look, I'll do it for free, man, I'll do this for free. I'll drive my time and do whatever you need to do so that you can learn and gain and go from practice to theory. And then from there, you get the smaller multifamily and realise, hey, listen, there's a way I can also passively invest, do that with others go into larger types of opportunities, and not necessarily have to swing the hammer every single time. And now you're even doing that and you're helping to help people decode and decoding cash flow through your podcast. And you also through Asher capital. And so like everybody wants to know, Billy, just get to the point. So everybody wants to know, Ted, what's the best way for the going long family to contact you or to be in touch with you and find out more about what you're doing.

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27:43

They can always go to my website. It's Astra capital, it spells like es tre capital.com. And they can go they can find me on social media, LinkedIn profile, you know, Facebook and stuff.

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27:57

As well as I like to give my email address also, to your listeners, just in case if they want to, you know, get in touch with me anytime. It's Ted at Astra capital.com.

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28:09

And I'll be happy to you know, talk to them. answer any question. Answer any questions they might have. And, yeah. All right, fantastic. Well, listen, men. So Ted, really appreciate you investing on behalf of the entire going on family. You investing your time with me with us today. And really, really appreciate it. Thanks so much, man. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Cool. And Ted, if you like, Yeah, sure. Sure. If you give me like 10 seconds, I just want to wrap things up with going long family. Sure. So listen, everybody, Ted just shared his story, how he's transitioned from corporate into full time, investing, also being able to keep a lot of those skills. And he's talking to you about taking theory and putting it into practice. That was even point number two when he talked about going long, final three. So take today's conversation, share it with family, share it with friends. And while you're doing that, going from practice, from theory to practice, I'll be here preparing the next conversation. So until then, go out and make it a great day. Thank you very much.

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