00:01

Welcome to Episode Three of Season 15 of the Growing Empires show. Today I’m here with my special guest Noel Parnell, a Philadelphia native, and I find his story to be really interesting. He’s a professional athlete. As a matter of fact, he was part of the 2008 Olympic team. His career prior to real estate was a scientist. But he sailed, desired and yearn for more, and knew I was going to tell you all about his journey into real estate investing. At this point, he has a portfolio well north of $6 million, which includes land single families, multifamily and commercial properties. He is an avid runner, swimmer crossfitter jujitsu and Muy Thai athlete. But what I think you’re gonna really grab from his interview is how disciplined he was in creative he was, and how he started his real estate investing career. So make sure you stay tuned, you won’t want to miss a bit of this episode.

00:55

Welcome to Growing Empires hosted by real estate entrepreneur and trusted Investment Advisor Jennifer de Jesus. Growing Empires provides insight to building wealth through passive income producing real estate investments for those who want to build and manage a more profitable real estate portfolio.

01:15

So welcome, Noel to the growing empire show. I’m so glad that you’re here.

01:19

Thanks for having me. Thank you for having me.

01:22

I’m excited to get started. So let’s kick off this episode with you sharing a little bit about your background and the work that you’re doing now.

01:28

Yes, yes. So I am a former pro athletes, former scientists, and now a full time multifamily real estate investor and syndicator. So there’s a lot that goes into that there. Again, I started my career, really kind of spearheaded from the Great Recession, and 2008. As a result of that, I was laid off in 2009, from GlaxoSmithKline. And from there, I kind of started my house hacking and then kind of built the portfolio by myself with over $7 million worth of property. I found my partner’s Tiffany span a loop a child about two years ago through Michael Blanc. He has dealmaker live and things of that nature. I found him to there. We recognize what our superpowers are, and kind of form like The Avengers, as I like to say it. And we have been working collectively together for little for the past two years. So within the last six months, we’ve closed on 164 units. We just put another 70 unit under contract in Lubbock, Texas. I was actually out there on Wednesday, actually touring it, but that just went under contract right now. And we’re rolling out a lot of fun things now with education and things of that nature as well.

02:46

Okay, wonderful. So when did you actually start your real estate investing career? What year was it?

02:53

All right, I so I like to say I started it back in Oh, nine when I got laid off. I kind of looked into like, oh man, how did the rich become rich? I was kind of like, pissed at the world, like, Oh, I’m getting laid off. They don’t even know how hard we’re working down here. And I literally was like googling How did the rich get rich and it was real estate. And I remember, I kind of laugh at this now. I was going to Barnes and Nobles. And I was like bookmarking, like these real estate books. I was like, I could purchase them. But I was like bookmarking them. And real estate wasn’t as sexy, then as it is now. So nobody was bothering it. I was going through the same Barnes and Nobles. And I was just taking notes and applying it. So I like to say my real estate journey started in 2009. But I didn’t get my first property until about 2014 15. You know, I had a whole bunch of like nose before I finally got to a yes. And I was trying everything from you know, I did the house hacking, which is my first primary home. Then I started going like door to door trying to talk to people like Hey, what are you selling your house when I knew they were so let me back it up. And Philadelphia they have a foreclosure and tax foreclosure website. And it tells you when everything’s come to auction. I had the bright idea. It was like all right. If it’s coming in March, I mean, they have an auction that’s coming in like August September. Let me reach out to the right now. What I learned from that is that empathy and tactfulness no one wants to lose their home. They certainly don’t want me knocking on their door, you know, on a Sunday afternoon like Hey, Bobby, your let me buy your house. I know what’s going to the auction, you know, because no one wants to lose their home. It was such an asshole move on me. You know, I just didn’t. I was just really selfish. I was just thinking like, Oh, I just need to get a home. I wasn’t thinking on the other side that no one wants to lose their home based on Oh, they couldn’t pay their taxes or, you know, for their face of foreclosure, you know, is having some empathy for people, you know that they’re humans, you know? And so when I came up with that Is that I would give options, you know, so I worked on one my sales pitch and how one I dress when I’m going to the properties and how I present myself and what I’m offering. So I’m always offering one like, Hey, how can I help you save your house? One? How can me and you partner together to save your house? Or you could sell it to me, or we just depart. And you know, so I give those four options. And that worked. That worked so much better than, you know, meetings, like, Hey, I know your house is coming up for sale. I mean, for tax foreclosure, you better buy the mirror, they’re gonna take it, you know, that, you know, I still kind of like, man, you know, when you look back at these years eve, like, what were you thinking, you know, approaching people approaching people like that, you know, at all. So I’ve done that, I’ve done that for a while. And I finally got someone to agree, actually wasn’t even a text or sell foreclosure. It was a woman that had a property and we ended up doing a did to my dad, a seller financing through a guy named Joe Dixon. I’m in Pennsylvania. So it’s called a group of real estate repairs called diversified investment group. It’s one of the oldest in Pennsylvania. And I met this gentleman there, he was like, alright, we’ll do these terms of seller financing of this property. He was looking to unload his property, he was retiring. We worked out the deal. That was my first seller financing opportunity. And then the second one I did was a subject to deal where I took over the mortgage, she had to remind people disclaimer, don’t sell clothes all the time. But what can happen, that that property was very promising. Both of them were very promising. I still own

both of them today. But that kind of spearheaded me kind of getting my feet wet and properties. And then I started being a network, which is my language, casually here, but I was at every network event every day of the week, if there was a network in the tri state area, whether it was New York, New Jersey, Delaware, or anywhere in Pennsylvania, I would try to be in a networking event every day of the week trying to meet as many people as I can and learn as much as I can. And that’s what kind of led me up here to find out like my private lenders, and you know, parlaying two units, the four units, I started doing ground up build ups. But that’s that was kind of a sweet spot. It’s kind of doing renovations on one, single family homes. Okay,

07:25

So let’s back up for just a quick second, I want to make sure I’m getting this timeline. Right. So you were laid off? And was that from your pro career? Or is that from your scientist, corporate job.

07:38

That was a scientist career. So I tried out for the 2018 Olympics in Beijing. I did not make it but I still got to go as a Paralympian. So you’re, you help another individual dance blind run, as during the same time, we’re tethered together. So I’m a mirror image. And so that was really fulfilling for me. Because I always feel like my life has like these milestone lessons. I don’t know, once I’m older now. But I’m like, it taught me how to really look behind my own selfishness. Because you know, when you’re running, it’s a single sport, you know, and, like, I trained for years for less than 10 seconds, and it was over, you know, and I know, I still got the great chance to go ahead and take him there. But then like, my mom, and my stepmother was like, alright, what are you gonna do now? What are you gonna do now that you didn’t make the Olympic team? What are you gonna do now? And I had another life lesson and that as well as Don’t let anyone impose their fears on you. I was 2627 at the time. I was still young, but it was their fear. Like, what are you going to do this running? Like, I still had my degree. I didn’t even go to my I didn’t go to grad school yet. But you know, it took me down another path, but you don’t let anyone else’s fear and pose it was their fear on a love, but you can’t let someone else’s fear, you know, be imposing on you. Because I was like, Oh, they’re right. What am I gonna do when I look back and I’m like, I was 2627 years old. I was if I can get those days back in the in the the blackness of my hair, all the grace I have now. I have a gift for that.

09:13

It’s funny. So you you got laid off. And so you did your pro stuff. You know, you got your degree, you did your pro stuff, then you you took a job as a scientist and then you were laid off. I assume that that came as a shock to you. I assume you didn’t see the writing on the wall that it was happening.

09:28

No, they call this into a room. I mean, everybody this is the lion. Anybody was in GSK down in RTP. It was the late the lion Hitchings buildings. The building look like a beehive for birdie, all my folks down there and RTP and I remember the day, they all call us in a room and was like, Yeah, we’re shutting all this down. And I was like, What the eff? Why Yeah, this is good because this is one of my first no jobs out of no college. You know, I was I was I was fresh and something like this is what happened. Yeah, so that was that was all new to me.

10:02

So So what made you venture into real estate? I know you said you kind of dived in, you Googled, you’re reading books, but what made you say real estate? And not let me go back and use my degree or let me go back to corporate America?

10:17

So I use real estate in the sense that I first I was like, Alright, how do rich become rich? I found some stat at that time, it was like 96% of the people that were wealthy started with real estates. So I was like, Oh, that’s a great point. All right, you have options. You know, I don’t believe money can buy you happiness. But money gives you options that you don’t have to do the things that you don’t want to do. Or you can move and pivot when you don’t have to. So I wanted that. And then when I got laid off, I was like, why needs shelter? I was like, All right, so let’s, let’s figure out we can have some place that you know, least live, whatever. And so that’s what kind of spirit into that there. I did go back into corporate because I never hated my job. I still love science, I’m still like, kind of a geek at nature, is that I outgrew it. So I officially left in 2016, where I kind of supplemented my income. And that’s when I left to go full time in real estate. And I’m so so thankful for one my my education background, and just my circle of pharmaceutical colleagues, because when the pandemic hit, I was doggy paddling. You know, no one predicted like, hey, my tenants wouldn’t have to pay, you know, yes, so many old tenants and weren’t paying anyway. But once they said, no one has to pay, and no one has to get out. My mortgages were still coming. The beginning of the month, as planned. I had, I had no one for my worst companies saying, hey, you know, we understand what’s going on. You can take these months off, I had to float my money. And I’m glad I took consulting gigs and things of that nature, took some other positions and pharma, just to hold that over until the eviction memorandums were over.
12:00

Okay. So all right, we’re getting somewhere now. So you, you know, you, you took another job, you were laid off, you took another job that you were already immersing yourself into real estate. And I assume your ultimate goal at that point, then was to live financially free, but also to escape your corporate job? Was that kind of in your mindset initially? Or did that come at a later time for you?

12:24

That came at a later time, I think I never was looking at it to escape my corporate job. Actually, I actually liked what I was doing. I still tether between what’s the weather between maybe starting a small bio startup bio maker startup later on in life. But I that was never the issue. I think it became an issue when my responsibilities for the real estate start outweighing and became self becoming detrimental to my work. And once that happened, I was like, Oh, all right, you need to make some decisions here. And it kind of really didn’t happen fast. Because I would say if I had a timeline, I started doing much better at my job once I had financial independence. And these are like, I’m very methodical and metrics. So I want to keep so my first thing that I was doing with my real estate was I want financial independence. So I was like, how many units do I need to net where I can actually keep shelter, food and shorts. And

my car knew. That’s all I wanted, you know, and food in the fridge. It was just me. And so once I hit that number, I was like, Alright, this is passively coming in. I was good. But what that had me do was that my performance in the pharmaceutical world actually increase because I didn’t have that anxiety like oh my goodness, what if I do something wrong here? Or if I mess up? Are they going to fire me? Are they going to lay me off you know, a lot of these pharmaceutical places there are a type A, you know, where it’s really grind grind grind more for less, which is the world is coming to me now anyway, but my performance actually increased because I was like, Alright, I can actually just focus on my job and not like walk on eggshells making sure that’s what I’m doing something incorrectly that I had another stage where I was like, Oh, I’m over exceeding this right now. We’re now it’s kind of it comes to a point where I was like, Oh man, I gotta take this meeting during work hours. I was like I’m not I’m not big on floundering and stealing time at all you know? Get some ethics and morals about yourself. So I did put in are my friends always say if the longest two week notice ever and I put in a two week notice which was about two months, and I wanted to make sure that I can die. I’m big on like finishing the projects. I want to give enough time for the transition. And I didn’t need like a true two weeks but I told him like hey, this is my gonna be my entire time and it ended up being a little over two months and you’re like, What is this I was like, Well, I just want to make sure I can, you know do all my projects and things that nature to you know In, transition them properly. So yes, that’s your that’s where we’re at.

15:02

So when you got to a point where your income was starting to passively exceed what you were making at your corporate job, like you were able to provide all those things that you had mentioned, your shelter, your car, your insurance, your food, how many properties did you actually own at that time?

15:19

30. So 30, well, it was 30 doors, but at that time, I think it was about 11 properties. Okay,

15:27

So you’re buying you were buying multifamily single family a little bit more small. At that time, it was small residential, so it was more triplexes, and quads. That’s what I was buying. Okay, I will, and I will buy them with the index that I needed to buy and rehab them at no more than 60% of the after rehab by you. And I did this because I knew the banks, were going to, you know, lend at 70 75%. So I knew I couldn’t buy and rehab at that, because I’ll still be up to me, I will be upside down. So I wanted to do that cash out and take that money and put it in other things. And then also, I had a number that I wanted to make, I wanted to make at least 350 $350 per door. So if I was doing it correctly, I could I knew that I needed three doors at $300, that would give me nine grand that net, and I was looking always at the net. And so that was the goal when I finally hit that.

16:24

Okay, so we’re gonna definitely talk today about growing your portfolio and your rehabilitation projects. And I’ve asked Noel to join me to share his wealth of knowledge throughout the years on these subjects. So we’re gonna dive right into this section, because I think this is so critical. So you talked about these 30 units. And you had mentioned before that you had previously bought some through like tax sale, just kind of a network. So we’re all 30 of those doors, essentially, at that time, done that same way. They were all rehab type projects where you’re either helping somebody out of a bad situation, or you’re buying from tax sale or foreclosure or something of that nature, or did you find properties in any other manner at that time?

17:08

Correct. So I will say about, at that time, where I hit the 30, about 15% of them, were a special, a special circumstance where it was like a textbook closure. And I was saying, hey, let’s do a seller financing or some type of owner financing special deal. The rest of them were I was I would jog in the neighborhoods that I want it to be in. And particularly during the summers, it was great, or the winter, you can see who’s taking care of the properties, like if it was a lot of grass, or they put on it for like pizza places, slides and the doors and you see them like filled up like, Oh, they’re not here, you know, so let me go ahead and find who they are. And so that’s what I would do. And I would rehab them. So I would go ahead and I was buying these properties at this time, maybe $20,000, like 20 to $30,000. And placing about at that time, you know, I can I can rehab for fairly cheap for rehab, maybe 100,000 For a full rehab of these places. And then I was cashing out. And so that was a tax free money, which I’ll say that story for another time. Because like earlier on, I didn’t even know about the birth, you know, someone I happen to be there. So I was like, You’re not doing that. And I was like no, I’m just getting loans on them. And so it did help me out later on. Because I got had equity, so much equity and other properties. I ended up taking this stuff out. But that’s how I did I was kind of buying those from distressed properties, finding them, they were C class properties. And I will say oh, there’s a market for this. So I look for places, I will run that. And then I will look for the bigger developers. This pretty much any city like normally, if you have a bigger developer in your city, they always have to talk to the castle people or somewhere in the city and had to put in those plans. Those are always free to knowledge and I will go on the borders of those areas and find because I will be out priced but I will be found on those borders those areas, and I will buy up those type of properties there. Okay,

19:09

so you were you said you were doing some like seller finance deals. Were you buying things any other way? Were you buying some cash? Were you buying because of the price tag on them? Were you doing any other traditional financing methods?

19:23

No, the only traditional financing method I use was my own personal home, which I house hacked out of those as well at four bedrooms and I’ve rented out every four bedroom the couch everything. When I was house hacking, everything else was primarily through seller financing. And I built a reputation from the networking and I found I there’s still they’re like families in your right now. They’re actually their PayPal website now called 123 lending.com. Their owners Karen and Michael Yala wits they talk He’s so much ended up being my private lenders. And if I bought the properties, and below 65%, I was getting 100% of purchase and 100% of rehab. And so I didn’t pay like, you know, some some soft costs

as far as insurance, and you pay the points, but it was it was minimal. It’s a peer to the the grand nugget of it all. But most importantly, they taught me about finance. They taught me about debt. You know, I like I said, I’m, they were one of my probably one of my favorite mentors, they probably only know they’ve mentored me, but I would always just asked to pick their brains on how their their relationship with money and having a good relationship with money and how that relates with real estate as well. The you know, which is another big thing, because once I left my job, I didn’t realize how bad I was mismanaging my money. You know, it was intermingle. You know, I was making six figures in pharma, and I was making good money there. But I was like, oh, wait a minute, I was intermingling some things here and there. And then also, I was in falling business taxes. So I was getting predatory loans after a while as well, because I didn’t have two years of business taxes. So certain things that I learned, and they helped me out a lot along the way. So I’m very appreciative. And I’m, we’re still great friends to this day.
21:19

Wonderful. So you initially bought all these properties just by yourself? Or did you have partners any anywhere along the way? They’re all by myself. They were all by yourself, it must have taken an incredible amount of time for you to source these deals work work the neighborhood, right? And then you were talking about, you know, essentially rehabbing the properties to do so were you physically doing the work, or were you hiring people to do the work,

21:45

I was hiring people to do the work. And so I went through a lot of failures. Knowing how to deal with contractors know how to deal with a contracts, I lost some of my own personal money that I was I was having that I was paying from my former job. I mean, again, it taught me another lesson of how to deal with contractors, how to properly do a scope of work, how to vet properly. And also to know what good stuff looks like, you know, you have to go to other people’s projects sometimes to understand what a good rehab looks like. Because when you’re new, you’re like, oh, okay, that looks good. I once had an H Vet Guy convince me of a left handed pretty colleague called like, this is a left handed, he left hand a heater. And I was like a left hand. Here’s like, Yeah, this is the left hand a heater. I didn’t know what the hell that meant. And it was Bs is he took it from another property. And so he covered that ductwork up and put it into it was a used one. And now I recognize that, but I was just like, I had no clue of like what it was. But, you know, I will say it helped me. Because now that I do like the larger things. I know, I know the pricing for work, I know the price of materials, I know how to measure floors, I know drywall calls on how to measure how many sheets we need. So I’m very appreciative of that, even though I’m not in the weeds any longer and kind of that, that, that facet, I’m more of an asset management role. And I hired a team of people here in Philadelphia, where they report to me, I give them cards. And I just see the monthly readouts on the cars of what we’re buying from materials. And we review it as a product. They like my project managers, essentially. And I’m I act as like a program manager, asset manager, and I’m just looking at the projects and making sure that we’re, we’re aligned on timing. Okay,

23:36

So let’s talk a little bit more about the actual acquisitions. And we talked about how you found them, right, some of the deals, but let’s talk about how you vetted the deal. How did you know that this was a

good deal versus something else that you saw, because I’m sure you walked away from just as many deals as you bought, if not more?

23:54

Absolutely. For everybody listening is quality over quantity. You know, that was always my thing, quality over quantity. And one of the big things that I’m looking for is one, I’m looking for the one things I will look forward to after we have value in that area. And I would in most banks will go out point five, I will go conservatively and I’m like, What is it 4.3 And always compare apples to apples, you know, are just the oranges. And then I would have what I call a I will work a a formula called a maximal allowable offer sheet. I know what in my head now, but I guess my breakdown the numbers is that I want to have my ARV and then I’m going to have costs. The my costs are maybe buying costs associated 3% for buying calls. My carrying costs is another 3% closing costs is 3%. My margin of error is 1%. And equity or profit is 20% which gives me about 30% That I will take off of that ARV for costs, then I have another line item, which is repairs. And so I always tell people like you always can get a contractor. But if you don’t have a contract there at that moment, for your, for your specified area, you can, you can multiply the square footage, per, you know, per dollar of what is going in your area. So I know when my Philadelphia I can do $80 per square foot, some of the high end areas, they may be building at 120 $130 a square foot. So I wouldn’t, I would normally say, alright, this is a full rehab, I’m going to say if this is a 2000 square foot place, I want to say I need everything. So that means 2000 times $80. That is going to be my rehab costs there. So that would actually, you know, give me $160,000. So I know right now, that that’s that right there. So that’s gonna give me a good notion. So now I’m just going to do is I’m going to take the ARV minus the 30% of costs minus that repair number I just gave. And that’s going to give me a figure. And then I’m gonna take 15% from that figure. And that’s where I’m going to start my negotiation price. And so if we had a, get a calculator real quick, so show up here, if you have a calculator, that’s a if you have a property that’s worth $500,000. And we know that we’ll take that 30% costs. So that means that that’s $150,000 in costs. And we already said this is a 2000 square foot place, and we’re gonna say we’re rehabbing it $80 per square foot. So now we have $160,000. So we already know that our re are after we have value of this property is 500,000. So we’re just going to subtract that 150,000 And at 160 $160,000. And that gives you $190,000 As your maximum allowable offer that I could place in for that property, then I would also just times the times 15. So that 190,000 minus 28,500 is 161,000. So that’s how we will start my negotiation. And so that’s where I was, that’s where I was started. So that’s that that was that’s I would I know those rules by heart. So now when I go into a property and area, I can kind of pinpoint and I do it well enough. I’m like, Oh, I know, these houses here. I’m familiar with the area is this like clockwork in the head, but I remember the hill Smallwood works for kW, she took me around in a summer of 2015. And always over a lot of credits, she helped me out with this, she knew I wasn’t buying anything, I just want to perfect my craft. And I was like, I just need you to show me houses six or seven houses a week. And I would just go and I would just underwrite them just for practice. I was like fixer uppers. And I just wanted to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And I, I owe her a lot of credit. Just for, you know, just given me that time, you know, because she’s a licensed Realtor. And she would just get, you know, walk me these properties. And I was like, I’m just looking to practice. And she did that for me, and so I’m always grateful for her.

28:36

The episode will continue in just a moment.

28:39

As an investor, we know it’s important to stay on top of market trends and real estate opportunities that add value to your portfolio. We also know that having a trusted source of reliable information to help you stay a step ahead of other investors is critical to your success. If you’re interested in having these types of resources, as well as access to me and my team, I invite you to join the Empire Investment Club, a free service that gives you an easier way to make sense of today’s and tomorrow’s real estate opportunities. As a member of the Empire Investment Club, you’ll get access to relevant resources and investment focused experiences, such as live interactive webinars, market trend presentations, and investor socials designed to equip you with what you need to succeed. So whether you’re an active investor, passive investor, a combination of both, or just starting out, the club is where you’ll get what you need to build a portfolio you love to join, just head over to Jennifer to hastings.com Sign up, and we’ll see in the club where everyone’s on a journey to becoming a better investor. So you talked about immersing yourself in books and you referenced investor meetup groups, networking events, you referenced Michael Blanc, who I know does a phenomenal podcast, as well as training sessions. So you’re you’re getting all of your education from resources outside of you, right? And you’re bringing that in and You’re testing this knowledge and trying to figure out which works for you. How did you navigate that? How did you know that? I’m learning all these things? Because there’s so many different ways to invest. How did you narrow down your search to it’s going to be C class? And it’s going to be, I assume you’re investing in the Philadelphia market? Correct?

30:19

I’m in Philadelphia, I’m in Texas. I’m in Kentucky, and Georgia.

30:24

So how did you get from all this knowledge that you’re grabbing from all of these resources, right, all of these areas? How did you set your sights on it’s going to be C class? And this is what I’m going to do? And these are the locations and I’m going to do it in how did you narrow all that knowledge to get to a path where you could take action?

30:43

Well, I guess it’s twofold. You always have to take action. We’ll talk about that later. So I think the C class is more by default. You look at what you what you have in your account, and what you can afford. And so there’s always a there’s a running joke in real estate, that C class is correctly by Oh, l C class is the crack properties, not necessarily you can make, you know, I always say that, you know, singles and doubles will get you to the Hall of Fame just as quickly as homeruns do. And you have to start somewhere, you know, as long as you’re looking at a trajectory. So I started with C class, because it was the easiest to get into, from what I could afford. And when I can navigate whether it was seller financing or with my private lenders, blood, now I am as I’m scaling up, I’m going more into the B and C classes. And I chose areas now that I still have some things that Philadelphia to finish, but I don’t do Philadelphia anymore, I’m more prone to red states. Just because the landlord laws are a lot more friendly. I kind of learned that through the pandemic. So I was like, you know, got burned once I don’t need that lesson again. So I’ve been I’ve been I’ve been in Houston a lot, Lubbock, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky, and Marietta and Decatur, Georgia, those are the areas that I that I am I also like Tennessee as well. But those are the reasons why I transitioned to those states. And those classes. And as you go up, you know, particularly getting bigger into the commercial real estate, it’s important that I you know, I compound by my C classes for my net worth, because, you know, it’s a ratio of one to one when you’re buying a building. So just because I get $11 million dollar building doesn’t mean I’m going to get it because the you know, the commercial lender is gonna say you need to have $11 million in net worth, you know, and so when I need to get up into these upper buildings, that’s where we combine our powers meeting to be Tiffany Lupe, and we go ahead and get these B class properties. And eventually, you know, you may want to move into a, I still like the B areas, but as you know, the A’s are very stable. But it doesn’t give a lot of room for our investors, like the squeezing the juice out of it left, you know, maybe maybe 10 to 10 years, I’ll just put down Billy do A class properties. But right now I’m trying to squeeze the juice provide value add. And this presents great, great living spaces for for individuals. I’m big on culture. So once we have i with the property manager, we’re like, we’re learning what religions people apart out when their birthday says it’s, you know, we can send free eat like II carts. You know, it’s about presenting a culture for people where we have inclusiveness, and they fill this one in love, and we are changing over a socio C Class building, you get to change the culture of that building, you know, and make people know like, hey, there’s some sheriffs in town. You know, we’re loving to cared for you. And we’re presenting this and we want you to take care of it just as much as we’re trying to take care of you guys.

33:41

Sure. So you bought these properties, right? You were doing a lot of rehabs on them. And you said you’d learned some very valuable lessons. Give me just a quick, you know, two second tutorial on some of the aha moments that you had in your rehab projects.

33:58

One, make sure that your contracts have milestones on those. So have your contracts milestone delivered, so it means your contractor has to deliver on this, this and this for in order for them to receive payments. I learned that my other thing is that never give them 50% up they didn’t do 50% of the work. So I never give a contractor 50% Like I need 50% To get started why you didn’t you didn’t give enough to extend it to work. How about my thing now that I do is that in my best contract is also followed this is that I’ll supply materials and uh you get paid on executing that yourself or get split, you flaunt your your own your own labor, and then guess what I’ll pay you afterwards and I put them on a bi weekly schedule of every two weeks. And I do that through MX. And so I’ll tell them they should set up an account where I can pay them to my AmEx, because if you don’t know Amex will take back anything if you tell them like hey David to complete those, I can call Amex up and open, like, alright, we’ll take that money back from them. So this is an extra level that I use to kind of secure myself. You know, with that. I’m big on by my materials, I had a situation where it put me in a precarious situation where one of my H back technicians for 14 a building, I was doing dye pack for coldpressed, from COVID, during the pandemic, oh, man, he had my units and his storage. And I’m trying to figure out how to talk to his wife, you know, and still be compassionate about that. But knowing I still have the business to run, and I need, you know, I had almost $50,000 worth of material for my my heaters and AC condensers that need to go on my units. And, you know, that’s, that was a hard thing to deal with, you know, because she’s trying to deal the fact that she doesn’t have her husband any longer, you know, what are their children doesn’t have a father any longer. And I still have to, you know, navigate that like, alright, you know, the MP, but also, I’m running a business as well. And I need to complete this project, because I’m picking up making payments on this every month. Sure. So I always have my materials. Now on a storage or warehouse, I can no longer gonna let the guys just kind of hold it hold it there themselves. Sure. Because that’s just a very that was a no win situation for for me at all. You know, either way you look at it, I was going to be again at home because I had to ask for it. And it just sucked. It’s like,

36:43

Do you still use the same contractors today?

36:47

Yes, so I still have, I have a team of three, I, which I call my eight team. And then they’re not on the C team, but they’re two b’s, but my guy that’s really good. Um, I kind of put him on a lot of jobs that keep them working. So yes, I still keep them there. Okay, and we understand and we understand how we work. I have a end of the year celebration for everybody, this kind of thanking everyone there. I also tried to get them and teach them how to own their own properties as well. So they’re not fixing things up for me, they can build for their families as well. You know, I think that’s, I like to think that’s one of the reasons why we work so well together. I never like to say anyone doesn’t work. For me. I like to think we all partner together, because I need them. It’s just as much as you know, we need each other. How important

37:35

do you think those relationships have been in your career, in your success in your real estate investing?

37:42

I can’t put a number on it. It is relationship those relationships are everything. And then once you find, you know, a good, a good person, a contractor. You pretty much what sue them. Because he was like, Hey, you don’t owe anybody good. I’m like, I can’t give you my God. I’m sorry. I need to keep him working. So I’ll make the about somebody else that, um, I can’t give you my god because he’s that good. It’s almost a little selfishness is like, listen, I can’t that’s my girlfriend. I can’t I can’t live out my girlfriend here. You know, like, I just can’t do it. You know, I have another person here that can help you. But I can’t, not my main squeeze.

38:21

They completely understand that. So how did you how did you scale beyond all this? So you had all these deals? You had like 30 doors and you know, where are we today? How many? How many doors?

Do you have that you own personally? Or with partners?

38:35

Yeah, so personally, I’m at 123. Okay, by myself. And with partners, we’re at to 238 right now.

38:45

Okay. So where were in that timeline? Did the partners start to come in when you started to do things with other people?

38:53

So that came in where I wanted to buy apartment buildings. I didn’t know how to underwrite apartment buildings. And so I found the How to underwrite and I was like, how do you how do you do this? And I found out that Michael blanc podcast, I was listening to him. And I was like, You know what, I’m going to join his mentorship program. And I did, I joined this mentorship program, and I got a lot out of it. I learned how to underwrite you get access to with SDA, and a lot of members of this team. So I’m always grateful for that there. And that’s why I met Tiffany. And me and Sydney met at a conference. We were just kind of sharing, she’s in the DC area. And we were just talking about goals. And we want to go and I will say this is always very important for anybody who’s looking to partners that people grow. They get all the time every day by day, year by year, and it’s always good to be transparent on what your needs and wants are because it’s like a marriage. I will say as a marriage. You need to be able to be transparent What’s your needs? So our needs and what we talked about, you know, two years ago are completely different to what they are now. Because now we’re doing, we’re about the rollout, the mentorship about the rollout training classes, and things of that nature. We never talked about it right there. But that was a need for one of the partners. And you have to you have to understand though, like, I guess that guess what, I know, we were doing this by here what I liked, now let’s do what you like, whatever. So, you know, because I necessarily do not like selling a classes. I love talking real estate. So that is one of the things I love doing like I always tell them, I was like this, let me know what classes to show up for what’s my topic? You know, keep me let me get my talking points. Because I know so much stuff, I can go off the rails. So I just need to be kept on track. Because I left talk, we’re good. But that’s how we got to our partnership. And she does like the back office stuff. So I do Asset Management acquisitions. She does every everything else that people don’t see as far as the snow bio, the Active Campaign, the newsletters, you know, making sure the the bank accounts look look great, you know, that a child does our capital raising. And I was like, you know, she can raise? No, I’ve seen her raise over $2 million dollars in a month and a half. You know, I don’t know what you know, I don’t know, she hasn’t like mob litter, like, I’ll put you in the truck. Our Father, she does it. But she does it. She’s amazing, as she’s amazing at it. And I’m thankful for both of those ladies, you know, they’re amazing. There’s, this is awesome. And they still do the old things like I know that he puts them Marina. I know I was interested in the marina, but they purchased the marina in Missouri or Michigan somewhere. It’s pretty awesome. But I’m like, I’m so proud that I like to say like, we found each other because we really feed off each other. We’re very honest. You need to honestly, in partnerships, we don’t sugarcoat stuff. So I don’t like to say is arguing, but we do stress tests each other because we’re looking out for you know, our investors that’s very important to us is that our investors, and when you’re syndicating you’re taking someone’s nest egg, essentially, and you just want to make sure like, you’re you’re taking care of that baby, you know, it’s all that it’s a worm that you have partners like that. That’s it’s not like, there’s nobody’s like a Yes, man or Yes, woman, there’s like, ah, yeah, let’s just go on with it. No, we’re gonna, we’re gonna stress test each other about it.

42:45

So the partnership is about you being able to scale, am I correct. And now you’re also now you’re essentially lending your services to other people now, because you you mentioned syndicating. And that’s kind of when I got, as we were going to move into a little bit more about crown capital, and like, where that came from and what you’re doing there for investors. But I gathered that you were now in the syndication. So now you’re able to scale much faster because you’ve got partners with different expertises. Would you say that that was the main reason that you’ve been able to go from those 30 doors to the couple $100 that you have?

43:21

Yes, and no, I will say no, I could have been on the same trajectory by myself. And it just been a lot slower. And my main goal is to move I need to increase my net worth within the next 15 years expeditiously. So my main goal I think answered this before I made I don’t think I answered it, is what I guess what, what has motivated me to do the scale. And I want to own a football team or a sports team, like in a minority ownership. That’s the ultimate goal. I’m using real estate as a vehicle to buy into either a baseball team football team hockey team, I want to use that for I want to use real estate as a vehicle to get into that. And so you need your net income to be a certain Misumi into your net worth to be at a certain level. And I could not sell it at the time that I want to be at doing it by myself. Sure. I needed my partners to help me to grow faster. And so that’s the main reason.

44:20

All right, so tell me about crown capital, what is crown capital,

44:23

Crown capital is they were asleep. We help busy professionals know that they have other avenues to invest other than 401 K’s. That’s why we have a thing called wealth without Wall Street. You know, there’s a we love so much every day and we like to like every time we give webinars, we’re getting webinars from people that we actually use from self directed IRAs, from insurance companies, whole life insurance, we’re giving you everything that we didn’t have accessible to us when we were in our W twos, and you’re like, oh my goodness, I didn’t know this was This is this is known to me, you know, if I’m elected to my w two right now, I wouldn’t put my money in my 401 K, I would do a self directed. But I wouldn’t do my I wouldn’t put my money in a 401 K there, you know, I do not understand. And there’s like, Oh, what about the matching? Well, yes, they are matching. So yes, I guess get the match. But it’s not free money, you know, no company is giving you anything for free, most likely they’re lowering your salary, that’s why they’re giving you the match. But after the match, they say you won’t do that match, I wouldn’t go over that I would just park money in a self directed. And I would start using that to invest in so many different real estate vehicles. We are the provinces will estate, but we don’t tell people Oh, you shouldn’t be in the stock market. Because I keep my money in the stock market as well. I just know, my returns over the last 12 years, real estate has been kicking the stock markets, as you know, and this is this me like ever, like I think my returns on average, and may have been like four to 5%. You know, and I had money allocated to you know, feed the market. I mean, now he’s getting slaughtered, but it’ll go back again, I still deposit money into it as as normal every month, part of my rental income goes into the market, and it’ll come back up again, it’s cycles. But when I look at it, you know, just comparison, real estate to status, it is so much better, and it’s tangible. You know, I can physically touch it, you know, I can I can touch the brick. You know, so we like to do investor tours, we’d like to show people like, Hey, you have options, you can be an active investor, or you can be a passive investor, we can teach you how to be an active investor. You know, you may say, Guess what, I like what your guys are offering, but you know, maybe I want to do my own thing. That’s fine. We can teach you how to do your own thing, you may have a great network where you can do that. We believe in abundance. So we’re not trying to hold nothing back or say, oh, you can’t look behind the clothes curtain, you know that we believe that, you know, a closeness cannot give anything, but it can’t receive anything as well. So we’re all about, you know, get this getting info out. And not just info what we heard, if what we’re using, you know, because I always say in real estate nowadays, there are great marketers out there. Wait marketers, you know, but how many of them are doing real estate? Can they really show you the highs and the lows that they signed on one? Sure. And here? We do. I don’t have a big number of saying, Oh, I’m in like 2000 Plus units. Because I’m not a great marketer. I’m gonna be honest with you on what I have and what and what we do right there. You know, so that’s really important to us, you know, that we’re not great marketers. Where does great real estate investors.

47:39

Okay, fair enough. So crown capital is your blobs, you’ve got resources on your website, I saw that for investors starting out. It looks like you, you know, obviously, you do your syndications. And then you also have the meetup groups that you do. So you’re hosting your own networking groups. And then you mentioned a little bit more of the like the mentoring ship that’s getting started too. So where can where can our listeners find you? How did they get in contact with

48:05

you? Oh, yeah, for me, I can be found at no Parnell on LinkedIn. And so there’s no Well, no el parnell@linkedin.com. And then also no well at crowd capital corp.com. And we have our website, crowd capital ct.com. And you’ll find all our events. If you’re in the DMV area you’re listening in, we do have a another networking event coming up on June 8, and we do webinars we kind of postponed from the summer, but we do every Thursday evening. And we’re just giving out you know, they’re just come in come and go, but everybody is we want to pick them back up in the winter. You know, summer, you know that at 7pm. People want to enjoy, you know, the extra sunlight. We share. Do we know it’s a long week, it’s at the tail end a week for their families and things of that nature. But the winter, we’re still picking it back up again.

48:55

All right, fair enough. So if if you had to give me one tip for investors, just one, your best best tip? What would it be?

49:06

They’re gonna laugh at this asset. Because it’s one of my favorites. It’s me, I call you one right?

49:12

Only one, you can only give me one

49:15

or, okay, it’s, it’s alright. It’s so you’ve gotta be with this one is I’ll be good with this one. It’s, it’s better to be prepared for an opportunity that you don’t have than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. I like it. And what that means is that you should always always talk about how many years I went without getting a property but I was still always working on the craft. So when it did come, I was ready to receive it. You know, I never doubted myself and so that’s what that phrase really really means. But I have about three of them that use that that was really hard right there. So that’s that’s good. What had to pick what’s here the three but I hadn’t

49:56

picked one yet and picked one. Well, no, I think Got you. You’re such a inspiring personality and person, you know from from all of your, you know, different ventures in life to how you kind of navigated it all to real estate and the success that you guys have now had with Crown capital, your own personal access and investing. I can’t thank you enough for being a guest on the show. And, you know, I hope our listeners will reach out and get a hold of you at Crown capital. corp.com.

50:25

Great, great, great. Thank you for having me on. Listen, I would love to be on again and show you how this is a personal deal. I did a 20 unit and Houston. I got a 20 unit in Houston, other specials financing for under five grand over five land. I guess that’s maybe an episode in itself, how I structured how I came together that I did that for $5,000, a 20 unit in Houston, Texas. So

50:50

Wow, that’s fantastic. Well, I’m sure we will have you back again as a guest. And again, I really appreciate your time today.

50:57

Thank you so much. Have a great day. All right, you too.

50:59

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. I hope you enjoyed my interview with Noel Parnell. Make sure you stay tuned for the rest of season 15 And until next time, take care.

For more information about how Jennifer can help you plan, develop and manage a strong real estate investment portfolio visit growingempires.com