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Welcome to Episode 9 of Season 15 of the Growing Empires Show. Today is our trailer, a recap of what you experienced in season 15. And what to look forward to for the upcoming Season 16. So stay tuned.

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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.

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So Season 15 was, as you might expect, wonderful. Well, that’s just my opinion. And hopefully you felt the same way. I love to bring stories, and do in depth interviews with investors who have taken a unique look on their real estate investing and taking it to another level. Now, in season 15, we talked a lot about how investors actually created new business opportunities, and maybe you’re not looking for a new business opportunity. And that’s okay, maybe you’re looking for strictly just passive income. So creating or starting a new business and going the route that some of our guests did in the season. 15 may not be what’s right for you. And that’s quite alright, the importance of what I’m bringing to you. And then what you’re going to see in season 16, is that there’s so much diversity in real estate investing. And there’s far more diversity in this segment of investing than any other segment that you can get into. Sure you can diversify your stocks and your bonds and your your other holdings. But the reality is, is that real estate is a path that allows you to do far more with your endeavors and far more with your money and time than any other opportunity presents to you. Some people take it and create new businesses and they create new careers for themselves. Other people just truly have passive income and look to retire early. Whatever you so choose to do with your real estate investing, just know that real estate was the vehicle that got you there. And it’s so important to me that I connect people and bring people together to be successful, because as you have heard through every single interview that I’ve done, probably to date, this theme of the of the investing journey, somehow some way always comes back to some network, some partnership, and somebody else that helped them get their start. Real estate is not one of those endeavors that you can go it alone. And even if you are truly just investing for passive income, the reality is, is that you still need a team on your side. So whether you’re not may not be business partners with the person, you still need a team on your side, be it your attorney, your accountant, your real estate broker, your property manager, your lender, so on and so forth. So I’ve got some other avenues that I wanted to share and make sure that as my listeners, you’re aware of all the avenues and opportunities that we bring to the table. Because I’m so passionate about connecting people. This year, we started something called the Empire Investment Club. It was born in January, and it still lives on today. As a matter of fact, it’s growing in its network and I couldn’t be more proud. The Empire Investment Club is a resource for all investors, beginning investors, somewhere in the middle of investors and those that are super savvy and have been investing for many, many years. What I do with the Empire Investment Club is several layers deep. The first and most obvious is we’re just bringing content. So if you’re signed up for the club, which is a free membership, you’re going to have access to me for consulting if you’ve got maybe an investment that you’re looking at, or maybe you’re trying to get started in investing and don’t know how to quit navigate that. Whatever your choice may be. The Empire Investment Club will give you access to me it will give you access to other investors like yourself that are in similar positions or were in similar positions that can help you navigate the different times in real estate investing. They can help you navigate economical challenges, financial challenges, they help you figure out where you’re going to get money from. But the environ investment club also helps identify new and unique investment opportunities by bringing you hot properties. Our website also gives you what we call advisor guides. Those are put out weekly and those advisor guides are like blogs. They’re me writing stories or and or help articles that allow you to navigate all different things that happen with real estate investments from property management to how you raise capital to where you get funding to How to leverage yourself appropriately how to identify deals, how to deal with tenant problems, leases, you name it, we’ve written about it. And we’ll just continue to keep adding content. For those of you that just like to read, for those of you that like to actually be involved, we have our networking events, we do try to do our networking events every other month or so. And those networking events are where we bring people together. Now, if you’re not local to the Allentown area, I understand that you might not be able to, you know, be in attendance. And maybe in the future, we will also bring in zoom. But for right now, the collaboration and the excitement that is surrounding these networking events is just fantastic. We have two speakers that come in, and they discuss all different real estate type topics. And the purpose is to bring you education and knowledge and to speak with professionals in the industry, and build your network, but also learn from them. So for example, we’ve had people from 1031 exchange companies to talk to you about tax deferment strategies, we’ve had CPAs, we have had other investors, we’ve had lenders, it’s so much is out there as far as information and networking, and just really good professional contacts. So we bring that. And then the other hour of the event is all about networking, it’s about being able to meet other similar investors to yourself, maybe in similar stages, hopefully, to be able to help you build a partnership of some sort that’s going to allow you to scale your investing career, or your investing your real estate investments. We’ve gotten a lot of attendance. And I have heard nothing but great feedback from it. So I wanted to make sure that you are aware that these things are happening, we do also record these events, or at least we’ve started to record these events. So in the future, even if you can’t attend, because maybe you’re out of state, you can always reach out to us and get the latest recording, at least from the educational parts of the night. Again, our networking event is November 9. That’s our next one of 2023. And I hope to see you there.

Lastly, I wanted to just quick mention a different vehicle for real estate investing that we started a few years ago. And it’s really been scaling very quickly, I wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to discuss it more with me should you so choose. And that’s the Empire Capital Fund. We do talk about this a lot at our networking events, because a lot of our fund investors do show up to the networking events. But the Empire Capital Fund was something that I started roughly about two years ago, and it was kind of at the onset of COVID. So we had to take it slow and steady. Because you know, at that time, nobody knew what they were going to do with their money. But the whole purpose of me starting the Empire Capital Fund was because I was able to see and predict the writing on the wall with real estate investments, I saw the market going crazy, I saw money coming in from other states, so local areas that was artificially inflating our marketplace. And what that meant to me was simply that it was going to be very challenging for our investors in the very near future, to invest and not be in high competition and overpaying for properties. And those prices that were being artificially inflated by all this money coming from out of state was going to create an environment where investors really had to reconsider their investment strategy. Because the whole part of real estate investing that makes people very wealthy is that you start by buying great deals. And if you no longer can buy great deals, you really need to stop investing. So the Empire Capital Fund was something that I designed because I wanted to make sure that investors could continue to buy or continue to be part of real estate investing, and not be subject to the economic changes in the industry. Empire Capital Fund is a hedge fund that we source deals strictly off market. So these are not deals that any investor is going to ever find because we sourced them through our network. So what you’re investing in is you’re investing in deals that you would otherwise not have opportunity to invest in. So for example, we buy things from foreclosures, we buy properties from estate sales, Sheriff sales, distressed sellers, people trying to get out of investments because they’re in a bad financial place. All of these things make really great investments. And over the years that I’ve been in this business, which has been a decade and a half, actually, I have watched investors become very wealthy from Real Estate Investing, but specifically real estate investing the right way. And because we provide all those sources or resources to investors, we’re able to help them navigate, you know, ever changing markets as well as buying the right deals, and then getting those properties to effectively cash flow and making the necessary improvements to stabilize those properties. So in MKR Capital Fund, we’re not actually doing anything different than I have been doing for the last decade and a half, we’re just doing it on a much larger scale. So we raise capital, and of the capital that we raise our investors get shares, and those shares provide quarterly dividends, or quarterly returns. And at the end of the fund, which is approximately four years or so, we are going to sell all the assets in the fund and then distribute the profits. And again, back going back to investors and how they get really wealthy is, you know, you start small, you buy properties, you stabilize those properties, and when you’ve maximized that asset, most people either a pull out the equity and reinvest that same equity, or they sell the property capitalize on the appreciation, the force depreciation that we put into the property. And then they use tax deferment strategies like a 1031 exchange to then double the size of their portfolio or buy more properties. Okay, so in general theory, you know, I started out with a two unit, I appreciate it, maybe, maybe it takes me a year, I sell the property. Now I’m buying a five unit or a six unit. So essentially, I’m doubling my portfolio. And that’s typically how investors start to really build and scale very quickly. We’re doing those exact same things in the fun, but what’s unique about this is that we don’t have to deal with the same economic factors that any investor would have to deal with today. Why? Because we raise the capital. Therefore, we are not using traditional bank financing right now. Why? Because everybody’s talking about how terrible the interest rates are and how high they are and how they don’t make for good investments. Well, they don’t, so we’re investing a different way. So this empire Capital Fund is a vehicle that allows investors to continue to invest when the market itself is not conducive to finding great deals. We are finding them for you. We are buying them all cash, we are renovating the properties, we are stabilizing the properties and it’s just a rinse and repeat. And it’s like the same things that we’ve been doing and built services around for again the last decade and half.

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The episode will continue in just a moment.

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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 haystack comm sign up. And we’ll see you in the club where everyone’s on a journey to becoming a better investor. I want to take a moment to give you some insight into what we’re actually doing and why the deals are so great. So for example, the very first property we bought. We bought a three unit in Easton area and this was from a very distressed seller who just was about to lose his house and everything else he was so far in debt he could not manage the property. And we just were able to get him out of that by taking off the concern the property. So we bought this property for 152,500. For those of you that don’t know our market, getting something at $50,000 a door is unheard of. Right now our market is selling at 120,000 a door. That is what is so currently today on market 120,000 a door that is the average sale price. So for us to be able to buy something at $50,000 a door. I’m sure you can understand how quite significant that deal is. We bought that property. We had to renovate that property and That property we are currently holding, it has been fully stabilized and it nets about $25,000 a year in profit. The second property we bought was a flip. And the reason we decided to flip the property versus hold it is it’s just a single family home. And it’s not an ideal hold candidate for an investment. But it was a phenomenal flip. Because it’s in a high demand area, it was a single family ranch home, which again, is in high demand. We bought this property from an estate sale, we bought that property for $132,000. So $132,000, we spent about $25,000 in renovations, and we ended up selling that property for $100,000 net profit above and beyond what we had put into the property. We did that in a matter of four months. Now, I don’t know about you, or how quick you can do that math. But that is a very high very significant return for only a four month stint, which was from acquisition to the final sale date. Then we took that profit, we reinvested it back nto the fund, and we went and bought the next property. This was a bank foreclosure. This was a 11 unit property in Allentown. We have since gotten approvals to convert it to 15 units. And we are in full blown renovation. Again, all of this being done by way of cash transactions, no financing, no leverage. So you can imagine the amount of significant equity that is building up in these properties to date. And when the rehab is done on this 15 unit property and we fully stabilized this property by them, we probably will be able to pull out some equity and reinvest it, but we’re gonna keep raising capital in the meantime, that property that we bought, we purchased for roughly about $500,000. Again, it was 11 units at the time being converted to 15 units. So again, you can do that kind of math there that price per door. And we are spending about $600,000 in renovations for phase one. Phase two is going to be another couple 100,000. But ultimately, this property is going to be worth well into the $2 million range. When it’s all stabilized. Again, you can see the dramatic appreciation and the way that we’re able to really take that dollar and spread it really really far. So for our investors that are in the fund, they’re going to continue to grow their portfolio, they’re going to continue to have cashflow, and their shares are going to be very valuable in the long run and ultimately turning a much higher profit and a much higher return on their investment than they can find literally anywhere else. Even if you were hugely successful in the stock market, you are not seeing the returns that I’m describing today. So Empire Capital Fund, where can you find out more information about it? Well, you can certainly check my website. But the best thing to do is just arrange a call with me. I’d love to talk to you more about that and other investment opportunities that we are seizing for investors given the current economic and real estate market climate. So for season 16, I am going to bring you more in depth interviews with investors who are hugely successful in real estate. Our theme is investing in the new market and learning to pivot during times of change because ultimately every real estate market has its highs and lows. Every economy has its highs and lows. And if you’re going to be successful in real estate investing long term, you have to be able to pivot and navigate those challenges or those cycles. So we’re going to focus on that and we’re going to talk to investors that have been able to do it. So until next time, take care.

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