ATE-Finding Partners with Sandhya Seshadri and Chalmette Ray

From finding investing partners to establishing yourself as an aspiring investor, Sandhya advises Chalmette on today's episode.

Interested in being on the show?  Visit our website at www.fouroakscapital.com/podcast or email me at brianbriscoe@fouroakscapital.com
Download our free investing guide at www.fouroakscapital.com

Originally aired on Sept 28, 2020

Sandhya Seshadri

Sandhya Seshadri has Bachelor's and Masters degrees in electrical engineering and worked at Texas Instruments for over fourteen years in various technical, marketing and management roles with revenues in excess of $80M and budgets of $28M. During her time at SMU acquiring her MBA 20 years ago, Sandhya began investing in the stock market and built a portfolio that allowed her to “retire” early from her corporate career.  She diversified into commercial real estate in 2018 and has passively invested in 3500+ doors in Multifamily, and syndicated 2 deals.
Find her and her free Passive Investor Checklist at https://multifamily4you.com/

----

Chalmette Ray

Chalmette Ray is from Houston Texas with a background in medical research and she’s co-authored several academic publications in that field.  She became a real estate agent in 2007 and has been full-time in the industry since 2014.  She has passively invested in multifamily and is looking to own more and more apartments.
You can contact her at LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/chalmetteray/
cray@crayinvestmentgroup.com 
(281)-798-3005

----

Your host, Brian Briscoe, is a co-founder and principal in the real estate investing firm Four Oaks Capital.  He and his team currently have 168 units worth $7.5 million in assets under management and are continuing to grow.  He will retire as a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Marine Corps in 2021. Learn more about him and the Four Oaks team at www.fouroakscapital.com or contact him at brianbriscoe@fouroakscapital.com - be sure to let him know where you found him.

Connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, or on Bigger Pockets.

Tweetable Quotes

"You don't have to restrict yourself at this point. At this point, just work on your expertise which you have to offer. And I bet it'll be easy to find a partner." -Sandhya Seshadri

"A year ago, you might have just said, Oh, I can only meet someone who comes to this conference, I can only meet someone who wants to my local meetup. Well, now you've got access to people pretty much anywhere thanks to zoom."-Sandhya Seshadri

Transcript

Brian Briscoe : 0:00

Well Chalmette we have Sandhya on the line here with us. What do you want to ask her?

Chalmette Ray : 0:03

How do you suggest an aspiring investor kind of go about laying the groundwork for hopefully having a partner as far as investing,

Sandhya Seshadri : 0:12

figure out what you have to offer and shortlist about half a dozen people and build a relationship with that. I know some people form a partnership at the beginning and stick with the same partner throughout and farm company and have these pretty logos, etc. But I wouldn't get too hung up on just partners. At this point. Just work on your expertise what you have to offer, and I bet it'll be easy to find a partner.

Brian Briscoe : 0:43

Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor podcast with your host Brian Briscoe. In this podcast we bring some of the top professionals in the apartment investment field to discuss various aspects of the apartment investing journey with the sole purpose of educating listeners to make wise investment decisions. The Diary of an Apartment investor podcast is sponsored by Four Oaks Capital bringing you high yield returns through apartment complex investing. This is journal entry number 37 and part of our Ask the Expert series. This episode experienced investor Sandhya Seshadri guides aspiring investor Chalmette Ray and finding investing partners. Welcome to the Diary of an Apartment Investor podcast. I'm your host Brian Briscoe with Four Oaks Capital. Very excited for today's show. It's one of our Ask the Expert episodes and we have two amazing women on the line with us today one with a ton of experience in this business and a couple others as well. Sandhya Seshadri and a very motivated energetic aspiring investor Chalmette Ray. So first introduce Sandhya she has a master's degree in electrical engineering worked at Texas Instruments for over 14 years in various technical marketing and management roles, with revenues in excess of 80 million and budgets of 28 million. During that time, she was also at SMU acquiring her MBA, she also began investing in the stock market pretty heavily built a portfolio that allowed her to retire early. From her corporate career. She's now diversified into commercial real estate, and is passively invest in 3500 doors, and has now syndicated two deals on the GP side of the house. So Wow, that's very impressive Sandhya that said, welcome to the show.

Sandhya Seshadri : 2:16

Thank you so much for having me here. Brian. It is such an honor to be here. And first, before we get into more questions and details. I want to say thank you so much for your service. Really appreciate you for what you did. And your 20 year anniversary year. Retirement is coming up. Congratulations on that.

Brian Briscoe : 2:34

Thank you, Sandhya. I appreciate that. I'm so glad to have met you. You know our our mutual friend Julie, Holly set us up. So I'm going to give a public thanks to Julie for introducing us because you know, I've had a lot of fun getting to know you over the last week or so. I'm excited to to continue the conversation here. So that said, Why don't you tell tell us a little bit about your background and your history up until you decided to move into apartment building investing.

Sandhya Seshadri : 2:58

So I dreamed of America for a very long time I was growing up in India. And I had a nice uncle who brought me here one summer just for a visit. And I got to go up the World Trade Center and look down from there. And that was a defining moment for me to say what a wonderful place this is. This is where I want to live. But I had a small problem. My parents combined monthly income, which was plenty for us to live a comfortable life was about 70 $75 a month. And the college I wanted to come to here cost me about $20,000 a year. So it just wasn't going to happen through my parents savings. And that's what motivated me to decide. Find another way to get here, and the way was through scholarships. So I applied for scholarships, I worked very hard to make very good standardized test scores. And I came to Dallas 30 years ago, first with a scholarship. And right after that I got hired into Texas Instruments. So I have my web background. And texting is a wonderful employer had a great career there. And once I had children, I also have the stock market knowledge and experience because of my MBA, I was easily able to match my corporate salary with my stock portfolio. So I sort of retired early to stay home and years into the stock market and doing well I was very blessed and lucky that the stock market did so well for many of us that my portfolio grew. And I was starting to pay a lot in taxes every year. So that's when I was like I need to diversify. I need to find a way to pay a little bit less in taxes. And I had never really gotten into real estate because I assumed that real estate was all about single family rentals, buying the house down the street and moving out each time I buy another house I just rent out my previous house. And I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to self manage. I didn't want to worry about tenants. I didn't want a tenant calling me in the middle of a Thanksgiving dinner you know that they had a leak or some problem. So I stayed away from that until A friend told me about multifamily and passive investing to begin and get my knowledge. And then it was two years ago that I made my first passive investment. And it was fantastic. Because after that, I realized, when you think about the risk adjusted return, like the Sharpe ratio that we use, when analyzing stocks, this was much less risk. This is a hard asset. It's a great way to invest and learn the process without taking on all the risks yourself. Because the fund the deal sponsor or operator takes on a lot of risks. But you as a passive investor don't necessarily have to, you kind of get to watch and look over their shoulder and see what they do. But then you're not taking all the risk yourself. You're still learning the business. So it's like practical training. And then I attended one of those weekend seminar events, and it was all about multifamily. It was with a mentoring group that was based in Dallas, which is where I wanted to focus. And I was sold, I was completely sold. So I joined it right away. And it's been fantastic. Awesome.

Brian Briscoe : 6:06

Now, you mentioned up front that part of part of your motivation for this was was for your tax bill, how did your tax bill change after you started investing in multifamily? You see a significant decrease in taxes owed,

Sandhya Seshadri : 6:18

I did I have a significant decrease in taxes, thanks to the tax law that allows you to take advantage of both the cost segregation and the bonus depreciation, all of it in year one itself, instead of throughout the next, say, 10 years over the life of the air conditioning unit, for example, right? brought us a huge tax bill. So I'm on target this year to pay practically zero in taxes. Last year, I cut my tax bill by over 50%. So just the tax savings from investing in real estate made it worthwhile for me to get into it.

Brian Briscoe : 6:54

Yeah. And that's huge. I mean, for somebody who has a large tax bill, and I mean that the tax system is not it's structured, almost penalize the high income earners. So if you have a high w two income, that those are the people that get taxed the most. And if you can offset some of those taxes with a real estate investment, I mean, it's Win win. So and I love what you said about you invested passively first, you know, and right now you're up to 3500 plus doors. I love how you said that helped you to learn about the business you learned from the syndications that you were invested in you learned about the business yourself. So good point. So let's switch right now let's switch to talk about your motivation, your your big burning, why for for investing in apartments.

Sandhya Seshadri : 7:35

So my biggest Why is like for many of us, our family know being able to provide for our family increase our earnings for the year in a more risk adjusted way. But at the same time having control of our schedule, because I know what it takes to go back to the corporate world, make my salary make it even better. I mean, you look at people like our presidential candidates, they're well into their 70s. So I still have a few decades left to go into the corporate world, but then they control my schedule, I have no say in what times I have to either show up or be logged in remotely, or travel on business, which I had to a lot, especially in my peak corporate days. And I didn't want to do that I really felt like quality of time with my family was very important. We love to travel together, which I hope to after this COVID. So that's my big Why is not just to have financial freedom, because I already have that. But to combine that with real freedom, which is true freedom control of your own time, you get to do what you want. And when you want to me that's my big why. Because it means whether it's volunteer work with charities, spending time with my family, or promoting causes that I believe in, for example, really promoting STEM education for girls is one of my passions. So I offer free math, tutoring to children who cannot afford it or who struggle in math, because I think math confidence is how you get financially free. It's not about doing some worksheets and understanding calculus, it's about knowing simple things you do everyday when you go to the grocery store. It's about not getting fooled by investors investment opportunities, and being able to analyze them correctly. It's about being able to calculate what's a mortgage payment, you know, just being the financial decision maker of a household. And so that's all starts with financial literacy, which is a big piece of math, which by the way is included as a topic now in schools.

Brian Briscoe : 9:37

Yeah, you know, I have two degrees in math. And I actually taught a math class and this is this is 20 years ago, before I came in the Marine Corps. One of the math classes I taught was exactly all of that. And I learned more. I mean, it didn't go into algebra or I mean the level of math it takes to understand that it's actually fairly low level but the understanding that you get from that has a symmetry returns on it and just being able to understand the compound interest understand that your, your your credit cards not the best way to finance things, you know, things like that. So anyway, I love your why, you know, all centered around your family. And you know, the fact that you're giving back and free tutoring is is amazing that you're doing that for the people. You're from an engineering field. So you're right in the middle that stem I'm from a mathematical field, I'm on the back end of that. So. But anyway, who better to get tutoring from than somebody with a master's degree in double e so well, good. So let's talk about one of your deals or your projects that you've done with real estate right now. Can you give us a overview of what you do? Or maybe a deep dive into one of one particular deal?

Sandhya Seshadri : 10:39

Yeah. So as I mentioned, I had joined this mentoring group couple years ago, and their focus in the Dallas market, which is where I live, which is the suburb and areas that I know really well, low crime versus high crime. So by being with this mentoring group, I was able to interact with a lot of great people such as yourself, Brian, I just met you through a connection. But just like you, I met a lot of great people just because that mentoring group has several meetings throughout the year. And I found who would be my future partners. So again, passive investing is another great way to build that relationship. So my first deal was an 86 unit property for which we paid 6.7 5 million. We raised about a little over 2 million in equity. And we finance the rest. It was a Freddie Mac loan, we got 80% LTV, we closed this deal about 13 months ago, it's been doing really well. This was in a secondary market place called Cleburne, which is about 30 miles from Fort Worth. So it was a little bit below the radar for people they know all the big cities in the Dallas area. And so I think a lot of people didn't know about it. So it wasn't a super competitive bidding war kind of way that other deals in like Arlington or Fort Worth, or Irving etc, in the Dallas area, get so many more offers. So I found my partners because they were also bidding on the same deal. And they had the experience, they were within the same mentoring group. So I just literally chased out for them and said, You should really take me You're both out of state. I'm here. So that's how I got my first deal. And they were kind enough to take me on and let me be a part of it. So I helped in all aspects, I had also underwritten the deal visited the property been part of the due diligence helped a little with the capital raise, although quite not as much as they did, because they have the experience. And we all agreed on the business plan. So at a high level, one of the biggest things we were going to do was move the leasing office. So this property has townhouses on one side and apartments on the other. And the leasing office was occupied in one of the two storey two bedroom, one and a half bath townhouses. So it was the largest square footage of all of our units. And for us to not have that rent wasn't going to work. So we moved that leasing office to be on one side of our laundry center. So we built really hard reinforced walls, so that somebody doing laundry couldn't just punch through and get to the leasing office. And this area already had plumbing in there. So it was a pretty inexpensive project, it was under 20 K, maybe 15 k kind of range, well, where most of the work to do there because there was already existing plumbing. And by doing that, we got immediately an additional 1200 plus in revenue, which is 14,400. And that's

Brian Briscoe : 13:36

that return on investment you basically paid for itself in about a year's time. Yeah, that's that's a really smart move right there. I think that's brilliant, you recognize really quickly that they're taking up revenue by by parking at the office right there. And for 15 $20,000 expense. That's, that's brilliant. I love how you guys did that. I mean,

Sandhya Seshadri : 13:57

when you add up signage and all the other extras, it was probably a little bit more, but it was well worth it. And so what this did was immediately gave us that extra unit for revenue. One of the other things we did was the water conservation program by which we had low flow toilets, and etc. Because we still had one side of our property on all bills paid. So reducing the water bill made a big difference to us. We did have some tenants on a government assistance program for paying rent. So they just prefer to get all bills together. So the water conservation helped us a lot. So that was one of the quickest things we did again, it was part of our business plan. We really liked this company as as we haven't had leaks and other problems or you know, overflowing toilets or Clogged toilets because of it because of the specially designed toilet that takes into consideration that this is an older property, and it worked out really well. So in fact, our savings were so high I think we were featured in one of their showcases to demonstrate how much you can save in water. So it's been over a year and one of the things We look at with our property management company every week is the service request, what kind of problems are we seeing in the property so that we can address them maybe with a cap x if we see the repeated problem occurring all the time. So we haven't seen any major issues with Clogged toilets or anything. So that was a really good project. So that was the second project. Another one was LED lighting throughout the property, because we had really old bad lighting that was costing us a lot more. So again, when you have all bills paid, LED lighting is just much more efficient. And then we had ones with sensors as well as certain common areas.

Brian Briscoe : 15:35

Yeah, I think in some areas, a lot of those make a lot more sense. In areas where utility costs are high, the LED lighting can have a huge return on investment, you Same thing with the water bill in areas where the water bill is high, huge return on investment. Similarly, we've got we got a property that we're working on right now we're going to try to trim the water budget significantly as well, because it's doing about triple what the comps are doing as far as you know, water per unit per month. So

Sandhya Seshadri : 16:01

yeah, and I think that even when you are able to Rob's or get your tenants to pay for it, if you reduce their utility bills, it means it's that much more wiggle room for you to increase your rent, so to speak, because they're generally used to paying a certain amount for all their costs. So I would say that these two conservation methods are really good LEDs as well as water conservation. Now another fourth thing we did was because we have townhouses on one side, and actually there's a residential street that runs by it with a lot of single family homes, we added private yards to all of these townhouses, and we immediately got a rent bump of about $40. Okay, offered them and the cost was about 1200 for the fences,

Brian Briscoe : 16:45

or per door for the fences.

Sandhya Seshadri : 16:47

Yes, pro 1200 for the fences, but you got a monthly rent bump of 40 bucks. And Max your noi pretty well.

Brian Briscoe : 16:54

Yeah. And that's about a 40% return on investment. Your one pays for itself in two, two and a half years. So yeah. Not not to not to mention you increase the noi?

Sandhya Seshadri : 17:05

That's right.

Brian Briscoe : 17:06

Right, well, Sandhya. So what's what's next for you?

Sandhya Seshadri : 17:08

Next for me is to continue to acquire properties in the Dallas area, if they make financial sense, there's not a specific number of doors that I'm after, as much as enough to afford third party property management, which usually happens at hundred plus doors. But if there's a property with 40, or 50 doors near an existing property that we already own, then it may still make sense. So again, financially, what makes sense marketing wise, is it still meeting all of my criteria for low crime for grade market for diversity of jobs, job growth, population growth, all the usual things that we look for, in buying a property, I want to do that, I certainly want to partner with more people, I've had the pleasure of meeting people like Julie that Brian mentioned a little bit earlier, there's just so many wonderful people I have met, but I'm still sticking with Dallas. So anyone who's out of state that wants to partner with me, and the property is in Dallas, I'm very open to partnerships. and community involvement is a big one for me. So every one of our properties, we want to make sure that the tenants know how much they are appreciated. We want to partner with providers in the community to come and do things with the tenants like whether that's health screenings, whether that's fitness, etc. I want to partner with local vendors, because of COVID. We couldn't do quite as much of that. But we did do goodie bags for our tenants, that's a big one for us, we'll definitely do that, again at Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or giving up school supplies to children, etc. So making sure the community of knows how much they are appreciated, and doing things that enhance the tenant value and keeps them in our property is what we're going to focus on.

Brian Briscoe : 18:48

You know, and that's huge. I mean, if you look at a tenant, and one of my previous guests named Bruce had a very great philosophy that I love. You look at your tenant as a $40,000 customer, things like that make a lot of sense, you know, you can put 10 or $15 per unit into school supplies. And if that keeps one or two people from moving out and you avoid those turn costs. Number one, you have happier tenants, you have people who want to move there, you have tenants who are telling their friends, hey, you're looking for a place one down the street or one on the next floor up just went vacant? You got to get that. So those little expenses, I think have have large returns on them. You know, sometimes it's really hard to capture, but I think it's really smart. And I love how you had the community mindset on the apartments.

Sandhya Seshadri : 19:37

Yeah. Earlier I said that we moved our leasing office from the big townhome to this other side by our laundry center. Yep. Now to get to that leasing office, you have to pass through the entire courtyard that's in the middle of all of our apartments. And so now because every prospective tenant is walking through that, we enhance that in a big way we have a nice pergola release station. Also very nice picnic benches and accent colors that match the doors. And then we actually in front of all of the lower level apartments, we provided these benches as well. So they're all uniform. They really color coordinate. And now when tenants come out, they're not sitting out there plastic chairs in different colors or assorted items there. It's very uniform. They love sitting out now. So it's again a community, especially with the socialists, and same time you know, you sit in your bench, they sit in their bench, able to keep the six foot apart and still feel like okay, I'm not alone in this stuck in my house. So it's been great.

Brian Briscoe : 20:35

Yeah, yeah, a lot. A lot of good tips there. Go for that community feel and people will want to stay you'll have sticky tenants are gonna have less turnover time. And you're like, like I said, you'll have tenants who are bringing their friends along with them so Well, great. It's been been great getting to know you. We're gonna transition right now and bring our aspiring investor on. We have Chalmette Ray here show might raise from Houston, Texas. She has a background in medical research. And she's co authored several academic publications in that field. She became a real estate agent in 2007. And has been a full time in the real estate industry since 2014. She's passively invested in multifamily is looking to own more and more apartment building. So that says show Matt, welcome to the show.

Chalmette Ray : 21:15

Thank you, Brian. Thank you for having me. I'm extremely nervous. But Sandy is here. And she's great. So I feel like I'm in good hands with Brian and said,

Brian Briscoe : 21:25

Yeah, well, she's amazing, not just great. So well. You know, I met you talk to you a couple times. It's one of the online virtual meetups and super impressed with you. So let those nerves go away. We're just talking here. So let's let's do this. Why don't you talk a little bit about your background and your history. And we'll take it from there.

Chalmette Ray : 21:42

Well, like you said, I'm originally from Houston, Texas, born and raised here and still choosing to live here. I enjoy. It's, it's hot, but it's okay. And I have a biology degree minor in Chemistry. So I'm a scientist by trade. And I spent a considerable amount of time in the academia, space in the Texas Medical Center at Baylor College of Medicine, as well as partner with Texas Children's Hospital. And there, we did a lot of nerdy things, but basically, the various projects on working on ways to address sepsis and infection and the blood system and really focusing on children actually. And so after a little over a decade or so of that various projects, working on different medicine, different ways to test laboratory scenarios that would mimic in vivo what's going on, you know, using as humans as lab rats, so to speak. And after that I ended up getting laid off, but I had my real estate license. And I chose to pursue real estate full time in 2014. And spent and has spent a considerable amount of time just researching and learning how more specifically the multifamily space works, because I thought people were putting their money together, and just meeting each other to Starbucks and just, you know, a considerable amount of money together to buy properties. And I did not quite have an understanding on how that was going. So I actually attended several or I should say, a considerable number of conferences, locally here in the south with some of the common gurus because in my mind, they are, they're people that have an extensive amount of experience and in the space. And I took time to go to several conferences, and I've met a lot of awesome people that know way more than I do. And I have seen real life, what multifamily can do in the lives of so many. So last year, I actually took the step and invested passively and the asset in the suburbs of Houston. One of these students from one of the Guru's here in the south are based out of Dallas. And I always had on my bucket list, I wanted to own an apartment, but then also, I wanted to buy a rental home to national. Like that was something you should do. And so I did that last year to get that out of my system as well. And so since then, I've just been contained to meet just awesome people. And then with COVID-19 that really is push the button and push me in ways I don't think otherwise I would have entertained because we've had to, you know, just kind of stay tight, sit at home and be quiet and safe. And so met a lot of great people like you and Sandy on LinkedIn and just continue to build relationships with people that are in this space. And it's just been really cool because it's it's an abundant mentality. We don't necessarily guard so closely to this information. I don't mind sharing and encouraging and just really it's it's something that's kind of insane because then the scientific world that I came from, we don't do that.

Brian Briscoe : 24:54

Yeah, I mean it's competitive because your your publisher die in that community. So if you're not publishing, you lose your job. And if somebody else takes your idea and publishes it first, all that hard work goes away. And that's something I enjoy about this as well is there, there's so many good people, there's so many people who are willing to share their knowledge. And I'll tell you something that's impressed me about you is you've been able to take action, you know, you've done some learning, you've gone to a lot of conferences, and a lot of people stop right there, they go to conferences, they have a great idea, but you've been able to passively invest, you've been able to pick up a rental property on your own. I'm sure that a couple years from now, you'll have a gigantic portfolio, you know, of multifamily to talk about. Sothat's the plan. Yeah, yeah. And we will get you there. So let's let's talk about this. I think this is important whenever you're planning is to talk about your why, you know, because in my case, my y has fueled me to be able to reach my goals. So what is your big burning? Why?

Chalmette Ray : 25:52

I've been burning, why, to be honest, has evolved over the last few years. I lost my mom when I was a little girl like 10 years old. So I didn't necessarily come from people that think the way I think even now, I don't usually share with a lot of my family because, yeah, they just don't understand. And so Originally, I always thought I just wanted to own rental property. And that's kind of all I just knew. And then it evolved into apartment buildings. I want to know, how are people who owns those buildings that, you know, maybe you lived in, in college, like I did in college, I lived in apartments, and I was like, wouldn't it be cool to own this and on a different level just kind of changed the game. And now my Why is I would like to have dual citizenship. I want to have opportunities to options, I should say, to live somewhere else remotely, and still be able to be financially free to, to do what I want for however long I want. That's that's my motivation. I've even taken it so far. My husband and I are currently a third year in learning French, not only wherever we end up going, I want to be able to speak the language of where I end up going. Yes, that's, that's, that's my why I want to live internationally and be able to have dual citizenship work and split my time. I mean, I like to us. I don't I don't want to. I don't want to leave here, you know.

Brian Briscoe : 27:27

Yeah, but there's a lot of opportunities. You know, I speak Spanish and Portuguese and I know how difficult it is to to learn a new language. So so good for you. But it's so much fun being able to see what else is out there besides just just this country. So good.

Chalmette Ray : 27:42

Yeah, that's, that's, that's my big one.

Brian Briscoe : 27:44

All right. Well, good enough. Well show that we have Sandy on the line here with us. What do you want to ask her?

Chalmette Ray : 27:50

So, Sandy, my first question is regarding mentors. How important are they? And do you suggest an inspiring investor? It one, or do you feel like they need multiple mentors just kind of based on just the various moving parts of investors journey?

Sandhya Seshadri : 28:14

I think it completely depends on the goals. How quickly and what do you want to accomplish will determine how many formal and informal mentors you have, I consider pretty much every person I'm doing with as a mentor in some ways, and a mentee in some ways. I don't know anything about residential, single family. So if I ever got into it, you could be my mentor. For example, I don't know much about Houston. I'm always thinking anything, Houston is flood zone. So if I have a property in Houston, guess what I'm going to send it to you. So you would be my help or mentor in that sense. But if you wanted to get into multifamily quickly, and you wanted to do it through passive investments and building relationships, and finding a sponsor, you could do that quickly through a mentoring program. But you don't necessarily have to, it's not the only way to do it. There are mentoring programs with various levels of participation, and therefore the fees you pay them and the coaching needed for it. Like I was new to real estate, I did not know how to underwrite deals, I did not know any of the terminology. So a coaching program that provided me with a ton of videos that I could playback as many times as I needed, was perfect to start with. But then I also had access to coaches, and I could book calls with them as many times as I wanted. I did not want a program which said you get an hour a week for the next eight weeks, and then boom, you're done. You know, I didn't want something to be quite so specific. I liked this one because I could call on my coaches whenever I needed. So for example through COVID there were a couple of months when I didn't underwrite any deals, and I never called out any coach. I was just I don't know in my own little shell or something with my family sheltering at home. But then I've had so much deal flow in the last two weeks. I think I've Made a half a dozen coaching calls even though I'm an experienced underwriter who's underwritten at least over 200 deals in my, you know, couple of years, easily more than that. But I still had six coaching calls in the last two weeks. So I wanted a program that gave me that flexibility, instead of just saying, you know what it's use it or use it, lose it, you know, you get four calls a month, and if you didn't use it that month, okay, boom, it's gone. So I needed that flexibility. And I was willing to pay the extra money, because when I pay the big bucks, I knew it would get me there, get me to focus and get it done. Because if something is free, whatever is said and done, we meant I've taken quite seriously, you could probably get a lot of that knowledge through free podcasts, etc, by watching enough of the famous gurus. But when you put your money, it's sort of like you're not going to study unless you have a test. So I needed, I needed something to keep me in check for a mentoring program. And we can certainly talk about all the different mentoring programs out there. But one focus is when you choose one, make sure they focus on the market that you're interested in. Yeah, if I metric was based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and that was where they were well known, that wouldn't have helped me because I didn't really want to get into that market. That's wonderful. A market as it is.

Brian Briscoe : 31:08

Yeah, I agree. You know, I did mentoring because I wanted to accelerate things. But there's a lot of people, you know, one of my partners, for example, has publicly said he's anti coaching as in, you know, he wanted to do everything without a coach, he's got a lot of informal mentors. So So, pick, pick one that works for you, you pick a strategy that works for you, I think Sandy hit the nail on the head, you know, figure out what your goals are. And mentoring can and should play a role in that, but really depends on your goals and how fast you want to get there.

Chalmette Ray : 31:39

So do you Sandia suggests certain educational avenues for women? And if so, do you think they should be different based on minority women? Since I'm a minority? I just wanted to know like, what are your thoughts on that?

Sandhya Seshadri : 31:59

So I spend most of my time in the engineering world, which is definitely male dominated, etc, versus being a minority woman there. And so learning from folks all around me is something I've always done, not necessarily because of their gender, or, you know, Caucasian versus non, it's more of who has the knowledge I need, who's going to get me there to where I want to go. And that's how I base it. And so when it comes to your knowledge, the first thing I would do is make an assessment of what are the things I already know, and I'm proficient in, and what are my gaps that I want to fill. So I look at syndication, if that's your goal as three prongs, the first one is to find a deal, underwrite it, make sure you have the broker connection for them to give you the deal, right. So finding the deal, it all falls into the one first from the second one is raising capital. So you need to be established or confident if you're dealing yourself to where people trust you and will give you their money, so to speak, to invest in a deal that is going to be lucrative for that. The third part is asset management, to where you execute the deal now. So it's very nice that you have designed this beautiful car. Well, now it's time to take it on the road, and make it work and make it reliable and function and come back. So asset management, that's the third piece. So of these three pieces. As a newbie, I would say focus only on one piece and do it the very, very best you can. And that will be what you have to offer to an experienced syndicator. Let's say you want to deal with do a deal in the future with say, Brian, or someone else that you meet at a conference, what do you have to offer to them that they should take you on as the newbie, right? So for example, you can rely on your own expertise of the Houston market us a realtor in the Houston market, you could be the one to establish relationships with brokers, etc, and find the deal in in Houston. And you could also get better at underwriting to where you can underwrite a deal really well so that when you go talk to say the Bryan's of the world, you could just say, I have a deal in Houston. Here's how I underwritten it, this is your cash flow IRR. And this is what an investor can make. And now I need help with raising some equity for it. And I need some help sort of monitoring me with the asset management. So even though you're located somewhere else, this deals right here in my backyard. So I can be boots on the ground, and I can go help you. But I'm going to need you to mentor me through this and make sure this business plan makes sense. And so figure out what you're going to offer to an experienced syndicator become an expert in that whatever way that gets you there. And then make it hard for them to say no,

Brian Briscoe : 34:41

yeah. didn't keep on networking until you find somebody who says Yes, that's it. That's simple. So and you've got a really good background in science. So I would imagine you're probably going to be a pretty darn good underwriter when it all comes down to it. Yeah.

Chalmette Ray : 34:57

No, it's a question. Okay. Well would you suggest on how an aspiring investor would pivot and kind of position themselves in this climate? And what some investors would have done last year, this time, I would imagine, is different. Now, since we're in a pandemic that no one was expecting, would you suggest anything different or just still go with that?

Sandhya Seshadri : 35:21

I actually think it's easier now, in some ways, because if your goal is to meet the Bryan's of the world, a year ago, you might have just said, Oh, I can only meet someone who comes to this conference, I can only meet someone who wants to my local meetup. Well, now you've got access to people pretty much anywhere. Thanks, zoo. So all you have to do is look at the last time you went somewhere or look at the last person on a podcast who impressed you and say, What do I have to do to go talk to this person? I really like the way they think I really like the way they do business. I want to make a friend so you know, go to multifamily group where they're active, start commenting on their posts, try to have some side conversation, see if you can set up a call and build that relationship. So identify and shortlist about five or six people that you really want to do business with in the future, and start with asking them what their market is going to be. And I think, would you the biggest thing you have to offer is your local market and knowledge. Like I think you'd be far more helpful for a deal in Houston than a deal in you know, Atlanta, for example. Right. So in that sense, I would use that. And so in terms of the climate being different now versus a year ago, I'm still seeing deal flow like crazy right now. And they still want pre COVID pricing. So people are acting like there is no pandemic in a way when it comes to deals that I'm seeing at least in the Dallas area.

Brian Briscoe : 36:40

Yeah, yeah, all distill it down. I mean, I was going to conferences, I was going to local meetups, you know, I was I was spending a lot of time doing that. And I have probably tripled my network from the beginning of this pandemic, just because everybody went online. And now it's so easy to connect. I mean, that's how three of us connected was was through virtual meetups.

Chalmette Ray : 37:02

Have one other question if I have time.

Brian Briscoe : 37:04

You got time? Yep. Go ahead.

Chalmette Ray : 37:06

So I'm still relatively new in the space. But I'll be honest, I always feel a little sad, because I see so many people that have partners. So I know it's a team sport. I understand it all day long. How do you suggest an aspiring investor kind of go about laying the groundwork for hopefully having a partner RS investing? Or is that something you would suggest focus on it a little later?

Sandhya Seshadri : 37:32

I would focus on shortlisting, maybe six people from all the conferences, meetups, etc, you've attended, and trying to get through to those six people first. And make sure they're interested in your market. And what you have to offer is of interest to them. Because believe me, if you find a good deal, that cash flows well, and it's off market in the Houston area, for example, you can definitely give me a call and I'll connect you with a dozen people if it's not me. So in that sense, figure out what you have to offer and shortlist about half a dozen people and build a relationship with them. But I wouldn't get too hung up on just partners. I know some people form a partnership at the beginning, and stick with the same partner throughout and farm company and have these pretty logos, etc. I'm not that way, I have a great set of partners, but they also invest everywhere. So I've got three different sets of partners. Right now, we are under contract for a JV deal, which is a completely different set of partners than my other two deals. So I think you just got to be flexible as things move. And people change and markets change some folks who used to be all about multifamily or moving into other segments, and I still want to stick with multifamily and with Dallas. So I wouldn't get too hung up on this partner like you might partner with me on one deal, or Brian on another deal, etc. You don't have to restrict yourself at this point. At this point, just work on your expertise which you have to offer. And I bet it'll be easy to find a partner.

Brian Briscoe : 39:05

Yeah, when forex capital came together, we did not have long term partnership in mind. We came together for one single deal. And the long term partnership ended up coming out of that we just like you know what we'd really like each other. We worked well. We were in the same markets. We were interested in the same thing. We had the same objectives. So we ended up forming a long term partnership, but I would agree a lot with what she said. I think your focus needs to be getting that expertise at the very beginning. And then you'll become a lot more marketable. And you do have a lot of good things going for you especially Houston is a hot market and a lot of people from places other than Houston are looking for deals in Houston. So the good enough Well, we're about at a time right now. So I've got one more question for each one of you and San Diego first, how can listeners get in touch with you

Sandhya Seshadri : 39:57

can come to my website multifamily Number four y o u.com. Good provide your name and email address there and you can get a free passive investors checklist to vet a sponsor and by doing that it does not sign you up to any kind of a mailing list and you won't hear from me again unless you want to so no fear there. You can get the free checklist and that's it but that's the easiest way to locate me. So

Brian Briscoe : 40:23

free passive investor checklist no strings attached and they can opt in if they want to opt into your your mailing list. Exactly. All right, good deal. I'll put the multifamily for you link in the show notes and also put a little blurb in there about the the impressive investor checklist correct? Yes, perfect, perfect. And show that same question for you. How can people get in touch with you?

Chalmette Ray : 40:48

Well, you can catch me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active. Chalmette re and that's Chalmette like Chalmette, Louisiana. And that might make it a little easier for people. And I'm also at C re SC, re Investment Group comm if you want to email me or to 2817983005.

Brian Briscoe : 41:08

All right, and I'll put all that in the show notes. So anybody listening, just tap your screen, scroll down to the show notes, and you'll have links to all of those. All right. Well, ladies, thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was a pleasure spending the last hour with you guys and look forward to you know, hopefully interacting a lot in the future.

Sandhya Seshadri : 41:27

Thank you so much.

Brian Briscoe : 41:28

Great. And that's a wrap. Thank you for listening to the Diary of an Apartment Investor podcast today brought to you by Four Oaks Capital. If you'd like to know more about how to invest in apartment buildings or want to be a guest on our show, visit our website at Four Oaks capital.com slash podcast or email us directly. If you're still listening, you obviously like the show. So pull your phone app subscribe, and leave us a five star rating on your favorite podcast app. And we'll see you again next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai