First Deal Episode with Mauricio Roque and Princess Escoto

A discussion on a recently closed on a 41 unit, C class apartment complex in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with husband and wife team, Mauricio Roque and Princess Escoto

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Originally aired on May. 02, 2021
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Mauricio Roque
Mauricio is a professional Real Estate Agent in Southern California  with over 5 years in experience helping families, buy, sell or invest in Real Estate in Southern California. His passion is helping first time home buyers find their first home. Prior to Real Estate, Mauricio managed a Bankruptcy Department for a local Law Firm in Orange County while being a constant guest at an ESPN radio show. Mauricio started his real estate investing journey in 2019 after helping one of his residential clients buy their first investment. Since then..  Mauricio  has traveled across the US to identify investment opportunities, meet brokers, lender, and has developed a solid network of professionals ready to take on the next investment. Learn more about Mauricio at his website: https://brickstoneinvestmentgroup.com/
Connect and follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram

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Princess Escoto
Princess is an Industrial Engineer with expertise in Business Planning for almost 9 years in Manufacturing Industry. She is skilled in planning, reviewing, and developing production procedures development , implementation  and control functions in production floor.   She is also a licensed real estate agent and  started her real estate investing journey in 2018.  Her set of skills in business planning and communication skills to Customer gives her advantage to the real estate industry as an asset manager.
Check out her website https://brickstoneinvestmentgroup.com/about-us or email princessescoto@gmail.com

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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 485 units worth $21 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 or Facebook.

Transcript

Princess Escoto: 0:00

What advice would you give an aspiring investor that's six to 12 months behind you.

Mauricio Roque: 0:04

When we started, we didn't network enough. But the moment we started networking, our business completely changed. Our mindset changed our motivation, networking, it's like, I think it's like vitamin. If you're doing multifamily, you may end up finding your perfect business partner. But if I could do it all over again, I would have started networking since day one.

Princess Escoto: 0:36

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 episode number 128 and part of our first deal series. Today I bring on ratio roquet and Princess is Scotto, their husband wife combination out of the Los Angeles area, and we're going to talk about how they recently closed on a 41 unit C class apartment complex in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And now the show Welcome to the diamond apartment investor podcast. I'm your host Brian Briscoe with porlex capital. Very excited for today today's show, it's one of our first deal episodes. And we have risio roquet and purchases Scotto. on the line with us. They recently closed on a 41 unit C class apartment complex in Kalamazoo, Michigan for $1.85 million. And why I'm really excited for this episode is because you know I've known these guys for I think we met dealmaker live and microblog block event in July 2019. Right? That is correct. Yeah, yeah. So I've been following you guys for a while. You know, we've talked a lot been a lot of networking calls together. And you know, I brought you both on the podcast as aspiring investors you know, episode eight with Andy Vaughn that was with Mauricio, and at one princess with chess or mental sign wall, so 10 ratios of residential real estate agent in Southern California, and Princess as an industrial engineer, and also a licensed real estate agent. Their goal is to help others increase their wealth through multifamily investing. They started their investing journey in 2019, their company's Brookstone Investment Group, which they founded in 2020, and they have a couple partners in different markets across the US. So let's do this. Let's talk about you guys. First, each one of you take a turn telling us about yourself. And there we go. Go. Yeah, no, thanks.

Mauricio Roque: 2:39

Thanks for having us. Yes, we started back in 2019. Before that, I was a full time residential real estate agent. I love my job. I love what I do. But we were looking for something that could bring us some type of residual income.

Princess Escoto: 2:54

So I am an industrial engineer and practicing for almost a decade now. And I've come across when multifamily investing when because the Modi CEO, he just like mentioned to me one day like oh, okay, I found that they found a way for us to spend more time together. So like, okay, excited since then. Yeah, yeah. Now, number three. So you said something, you know, you were looking for something to bring more more passive income through. And your business right now is very transactional? What what kind of led you to make that decision as far as Okay, you know, here's where we're at right now. We need to do something different. What was what was kind of the motivator there?

Mauricio Roque: 3:31

It's really easy for any real estate agent to understand this. I'm sure there'll be plenty listening and we'll identify with this. You know, you close the deal. You give your client the keys, you prepare everything champagne bottle, the whole thing, the whole family's there. Everybody loves the you drive home amazing feeling. And the next day you're unemployed in roller coaster. Exactly. So I bet if there's any way that I can close a sale, and get paid from that sale, even a small fraction, that's what I would do. And that's where multifamily came in.

Princess Escoto: 4:03

Yeah, it's absolutely an industry where you can do that where you can one transaction you and you get several paydays down the road, you hold a place, you have renters in it, you're gaining income from the surplus every every month. So definitely a business where we can do that. And purchase you mentioned something that resonated with you. It's something that can free you guys up spend more time together. And I really appreciate that. Yeah, like, you know, like, I mean, all of us are growing. So we just wanted to spend more time together spend more especially that we had our daughter, so we wanted to see her grow and want to see her milestones. So basically multifamily investing or investing would give us that opportunity in the long run. So we just need to get more work right now but definitely will give us that benefit in the end. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's a definitely you know, we're recording super early where you guys are at hoping that You know, the baby stays asleep, right? Yes, we

Mauricio Roque: 5:03

have the baby monitor next to us.

Princess Escoto: 5:05

So But hey, that's, that's awesome. You know, glad you guys were able to get your first deal, you know behind you now we've kind of we've talked about it a little bit, we talked about the income, we talked about the time freedom that it buys. But if you were to in one sentence talk about your big burning lie or express your motivation for doing this, what would it be?

Mauricio Roque: 5:26

I think it started with us wanting to spend time together, because I worked mostly weekends, and she worked Monday to Fridays, eight to five. So the time that we spent together was very little. Yeah, it changed from spending time together to our daughter.

Princess Escoto: 5:41

Yeah, so we wanted, like I mentioned, we wanted to have to spend time with her to see her grill, you know, enjoy every moment with her. And also we wanted to give her a good life. You know, every parent wanted a good life for their for their children. So that's what we wanted to, to pursue on this real estate investing. Awesome. All right, so let's, let's start talking about your journey into multifamily real estate. I think for most people, education comes first. What did you guys do to you know, learn the business and educate yourself about what it took to close on my first deal.

Mauricio Roque: 6:17

We I attended an event A while back in 2019. In March, and after that event, when I came back, and I spoke to Francis about it, we started learning, we started reading and the best thing that we did is start listening to podcasts. Because you can listen when you're running, you can listen when you're driving. And so we would do at least one or two a week, we would grab some sushi, some maybe some wine and just listen to podcast.

Princess Escoto: 6:43

Yeah. So we started the conventional salsa, like the zoom meetings, we attended as much as zoom meeting, so we could do to COVID, you know, and also learn from other investors get their opinions and their opinions. Yeah, we read articles here and there. And we also purchase, you know, some of the Ultimate Guide to the apartment investing.

Mauricio Roque: 7:05

Yeah, that was a big one. Yeah, we invested

Princess Escoto: 7:08

so much in ourselves and our time. And also we hired our coach. So that could help us in the long run when we get a deal. Yeah, yeah. So it's definitely for those listening Ultimate Guide is a makeup Michael Blanc product. But you know, it's it's a really good educational piece. You know, I'm not not paid to promote microblog stuff. But I also, you know, that was also part of my education as well. So, so, you know, just just recapping, you know, you started out with podcasts, because it's a take anywhere, listen to anywhere, medium, started going to events, meetups, you know, both live events. And then when COVID happened to virtual events, paid into an education program, and then paid into a mentorship program. And you know, at of all of those, I mean, if you were to go back and do things over again, with your education, would you do anything different?

Mauricio Roque: 7:57

I think the only thing that we would do different is that we would have started networking sooner, because we did. We've, I think the first six or eight months, it was just us working. And there's not too many people to encourage us. Once we started networking, it was a game changer. But as far as the education part, we would definitely invest in ourselves again. Yeah.

Princess Escoto: 8:18

Yeah, you know, I've said similar things. And you actually right before the show, when we were talking and I said something similar that, you know, it wasn't until I started seeing other people doing it, and aka going to these events, that, you know, I really started realizing that I could do it too, you know, prior to that, it was just, you know, a bunch of random people on podcasts, you know, that I've heard that, you know, maybe you relate to them, but they're they're so distant, but when you can actually sit down with somebody or looks face to face over a computer with somebody, which is almost as good for me that that kind of took things to the next level and helped me with my confidence and realize that, that I could do it. So I definitely agree wholeheartedly with what you guys said. And incidentally, I mean, your story, you know, just replace my name with your name, and it's almost exactly the same so Alright, there we go. So let's talk now you educated yourselves, you started looking for deals. I think that's that's one of the the harder parts. So let's let's talk about how you guys found a deal and kind of what what process you guys went through to get there? And maybe what challenges you had?

Mauricio Roque: 9:24

Well, there were definitely a lot of challenges. The deal that we found, we were working in a different state, and we were hitting a lot of roadblocks. And we talked when we decided, hey, let's look at a different state. And we had some friends there. So we started in that market, which is in this case, the Midwest. We got an offer accepted a week before the lockdown. Needless to say the deal didn't go through. And that was pretty crushing. But we made enough context that one of those contexts that hey, let me connect you to a direct seller. And after six months of talking to that direct seller, he eventually gave us a shot. He only 1000s of units, and he eventually gave us a shot at one of his properties.

Princess Escoto: 10:04

So the property is in Kalamazoo. Now, you said you had friends in the area? Like, are these friends in Kalamazoo? or just general? How close are they to Kalamazoo? And I guess follow on question is, What did you like about the area?

Mauricio Roque: 10:18

Yes, well, we don't have friends, particularly in Kalamazoo, we have friends in Lansing, which is about about an hour or so. And we have some friends near the Detroit area. And we like the area, because of the rents and price per door. I mean, compared to what we were looking at, at other markets, it was half so that allow us to give our investors higher returns. And it was less competitive. Everything that we saw, the environment, the landlord laws, everything match with what we were looking for.

Princess Escoto: 10:52

Incidentally, I read an article just recently that a lot of the bigger investment firms are now moving away from your primary markets into areas like Kalamazoo, because the yields are higher, you can't quite get the same yields in your Austin's and Dallas is that you could you know, three or four years ago, so hopefully you're a little bit ahead of the power curve on that one, you know, so you got in got in before, you know, a lot of the big money comes in and just ride that wave. But

Mauricio Roque: 11:19

one interesting fact is when the whole COVID happened in the whole vaccine, when we saw the footage on the news about the trucks leaving the Pfizer facility with the first doses of vaccines, that's about eight miles from our property. Nice. Yeah. So we're hoping that it'll it will bring some some development and some more investment?

Princess Escoto: 11:40

Yeah, at least at least a short term. You know, hopefully, it's a sustained one. But I mean, with with all eyes on that vaccine, and those vaccine trucks, you know, short term, definitely a little bit of a boost. And hopefully, it's a long term sustained boost, but which interestingly, I mean, if a company like Pfizer is in Kalamazoo, how big is Kalamazoo?

Mauricio Roque: 11:58

The property is in a place called parchment, and which is a smaller area, it's about 20,000 people, parchment calamus is a little bit bigger, but the Pfizer facility as soon as another smaller city in Kalamazoo.

Princess Escoto: 12:12

Yeah. So what I was what I started to say and cut myself off was if it's got companies like, if it's big enough to attract companies like Pfizer, there's probably enough going on, you know, there's enough economic activity that you can, you can go in that city and be able to make good projections on returns. So let's move in moving right along. So you you started talking with this owner of the property? You said it took about six months, you know, how did the conversations go? And how did you? How did you get to the point with him where he was able to or willing to sell you a property. We were I was

Mauricio Roque: 12:49

talking to him probably once a month. And he's a very busy guy. As you can imagine managing or owning about 3000 plus units. And I think honesty goes a long way. I think people that are very experienced, they can see through you pretty quick. And I just told them, what we were doing. We were all new. And this is what we're trying to do what we're trying to accomplish. But at the same time, we also had a strong team behind us. You had an amazing lender, property manager, Attorney, and we knew that we could perform, and we've put how many offers probably a good like four or five offers and on his properties and getting a bit.

Princess Escoto: 13:35

Nice. Good. Good. So you mentioned your team. You mentioned the team. And you mentioned that you have your lenders and property managers. But I know you had other code GPS on this deal as well. Can you talk a little bit about how you guys came together as an entire general partnership and where you met some of these people.

Mauricio Roque: 13:55

One once COVID happened, we knew that we couldn't travel anymore. So my wife had this brilliant idea. Let's do some calls. And let's connect with everyone on the dealmaker live, and see if we can find some partners there. Yeah. Yeah, I

Princess Escoto: 14:11

actually got into a stumbled with you know, after the dealmaker live, everybody's just sending calendly calendly cannon I was just like, what is this calendly you know, so I googled it, I downloaded it I set it up as you know, as our company in our company's name. And then charges tried to probably you you received one of my messages like hey, trying to connect what are you doing? Well, we are we are looking for this this for this deal. You know, we are looking for this market and everything. So I hope we can catch up soon. And then people started sending us some invitations. And then I was just like, Hey, you know, I think we got some connections going on. And then we just like have 123 and then next thing you know, we got like 1516 hours just like doing the zoom meetings for about two months. I think since non stop, since since the since the event, so we just, you know, maximize the networking through zoom meetings.

Mauricio Roque: 15:10

One of the business partners, who is our boots on the ground was one of our strongest business partner. I actually met him on your Friday calls Brian. And it was a networking call. And I mentioned that I had been working on a property in Michigan, and he said, we're in Michigan. And it just happens to be a property that he was about 10 miles away from, and he's mentoring students, so it was perfect for us.

Princess Escoto: 15:36

Perfect. Yeah. And incidentally, I've been doing I started that, that Friday call as soon as COVID happened, and it just like, you know, all my networking opportunities dried up. And I honestly kind of selfishly created that thinking, you know, I need to still network, how can I How can I still network, but you know, glad you guys, you were able to find him through that, and just very coincidental. And in Princess, what you said, I love the amount of effort you guys put into it. I mean, it wasn't just, you know, and I think a lot of people are guilty of this, I was guilty of this in my first you know, couple of big events, is you go you talk to a lot of people, and then you leave the event in your resume normal life, but you guys got back on the phone, zoom calls, you know, a couple times a day or a couple times a week for several months, you know, afterwards trying to basically create this partnership or find people that you could partner with. And yeah, I think that's, that's absolutely key. Yeah, and it's actually intimidating at some point. Because email you, you kind of hit or you get an invite for this people that you've never met, that you never seen ones that you never had a conversation. One sender is just like one of one of them is like, you know, high network people, or one of them is like unknown people. And they were just like, talking to each other. And like, what are we gonna say like, I don't know, better get started with something. And so we know that he's just like, me and Maurice always practice, like, just to be honest, you know, what are you looking at? What are you doing? particularly what are your goals are? And I think that's where we mostly connected with people, that we're just trying to tell them what is our story, versus what we're trying to portray? So and that's how we get connected with this great people. Yeah, yeah. And there's a couple of keys there people like genuine, you know, you have to be genuine, I think it's really easy. When people are putting up a facade, it's really easy to see right through the facade, I mean, maybe not on the first phone call. But if you get to, you know, 234 phone calls, it's really easy to see through that facade. But being genuine is absolutely crucial in building relationships. And I also like what you said, you just you talked about what your goals are, and and what you guys are interested in and what you guys are trying to do. And if if you talk about that the two different the two or three people in the conversation, you can immediately see if your goals align, you know, if your goals align, there's a good chance that a partnership might work. If your goals are 90 degrees off of each other go in different directions, it's probably going to be really easy to see, hey, this isn't gonna work. You know, it's nice talking to you. I think you guys are awesome. We can be friends. But business, let's not do business together. It's kind of how that works. But I think that's exactly

Mauricio Roque: 18:19

how it worked. I mean, after a couple of weeks of doing calls is pretty easy for us to tell if this person would be somebody that we could potentially work with, or just, you know, somebody that we could encourage each other.

Princess Escoto: 18:31

Yeah. And I've done probably hundreds of calls, you know, at this point with either potential investors or people who basically asking for help, you know, and hey, what, what can I do? And it's amazing at how quickly you can decide, hey, I think we are aligned, or we're definitely not aligned, you know, so, within 1015 minutes, if you're deliberate about it, you can figure that out. But well, good. So let's go back. Talk about this deal. Again. Let's see, we talked about finding the deal, you guys got it under contract. Let's talk a little bit about due diligence. And after that I want to talk about, you know what type of loan you guys got. So go ahead and take us away take us from their due diligence. This is the most exciting part, you know, and not a lot of people are actually talking about it, like you said, people is just looking for the sexy part, which is finding the deal finding the market raising the capital, but not no one really talked about the due diligence, and there's hardly actually books out there or as far as I know, books out there talking about due diligence, and even with the networking people or with the networking events, nobody has been really talking about due diligence. So it's a very tedious process. There's a lot of there's a lot of things going on it as far as you know, you cannot when you get the deal under contract, you can only see a bird's eye view of it, but not really like the you know the details of the due diligence, talking about finding The people to work with insurance guy, accounting team, your marketing team, or if you have any marketing team, your marketing package, your your zoom meetings, I'm sorry, Your webinars, you know, also, aside from that you have to get connected with your lender, with your attorneys with your legal partners. And there's a bunch of things going on side by side that you as one person you wouldn't really yeah. wouldn't know where to begin with. I think you're absolutely right. You know, a lot of people who are in the education business focus on finding the first deal, because that's, that's really that's the hard part. I mean, that's the biggest hurdle people have to face. And I think a lot of people get in a situation where they finally get a deal under contract, and they're sitting there. You know, what now, and incidentally, I have a book right behind me, that is the due diligence handbook for commercial real estate. It's the only one I could find on the subject. And it doesn't, it has like four pages that are multifamily. You know, it's just one of those things where I think you're absolutely right, I think a lot of educational programs need to focus a little more on that one. And just the overall closing process, like you said, you have to have an SEC attorney, your your insurance guy has to be involved, your lender has to be involved, all these people are part of due diligence and part of closing. And, you know, if you don't know what order to put them in, it's going to delay a lot. I got an Excel from from one of the coaching calls. So we had under the mentorship. And it's just happened that I saw this an Excel file full of lists of what you guys need to do when you do a deal. And there's just a bunch of like, items. So you have to take every time you do this, you have to every time you do that, and it's just like so much that you wouldn't really know where to get started with or which ones are actually happening the same time where we go first.

Mauricio Roque: 21:54

So from supplier, yeah, yeah.

Princess Escoto: 21:58

Because, you know, you don't know like, okay, is this is this XL meant to be for syndication or meant for JV or meant for ignite, you know, no one really knows about it is just like a people are so someone that put up that list based on their experience. So every experience is different from each other. It's it, you know, you might end up doing something that the other party didn't do in vivo in the process.

Brian Briscoe: 22:26

Yeah, I mean, we on our first deal, I think the thing that it didn't really cause a problem, but it had the potential is we didn't start a title search immediately, we're probably, you know, month, month and a half into the deal. And, you know, my mentor said, Did the title search, come back clean? My title search? Oh, my goodness, you know, and, and so we got the title search going. And I mean, this property had changed hands probably a dozen times in the last 30 or 40 years. Right. So lots of title searches has been done. But the title search came back with, you know, something back in the 50s, where, you know, something wasn't properly transferred. And it's just one of those things where if my mentor didn't say, hey, has a title search been done yet, you know, we may have been too late in the game to get that resolved before the contract was over. And that's something that the the title, the title attorney said, Hey, in order for us to write you a policy, we have to get this resolved. You know, so, aka, that's a deal breaker, if you don't get it fixed. So yeah, same thing. You know, we were, I'm not gonna say woefully underprepared, but, you know, it was our first time going through the process, you know, we need to be done. But the timing and when things get done is also important, you know, so, we've actually started front loading. I know a lot of people will say, you know, delay spending money as much as you can. We've actually started front loading a lot of that stuff, you know, that makes sense. Yeah.

Princess Escoto: 23:53

Yeah, is the same thing that we did because we we hit on our own this steel in particular, we hit on do our due diligence and closing process, we actually hit some holidays on Christmas. So you know, your Your days are counting even though people are off. So we're like we lost like two weeks, getting prepared for greement with with our investors. So due to that we actually last like two weeks and we're kind of like, okay, we're unable to open the account the bank accounts because we're missing something, we're missing something, something like that. And it's first time investors dealing with your first deal. A lot of this terms are actually synonyms to each other and you kind of like what do you mean or I mean, we're sorry that they're interpreted with two different people. So title search for one party is different with title search with another party with your your team, title search with oil or attorney with title search with your lender or with with any insurance, you know, assess, is mind boggling. And then next You know, Hey, did you do this? Like, like, like I said, you know, have you have you done your title search? And oh, I thought our attorney already did that? No, it's two different things like, and they kind of like put us back on the track and like, Okay, well, what else do we need to do? What else? And one thing that we would probably say to those people that are entering their first deal, or dealing with their first deal, it's kind of just like, ask with your team. What else do we need to do after this? You know? Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's where a mentor really helps somebody who's done the process before, you know, so they can they can help guide you and give you that Excel spreadsheet and not just give you the spreadsheet, but talk through why things are important. So Good, good. So let's, let's talk a little bit about the loan you guys did, you told me earlier, it was a recourse loan. And once again, a lot of people will say, don't get a recourse loan. I don't agree with that myself. But obviously, you guys got a recourse loan, tell us tell us why you guys decided to get a recourse loan. And tell us about that loan process.

Mauricio Roque: 26:02

Yeah, we hear a lot. And we hear the same thing, don't get a recourse loan, don't get a recourse loan. But what we found is that a lot of the people we've talked to who own apartment buildings have gotten recourse loans. And including our mentor, he does those all the time. And we say how well it works for him. So he doesn't see it like this taboo, something that I need to stay away from, he sees it as an opportunity to use it in his favor. So for us, at first, it was a little intimidating. But once we had a good conversation, a team called with our lender, and he explained the benefits, he also explained the risk, it was an easy decision. For us, it was easiest way to move forward the fastest way. And I think it gave us a good strategy for the future,

Princess Escoto: 26:49

we've done a handful of recourse loans ourselves, and it's in my opinion, it's one risk factor, that you have to weigh into the entire property. I mean, it's not like, you know, it's it's an absolute, you know, go or no go criteria type thing where, you know, you absolutely do not have recourse loans, it's part of the overall risk profile. And you look at that as just one piece of the bigger picture. And we've had a lot of situations where recourse loans just make more sense.

Mauricio Roque: 27:18

Yes, exactly.

Princess Escoto: 27:19

It exposes you to a little bit of risk. But, you know, if you properly plan, you have the reserves, you have the insurance, you have everything set up, right, that risk can be mitigated.

Mauricio Roque: 27:31

So Exactly, exactly. I think it's a great tool. I think, like I said, it's a little bit of taboo. But I think for someone who is new, don't block the thought of potentially getting into a recourse loan,

Princess Escoto: 27:43

just just for listeners sake, you know, Princess had to get up take care of the baby. So, you know, it'll just be me and Mauricio for a little bit. And we'll see if she she makes it back. But so we talked about a lot of challenges you guys had, you know, just the the processes, you know, getting things lined up, right. But you guys finally closed. You know, I understand you. We talked about a prior to and I don't think we want to go too much more into it. But you know, your last minute almost delayed by your insurance rep for a minute. So that's also a big, big issue could have potentially, you know, rain on your parade. But you guys close. So let's talk right now about the first steps after closing, and how you guys handled that?

Mauricio Roque: 28:21

Yes, we're just like you said, we have some some delays, that could have been a big issue. Luckily, we were able to overcome them. And we happen to close. We didn't plan on this. But we happen to close the day that our daughter turned one year old. And we were heading out to the mountains for a vacation. And our phones were ringing, we were signing documents via DocuSign we're listening to the GPS, I mean, responding to emails, and it was just a moment for us to take a deep breath. And finally, get some rest. Anyway, we just needed to get some rest because he had been very stressful at the very beginning. And as soon as we closed, the first set that we did was to get in a phone with the property manager and game plan. I mean, we already had a game plan, boom, this was the time to start executing.

Princess Escoto: 29:11

Yeah, I mean, prior to closing it's all theoretical gameplan but once you once you close Yeah, that's that's the first thing we usually do on closing is you know, we talked with the property manager and just like a property manager we closed execute the game plan, you know, exactly go you know, so awesome, you know, and I do you remember our first deal many sleepless nights, you know, prior to just wondering you know, if we had a couple of hiccups last minute to like most people do on their first deal. The good thing is I'll tell you is it gets easier, you know, and as you learn the process better, you have things lined up, and you have far fewer sleepless nights, hopefully in your future deals, but

Mauricio Roque: 29:49

we definitely hope so. And we've heard before that there's always a curveball in every deal. And we knew that would be some at some point and sure enough, it can Always, it's always different. I mean, you can aunties try to anticipate curveballs as much as you want, but some of them are coming from left field instead of the pitcher's mound. So, exactly.

Brian Briscoe: 30:09

How's that for a double baseball analogy? Wow. So what's next for you guys?

Unknown: 30:16

Well, we are, I think our main goal right now is to strengthen our relationships and our partnerships. We were very blessed to have connected with some great partners, one that's you know, that I met through your calls and the other one through our networking calls with and in North Carolina. So we want to bring more value to them and hopefully grow in their markets. We want to improve our capital raising. When we raise capital for this property, we did it right between the elections and Christmas. And so it's, I mean, it was tough. We had a lot of Yes. So now we're seeing the bigger picture. And we're thinking, hey, let's just connect with more people. And let's try to have more opportunities. Let's try to have more products. We are looking currently doing a big deal in LA, we also want to look into storage units in the future, we want to be able to provide different options to our investors.

Brian Briscoe: 31:14

I see. Yeah. And that's all a lot of good stuff going on there. I mean, you're just just trying to keep the ball rolling add to the momentum that you have. And you know, very, very much wish you success in everything you guys are doing. Oh, by the way, you know, we've had a couple of, you know, holiday closings and they are difficult. You know, it's kind of hard, calm people asking to wire funds when, you know, it's a, it's a holiday weekend, you know, and you're like, well, we got to close on Tuesday. But Exactly,yeah, a little bit of planning can sometimes mitigate that. But there's always something you know, always something there. All right. So here's, here's my favorite question in the whole podcast, what advice would you give an aspiring investor, that's six to 12 months behind you.

Mauricio Roque: 31:54

But we talked about this with princess a lot, because the answer for us was the same. When we started, we didn't network enough. Like I mentioned earlier, the first six or eight months, it was just us, and a couple of people that we were talking to, but the moment we started networking, our business completely changed our mindset, change our motivation. And there's plenty of great phone calls and some calls that go to happen every week. But yours is my favorite one. There's a Julianne also has a good focus on Tuesdays. But networking is it's like, I think it's like vitamin. If you're doing multifamily. You may do it just for the encouragement. Or you may end up finding your perfect business partner. But if I can do it all over again, I would start networking since day one. Yeah, I

Princess Escoto: 32:48

love that. I think that's a great idea. And incidentally, you know, you never know, when you first meet somebody how long how far the relationships gonna go, you know, so something I've learned is, you know, just just keep on keep on pressing. And yet that the more people that you meet, and you talk to and you have these conversations with, the more likely you are to find somebody who's compatible with you as a business partner. So

Mauricio Roque: 33:09

yes, if I could ask something, one of the calls that princess mentioned that we would we connected with a gentleman that does really, really well. And so it's a little intimidating, and he does some projects here in LA, if you can believe it, and he does extremely well. So that's what we have the big project with now, after seven or eight months of talking to him, he they have been looking at what we have been doing, and we got invited to do a deal with them. Nice,

Princess Escoto: 33:39

nice power of networking. So yeah, you get the ball rolling. And, you know, I know, you know, our common mentor, Michael Blanc talks a lot about the law of the first deal, you get that first deal under your belt, you get momentum, you know, you get a little bit of credibility, and you know, people start paying attention a little more, you know, so that was that was the case with us. And looks like that's, that's the same with you as well. So last question for you, how can our listeners learn more about you,

Mauricio Roque: 34:03

the best way would be to go to our website, which is braceland Investment Group comm You can also find Francis and myself on LinkedIn and Facebook, but we're pretty active on both. And I'm always on the phone, My phone number is 714-650-3690 that's probably the easiest way to connect.

Princess Escoto: 34:22

Okay. And we'll put links to the website and your phone number in the show notes. So anybody you I encourage you to reach out to Tim ratio and Princess but if you want their contact information, it'll be in the show notes so you don't have to stop and you write that down right now. But anyway, Mauricio, appreciate very much for coming on to the show today, you know, understandably, you know, Princess had to step out for a second but please relay my, my thanks to her as well.

Mauricio Roque: 34:47

No, thank you, Brian. Thank you for having us. I hope this helps those that are struggling or those that are trying to find they're stuck somewhere and hopefully this helps them get to the next step. Yeah. Thanks for doing Just fine, really appreciate it.

Princess Escoto: 35:07

Thank you for listening to the diamond 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 comm slash podcast or email us directly. If you're still listening, you obviously like the show. So pull out your phone, tap, subscribe, and leave us a five star rating on your favorite podcast app. And we'll see you again next week.