Agents Building Cashflow

EP 124: Multifamily Real Estate Success Strategies with Axel Ragnarsson

• Axel Ragnarsson

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0:00 | 47:48

Axel Ragnarsson, the Founder of Aligned Real Estate Partners, shares his journey and strategies in the multifamily real estate investment space, emphasizing the importance of starting small, focusing on achievable deals, and leveraging personal funds for initial investments. He discusses his transition from individual property investments to raising capital for larger deals, highlighting the benefits and challenges of both approaches. Axel also touches on his specific focus on small to midsize multifamily properties, primarily in New Hampshire, and his methods for finding off-market deals to generate significant returns. 

Additionally, he shares insights on market selection, the value of direct seller engagement over brokered deals, and the operational efficiencies gained from vertically integrating property management. The conversation also explores broader investment philosophies, including the pitfalls of chasing trends and the importance of focused, long-term strategies in building wealth through real estate.

Key takeaways to listen to:

  • Starting in real estate with manageable, direct investments.
  • Transitioning to capital raising and larger multifamily deals.
  • Focusing on specific market segments for better returns.
  • Direct seller engagement and off-market deals.
  • Operational efficiencies and property management strategies.
  • Investment philosophies and long-term wealth building.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

  • The Multifamily Wealth Podcast with Axel Ragnarsson - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-multifamily-wealth-podcast/id1511607285

About Axel Ragnarsson:

Axel is an active real estate investor based in Boston, MA. He is the founder of Aligned Real Estate Partners, which focuses on acquiring class B and C value-add assets in multiple markets throughout the United States. Currently, Aligned Real Estate Partners either directly owns or has a GP interest in 450+ units of multifamily real estate and has been a principal party in $62M+ transactions.

Axel has directly sourced, raised capital, and operated mid-large multifamily transactions in numerous markets throughout the U.S., including FL, IN, NH, and TX. He is also a founding partner of Blue Door Living, a property management company based in NH that manages over 300 units of small to midsize multifamily real estate. Axel is also the host of The Multifamily Wealth Podcast, one of the industry’s most highly-rated multifamily real estate podcasts.

Connect with Axel:

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To connect with Randal and learn more about passive investing, visit www.ridgelineig.com and follow our social media pages below!

[00:00:00] Axel Ragnarsson: Buy something that's well within your financial means people. I think they're, you know, buying a duplex isn't sexy. That's not a fun to put up on Instagram. You're not raising money to do that. You're probably using your own money to do that, but that's the easiest way to get going to get going into the right direction to start building momentum.

[00:00:14] Axel Ragnarsson: Uh, if you're starting from zero and you're trying to find a 50 unit deal, you're never you're just not going to do that. Like I, that doesn't happen. Right. And if you do have, if it does happen, you are such the exception to that, that it's insane. So I wouldn't bet on that. I would bet on you just going out there and finding a 2, a 3, a 5 unit deal or something like that.

[00:00:31] Intro: That's achievable to purchase with your own money. If you're a real estate agent earning 200, 000 a year and you want to grow your passive income, this show is for you. Learn secrets other agents use and hear from experts in our field who will guide you on your journey to investing in assets like apartment communities. So you can take your commissions and turn them into cashflow. Here's your host, Randall. Let's dive in. 

[00:00:56] randal mcleaird: Hey, welcome back. Great to have you on today. Today we have with us [00:01:00] Axel Ragnarsson. Um, he is an investor in the multifamily space. He does a lot of operations in the New Hampshire area, living in Boston, investing in New Hampshire.

[00:01:10] randal mcleaird: We talk about, you know, the types of assets that he's buying small multifamilies in the 15 to 80 unit space. That's his specialty. Um, how he's vertically integrated with his, his management company. Um, and just in general, we talk about investor mindset in a way where you can easily get sidetracked on shiny objects and chase down certain things.

[00:01:28] randal mcleaird: And so we talk about some of the mistakes that he's made, mistakes that I've made. Um, and, and it's definitely a helpful and beneficial if you're looking to get into the sub market or looking to invest in multifamily in general, we talk about the difference between just being a capital raiser and actually owning and operating the deals yourselves.

[00:01:44] randal mcleaird: Um, so stay tuned, stay, uh, pay attention to that. I hope you're getting a lot out of the show. Um, if you are getting value, please go on rate and review. It helps us a ton. Bring on amazing guests who are bringing, uh, their knowledge and expertise to you so that you're learning on a weekly basis. [00:02:00] All right.

[00:02:00] randal mcleaird: So without further ado, let's jump in the conversation with Axel. Here we go. Hey, Axel. Welcome to show. Second time. 

[00:02:07] Axel Ragnarsson: It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. No, I appreciate the invite. Happy to be here. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:02:11] randal mcleaird: So again, why don't you just tell us, uh, you know, the market that you're operating in and, and your, your main focus and what you're working on these days.

[00:02:18] Axel Ragnarsson: Sure. So, um, I'm in Boston, Massachusetts. Uh, grew up in New Hampshire. Um, fundamentally, I started at the end and I came back up, give it a quick spark notes of the story, but our business today is very similar to what a lot of people do around the country. As it relates to, we, uh, we go out there, we raise capital, we buy apartment buildings, right?

[00:02:34] Axel Ragnarsson: We buy multifamily assets. We have a very narrow focus in terms of what we buy. We buy small to midsize deals, which I define as, um, 15, 20 to 80 unit deals throughout New Hampshire, uh, and then occasionally we'll expand outside of New Hampshire, but, uh, very narrow focus kind of within an hour of Boston.

[00:02:52] Axel Ragnarsson: And, um, and that's really what I've been doing for the last eight years, since I got into this, uh, back in 2016, I bought my first property, which is a small [00:03:00] multifamily property. And, um, my first four or five years in the business were just grinding away, finding discounted off market deals, you know, cold calling, sending direct mail, sending direct emails and, um, buying with private money lending and just refinancing into long term debt and organically growing a portfolio with my own resources and my own cash did that for about four or five years realized that I had, you know, bigger aspirations and continuing to stretch myself pretty thin with my own dough.

[00:03:27] Axel Ragnarsson: And I wanted to buy some bigger deals. I wanted to buy more deals and it was just really hard to do that. Even if. Um, I was finding great deals and using private money lending, just managing the cash, which just started to become really challenging. So I started raising capital from LPs in 2021. Um, we bought a few deals, uh, in Florida.

[00:03:45] Axel Ragnarsson: We actually expanded at the same time. We did a few deals in Florida that At that time, when we started, um, raising money and, um, those deals all went extremely well, uh, we sold 3 of them. We still own 1 that we're still operating right now. At the same time, we were buying real estate in New Hampshire with LP [00:04:00] capital and just, you know, continuing to organically grow the business.

[00:04:04] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, we didn't go the road that I think a lot of folks that got into the syndication game did at that time from 2020 to 2022, where they just were trying to, you know, they became obsessed with buying large assets, 100 plus unit properties. We were very okay playing in our lane, which is going direct to seller and finding discounted off market deals and that 20 to 80 unit range, um, and doing a higher volume of those every year in markets.

[00:04:28] Axel Ragnarsson: We understood really, really well where we could operate. Well, so in New Hampshire, we bought a couple 100 units in 2021, but slightly less than about a buck. 50 and 22. But a little over 123, um, you know, as the market started, as, as interest rates started to go up, our volume started to come down, but the biz, we grew the business in a very sustainable way.

[00:04:47] Axel Ragnarsson: And now we're in a great position relative to, I think, a lot of other folks that have been in this game and have done what we've done over the last couple of years. And, uh, well positioned to continue growing throughout the rest of this year, um, and into the future. So, that's kind of the high level Spark [00:05:00] notes, but happy to dive into any component.

[00:05:01] Axel Ragnarsson: Yeah, 

[00:05:01] randal mcleaird: yeah. Solid. I got, so on the, on the unit mix and unit size, um, there are a lot of guys that, uh, went to like seminars and, you know, they, they came out of the seminars wanting to buy those 150 plus unit deals, bigger is better type thing. And it's always interesting when I have conversations with some of the guys and some of the masterminds that I'm in, uh, I'm like, how'd you get started?

[00:05:22] randal mcleaird: I mean, I bought a six unit or I bought a, I bought, you know, a 20 unit or, you know, then I, then I slowly geared up. So it's always good to hear, um, I guess actual deals getting done, right. And, and you're the principal on the deal, you're actually operating it and you're running the thing. So, um, the question I have around that one, I like that size as well for a couple of reasons.

[00:05:41] randal mcleaird: I'm wondering why you are still operating or why you pick that size. Um, and what is it that, that you're doing? I heard you, you're sending out mail, you're direct to seller, all these things. And I understand why, but for a listener may not understand if they're trying to target multifamily, um, breaking into the, the asset [00:06:00] class, you know, you go bigger, maybe it's, it's, uh, controlled by brokers, that sort of thing.

[00:06:05] randal mcleaird: So why do you focus on that size? 

[00:06:09] Axel Ragnarsson: For sure. So, uh, there's a handful of reasons I'll kind of walk through, you know, just, just some off the top of my head. Um, and to take a step back when we think about fundamentally what you can do as an investor to accelerate your returns while also mitigating your downside risk, the, the one most important decision you make throughout the entire investing process when you're buying a piece of real estate is determining what you pay for it.

[00:06:30] Axel Ragnarsson: It's the most important parts of the entire process, and it's really not even close. Um, it's the most important decision that you're making. Um, it helps to mitigate a lot of the risk after the fact. If you buy at the right price, you can go a little bit over on your construction budget. You know, maybe you implement your business plan over a longer period of time.

[00:06:49] Axel Ragnarsson: It takes a little bit longer. Um, you know, you, you, you miss under wrote 1 of your expense line items. When you buy at the right price, everything downstream becomes easier. So that's what we care about the absolute [00:07:00] most. And then it also helps to accelerate your returns very significantly when you're buying a property at 10, 15 percent below market, comparatively to playing a paying market.

[00:07:08] Axel Ragnarsson: So understanding that that is a foundational fact of real estate investing, how do we actually go out there and find those discounted deals? Well, if we work backwards, um, we've, I think about competition a lot when we, uh, when we're investing, um, and I'll bring it all back, but. All these folks that went out into the Sunbelt and we're buying deals in Tampa and Austin and Dallas and all of these extremely competitive markets.

[00:07:30] Axel Ragnarsson: They were competing with a high number of buyers and then more sophisticated buyers, especially those larger assets. But even in the range that I was describing. And real estate is, it's a, it's a business like any other where you have competition, you're competing with other buyers, you're competing with other investors, you're all chasing a finite number of deals.

[00:07:49] Axel Ragnarsson: So therefore it's, you should be mindful of who you're competing against when you're going out there and doing deals. So being in Boston, you know, we, we had all of the desire in the world to go down to the Southeast and you know, every [00:08:00] wall street journal article talking about how everybody's moving down there.

[00:08:03] Axel Ragnarsson: And we were constantly thinking about getting pulled down there. And we did, and we did a handful of deals in Florida. But even within Florida, there were tertiary markets, you know, not those primary markets. And all of this to say, we worked back into our acquisition criteria through a function of that.

[00:08:16] Axel Ragnarsson: We need to buy great deals. It's easier to buy great deals. We're not competing with a lot of folks. So what, what does that mean? What do we actually look for? So we get to New Hampshire, right? We're an hour away from Boston. We're still close enough to a major city. New Hampshire is a quality market from a fundamental standpoint, but it's still more of a tertiary market comparatively to the hottest markets of the last 3 or 4 years.

[00:08:36] Axel Ragnarsson: And therefore, we're competing with less folks. And then we say, okay, beyond that, what segment of that of the market in terms of property size, can we focus on to further mitigate competition? Well, that 20 to 80 unit range is kind of that messy middle where it's too big for local folks who are using their own dough, or maybe it's a couple of partners trying to buy a deal and it's a little bit too small in terms of the deal size, which I usually describe as 10 that [00:09:00] cutoff, at least in my opinion, for larger institutions who have a much lower cost of capital than we do going out there and raising retail funds from just accredited investors in our network.

[00:09:08] Axel Ragnarsson: So, all right, now we know exactly what we should look for. Again, how do we increase the likelihood that we find good deals? Now is when we start doing, we start sending direct mail to these owners. We start cold calling these owners. We start sending emails to these owners. And while we're still networking with the brokers and the other service providers that might be able to refer as deals, we realized that a broker deal, again, back to competition, you're competing with the largest number of individuals because they're taking it out to the, to all the buyers in that market.

[00:09:34] Axel Ragnarsson: So when you're going direct to seller. You're increasing the likelihood that you are not competing with other buyers, which therefore increases the likelihood you can secure a great price. And that's what we built literally the entire business around is just doing that, um, and becoming extraordinarily well versed within that product size, within that marketplace.

[00:09:53] Axel Ragnarsson: Understanding it, you know, understanding the market on a street by street basis, much more so than other folks that are coming in and trying to compete with us. So we know [00:10:00] exactly what we can pay exactly what it costs to operate. And, um, and we just want to be top of mind as it relates to getting in front of all the sellers while also maintaining great relationships with all the deal finders, you know, the other investors, the brokers, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:10:13] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, so that's, that's how we backed into focusing on that sizing. 

[00:10:17] randal mcleaird: Okay, so then my, my question is more of a tactical 1 and, and I guess a numbers 1, then if you look at, because I mean, that's the same model that that we use when we're targeting like single family, I mean, we're spending a ton of money on direct mail at the staff and everybody that was vetting all the deals doing everything that goes into that.

[00:10:35] randal mcleaird: Um, when you think about the cost that it takes to find a deal, like, I don't know what your cost per acquisition is, uh, but I'm sure you guys know that number, but does it make sense? Are you getting that 10 to 15 percent discount? Is that making up for the cost? Are you doing enough deal volume? Um, because somebody coming in and saying, Hey, I really want to get into multifamily.

[00:10:56] randal mcleaird: Um, should I do it on my own or should I go to the broker? Like, uh, which path [00:11:00] is, is the path of least resistance or, or does it matter? So. Yeah. You're shaking your head. Yes, but like what, what, you know, obviously it's working. 

[00:11:09] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, I'll outline it. Yeah. I mean, I'll just give you a quick example, right? I think, um, uh, you know, and I think fundamentally a lot of people have trouble conceptualizing this, right?

[00:11:17] Axel Ragnarsson: Because one, there's a scarcity mindset components of it, afraid to spend money or time or energy, right? Maybe you're not spending money on mail, but you're spending time calling or you're spending manual time emailing owners with without any certainty of there being. Right? Some level of return and you're right.

[00:11:31] Axel Ragnarsson: There is no certainty, right? This is a you have to make some kind of leap of faith here. It's like marketing in any business You just have to assume and and and develop a plan that increases the likelihood that you see a return but the beauty of multifamily Is that the deals are larger in size such that doing one deal The the roi on the time investment and then the marketing dollar spend is so drastic that you're basically paying for it forever Like, like literally that's how I think about it.

[00:11:57] Axel Ragnarsson: Right. And that's not a deep level of analysis where I'm saying, Hey, we [00:12:00] spend 4k on mail per deal that we get, frankly, I don't care about tracking that because like I've paid for my marketing for the next 300 years over the last two years. You know what I mean? Um, we spend maybe 20, 30 grand a year on direct mail marketing.

[00:12:13] Axel Ragnarsson: You know, we're not mailing a massive data list, right? There's only a couple thousand properties on our list. We mail typically every quarter, sometimes more often. Um, if we're opening up a new market, um, I have a full time acquisition. He's got a salary who goes out and calls and does all that. But for example, like we, we bought a deal in 2021 at literally the peak of the market.

[00:12:31] Axel Ragnarsson: I think everybody retroactively looks at 2021 is the highest price point. In the history of real estate. Right. And we've come down since then. Um, we bought a 40 unit portfolio in New Hampshire. We paid 4 million. We had to invest roughly 500 grand into that about 12, 000 a unit in cosmetic renovations. So four or five and hard costs with transaction costs, we went at four, six, five within a year while the market was starting to come the other way.

[00:12:54] Axel Ragnarsson: And while, while rates were starting to tick up that portfolio price for 6 [00:13:00] million. Um, and we just sold one of those assets for even higher than our appraised value just a year ago to continue recouping some cash. That's a deal that would have traded most likely at four and a half million. If it was a broker deal, we paid for, cause we were direct to seller like, okay, so that 500 grand in equity is just like, we're good.

[00:13:16] Axel Ragnarsson: I'm good on direct mail for until the end of time. You know what I mean? So it's, it just requires one, it just takes one. And you know, I like to, to frame it this way as well. If you spend, let's say you have a thousand. Properties on your list and you send mail every quarter four times a year and you spend a buck a mailer.

[00:13:32] Axel Ragnarsson: So, you know, you're spending, um, whatever that is, four grand a year on direct mail. Okay, so let's say you do that for 10 years, you spend 40, 000 on like, do we think we're going to get a deal on that time frame? You probably will, right? And if you buy that million dollar property for 850, okay, you've 3x'd it, right?

[00:13:50] Axel Ragnarsson: In terms of equity that you've achieved at closing. And that's and we do tons of those deals. I mean, we've bought over 300 units direct to seller over the last few years going direct to seller. Um, and, [00:14:00] and, and kind of leveraging these, these types of strategies and these tactics. So it's you just do 1 and it all pays for itself.

[00:14:05] Axel Ragnarsson: I mean, it's lazy analysis, but it's the reality. No, no, that's 

[00:14:08] randal mcleaird: fantastic. I just wanted you to outline it because it's it. For some people that I know, like people talking to him, it's it's a difficult. Yeah. To conceptualize how to break into a business or to start buying multifamily. And the simple fact is if you're doing the work, if you're doing some marketing, doing some things, answering your phone, making, making phone calls, then you can buy something.

[00:14:27] randal mcleaird: So it's that, and it's just the, the, the other side of it was comparing the two, um, either direct mail or, or, or marketing in general for your own deals or going direct to broker and see, uh, the difference between those two. So. Um, the other thing I want to ask you about on that, on that asset size is like for management.

[00:14:45] randal mcleaird: Are you guys vertically integrated? Do you guys handle all of that in house or do you guys outsource that? And what does that process look like? 

[00:14:51] Axel Ragnarsson: Yeah, so we own our management company, at least in New Hampshire, you know, we still have our building in Florida, which we have third party on. Um, but, uh, but in New Hampshire, our in [00:15:00] house PM company, uh, we, we manage our own stuff.

[00:15:02] Axel Ragnarsson: And then we also manage third parties. So we currently own about 300 units in New Hampshire, like in terms of what we personally own, but the management company manages about 600 units. So it's, you know, we have a, uh, 300 units in third party management. We do as well. So all in house, we control that whole process, which.

[00:15:18] Axel Ragnarsson: Okay. It's kind of important for that type of market where it's scattered site, a lot of small to mid sized properties. There are other management companies, but, but they're not great, you know, and, uh, just given the fact that it's not necessarily like a large mature market, like a major city is where you have, you know, even a larger number of management companies to choose from.

[00:15:36] Axel Ragnarsson: And if you don't like one, you can go find another one. And there's usually a best in class. So in that area, we like to think we're the best in class. Obviously we're biased, but like we built it out knowing what we needed. And, um, and then we leveraged our platform to go and manage for other folks as well, to help us continue building out our team.

[00:15:51] Axel Ragnarsson: And it's a lot easier to run a big management company comparatively to a small one, which is right. Which is why we started doing third party as well. But we, we control that whole part of the process. [00:16:00] Yeah, gotcha. 

[00:16:00] randal mcleaird: So on the, on the tactic side on a, say a 30 unit. So like I'm buying a 24 unit, let's just talk about a 24 unit.

[00:16:07] randal mcleaird: When you guys are looking at the management, have you guys implemented any kind of tech or any kind of systems that have helped you guys manage that size with fewer people or not onsite, 

[00:16:18] Axel Ragnarsson: um, management? Yeah. So from a tactics standpoint, in terms of like tactical boots on the ground management, um, we do leverage a lot of tech and I'll just start free balling and sharing a lot of what we do.

[00:16:30] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, we've started to embrace self showings as it relates to how we actually lease units. Um, so. A lot of people are petrified of that. And there is, you know, you can't really do it with like the D plus to C plus, you know, you got to be careful which type of properties you implement this on. But if you have a C plus B minus or better type of property, uh, we use that folio.

[00:16:51] Axel Ragnarsson: It integrates with a product called tenant Turner, which is our leasing platform. And, um, and we just enable self showing so that it's a little easier instead of sending, uh, [00:17:00] our 2 leasing agents running around, driving around all day, trying to meet individual residents and perspective tenants. Throughout, you know, kind of a 45 minute radius.

[00:17:08] Axel Ragnarsson: That's not, you know, it's a very inefficient process. So. The way we've structured it is, is they just do their laps a couple of times a week to check on our vacancies, to make sure that doors are locked, that property, you know, that floors are clean, that no one's tracking snow in and out type of thing, but we just give perspective residents the ability to upload front and back of your ID, a credit card, you can go and check it out at your own time, right?

[00:17:30] Axel Ragnarsson: So we increased the volume of showings from a leasing standpoint. That's been big for us. Um, we heavily leverage VAs, you know, we have like, I think we have five VAs in the business, uh, tenant relationship managers, uh, on the bookkeeping side, you know, just kind of general admins helping to manage all the paperwork behind the scenes.

[00:17:47] Axel Ragnarsson: We use all kinds of systems, automations from a, from a process standpoint, you know, for example, a tenant moves out, there's like 30 things that have to happen, which is crazy to even think about, you know, you think it's a simple part of the process, but then actually [00:18:00] write down everything that's got to happen from a.

[00:18:03] Axel Ragnarsson: Off boarding and security deposit disposition to getting our maintenance guy out there to look at it, to assessing what the turnover requirements are to this, to that, everything that's got to happen before you get it back on the market, there's like 30, 40 steps. So we use a, uh, a software called lead simple to, which again, integrates with that folio, which in my opinion is the best property management software.

[00:18:20] Axel Ragnarsson: We've used all kinds of different PM softwares, um, both on the ownership side, and then as the third party client, cause I've worked with all kinds of management companies as a client at folio is the best. You know, unless you're doing like 200 plus unit institutional assets where maybe it's like a yardy, but for us, that fully was great integrates with everything.

[00:18:36] Axel Ragnarsson: And so lead simples apply from, we used to automate a lot of, um, that process there and then at folio itself too, is interesting because they have all kinds of like, they're leading the charge from an AI implementation standpoint in the PM software world. So they're implementing all kinds of like smart maintenance.

[00:18:54] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, tenant calls with a maintenance problem. You know, my, my toilet is running nonstop or my sink is leaking, [00:19:00] whatever. You know, I got a, I got an outlet that doesn't work. Smart maintenance will suggest all kinds of initial fixes to that, to that tenant so that they can see if they can resolve it themselves before we dispatch a tech.

[00:19:11] Axel Ragnarsson: But they also collect surveys so that we can troubleshoot any, like, long term maintenance issues, try to preserve residents. Um, so there's all kinds of stuff we do, and I'll stop there before I just, before I ramble for too long, but, but those are some of the big things that come to mind. No, that's helpful.

[00:19:25] Axel Ragnarsson: Very 

[00:19:25] randal mcleaird: helpful. Um, so I, I guess let's, I take it back to, um, some of the stuff that you guys have bought. Um, so you're doing the. Uh, you guys are own most of the stuff in New Hampshire, the, the deal that you have in Florida, is there a reason you guys have stopped in Florida or is there, would you guys go back there?

[00:19:42] randal mcleaird: And even before that, like, how did you even pick that market? Um, you know, I know it was exploding. I know guys that were buying stuff for 30 million selling for 70 million and in like 18 months, you know, it was like insane. Um, so yeah, couple, couple questions within a question there, but yeah, 

[00:19:58] Axel Ragnarsson: yeah. So, um, when we [00:20:00] started thinking about getting outside of New England, um, you know, it's like the shiny object syndrome.

[00:20:04] Axel Ragnarsson: I'm like, Oh, maybe like the Midwest that's, you know, it's, it's safe, but then we have the Southeast higher growth, but then in the Southeast we have all these cities in Florida, but then we also have Texas, but then also Atlanta, Georgia, people are moving there. So at some point I was like, you gotta like, just, you have to drown out the noise and you just need to focus on one.

[00:20:20] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, and if you're in the deal sourcing and operations game, like you just, you have to have very narrow levels of focus. It's really hard to be a generalist from a market standpoint, you're going to get burned. So for me, I was like, I have a friend just at a time. I have a friend who lived in Tampa. So I was like, okay, I'm going to go look in Tampa.

[00:20:35] Axel Ragnarsson: Right. Great city. I really enjoy visiting there. It's a three hour direct flight. Um, I can see, you know, the longterm desire to build a portfolio out in Tampa. And then we realized that we just couldn't compete in Tampa again, because everybody was looking at Tampa, right? So it was one of those challenges.

[00:20:49] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, even though it had great metrics, like we just can't compete and we're huge on buying at below market value. Like we just are not interested in doing deals unless we can do that. Um, so then we said, all right, well, where [00:21:00] near Tampa can we look? So we started looking inland. We looked 45 minutes inland in a town called Lakeland.

[00:21:05] Axel Ragnarsson: Which is sits right between Tampa and Orlando. Uh, but a hundred thousand people, smaller market still competitive, but like we could reasonably compete there from afar started doing a lot of direct to seller. Um, and we bought 44 units, uh, 1 transaction. We, we were, uh, partners in a 42 unit deal on Daytona beach, which is kind of the extension of I for all the way out to the coast.

[00:21:25] Axel Ragnarsson: And then we bought a 48 unit, uh, in Bartow, Florida, which is like right next to, um, uh, Lakeland. It's basically the bordering town. And we sold those 44 units and did extremely well. We sold them in like 14 months. We paid 60, invested 10, and we sold in a year for 125 a unit. You know, market helped us, but we also sold on the, on the downswing, which was interesting.

[00:21:45] Axel Ragnarsson: And, you know, reflective of going direct to seller there. And then, um, we stopped actively looking there one, because we just got busier in New Hampshire. Like we just started, there was more opportunity in New Hampshire to the insurance market just went absolutely bananas and it was impossible to [00:22:00] underwrite anything like deals were simply not, you could not pencil deals regardless of where they were coming from.

[00:22:05] Axel Ragnarsson: So we just, it was just a waste of our time to continue looking there. And then three, and I think this is something that a lot of folks are realizing all of the sexy market metrics, the population growth, the job growth, et cetera. All of those are great, but you have to look at them through the lens of what is the supply growth in that market to from a housing standpoint, uh, markets like Phoenix and Austin and Dallas.

[00:22:27] Axel Ragnarsson: It's not hard to build apartments, very pro development, uh, government landscape, plenty of land to build cost of capital was so cheap over that 2 year stretch that they were just, you know, apartments being built everywhere all the time. So you have all these people moving there, but you also have all this supply being added to absorb that population growth.

[00:22:44] Axel Ragnarsson: So you're not really seeing any net effect of rent growth. And now over the last couple of years, in a lot of those markets, you're seeing rents go the other way, where they're flatlining or coming down. Specifically in markets like Phoenix and Austin, like rents are starting to decline versus a market like New Hampshire, where now we don't have nearly the same rate of [00:23:00] population growth as a lot of those markets, but we do have population growth, but we have no supply growth.

[00:23:05] Axel Ragnarsson: So rents, and this is a crazy stat rents in 2023 in New Hampshire increased 11%, which was like 3 to 4 X, the national average and a lot of the markets that I just described that were previously thought to be the hottest markets in the country and the, you know, the best place to put capital. Have had flatline growth, whereas New Hampshire double digit rank growth.

[00:23:26] Axel Ragnarsson: Like it's insane. It's continuing the trend of what happens, um, during COVID. So, you know, so we, we were like, that's just a way better story. We really, we feel a lot more confident in our underwriting here. We, we like, it's a lot easier for us to find deals cause it's in our backyard too. And we were like.

[00:23:41] Axel Ragnarsson: At some point, it just makes sense for us to kind of focus here and to just increase the volume of what we're doing in this market. And we started our PM company around this time as well, so we could operate more efficiently. Um, I would love to go back down to Florida, you know, and buy more deals down there.

[00:23:54] Axel Ragnarsson: We're just going to wait until the insurance market starts to stabilize. Until then, it's just really, really [00:24:00] challenging to, to, to feel confident in our underwriting. So that's kind of why we put a pin in that for now. Did you guys, when 

[00:24:06] randal mcleaird: you, when you were, uh, buying the last couple of years, you guys do any verge deals with the rate caps?

[00:24:11] randal mcleaird: Do you have any, any issues on that front? Were you guys able to avoid that? Like, how do you guys typically take these things down? You've got, um, equity coming on, 

[00:24:19] Axel Ragnarsson: uh, LPs. Yeah. So we, we've never done any floating rate stuff. Um, we were just, we're never. Like, you know, it's funny. It's like, I just, it never even occurred to me to do that, which I guess is kind of funny.

[00:24:29] Axel Ragnarsson: Like it was, there was never like, uh, Oh, you know, so I don't even want to say that we were smart or anything like that. I just never even occurred to me to go the floating rate route. And, uh, you know, 1 of the major reasons is specific to New England. Um, there is a, an extraordinary abundance of local banks, regional banks, local credit unions, regional credit unions that provide financing.

[00:24:48] Axel Ragnarsson: And it's actually not a market that the agencies love specific to New Hampshire, because it's more tertiary. So agency terms can never compete with local bank terms. So we were always going to local bank route and, uh, [00:25:00] and therefore we're getting, you know, 30 year AMS and fixed rate for five years. And we were never getting into the adjustable world.

[00:25:05] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, you know, it's interesting that other markets though, it's not necessarily the case where the agencies were in, in, in markets like Florida or some of the other Sunbelt markets, agencies are much more competitive on pricing. Um, so a lot of lenders or excuse me, borrowers are just going the agency route.

[00:25:19] Axel Ragnarsson: And then that's where you have that decision where it's like fixing a rate is more compelling here, but I'm doing a value add deal and I want to be able to get out, you know, I want to refi and fixing an agency loan product has incredible prepayment penalties tied to what are yield maintenance. So you basically can't do anything with that loan once you close it.

[00:25:36] Axel Ragnarsson: And that's why I think a lot of people were pushed the bridge route. Whereas when we were doing deals, we just never really. We just never really faced that because I negotiated away the prepays anyways on our fixed rate loans. So long story short, never, never really did that. It was never really a thought process that we had.

[00:25:51] Axel Ragnarsson: God, you could 

[00:25:52] randal mcleaird: see into the future, man. So 

[00:25:53] Axel Ragnarsson: smart. I should give myself more credit. Yeah. No, 

[00:25:57] randal mcleaird: no, it's, it's interesting too. I think it [00:26:00] may have something to do. I don't know your philosophy around investing and, and, and, um, you know, like buy and hold seems like. Kind of kind of the go some flips, um, just based on the quick conversation we've had.

[00:26:12] randal mcleaird: But when you, I guess where I'm going with this, when you are spending your own money and you're getting into deals, like my mentality has always been similar to yours. It's, it's like. I mean, I'm buying it. I, I plan on operating this thing and knowing how it's, it's working, what's going on. Um, like getting a, getting a, uh, bridge loan on, on, uh, you know, 3 percent that I have to be out of in 2 years.

[00:26:34] randal mcleaird: And you really only have 1 or 2 options at that point, you know, sale or refinance. Uh, yeah, didn't, didn't really, it wasn't something that was like top of 

[00:26:43] Axel Ragnarsson: mind. Yeah. And I will say I did use a lot of bridge debt, uh, personally for deals. I personally did, but not floating rate. You know what I mean? It was like at the time, you know, Lima one capital, like there's a lot of these larger national bridge lenders, you know, with two year terms where you can do an extension and maybe, and this is [00:27:00] back in 2021 in terms of where rates were like low sevens, high sixes for a rate.

[00:27:04] Axel Ragnarsson: But it was fixed, right? And, uh, and I know there was never any floating risk there. And again, you know, I oftentimes think it's hard to lump just multifamily into one conversation. The guy's doing 100 plus unit stuff. That's way over there. That's let's go put you guys aside because I'm not even playing that.

[00:27:20] Axel Ragnarsson: I'm not even playing that game. I'm playing a total, totally separate game. Like, I'm playing this game where we go direct to seller 2 million dollar property for One seven and I can refi in six months and pull all my capital or a large chunk, you know, so it's, it's almost like a totally different game there where using bridge that on that is a little bit less risky because we're, we're buying with so much margin and we're investing all of this time to find those opportunities versus the people using bridge debt or floating rate debt on fully marketed deals where they're competing with sophisticated buyers and fundamentally paying too much.

[00:27:54] Axel Ragnarsson: You know, so it's, it's two very different scenarios, I think, but yeah, but I think we oftentimes talk about them as one, you know, and I don't know [00:28:00] if it's necessarily fair to either party. And that's yeah, yeah, 

[00:28:03] randal mcleaird: that's, that's true. Um, good clarification there. Um, all right. So you've got a, uh, podcast. I was, I was jumping on and, um.

[00:28:11] randal mcleaird: Listen to some of the stuff on, on the multifamily wealth podcast. So you provide a lot of good information on there. Um, wanted to just ask you, you have this, this one that I looked at, it was stop effing around and just go do the work, 

[00:28:23] Axel Ragnarsson: something like that. I was like, yeah, property talk about that. So what, what caused that, 

[00:28:29] randal mcleaird: uh, to come top of mind and spawn that episode specifically?

[00:28:33] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, you know, so I'm active on, on Instagram, as you know, right. And, um, and, and I'm fairly regularly posting there and then have the podcast and people just reach out and, um, the amount of people that I've, that I've just spoken to personally, or also just seen talk about their journey, shared on social, just, and I'm, it's just kind of, I'm adjacent to it over the last couple of years who decided they wanted to get into real estate.

[00:28:58] Axel Ragnarsson: And then they listen to the Gran Cardones of the [00:29:00] world. They listen to the other, um, you know, influencers, I guess, for lack of a better term here to describe a lot of these folks that are on Instagram talking, but you need to, you need to go jump into large deals or you need to skip the single family.

[00:29:11] Axel Ragnarsson: You need to do bigger transactions. There's all kinds of economies of scale when you do a large multifamily deal, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you have a lot of newer individuals looking to get into the game. Who they're either a waiting to find a large deal in terms of like actively going out there and sourcing one, or they want to go and raise capital for somebody else who's doing a deal like that.

[00:29:31] Axel Ragnarsson: I think all that stuff is so stupid. Like, I don't, I don't like any of that. Um, I'm, I couldn't be a bigger believer in, uh, the easiest way to get started is to just get started by buying a piece of real estate. Buy something that's well within your financial means people. I think they're, you know, buying a duplex isn't sexy.

[00:29:48] Axel Ragnarsson: That's not a fun to put up on Instagram. You're not raising money to do that. You're probably using your own money to do that, but that's the easiest way to get going to get going into the right direction to start building momentum. If you're starting from zero and you're trying to find a [00:30:00] 50 unit deal, you're never, you're just not going to do that.

[00:30:02] Axel Ragnarsson: Like I, that doesn't happen. Right. And if you do have, if it does happen, you are such the exception to that, that it's insane. So I wouldn't bet on that. I would bet on you just going out there and finding a two, a three, a five unit deal or something like that. That's achievable to purchase with your own money.

[00:30:16] Axel Ragnarsson: And not only that does it help you build momentum. There's way more financial upside. And being the sole owner of a small property for your first couple of deals versus raising 500, 000 for the investor, that's raising 10 million. And you get. Uh, 1 percent of the general partnership or whatever it is. And like that, there's no, you don't make any money doing that.

[00:30:37] Axel Ragnarsson: There's no money there. Like you're working for minimum wage when you do stuff like that. And not only that, you're not learning anything, right? You're not, you're not on the operational side. You're not making headway. Um, so I, I, I speak with these people all the time. They're like, yeah, I want to start raising money or I'm looking for these types of deals.

[00:30:50] Axel Ragnarsson: You know, how do you recommend I speak with brokers? I want to go out and buy, you know, a 25 unit deal or something like that. And it's like, don't do that. Like, that's just not the right road to go down in my opinion. And I guess I [00:31:00] should say this is my opinion, but, um, but I see so many people that just don't get anywhere and they spend 12, 18 months, two years, just waiting for that bigger deal.

[00:31:08] Axel Ragnarsson: Cause they think that's what they're supposed to do when the people I know that are making the most amount of money, which I think is the objective metric here, if we want to, if we want to compare people and we want to actually build out a scorecard. The people that are making the most money earlier in their career are the people that go and find discounted deals.

[00:31:23] Axel Ragnarsson: They hustle to find good deals, and they buy that $500,000 five in property for 400 grand and they use 80% LTV, and then they refinance six months in and they pull their money out and they go do it again. That has a much more meaningful impact to your balance sheet, to your net worth, to to the passive net cash flow that you're receiving as an investor.

[00:31:41] Axel Ragnarsson: Do a few of those. Build out your balance sheet, learn the game. Then leap into either the larger transactions where you're raising money. Yeah, but if you want to go raise money with other people along the way to by all means do that, but, but you should start with personal ownership of real estate, in my opinion.

[00:31:56] randal mcleaird: Love that, man. Honestly, that's like the episode. 

[00:31:59] Axel Ragnarsson: That's [00:32:00] like the whole, we get in there. 

[00:32:01] randal mcleaird: That is. Uh, you encapsulated how I feel about it and, and, uh, in a short order there, um, it's interesting because again, a lot of, a lot of people in the, in the buildup, I guess it's been a real estate has been going up since what?

[00:32:16] randal mcleaird: 2009, 10, you know, like, it's just been on a upswing since then. So anybody getting in could easily do it. And I think in the last couple of years. At least when I started paying attention to like the multifamily space more so than the single family world. Um, and it's probably always been this way, but, uh, like a lot of guys would come on like the Cardones and the other guys and they're like, Hey, buy these big deals.

[00:32:37] randal mcleaird: You can start by raising capital for my deal. It was really like a lead source for them to pull in LP equity without having to do the work. And it's deceiving in a sense, if you're listening to this and you're like, Hey, I want to get into these bigger deals. It's kind of deceiving. Like, if you want to be a capital raiser.

[00:32:53] randal mcleaird: And that's, you love that. And that's the business you want to be in for sure. You can build an entire model around doing that and raising capital for other people's [00:33:00] deals. And it takes a long time to actually start earning some money that way. I would think maybe you get a small percentage of the acquisition fee or something, but there's really no payout or, or no money to be made in those deals.

[00:33:12] randal mcleaird: So I think. What actually just said is, is huge. Um, yeah, 

[00:33:16] Axel Ragnarsson: if you, and I'll share a couple of stats here, like that really drive this home from a numerical standpoint, cause I've done this, I've raised capital for other people's deals. When I started raising money, I did that because that was, I didn't have the deal flow myself quite yet outside of these smaller deals I was doing to really, to monetize.

[00:33:31] Axel Ragnarsson: It doesn't make sense really to raise money, but like an eight unit deal. I mean, you can, but it's just. It's just harder from a legal doc standpoint. So long story short, I went and raised for other people and I've seen that side of the business and there's really not a lot of money there unless you're doing it at very large scale.

[00:33:45] Axel Ragnarsson: So, for example, to use actual numbers, because I've been in a lot of capital raising masterminds and I, you know, I know people that do this at a very high level, they raise multiple eight figures a year. When you raise money for another operator and you're, you know, uh, being involved on the general [00:34:00] partnership side, your co GP in the deal, or you do like a fund of funds, which I'm not even going to get into that because that's a very complex structure, but you're being compensated in some capacity for raising money for another investor, partnering with another investor on the capital side.

[00:34:12] Axel Ragnarsson: Usually it waters down to you're making 10 to 20 percent of the capital you raise over the lifetime of the deal, inclusive of acquisition fees, and then your promote. So if you raise a million dollars. If the deal goes well and hits its projections, you're probably gonna make between a hundred and a couple hundred grand for doing that over that, over that holds period, right?

[00:34:31] Axel Ragnarsson: Over that five year period of time. That's nice, right? I mean, that's, I wouldn't mind making a hundred, couple hundred grand, right? That, that seems like it makes a lot of sense, but. Raising capital is the hardest part of being in real estate. It's a lot easier to find great deals, which people don't get that.

[00:34:45] Axel Ragnarsson: It's actually much harder to raise retail capital with low return expectations than it is to just go out there and find a good deal. Like in terms of the effort required to do both of those, unless you come from a, you know, you got the rich uncle or something like that. Um, takes a lot of work to raise a [00:35:00] million dollars.

[00:35:00] Axel Ragnarsson: It's a lot easier to go buy the 500, 000 property for 400 grand and make your a hundred grand in equity, or to go buy the million dollar property for eight. That's a much easier, uh, road to go down. It's you'll do that faster. You'll do that, you know, quicker. Not only are you going to make more money, um, or, or, you know, you might make this a similar amount of money or, or, or what have you.

[00:35:20] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, and you don't even really need to find a deal of that margin because we're comparing it to compensation you'd earn over the life of a deal on the capital raise side, but you're going to start to generate actual passive income. There's no passive income in being the 2 percent or in a big GP. Like you're not really seeing any net from that because syndicated deals don't really produce cashflow for the GPs.

[00:35:40] Axel Ragnarsson: I mean, again, another secret behind the scenes here. Um, GPs make money when they, when they hit those big refi's and when they sell, that's when they get into their promote. There's really not a lot of cashflow until you're multiple years into ownership, even in a really healthy market, uh, where the market's starting to trend upwards, which nowadays it isn't.

[00:35:55] Axel Ragnarsson: And most GPs are never going to see their promote and a lot of the deals they put together. So it's just, what is the [00:36:00] easier road? What gets you started faster? Where do you actually make more money? It's usually just doing some of these smaller deals and hustling to find them. Um, so anyways, that's a rabbit hole that I could spend some time on, but that's like some real numbers as it relates to, to comparing apples to apples for 

[00:36:13] randal mcleaird: sure.

[00:36:13] randal mcleaird: No, that's solid. And I think the only, again, the only caveat is. Live where you want to live, you know, if you don't want to operate a deal and you don't want to actually, you know, look at real estate and you don't want to take a phone call or go out and be because raising capital is raising capital. You are providing an offering to somebody and saying, hey, here's a financial vehicle that you can invest in.

[00:36:36] randal mcleaird: Um, but operating the deal, I mean, there's just two different businesses in my mind. Um, 

[00:36:40] Axel Ragnarsson: They are. And that is a good caveat for sure. You know, if you live in like a San Diego, like I live in Boston, right? I can't buy a rental property within 30 minutes of me. That's why I'm going up to New Hampshire, right?

[00:36:48] Axel Ragnarsson: So for a lot of people, that's not an option, but I still do think. You know, there is still a way to think about this where, okay, well, then maybe go if you're going to, if you've accepted that you're going to be on the capital side, [00:37:00] you need to accept that it's going to require a volume of capital raised, you know, you're going to have to, you're going to have to raise a good amount of money, multiple seven figures in order for that to be comparative to active real estate ownership.

[00:37:11] Axel Ragnarsson: And if you're going to do that, um, it's oftentimes helpful to find a local partner, somebody that, that it maybe is buying in your area. Right. And maybe you can negotiate some more competitive terms with them than, than trying to go and do it for a larger operator or something like that and try to get, you know, you want equity, right?

[00:37:26] Axel Ragnarsson: You want bigger equity chunks and focus on the inefficient deals, right? Like raising money for the guy who's buying the 175 unit deal in Florida, like. Again, it all comes back to where we started the show. That's an extraordinarily competitive marketplace. You don't earn outsized returns in an efficient market.

[00:37:43] Axel Ragnarsson: The smaller segment of the market is more inefficient, right? That's where you make more money by definition. With inefficiency comes those outsized returns. So spend some time there if you want to raise, right? So that, again, helps you get going a little bit faster. Again, this is all just my two cents. I'm not saying this is gospel.

[00:37:59] Axel Ragnarsson: This is [00:38:00] just what I've seen in the business being on both sides of a lot of these deals. Um, but I think that there are alternative ways to getting into it versus just waiting for those massive deals that, you know, the GC on Instagram there told you to, told you to focus on. Yeah, 

[00:38:13] randal mcleaird: for sure. Um, I, I want to, I want to ask you, I guess on your, on your show that you've got, um, you know, you have a bunch of conversations with, with, uh, with guests that come on, like, what are some of the lessons that you've taken from, from just conversations you've had with guys and been able to apply to, to either your business or to your 

[00:38:31] Axel Ragnarsson: strategy?

[00:38:33] Axel Ragnarsson: Yeah, that's a, that's a great question. Um, I think something that I've learned over the years, um, both actively and then also what I've been told by more experienced folks on the podcast to, to kind of touch on what you mentioned there. Um, you, you really do need to have a narrow focus and you need to put your head down for a long period of time.

[00:38:52] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, like, that's just, that's, that's the more time I spend in this game, the more time I realize. Uh, and it's, it takes so much work to not get [00:39:00] the shiny object syndrome. Oh, I know this guy who's making a bunch of money doing Airbnbs. I'm going to go kind of, maybe I'll go take a look at what he's doing.

[00:39:05] Axel Ragnarsson: Maybe I should go look for Airbnbs or wow. Self storage, you know, the returns on those deals. I mean, that's crazy. It's a little bit more, it's easier to find those deals and multifamily, it seems, or this market, that market, this partner, that partner, et cetera. Um, Like it's so hard to drown out the noise, but I honestly think it's the most critical thing you can do because at the end of the day.

[00:39:24] Axel Ragnarsson: Real estate's not a complicated business. It's actually an incredibly simple business. You just, you do the sales and marketing functions required to find deals and to find money. You operate really well, which is fundamentally just, it's just getting up every day and just doing the same crap over and over and over and over again, and never getting bored and never letting stuff slip through the cracks.

[00:39:44] Axel Ragnarsson: And you just do that for decades, right? I mean, it's it's I think when you boil it down, it's very simple. There's no secrets. It's just doing it right for a while. So, um, I, I was distracted. I did the stuff where I raised for other folks and I, and we did go down to Florida and we did very well in Florida.

[00:39:58] Axel Ragnarsson: Right? But that [00:40:00] took me away from New Hampshire at a time where we could have crushed it even more in New Hampshire. Um, but I kind of stopped looking there for a little bit, cause I wanted to go down to the Sunbelt cause that's where everybody was going to raise money and do deals. Um, I started, you know, we'd started marketing to, to nicer single family homes in vacation towns throughout New England, cause we wanted, and it's just like, if I just stopped doing all that and just executed better on the core strategy and the core focus, I think we would have just made more money and built a bigger portfolio and been a little bit farther down the road.

[00:40:26] Axel Ragnarsson: So that's what I've learned personally. And then on, in terms of the guests in the podcast, the people that I feel like. Um, their advice is worth the most and who I think have the greatest level of success are people that are like, I do this and I do it here and I've done it forever and I will do the same thing forever and I'm not interested in doing other crap.

[00:40:46] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, you know, a lot of the guys like, you know, Terrence Doyle, who's a, who's an investor out in Denver. Um, I don't know if everyone here is going to know him. I don't know if you know him, but just somebody who's like, I got my construction company. I got my management company. We buy value ideals in Denver and Des [00:41:00] Moines, right?

[00:41:00] Axel Ragnarsson: And he's like, that's just what he does. He's that's what people know him as. That's what he does. He absolutely crushes it. He gets the best deal flow. He generates amazing returns because that's what he does. And he didn't think like, okay, I want to go to Texas. Cause I, cause people are buying a Texas and they're doing well.

[00:41:15] Axel Ragnarsson: Um, you know, a lot of the larger folks that I have around me too. That's, that's kind of their strategy. It's, we're just going to, we're going to go so deep here, inch wide, mile deep in this market. And when you do that, you see the best opportunities, and it's a lot easier to raise money, right? And that's, and that's me speaking as a multifamily sponsor who's trying to find deals and money.

[00:41:33] Axel Ragnarsson: When you're associated, like I am, I'm very associated with New Hampshire now, we see a lot of deals. And then when investors are looking to invest with us, like we, Cohen, we, we, we associate you with New Hampshire. We know you know it, like. We're already halfway down the road in terms of a due diligence standpoint, because we know, you know, your stuff in that market versus, and there's all kinds of guys in the game doing this.

[00:41:50] Axel Ragnarsson: And I have them on the podcast and I can tell they're scattered, um, at different times where they're raising for a deal in this market one day. And then they're trying to do a different, you know, trying to do a deal in a different [00:42:00] asset class. The next day, they're kind of bouncing all over. And Your actions don't compound when that happens.

[00:42:07] Axel Ragnarsson: You're not giving, you're not giving time the chance to help you. Time's actually hurting you because you're just resetting every time you jump into a new market where you jump into a new asset class. So I think narrow focus and letting time, you know, time be your asset, be your ally and over time, you know, just compounding as it relates to your relationships, your deal flow, your ability to raise capital and then fundamentally your returns.

[00:42:26] Axel Ragnarsson: Right. That's why we're all in this game. So I could probably come up with a hundred, but that's probably the one that comes to mind the fastest. 

[00:42:33] randal mcleaird: Really good advice when I was first starting out, when I got back, I live in Australia, I came back in like 2008, started working for an attorney, um, I was going to go back to law school and he was doing real estate, um, law.

[00:42:45] randal mcleaird: And I was like, Hey, man, I want to buy. I want to just buy. I want to do this and do that and do this. I had all these ideas. I'm going to do everything. And he's like, just pick 1 thing, just do 1 thing and stick with it and do it really well. And so that advice stuck with me. And I just rehab houses for years and [00:43:00] years and years.

[00:43:00] randal mcleaird: Brings to mind another podcast. It just lets do is Brandon Turner. He interviewed Noah Kagan. I don't know if you know Noah, but, um, he said, yeah, big YouTuber and doing things and really good, really good episode where they're just talking about, you know, once you find the thing that makes you the money, the majority of people end up just trying something new.

[00:43:18] randal mcleaird: Like. That thing is making you 

[00:43:20] Axel Ragnarsson: money. I'm guilty of it. We were crushing it in New Hampshire. Doing a ton of deals. We had it figured out. And I went off to go do stuff elsewhere. And it was like, why are you doing that? Um, you know, there's a I don't know if we got a, I don't know if you've seen True Detective, right?

[00:43:35] Axel Ragnarsson: Season 1, one of my favorite TV shows. But like, Russ Cole in True Detective is talking about how he wants to like try painting. And, um, and Woody Harrelson's like, why don't you try it? He's like, life's barely good enough. Like, life is barely long enough to get good at one thing. And, you know, if that, right?

[00:43:49] Axel Ragnarsson: And it's just such a simple statement where it's pick the right vehicle. Multifamily is a very scalable business to be in, right? Pick the right vehicle. And, and you want it to be like, [00:44:00] if I'm going to work in this. Specific lane, whether it's the market, whether that's the type of properties you're acquiring, whether it's, you know, if you're in an adjacent business, whatever your business is, can I work in this?

[00:44:09] Axel Ragnarsson: And can I continue to grow for for decades? Right? Sometimes the answer to that question is no. And you actually need to leave what you're doing and pick something else to focus on. You know, if you're trying to build a flooring company in your local town, well, there's going to be a ceiling on that opportunity.

[00:44:23] Axel Ragnarsson: If you're trying to buy real estate over a larger, you know, larger area. Well, typically that ceiling is very high and you can become very wealthy doing that and you can create a great life for yourself. So it's like pick the right vehicle. Put your head down and then don't get distracted and like you just need to let time help you and that's how time does help you is by not getting off the track, um, which I did, so I know firsthand, but, um, but yeah, exactly.

[00:44:45] Axel Ragnarsson: I got to go listen to that podcast with Brandon and Noah there. I'm sure that's a, that's a great one. I'm obviously familiar with both of them, but, uh, yeah, it sounds like the 

[00:44:52] randal mcleaird: latest, um. A better life. I, uh, a friend of mine or a new acquaintance from a multifamily stuff here in San Antonio, he, he [00:45:00] put me onto it and I was like, okay, that's fantastic.

[00:45:02] randal mcleaird: And so big shout out to, to, uh, Mark for that. But, um, yeah, Hey, great advice. Uh, look, I'm going to put all your contact info in the, in the show notes. If you're looking to invest, or if you're raising capital, um, up in that area for some deals, um, by all means, uh, Reach out to actual, um, he's, uh, he's wealth and knowledge.

[00:45:22] randal mcleaird: Check out this podcast. It's the multifamily wealth podcast as well. Um, solid information. Really appreciate you jumping on and sharing your info with us today. 

[00:45:30] Axel Ragnarsson: Yeah. Randall, this has been great, man. Appreciate it. And, um, and yeah, if anybody wants to reach out. Love to chat with anyone about real estate. So I guess the, the, the contact info will be in the show notes there.

[00:45:40] Axel Ragnarsson: So don't feel, don't feel like you shouldn't reach out if you want to chat about anything, real estate in general, or even better, uh, New Hampshire real estate or New England real estate. 

[00:45:47] randal mcleaird: Or Florida, you know, or maybe, maybe Phoenix, 

[00:45:50] Axel Ragnarsson: who knows? Or wherever you want to talk about Airbnbs or storage or whatever.

[00:45:54] Axel Ragnarsson: No, but, um, but no, I appreciate you having me. This was great. Yeah, that's good catching 

[00:45:58] randal mcleaird: up. Good catching up. All right. [00:46:00] See you guys on the next episode. 

[00:46:03] Outro: Surprisingly, most of the agents we speak with got into real estate hoping to gain passive income and become work optional. However, only one in five ever start investing. Most are simply too afraid to start. Once you get educated by listening to this show, you'll be able to overcome that fear and become the one in five who are finding financial freedom. Don't miss a single episode. If you want to stay up to date, the best way is to make sure you're subscribed. So if you haven't done that, go ahead and do it now and we'll catch you on the next episode.

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Randal McLeaird

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