From 126 Single Family Rentals to 100 Million in Capital Raised with Kevin Bupp - EP10

Kevin Bupp went from buying his first rental at 20 to raising over \$100 million and building a portfolio of mobile home parks and parking garages across 15 states.

In this exclusive interview on *The Wealth Clock with Steven Weinstock*, Kevin reveals:

* How he scaled from 126 single family homes to a nationwide empire
* Why mobile home parks beat traditional multifamily (especially during downturns)
* A wild rent strike story in New York that cost him hundreds of thousands
* The \$44.5 million deal he closed with creative financing
* His fund vs syndication strategy and why retail investors are still coming in strong
* How his podcast generated up to \$70 million in investor capital
* The biggest mistakes he’s made (including a septic system nightmare)
* How to build investor trust in a tough capital-raising environment

Kevin is the founder of Sunrise Capital Investors, host of the long-running *Real Estate Investing for Cash Flow* podcast, and author of *The Cashflow Investor*. He’s been in the game for over 20 years and still actively buys, operates, and raises capital for deals today.

📍 **Chapters & Highlights:**
0:00 Intro
2:12 How Kevin started in real estate
5:48 Scaling to 126 single family rentals
8:30 Pivot to multifamily and commercial
11:14 Mobile home parks: why and how
18:42 Operating across 15 states
23:00 Rent control horror story in New York
28:56 \$44.5M creative finance deal
35:40 Fund vs syndication debate
43:12 Raising \$100M from retail investors
47:10 Starting his podcast and how it changed his life
55:00 Mistakes, advice, and long-term mindset

🔗 Learn more about Kevin’s company: [https://www.investwithsunrise.com](https://www.investwithsunrise.com)
🎧 Check out his podcast: *Real Estate Investing for Cash Flow*

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📢 Subscribe for more interviews with real estate legends, founders, and capital allocators: [https://www.youtube.com/@thewealthclock](https://www.youtube.com/@thewealthclock)

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🎙 Hosted by Steven Weinstock
Presented by WE Capital and the Goethals Capital Fund

🎙 About Steven Weinstock
Steven Weinstock is a real estate investor and founder of WeCapital and the Goethals Capital Fund. Since 2001, he has built a diverse portfolio of residential and multifamily assets while helping investors access passive income through strategic real estate opportunities. On this podcast, he shares real-world insights on investing, capital raising, and what it really takes to build and scale in today’s market.

📩 Want to invest or get in touch?
Visit: www.WeCapitalX.com

📱 Connect with Steven:
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevenweinstock1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wecapitalx/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWealthClockPodcast

Transcript

Steven M Weinstock: 0:01

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Wealth Clock with Steven Weinstock. I've been investing in real estate for over 20 years, from single family homes to multifamily properties, and recently launching my real estate investment fund. This podcast is brought to you by WE Capital and the Go's Capital Fund, where we buy properties in cash. We lock in deep discounts. We eliminate mortgage risk upfront. Refinance later on in order to scale. This show is not about me, it's about operators, founders, and closers who are building real results in real time. Today I'm speaking with Kevin Buppp. He's the founder of Sunrise Capital Investors and he hosts the Long Running Podcast, real Estate Investing for Cashflow. He's also the author of the Cashflow Investor. He has a long track record in real estate. We'll get into what he's built, what he's learned, and how he sees the current market. Kevin, thank you very much for coming on. I appreciate it. Yeah, Steven, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. All right. For listeners who don't know you yet, how did you first get into real estate?

Kevin Bupp: 1:11

Yeah, no, I'll, and I'll try to keep it brief, but I've been a full-time real estate investor my entire adult life. I I always joke and say that real estate found me at the age of 19. I didn't find it. And so very grateful and feel blessed that occurred. Ultimately it was at a age where I was trying to figure out what to do in life. Trying to really, figure out where to put my passion and energy and just happened to meet a gentleman who became my mentor and really my first, real estate investing endeavors. And now it was at 19, I bought my first property at the age of 20, which was a single family property like a lot of folks start with. And through my early twenties, a scaled, a fairly significant single family home portfolio. About 126 single family rentals. By the age of 26. I started dabbling in multi-family properties around that time, and I really started expanding my horizons and looking at other types of real estate, more specifically commercial real estate. And so over the years, owned just about every type, assisted living, industrial self storage office retail, and and ultimately landed on what really has been our core focus for over a decade now. Back in 2011, landed on mobile home parks started buying mobile home parks back in 2011 and have been scaling a portfolio ever since. Now in addition to mobile home parks that, we've got two verticals that we focus on at Sunrise Capital Investors, one being mobile home parks, buying those now for 14 years. And then the other is parking investments. Think parking garages. Surface parking lots and urban core locations. So that's who we are, that's what we do today. I've been at this again, over 20 years now and it's been a fun ride. Lot, lots of bumps along the way, but definitely been a fun ride.

Steven M Weinstock: 2:40

Got it. I also started with single family homes back in 2001 47 now. When I bought my first single family home, my goal was to really just buy one, one property pay it off over 30 years. Have an extra retirement account, so to speak. After a couple of months of collecting rent, the numbers started to click in my head and I said to myself, why? Just one, why not two? Why not three? I was still young. I was living at home with my parents and I was able to risk some money and I didn't really have much money. I was putting 10% down back in those days. That's how I got into it. And I also stuck with I guess the one to fours for a long time. You mentioned that you started with single family homes and grew a portfolio of about 120 units. When you pivoted to multifamily, what was that first type? What type of product or asset did you buy? As soon as that first one? Was it a five unit? Was it a 60 unit? How'd you make that transition?

Kevin Bupp: 3:47

Yeah. And there, it wasn't really a pivot or a very, pinpointed transition from single family, multi-family. What ultimately occurred is I was running a, my single family business we, we would essentially wholesale maybe, one or two deals, keep one. And we had a pretty big system. We'd buy a number of properties in any given year. And what occurred is I met an investor during my single family journey that was buying multifamily, and he was looking for a capital partner. And so the initial. My initial entry point into multifamily was more as a capital partner than anything else. And so I started just investing alongside him in the various deals he was buying. So the first one was a 12 unit property and most of the multifamily we were buying were smaller multis, all the way down to a, four or five unit, and the largest, at least at that period of time. Was a 72, 72 unit property, but most of 'em were, 12, 18, 24 units. I think, third, there was a 36 unit in there. But again, I was, it wasn't really a pivot. I never, I didn't stray away from my single family that I should have. I, I should have seen the writing and should have seen the bigger opportunity.'Cause ultimately when everything crashed in oh eight, I looked back and reflected on the single family stuff versus the multifamily. And there was just a lot more efficiencies in the multifamily investments that I had. Not that they weren't, not that we didn't have hard times there as well. Everything here was, everything I owned was in Southwest Florida which was the epicenter of the of the GFC, back in oh 8, 0 9. And but even then I really, once I reflected back I realized that there were so many more benefits of the multifamily investments that I had a partnership in than the single family that I've been breaking my back to build a portfolio with over, over many years. And so when it came time to. Basically rebuild from the ashes. Oh eight through 2011 was more, for me was a chaotic period, kind of damage control. And then you're really focusing on how do I rebuild this because I lost pretty much everything. It was a really difficult time down here. And and I knew that the second time around I knew that I had no interest in multifamily. Again, just trying to scale one by one. There was lots of inefficiencies with the property management side of the business owning, one door here, another door seven miles away, another door, eight miles that direction. And I knew that it was gonna be multifamily the second time around. So that was, it was much more intentional. 2011 when I was ready to build a second business. But ultimately at that time I was, when I decided upon multifamily I just, by happenstance, met an individual named Randy Randy owned Mobile Home parks. And it was one of those asset classes I'd never considered. And I had a lunch with Randy, two hour lunch. And after that two hour lunch, I, he had it got me so excited about. Mobile home parks and that I should consider that in, in, instead of traditional multifamily. And ultimately that's, that, that's what really shifted my direction to really focus on multifamily in, in a big way. Multifamily meaning, mobile home parks. I look at 'em all in a similar bucket. It's just a different type of multifamily, it's a lot of similarities to that of what it is you do. It's just a different type of vehicle, that's all. But again, never really focused entirely on, on the traditional multifamily. Ended up owning about 300 doors. But ultimately it was mostly passive partnerships.

Steven M Weinstock: 6:41

Got it. When you started and you were buying the single family homes what were you doing for property management and did it change as your portfolio grew?

Kevin Bupp: 6:51

No, in the beginning it was just me. My, and so my mentor, I, David, he owned about 30, 30 residential units. He was a local investor. He was about 25 years older than nine, so he'd been doing it quite some time. And and I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I just I don't like, to fix what isn't broken. And so I saw David as being incredibly successful having a successful business model. And so I just really modeled what he was doing. And so for the. Up until about 35 properties. I managed it myself. I had an assistant, at some point I hired an assistant, but quickly realized that literally it was restricting me from growing. But, there was a beautiful thing that happened at that point. So I was at, at a stage where I had no time left. My bandwidth was so thin. There's not really enough property management revenue at 30 some odd units to, to build out a stout property management company that's really necessary to create some additional efficiencies. But at that point in time in my life, I met another individual who became another mentor of mine. And this is, I started in Pennsylvania. I moved to Florida during this initial journey. And Florida is where I really scaled my business. But during that period where I had about 35 units, I met an individual that had about 600 rental properties and had a, vertically integrated property management company. And so ultimately what occurred at that point was I had to make a decision. I either outsourced it to a third party firm, which I did not want to do 'cause I just heard a lot of horror stories. And I did think that was the magical answer

Steven M Weinstock: 8:11

you mentioned you're buying in Florida. You mentioned you're from Pennsylvania originally. Where in Pennsylvania did you start off?

Kevin Bupp: 8:19

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So the capital small, very small town but it is the capital of Pennsylvania. Started there bought for about two years. And then just, I was always. Looking for an opportunity to move out to move away. I, beautiful. Pennsylvania's beautiful. All my family's located up there, I, even growing up, I never got used to the cold, Steve. And I just I don't mind cold for a period of time. I don't want, I love snow. I'm a avid snowboarder and skier. So I love to trek out west once or twice a year to to hit the slopes. But, dealing with. Cold and gray and dreary weather for six months, seven months outta the year. Just I had my fits with it and I needed to go where there was sunshine. So that's what really brought me down the floor. I love sunshine. I love the ocean, love water. And that really gave me the opportunity to move down to Florida and it was a blessing in disguise. It was just moving to a bigger city. A lot more opportunity for growth and really a lot more opportunity to scale my newly found real estate endeavor,

Steven M Weinstock: 9:10

Florida. Yeah. De you're definitely in a good state. Are you only buying Florida

Kevin Bupp: 9:14

no. We buy all over. I think we own currently own assets in 15 different states. So we're in the southeast, northeast and then some mid Midwest Midwestern states. We, there's a number of states that we won't buy in. Lots of the New England states we, we've owned in New York where you're based out of got caught up, years back when he passed statewide rent control. And decided that it was just too much of a barrier to continue growing there. And so we sold out those assets. And so we typically try to stay away from not necessarily blue states per se, but we tend to stay away from any states that have regulatory risk associated with rent control. Either it's in place or there's been, heavy discussions around that topic. So that ultimately lands us in mostly red states. But we own in Maryland, which is very much a blue state. And not opposed to buying in a number of other blue states, Illinois, we own there as well. But we go toward the opportunities. We wanna know that it's a growth market. We wanna know that there's not a mass exodus that people leave. We wanna know that there's a, diverse economic base there. So there's plenty of jobs and diversity for folks. And and we want to, lastly, what most important thing for us is that there's a. Strong demand for affordable housing. And so that, that means, a shortage of available units, but then also fairly high median home prices. And median home rents.

Steven M Weinstock: 10:23

Yeah, I'm from Brooklyn, New York, and when I started New York City was really outta my reach and I started buying about 45 minutes away in New Jersey and, focused on New Jersey for a little while. Then probably about three years later, started buying in Brooklyn. Not too far from where I live. And it was tough. Brooklyn is tough. It was, this is years ago. So it was a lot, before a lot of the current troubles that Brooklyn is having. But I had a hard time and I was nervous about being a landlord in New York City in terms of payments, evictions. There were nightmares where, tenants could stay there for two years and then you're still paying them off to leave after.

Kevin Bupp: 11:05

Yeah.

Steven M Weinstock: 11:05

I did well in New York as far as appreciation and when I sold, it was too tough to, to self-manage. And not that I lost sleep at night, but it was just, something that was always on my mind. And, I, I exited New York real fast. Even though I still live here I'm afraid of New York. But I speak to people, I speak to operators here who are buying 70, 90 unit buildings, rent control, they're getting great deals. They're buying it from the bank. And the bank is giving them great financing just to get an experience to operator to take it over. And I ask them like, what are you doing?, They say to me, if it pen, if it pencils in today, at the worst regulatory market. If things change, then, it becomes a home run. I guess that's what these guys are doing, but I'm personally afraid of of New York.

Kevin Bupp: 11:52

Yeah, I guess the argument there is are we, are you in the worst? Can it not get worse than what it currently is, is in place? I think that becomes the question that I still have a challenge answering it in situations like that, right? And so I just saw it as, for us you mentioned folks not paying it. We had an interesting story with one of our mobile home parks. Most of the stuff we owned was in Western New York, so Buffalo area, and and we had some beautiful assets there. Still some of probably the nicest assets that we've owned. Absolutely gorgeous. And we had a situation back in 2018 where just normally we'll do annual rent increases. And and it wasn't nothing out of character. We give plenty of notice, follow the state laws, and and the one community for whatever reason they decided that, we could not increase the rents. They were not gonna stand for it. It was a very minimal rent increase. And they threatened to go on a rent strike. There was a hundred and 120, I think 122. Residents in this community units in this community. And of the a hundred twenty two seventy joined a coalition together a self-fulfilled coalition, and ultimately went on rent strike and and it turned into a complete disaster basically. Through the court system. The local courts didn't wanna hear to a resolution about a year and a half after the fact, never recouped hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost rent from these residents. And then at that point, his right rent control was coming into play. And so we just had the fits with New York and found it just incredibly too difficult, risky to operate there. And and not really, there's no landlord protection is in place whatsoever. It just, I find that it's, there's. Way, many more places throughout the country where, they're readily acceptant of business owners, landlords it's much more of a fair playground than that of New York. And so life is too short to try to run and scale a business in a state that doesn't really want businesses. And so for that reason, we've decided to move on and and not look back.

Steven M Weinstock: 13:39

Yeah, you're not the first investor to, try New York and leave New York. And you're referring to Western New York, which is Buffalo. Most people assume New York. Yeah. And they think it's just New York City and maybe the surrounding area. I've invested in my own property in New Jersey and I really like New Jersey because it feeds off the New York vibe. The population growth, but it doesn't have or at least parts of Jersey doesn't have all that regulatory. You could have somebody if somebody doesn't pay, you could have them evicted about three months. Which in the scheme of things is not too bad. But yeah, New York is real scary. Lemme move on. Have you ever used creative financing that worked particularly well? And tell me a good story about creative financing.

Kevin Bupp: 14:22

We've done a lot of deals. It's probably been a number of years since we've, and when I think creative financing, I think of, getting the seller to carry back a note not having to deal with banks. And there's been many deals that we've structured in that manner. I, nothing as of the last couple of years, actually, I shouldn't say that. There's, there was a recent deal actually we just closed at the end of last year, so that's probably a good a good story to share. It just, shows that there's options even when it seems like there's not, this is a big deal that we closed up in Michigan at the end of last year, 44, 44 and a half million dollars mobile home park. We need to close it by the end of the year for tax benefits. We'd already share with our investors that the tax benefits if it carried over to the following year while they still get some tax benefits, it wouldn't have been, exactly what we laid out for them. We had some challenges with the financing, the timing more than anything you get around the holidays you everyone start slacking off a little bit. The same goes with the lenders, and we had started the loan process within plenty of time. In order to get it closed out by the end of the year. But as hiccups come, there's been a couple bumps along the way that delayed the process and then we entered into the, the, Thanksgiving holiday and then we ended, got close to Christmas and New Year's, and we realized that there was no, no way in hell that we were gonna get this deal closed by the end of the year if we were just gonna go to the traditional route. So ultimately we, got with the seller explained the situation. He really just wanted a certainty of closing. And so for him, he was on board with, whatever had to happen as long as it didn't necessarily have a negative impact on him. And so in that instance we got him to agree to, to do a carryback note with a three month balloon in place. All we needed was a little bit more time. In exchange for that we we paid him in exchange that we paid him like another, I think about $50,000. So we agreed to pay a pretty, pretty significant. Kind of incentive to him to carry back this note. And then outside of that, he was, his biggest concern was he had operated this community for about 35 years, Tim and his family. And so he was intimately involved. It was a mom and pop operator that was operating an institutional grade asset which is uncommon. But he, his biggest fear was. Basically taking over the day-to-day operations while he was still the note holder and, doing a bad job. Basically, tenants leave, he gets the property back in a couple of months and and it's not as good of, good occupancy or the tenants are no longer happy living there and he gets a asset that is somewhat in distress. And so again, we paid him an incentive to, to go. And then we also let him stay in the management. Which was awkward and weird. Got the job done. So he essentially became a community manager. He wasn't employed by us, but we paid him as a 10 99 contractor to manage the day to day. And so our leadership on our operations side basically, treated him just like any other community manager, let him run the day to day. It was bumpy, it was not a ideal situation, but it got the job done. We closed the deal out with new financing. Took him out late February of this year. And everyone was happy. He was happy. He finally got his big payday. He got a low $50,000 bump on top of it. We paid him as a 10 99 contractor to actually manage the asset, the day-to-day operations underneath our umbrella. And and again he got what he wanted. We got what we wanted and ultimately we gotta deal closed. That would have closed. But it wouldn't have been as, as big of a boon for our investors and giving them, depreciation as we had otherwise, somewhat promised 'em and I think it's just all about finding options. There's always options available and I think it's just that, the biggest piece of it, the seller was very difficult to deal with, but we always maintain open communication with him. Whether it was good news or bad news he knew that we were in a time crunch. And I think it just it goes back to building trust and rapport. Whether you're a buyer or seller with the other party, and just make you maintain an open line of communication no matter how good the news is or how bad the news is or what's going on, make sure that you keep that open line of communication. I think that if both parties truly have an alignment of interest to get a deal done, you'll find a way to get there. And a lot of times, creative financing comes into play in order to help both parties achieve their objective

Steven M Weinstock: 18:07

when you're, when you're buying these properties, are you using, are you financing them with individual syndications or with a fund? How are you structuring these properties when you buy them? Yeah.

Kevin Bupp: 18:19

Today? Yeah. Today we run a fund. We're on our fourth fund at present time, about to close this one out at the end of this year and open up our fifth fund. Years past we've done deal specific syndications. Years, way before that we would do JV partnerships. We've, I guess we've evolved over the years and we found about back in 2016 is when we launched our very first fund. We found out there was just a lot more efficiencies, at least for us to operate a fund, offer diversity of assets, diversity of markets throughout multiple different assets underneath one umbrella. In addition to that, a lot of our deals. If you compare it to traditional multifamily, if you're looking at, traditional, larger multifamily 200, 340 unit properties the mobile home parks we're buying, or, the deal size is a lot smaller. Like our average deal size of Mobile home park is about eight or $9 million. And, we've closed very large ones as well. It's hovering around that eight, nine, $10 million range. And way back when we started looking at this, just the legal costs associated with doing individual deal syndications, the logistics behind it. And we found that it just was much more efficient from a cost standpoint, legal cost standpoint, and also capital raising standpoint for us just to do it underneath a fund versus that of individual deal syndications for these smaller deals. And so we started 2016, we launched the fund. I didn't know what the app was gonna be. We shared all the, what we felt were benefits of doing a fund versus a deal specific as we had done years past. And our investors. We already had a track record with a lot of investors and we'd already proven our success, proven our business model, and it was well received. And so we rolled with that first fund. Closed it out. Did you know within a two and a half year span did full return of capital still own a number of assets in Net Fund today? Opened the second fund. You had great success with that. Did a full return of capital within about a three and a half year span of time. So in a number of assets there. Opened up the third fund, fourth fund. We're about to wrap up the fourth fund as far as buying opportunities and roll out a fifth fund here at the end of this calendar year. We like the fund structure. I know it's not for everyone per se, but I think the biggest, I say the biggest concern a lot of maybe limited partners or investors have with a fund structure in a traditional sense. If you look at like how institutions do it, most of the time they have a general investment thesis. They build their case story of what they're going to go buy and why it's a great opportunity for them to roll to fund. At this point, raised X amount of capital. Then they go raise the capital. Once they build the business thesis. They raise the capital before they've ever bought anything. So it's really a, it's a blind, it's a blind fund more than anything else.'cause you have an idea of what they intend to buy, but you have no clue what's really gonna end up in that fund. Whereas we do it slightly different. We do a semi blind pool to where any new fund we roll out, we always have a couple C deals that are. Literally in due diligence ready to go Norman's two or three. And that way you have a firm understanding at least of what's gonna initially going into the fund. And you can look back historically as well as our other funds. And you'll find that there's a common theme and a common pattern that we typically buy the same type of assets over and over again. And so I think for that reason, a lot of maybe our investors that would've otherwise. Not found themselves comfortable in a fund structure can get a comfort level. Again, track record means a lot as well. We've been doing this for quite some time and have had great success with our fund model. And for that reason, we're gonna continue with the fund model. Moving forward,

Steven M Weinstock: 21:27

what's the biggest challenge raising capital in the current environment?

Kevin Bupp: 21:34

Yeah. It's, i'm not gonna say that we haven't had challenges. I think that it all goes back to track record and what does the last couple of years look like for your business? And, have you continued with distributions? Have you had hiccups where you've had to do capital calls or had deals that are, just not performing as laid out? I think that for us, we haven't had any debt. We've, we're pretty conservative with what we buy, and so we've never stopped distributions. I think we've had now. I think I think we're up to 32 steady 32 quarters of consistent returns over the years. Only time we've ever paused distributions was for literally like a one month stint of time when COVID hit because we didn't know whether or not people were gonna pay their rent, but ultimately resumed them shortly thereafter. And so I think that for us, the biggest challenge we've seen is that LPs in general, Lumina partners. They probably have, a lot of 'em, if they're involved in multiple investments, there's probably been an investment or more that, where they've lost money or they've had a capital call and so they've got trepidation, they've got concerns. A lot of these, a lot of, credit investors, passive investors, a lot of'em, they've worked really hard for many decades to save up this capital so that they can, create this passive income. And they're seeing, challenges with that. They're seeing their lifestyle have to change because they've had some deals go bad. And so for that reason, that, that's a trickle down effect, investors that might have been putting capital up or wanted to put capital with us maybe are saying, Hey, sorry, I just don't have it. Or I just I'm scared now, right? I, I'm concerned that, I've lost money in these other deals. Like I just, I can't lose anymore. And so I think that's our biggest challenge. Although, we've raised. Over the last two years, we've we've had our two biggest buying years in the last two years. And so we've raised for us record amount of capital. In the last two years we've raised about a hundred and I think $112 million of capital from retail investors and a lot of it repeat investors a big portion as well, though new investors and but I think we're capital's not flowing as readily as it was, four years ago. And so we've gotta work probably two, three times harder. To get that capital through the door than what we would have when, it was just free flowing. Everyone's trying to throw money at deals, that is not what it looks like today. And so you actually have to do some work in order to gain trust and, get capital in, into your coffers. But it's we got a pretty good system. We got a great team in place. We feel, again, the track record, I think that's really. Where I feel like we, we've got a, a strong argument as to, who we are, what we do, why we do it. It speaks for itself. We don't have to sell, a profor of a deal. We really just have to sell what we've done now historically over the last, decade plus. And not just when time for good, but even over the last couple years, what have our assets perform, how they performed, how have our distribution's been? And it's been great. Not saying that we have an any challenge, but like it's been, we've been in a really solid place. We've got really great debt throughout our entire portfolio. No floating rate debt, anything like, nothing that's been, viewed as a risk now over these last couple of years. And so it's been a, it's been a good ride for us.

Steven M Weinstock: 24:17

What pushback do you get from a potential investor that will tell you? I only do syndications. I don't do a fund. I get that myself I started with syndications and I'll have people who just hear the word fund. And they're afraid. Now, some of them tell me a fund means more fees. A fund tells me you're doing whatever you want without consulting me. What are some of the pushbacks you get and how do you answer that? I know you mentioned yeah, you're in contract with a few properties or similar properties. But what's some of the pushback that you.

Kevin Bupp: 24:53

Yeah, the ones you just hit on there, the fee thing. And I would say that, our fund is structured no differently than the deal specific syndication. There's an asset management fee, there's an acquisition fee. So really it's just there's multiple properties underneath the one umbrella than that of just one. So as it relates to fees and the structure, it. Our paperwork model is out of a deal specific syndication. It just has multiple properties. And we do have full discretion to, to go buy properties during the duration of that fund. But at the end of the day, my job is not to sell you on, get you out of your discomfort zone. If you had a bad experience in a fund maybe a fund's not for you, then, I just for us, we just we hinge back on our, on the track record, what we've done. We're very transparent about our fee load what it looks like, what it means for them, what it means for their dollar invested. And it's really up to the investor. We give the information. Answer any questions they have and then you let them make the decision for themselves whether or not this is a good investment. Or they feel they should go otherwise other places and just do a deal specific. I, I don't know. It's I just always like to say proof's in the pudding, like I any deal I look at, so if I'm looking at a fund or a deal specific. It's obviously important to understand the deal, be able to wrap your arms around it, but at the end of the day, you, the average retail investor isn't a, isn't really an experienced real estate investor where Steven, if you gave them a pro forma for a multi-family property, that they would really be able to pick it apart. And poke holes and why it's going to, or why it's not going to perform as you have laid out. And so really what it comes down to is betting on the jockey itself. Who's running the organization, what's their track record? Have they been successful? Talk to other investors that, that they're currently working with. Find out how their communication is. Find out how the reporting is. How the financial updates are, and I think that's what you need to base your investment around. It's not necessarily, is it a fund or is it deal specific? I think just getting a, a good sense of. Who's the sponsor that's running this organization? What's their, what's the company balance sheet look like? What's their per personal balance sheet look like? Are they in good financial health? And again, do they have that long track record that they can lean on? Again I don't, we never get into a situation where we're trying to sell somebody on a fund if they're uncomfortable with it, we look at everyone at they're grownups. We give 'em the information, we're transparent about everything, and leave it up to them to make the right decision for them, whatever that might be.

Steven M Weinstock: 27:08

You've hosted your podcast, real Estate, investing for Cash Flow for quite some time. Why did you start it?

Kevin Bupp: 27:16

Yeah, it's a great question. Yeah, so it's been been 11 years now and this past January was 11, marked 11 years. I was an early adopter podcast. I started listening to podcast probably back in. That was probably back in 2008, 2009, when a lot of the folks didn't know what a podcast was. And what I found is that I was tuning in and trying to get specific information on commercial real estate investments, and there wasn't a lot of podcasts out there that really spoke to the topics I wanted to learn about. And for that reason if it wasn't out there, I figured that there was plenty other people that wanted to listen to the content that I wanted to listen to. And so I, him and hawed about it for a couple of years and then ultimately launched my show back in 2014 because it, there was nothing else that existed. In the podcast sphere that focused on commercial real estate investments. And and it wasn't, there was no business purpose behind it really. It was a, I looked at it in this way. I said, Hey, if I get to interview incredibly successful commercial real estate investors and ask 'em whatever I'd like to ask them for an hour period of time what's that worth? Is that worth me putting the effort and putting this podcast together? And the answer was a resounding yes. Absolutely. These are folks that have had decades of experience. And I was at the stage where I was building my business or rebuilding my business, I wanted to find out what the folks that have been doing it for multiple decades, what are they doing? I get to ask 'em these questions, right? Have a dedicated mentor for an hour. And so that was a big value and I saw that as a value of why I should be doing this show. And then second to that, I figured if I wanted to know answers to all these questions and I wanted to, hear stories from these successful. Commercial investors that there's probably at least a few hundred or a few thousand other people out in the world that wanted to hear it as well. And that was really the catalyst of me launching it. At least for the first couple of years, I never did any, I never promoted anything, never talked about my business, never talked about investments investment opportunities within our organization. Not until about three years did we ever started even making mention of an opportunity to invest alongside us. We've always done Reg Defi oh six Cs, and so we had the ability to generally solicit but we didn't really do that until about three years in. And again, that was never the intent or the purpose of the show. It was more so just to, to, get educated, meet other incredibly successful folks, and then also share that information with the world.

Steven M Weinstock: 29:19

Has the show ever led directly to a deal or a partnership?

Kevin Bupp: 29:23

Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And some of that's hard to really quantify. But as far as capital raise I don't have an exact dollar amount, but I can tell you probably for the first. Up until probably three years ago it was the sole source or the 99% of the capital that came in came as a result of investors listening to the show and then reaching out. And that probably equated to, it could have been probably in the 50, 60, $70 million range of of capital that came in as a result of the show over the years. As far as a deal yeah, I can't tie it back exactly to one deal that we bought because of the show that might have come in as someone sharing an opportunity with us. But I will say that my business partner Brian Spear, he's the other half of Sunrise Capital investors I met him literally through the podcast. I, I used to do this thing back when I launched the show. I wanted to get an idea. It's really difficult with app, with, with Apple. The other the other places that ultimately host podcasts, it's really difficult. And back then it was really just Apple. It's hard to find out who your listeners really are. Like you can see the number of downloads, but you don't necessarily know who's actually tuning in. Who are they? Are they active investors? Are they passive investors? Are they just getting started? Are they further along in the journey? And so I wanted to get a sense of who's tuning in. And so every Friday. I would set I set up a calendar link and I had four 30 minute slots on my calendar every Friday. And I would share that link on the show and I would allow folks to schedule 30 minutes with me. Like I didn't sell 'em anything. I didn't pitch anything. I didn't have a program to sell them. I wouldn't sell 'em investments. And it was just an opportunity to meet folks, talk, shop, talk about their real estate journey, answer any questions they might have and to be able to provide some value back to them if I could. And I met some, literally my Friday calendar was booked. Every single Friday for multiple years. I haven't done it for a number of years now. I just got too busy. But I met hundreds of people along the way, and one of those individuals probably in the first year I was doing it, ended up being my business partner, Brian Spear. And and after getting to know him for about a year and a half and see his talents and his skill sets ultimately came onto the team way back when this was like 2000 and. Probably 2015, 2016. And then, and now he's a literally a full-fledged, partner of mine within this organization has that really helped us scale it over the last couple of years. I would say out of that podcast, the biggest win or the biggest deal that I've landed is the partnership with Brian and us to just grown an incredible organization together. Pretty cool story there. I always like looking back on that and just trying to reflect and say, Hey, where would my business be? If it hadn't been for the podcast? I think we'd still be really successful. But I think the podcast has definitely helped us really accelerate the growth in many different ways.

Steven M Weinstock: 31:51

Wow. Incredible story. I, I guess you just answered my next question. Do you think it's important for syndicators. Today to have a public platform. But yeah I agree with you. Yeah,

Kevin Bupp: 32:02

I think so. I will say that I think it's important too when you go into it. It, po running a podcast is a lot of work. In the beginning I did everything. I literally found guests. I created all my content. I edited all the audio. I did, literally did everything. I, and I'm not, I don't have a tech background, so it was, I had to learn this stuff on the fly. Thank God for YouTube. But it's a lot of work. It, and it's a commitment. And so I think going into it, I think if you only have the sole purpose of going into it 'cause you think it's going to better your business, meaning that like you wanna raise capital, all you're gonna do is, try to, announce deals that you have working and the capital that you're raising and, looking for partners if you go into it with that intent. And it's not necessarily just to go in and have fun and meet great people and share, good value with the world, then I think folks get burnt out pretty quickly. You can go on the PLA Apple platform or Spotify and you'll probably find a lot of podcasts that started, years back. They've got 20 episodes or 25 episodes and they stopped. And 'cause it's a long, it's a long-term game. It's more of planting a seed and, that seed might take 3, 4, 5 years to blossom. That's a long time. And so I think if you go into it, the right intent, Hey, I'm gonna have fun doing this. I'm gonna meet some incredible people along the way I'm leading with value. Like literally I'm leading with value. I'm not gonna, I don't, I'm not going in to ask for anything. I wanna lead with value first and foremost. I think that's the right mindset. Otherwise I feel like it's much easier to get burnt out and it's just not gonna be authentic. Your listeners can see through that and they'll realize very quickly that you're just. This is a self-serve interest, and it's not necessarily to give value back to to the world.

Steven M Weinstock: 33:30

Yeah. So I started I started this podcast recently. I think we're recording now maybe the 18th episode. And my main reason for starting is exactly what you outlined earlier. I get to speak to successful people for a half hour straight or an hour straight. Who otherwise might not even give me a five minutes on a phone call. So Kevin, thank you very much for coming on. Yeah. But yeah, it's incredible. Just these last few weeks of recording these episodes I've learned a lot. Made great connections and it's, for now it's fun. So I'm still enjoying it. I'm still liking it a lot. I'm happy I started but yes it's definitely a long commitment. I'm still early in it and three to five years sounds like a lifetime away. But, I am in real estate, so I do play the long game. Let's see where this takes, that's real

Kevin Bupp: 34:21

estate's a long game too. That's another thing. Yeah. It's you can hit some home runs here and there and get some big pops and have some big wins, but typically speaking, it's a long game. It's a more of a delayed gratification type of business. And and it's all about just, compound benefits over time of buying assets, buying great assets in great locations at the right prices. But it doesn't typically happen overnight. Again, you'll get a few big pops along the way, but to think that those big pops and home runs are gonna happen time and time again, over and over, you'd probably be better off maybe, so buying another, buying into another type of business, right? There's plenty other businesses that probably throw off more cash flow. Than that maybe a lot. The real estate investments, it's real estate is much more of a long-term long-term play,

Steven M Weinstock: 35:03

in my opinion, Elise. Got it. Okay. So I'm gonna ask you some questions. As we wrap this up, try to gimme an answer 20 seconds or so. Sure. What's the one piece of advice you'd give to someone buying their first commercial deal in 2025?

Kevin Bupp: 35:19

Yeah, I think just find someone else that's been there, done that pretty easy nowadays to seek out someone that's been successful maybe in the area of real estate that you wanna buy. If you wanna buy retail, if you wanna buy office, whatever it might be, multifamily, find someone else that's been there, done that, and try to learn from them. Plenty of resources out there to do that now. So I, that didn't exist 25 years ago. It was much more difficult to find that 25 years ago when I started. But that's the one piece of advice I would give, get aligned with others that are. Focusing in your niche that are years ahead of you as far as experience.

Steven M Weinstock: 35:47

Okay. This next question might be a little tough. I don't wanna uncover any wounds. What's the worst mistake you made on a real estate deal and how did you recover?

Kevin Bupp: 35:57

Yeah, that's a great question. No, there, there was a deal that we, back when I first started buying parks that we that we, that I lost money on. I didn't, I relied upon someone else to do some of the deeper due diligence and the infrastructure and ended up buying the property. Everything had seemingly checked out and found out a few months into owning the property that the septic system was failing and that there was no really plan B there wasn't enough land to put new septic in. And so for that reason. It became a very expensive endeavor to have to haul away the waste on a weekly basis from this property. And and it was literally just, there was no, no solution for it. And so I ended up basically walking away from that deal lost, multiple six figures. And lesson learned is that I'm intimately involved even today in our business with the due diligence process. I put my eyes on every investment that we buy, and I spend multiple days in the property meeting with professionals looking through the infrastructure, the water line, sewer lines, the electrical, everything, so that I could put my stamp of approval on it.

Steven M Weinstock: 36:50

If your podcast disappeared tomorrow, what's the one relationship or deal you'd miss the most?

Kevin Bupp: 36:57

The podcast? Yeah. No, I think I just miss if the podcast disappeared tomorrow, I think I just miss these conversations like the one that you and I are having right now. Again, I think they're they're priceless. And the folks that I've met along the way and the experience I've gained, the knowledge I've gained is, again, you can't put a price tag on it.

Steven M Weinstock: 37:12

Kevin it was great to have you tell our audience a little about where they could reach out to you. I'll put it in the show notes, but tell us.

Kevin Bupp: 37:19

If you wanna learn a little bit more, more about my company, sunrise Capital Investors, and who we are, what we do, and why we do it you can go to invest with sunrise.com. Got a lot of good information there. You can see our current offering, but outside that we share case studies of deals that we've gone full cycle on deals that are currently in our portfolio. We even provide, there's, lots of third party reports on there of deals. We, we try to be very transparent with what we do, why we do it, how we do it. So again, invest with sunrise.com. I'm also very active on social. I'm very active on LinkedIn, very active on Instagram and Facebook. You can find me on any one of those places. Just, my last name is Bupp, BupppP. So if you type in Kevin Buppp I should be the first result that shows up on any of those social pages. But LinkedIn, I'm very active on, would love to connect with you. I still respond to all my direct messages. The ones that aren't spam, at least on LinkedIn. So I'm pretty easy to track down and and get in touch with.

Steven M Weinstock: 38:09

Kevin, thanks for joining me today. For those listening, if you wanna learn more, definitely check out Kevin's podcast, real Estate Investing for Cashflow. And his book, the Cashflow Investor, he shares a ton of value for anyone looking to get serious about building wealth in real estate. This is the Wealth Clock with Steven Weinstock. See you on the next episode.