2025 in Review: Wins and Lessons

In this episode of Paging Financial Freedom, Dr. Daniel Shin, a surgeon and real estate investor, and Lila Kaplan, a former Wall Street professional and certified financial planner, reflect on their journey through 2025 and share their goals for 2026. They discuss their real estate achievements, the challenges they’ve faced, and the lessons they've learned along the way.

The conversation delves into their personal and professional milestones, including Lila's success with an 82-unit apartment deal in Richardson, Texas, and the expansion of their portfolios. They highlight the opportunities they’ve seized by taking advantage of discounted properties and their efforts to overcome challenges like evictions and property stabilization. Dr. Shin and Lila also talk about their evolving real estate strategies, their goals for the coming year, and the importance of building relationships in competitive markets like Dallas.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 – Introduction to the episode and the hosts’ reflections on 2025.
 01:14 – Lila’s journey through the year and her successful 82-unit apartment investment in Dallas.
 03:32 – The process of finding hidden potential in real estate and uncovering opportunities.
06:24 – The challenges and successes of stabilizing properties and managing delinquencies.
 08:11 – Dr. Shin’s experience with capital raising and deals in Dallas and Tallahassee.
 10:48 – How current economic trends and interest rates are affecting real estate opportunities.
12:30 – The importance of market research and understanding local demographics when investing.
15:09 – Lila’s strategy for continuing to expand in Dallas while exploring new markets like Kentucky.
17:45 – The benefits of having strong relationships with local investors, brokers, and lenders.
20:12 – Personal reflections on goals for 2026, including expanding portfolios and professionalizing businesses.
22:35 – The balance between business growth and personal goals, including Lila’s pickleball tournament aspiration.
24:55 – Closing thoughts on the lessons learned in 2025 and the exciting potential for the year ahead.

Dr. Shin and Lila emphasize the significance of setting clear, achievable goals, building meaningful relationships, and making intentional decisions about real estate investments. They share how they plan to scale their businesses, diversify their portfolios, and continue learning and growing in 2026.

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

• Paging Financial Freedom Podcast on Spotify & Apple Podcasts
• Learn more about Dr. Daniel Shin’s Real Estate Fund: CereusRealEstate.com
• Learn more about Lila Kaplan’s Real Estate Investment Management Company: SilverbackEquityPartners.com

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Transcript

00:01
Welcome to Paging Financial Freedom, a podcast about doctors and spouses and the journey to financial freedom through real estate and tax savings.  I'm Dr. Daniel Shin, a surgeon and real estate investor. You might know me on social media as the Darwinian doctor or the founder of Sirius Real Estate.  And I'm Lila Kaplan, former Wall Street professional, certified financial planner,  and the person on a mission to retire my orthopedic surgeon husband in the next five years. I specialize in apartment investing.

00:29
helping doctors and their families build true financial freedom beyond their W-2 incomes.  If you're interested in achieving tax-efficient financial freedom through real estate, you're in the right place.  Let's get started.

00:44
Welcome everyone to another episode of Paging Financial Freedom.  I'm one of your hosts, Daniel Shin,  and I'm joined as always by Lila Kaplan. How are doing today, Lila? I'm good. I'm good. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm looking forward to this episode because, you know, as we discussed, we're just going to be looking back at 2025 and thinking about the year that we've had, what we've accomplished and sort of what we have in store for 2026. Yeah, absolutely. We're definitely winding down this

01:14
incredible 2025. And I will love to share some of my few wins and lessons and also goals with you and the audience. So do you want to start first? Yeah, I can give a quick sort of housekeeping update for the listeners. We've been kind of going back and forth about guests and I know we're both really excited to start welcoming on guests in 2026. So we're going to be making invites if

01:41
You're listening and you also want to show up on the podcast and talk about real estate and medicine and, you know, living life  as a healthcare professional seeking financial freedom. Definitely contact us,  but really looking forward to that new development  in the new year. Absolutely. And I would add to that, that if you have any questions about real estate, wealth building, tax strategies, please reach out to us. We would love to be able to address them.

02:10
ourselves or bring on additional professionals to address those questions as well. So love to hear from our audience who are listening. Thank you so much for joining this journey with us. You know, we would love to be more interactive with everyone that is listening to our podcast. do you mind going first? What did you like about 2025 and what do feel like you've accomplished? A lot has happened in 2025 as I

02:40
started this journey in 2025, I actually built a team of four that eventually was just down to me. And so I wanted to continue to scale my business, continue to chase the retirement journey with my husband of retiring him in the next five years, but also to build that business through multifamily. And so I was able to find a great operator in Dallas.

03:08
and we closed an 82 unit apartment building out of Richardson, Texas. It was one of those unicorn deals where  we bought the property  at the loan value of the seller. So 34 % discount  and the returns are looking good right now. We're starting to stabilize.

03:32
But also there was a huge value add, a hidden gem within the building that we didn't realize until we started walking this property. And that was the leasing office had three floors pretty much of empty space that were never converted into additional units. And so through this process, we found out that we're able to potentially add five more units and honestly working with

04:00
The city of Dallas has been an incredible experience. has been extremely easy for us. Definitely very different from  the states that I've have lived in like New York, Denver, or even California, where my partners are from. They're willing to work with you and they're willing to provide you the resources to get you over the gold line versus.

04:24
I feel like in New York or California and even Denver, they don't want to do anything. They don't want you to expand your business. So that has been an incredible experience to participate in. So we love Dallas.  On the other side of the coin, you know, we are still stabilizing.  We've evicted a few people now. And so everything, our delinquencies has gone down as well.

04:52
So we're very proud of this project. I'm personally very proud of this project. And I had a lot of, you know, medical professional investors who came on as investors as well  and have been communicating with them on a month to month basis, just to update them on what's happening with the momentum of this multifamily deal. So that's  was extremely exciting. I've been really fascinated hearing about it. You know, obviously you're very involved on the general partnership side and

05:22
It was a successful capital raise and it's been fascinating hearing about it. So congratulations on that deal. I'm glad it's going well. Daniel, I know that you have done a couple of incredible deals as well. How are those going for you? Yeah, it's been a really good experience this year. So for Sirius Real Estate last year did essentially one large kind of elongated raise that that did go well. That was for a property in Iowa.  And this year raised  capital for two

05:49
really exciting deals. uh One was also in the Dallas area. So I'm a big fan of the Dallas, Fort Worth area. And then later in the year,  there was a deal in Tallahassee, Florida.  And part of  looking at real estate all over the place is also a learning process. So whenever I look at a deal, I kind of fly in and poke around and drive around the city and learn about the economy and the demographic trends.  And  it was interesting learning about both Dallas and Tallahassee. So

06:18
Both of those deals are going great. And, you know, it's just a great experience going through that process and continuing to professionalize and formalize the capital raise and talking to investors. So yeah, they're pretty big properties, but also similar to your Dallas deal, there's this like window of opportunity now where all of these apartment complexes are being repriced. So they're being essentially available for purchase at a huge discount compared to 2021 and 2022. So it's been an exciting time.

06:48
Yeah, absolutely. mean, those bridge loans are coming due, maturing, and a lot of sellers are just not cash flowing. They're going from a 3 % interest rate to now a 7%, 8 % interest rate. So the cash flow is definitely a challenge for them. And that's why they're starting to sell. So hopefully we'll see more of these deals in 2026. I've been told that we're going to see a little bit more of these type of deals in 2026. And then that's

07:16
pretty much it and then hopefully where the market will stabilize by 2027. So Daniel, here's my question for you. I know you've been to Dallas, Iowa and also Florida in terms of finding these deals. Do you have a favorite market? What do you think the differences are and what do you think the investors should be looking at when looking at different markets? Yeah, I have a sort of a interesting opinion on that. I think that there were these hot markets

07:45
that got oversupplied during 2020 and 2021 into 2022. And these are markets that you might think of like Dallas and Austin got oversupplied, Phoenix got oversupplied. There are some other examples here. So it's interesting. You would think that, oh, you know, we should stay away from these places, but there's a reason why certain markets got oversupplied. It's because the demographic fundamentals and the economic sort of infrastructure is awesome in these places. So.

08:15
I think it's,  I'm sort of of two minds because  these  markets that we're doing awesome, you know, they might be challenged on the real estate side, but a lot of the economic fundamentals are still really great. So I don't think it's necessarily the case that you have to stay away from those markets, especially now that the property is changing hands and being acquired at much better entry points. But on the other hand, you know, when I learned about, for example, Tallahassee, which

08:41
I had never heard about Tallahassee. You know, my geography is amazing.  So I didn't  even realize previously that it was a capital of Florida, but now I do. So the thing is, when you look at these kind of theoretically smaller markets, you can also see that the fundamentals can be really strong. So it's anchored by being the state capital. It's anchored by a really big university. So there are all these things that can be going for these smaller markets also that make it really kind of appealing. So long story short, yeah.

09:10
strong population growth, definitely job creation in Florida. There's a lot of companies who are going to Florida now. So same thing in Dallas. mean, there  are about 3000 people who move into Dallas every week. So yeah, the growth there is tremendous. There's a lot of lot more Fortune 500 companies that are headquartering in the Dallas area as well.  And it's slowly creeping more north into Oklahoma. So

09:39
Who knows?  You know, there's the,  I think that they call it the golden trail going north  and potentially there might be more opportunities in the Oklahoma area as well. So we're looking around. you have a specific market that you kind of have as a favorite also? Is it Dallas or are you also kind of more open-minded?

09:59
I'm pretty open-minded right now. I love Dallas because I love the story of Dallas, the growth in Dallas. Like I said, it's incredible. And I have met a lot of very influential investors,  but also lenders and brokers as well. So I've filled pretty solid relationships in Dallas. And as you know, to find great deals, you need really solid relationships in the region. So  I'm going to stay in Dallas for a while.

10:28
It's hard to enter into a competitive market like Dallas. And so once you're in, you want to stay put. But I am open-minded to other regions as well.  I think we're going to start looking  into Kentucky next year along the Bourbon Trail.  We have a couple of investments out there already that are doing pretty well. So we're looking to expand our portfolio that direction.

10:54
But also, you know, I always talk to you about this as well, but Columbus, Ohio  is one of my favorite destinations to invest in. So I am looking to expand in that direction. So between Kentucky and Columbus, you know, it's, pretty close all around. So that's kind of my goal for 2026 is to stay within the Dallas  area, but also expand the portfolio into other areas.

11:21
just so that we get a little bit more diversification as well. That makes sense. All right. But before we leave 2025, kind of on the more sort of personal portfolio side, how have things been going? Good. Good and bad. You know, we have a couple of short-term rentals still out in the East side, East coast. Two in Tennessee, one in Florida. I would say in the beginning of the year, Florida had a lot of momentum. We were getting pretty great.

11:50
guest and an arch higher occupancy rate in the beginning of the year. would say we were hitting definitely 80, 90, even a hundred during the summertime. Yeah. Tennessee started a little bit rough, but I think we're closing out the year much higher than we expected. We did do a revamp of the property. We added a beautiful mural in our pool room and then also add a few more.

12:19
arcade games and that seemed to do the trick. And so we are probably in the 90th percentile in terms of STR owners at the moment. We're booked very, very well. And I think we're projecting to hit about 130, 140 in terms of revenue this year. Last year, we've only achieved about 110. And this is a market that's rough. know, I know, you know, it's, it's a rough market right now.

12:48
The average daily rates has come down 20, 30 % from its peak, probably even 50 % from the peak of COVID. And so I am extremely proud that we're turning around our STR in Tennessee this year by a few tweaks as well. So that's good. And because we were able to achieve the STR, know, attached with STRs is the STR loophole.

13:18
So we're able to use our cost segregation study on our existing STR property to get about $70,000 in tax return this year. So we're doing everything that we are educating our investors about. And so I'm extremely proud of what we have accomplished. So next year, hopefully it'll be a better year  in the STR market. We'll see. But for now, we're just taking one step at a time.

13:48
What about you? How's your personal portfolio looking like? Yeah, it's been an interesting year. So  I would say the biggest move that we made was selling our long-term  rental in Los Angeles. Like we had a very pricey rental in Los Angeles that we've been kind of holding onto for the last few years. It was our former primary home  that we've turned into a two unit long-term rental.  And we just had so much equity trapped in there.

14:16
that we thought it was finally time to kind of cash out of that. that was a really big move for us because we were able to sell that and because it was a primary home for two of the last five years, we were able to write off 500k of equity gain, which is amazing.  And we were able to take that cash and pay off a lot of HELOC debt that we had taken out for other things. And because of the high interest rates, HELOC debt is fairly expensive still, even though rates have kind of come down. So it was

14:45
really nice for our cashflow to pay off that.  And essentially I'm just, I think the strategy going forward is probably going to be just converting over our long-term rental portfolio into syndications and sort of larger assets  on a limited partnership or general partnership basis. The SGR has definitely had been challenging. You know, we have this great short-term rental in Palm Springs, California that's been doing pretty good.

15:12
The one that we have in the  Broken Bow Market  of Oklahoma has had challenges because just like you mentioned in Tennessee, the  average daily rates have really fallen.  And the thing that really differentiates our two short-term rentals is that in Palm Springs, it's very supply constrained. can't, it's very difficult. They make it difficult on purpose to get short-term rental permits. So  that has really stabilized sort of the average daily rates, but

15:41
In Broken Bow, you can put up a cabin in like a month, you know, and there's very little permitting.  So during COVID, the supply of cabins just exploded. And obviously when supply and demand gets out of whack, things like what you can charge daily rates, it can really be volatile. So that's been the biggest challenge there. Yeah. mean, I remember Airbnb wanted a million new  hosts.

16:07
to  start up Airbnbs and that's what happened, right? The market is flooded with short-term rentals at this point  and a lot of people are getting in trouble, a lot of people are not cash flowing and a lot of people are selling and that really depreciates the market. So we're definitely holding onto ours, our kids, we went out to Tennessee with our kids this year as well and we just, we love the place as well. we're...

16:33
definitely keeping this not only as  a business venture, but also  for our family as well. It's an incredible place to be. And  our kids love Dollywood, so we're very close to Dollywood, so that's always fun to have as well. Yeah, I think that is one of the nice things about short-term rentals that you can travel there with the kids, you can make repairs, they can kind of see.

16:57
what you're doing in terms of your real estate portfolio. And you can also enjoy the property at the same time. So there's always a silver lining.  what about your 2026 goals? Yeah. So for 2026, I would say on the business side, I'm just really excited to continue to expand and grow Serious Real Estate. My goal is to do three to four awesome deals next year, offer, you know, those opportunities to the investors.

17:23
And actually in this last quarter, I've been mainly focusing  on professionalizing the business. So I've made some hires to help with marketing and to help with the financial side.  I hired a fractional CFO to kind of help me shore up the financial plan. I'm putting the finishing touches on an ebook. I made this like very nice orientation deck. So I really  hope that it can be a very professional and growing business for the next 30 years. So I'm trying to make that investment and approach it.

17:53
in a really organized way.  So on the business side, that's really what I'm  looking forward to most  in the year to come, know, growth  of serious real estate.  What about you? Business wise,  definitely want just like you,  I want to acquire two more multifamily properties.  Definitely, definitely want to make sure that they're great investments as well. Right now is just it's it's you're looking at, you know, 100 different

18:20
opportunities and maybe finding  one or two great deals. So I rather have two than having, you know, four bad ones. So we,  trying to be a little bit more conservative with the acquisition side, streamlining my business. feel like as I'm scaling my business, I haven't really done the hires that you have done. And I see the incredible growth that you have had this year by just hiring a few people to help you out. So.

18:49
definitely want to be able to use AI as an opportunity or  tool to scale my business operations, but also maybe potentially get a human being behind it as well. And then just continue to educate,  you know, investors, doctors, busy professionals through workshops, webinar,  you know, any contents and just  also my personal experience.

19:15
This year I have done a couple of conferences as well. So I like to do a few more speaking arrangements at conferences or different webinars that are hosted by, you know, the industry professionals. We've got your bucket full, but I think you mentioned some sort of more like personal goals for 2026, right? Maybe some athletic goals. Can you tell us about that?

19:38
I do. do. So I started playing pickleball this June and I've been obsessed with it. It's just, it's so fun. You get to network. And so in 2026, I thought, you know, this might be random, but I am putting it out there that I'm entering a pickleball tournament in 2026. So because, know, success is not just about income. It's also about.

20:06
having the freedom to have fun as well. So that's my personal goal and I'm sticking to it.  I love it. I love it. What about you? Do you have any personal goals? Yeah, I think personally in 2025, for example, I traveled to a few different places with Locum Tenants uh and I've been slowly kind of working closer and closer to Memphis in terms of Locum Tenants. And  so I'm excited next  month  in January to start.

20:34
helping a hospital just about an hour away driving from Memphis. So that's going to be really nice in terms of quality of life improvement. I won't have to travel as much and spend as much time in airport lounges. personally, I had Hey, that's not too bad. Yeah, there's pluses and minuses, obviously.

20:58
Additional to that,  I had this recent really exciting meeting with the leader of a local nonprofit called Church Health. And in Memphis, they, by my calculations, health insurance,  I'm sorry, more like health services for about 15 % of the population in Memphis, which is ridiculous. I mean, they do so much, but so little. I'm excited to start helping them  with just like urology services and volunteering there.

21:26
There is a philanthropic mission for Sirius Real Estate where 10 % of the profits are going towards nonprofits. So I'm excited to start donating to them as well. like the more that Sirius grows, the more I can make a difference there too. So yeah, those are some of the, some of the personal goals. I'm on a continual fitness journey too. So maybe we'll meet each other on the pickleball court. Yes, pickleball. You know, my husband this year made a goal of running a marathon, 26.2 miles.

21:54
And this past week he did it. So I'm incredibly proud of him. And so I am very curious what 2026 has to, you know, has in store for him. Wow. That is  such an achievement. And  I don't know if I'm ever going to run a marathon, but  congratulations to him.  Well, awesome.  I know that both of us have some travel booked over the holidays and then we're going to hit 2026 hard. I'm really excited to.

22:23
record some awesome episodes in 2026 with you, with some guests. Thank you, Daniel. It has been an incredible journey with you this year and I'm looking forward to 2026. And I also wanted to thank everybody who's listening for being here and let's make 2026 your year to invest smarter, legacy and buy back your time. All right, everyone. Happy holidays. See you soon. holidays.

22:52
Thanks for tuning in to Paging Financial Freedom, where we help doctors and spouses like you take control of your finances, invest smarter, and build a life by design.  If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe,  leave us a five-star review,  and share this with someone who needs to hear it.  And remember, financial freedom isn't just a dream, it's a decision, so let's get there together.