How you could create Huge success In Real Estate by starting today! With special guest Vinny Silva.

All right, guys, welcome back to the Augusta Rammality podcast. On today's episode, we're joining my friend Vinny Sover here. Vinny and his partner, Reggie, have been killing the real estate game here in market recently. In the last two to three years, they went from doing a couple flips a year to doing, in out say in the next year, you're going to do how many flips, Vinny? 10 at least. 10 flips. So Vinny is, what, you're 23 years old, Vinny? 24. 24 years old. He's 24 years old. And most 24 year olds, I know, are still living out home with their parents. They're still, you know, working maybe like a regular nine to five job. Even though there's nothing wrong with that, he took a twin on the level. A couple years ago, he was working a regular nine to five job. And him and his partner, Reggie, decided to, they wanted more of their lives. They wanted to make an impact. They wanted to not work for the rest of their lives. And they wanted to make a change for them and their, for the future of, for them and their families. So today, we're going to be blessed to, to, to be able to hear what Vinny's thoughts and mindset are towards, towards life and how he got to, to the position that he is now at such a young age. All right, Vinny, you want to, you want to take it over and kind of introduce yourself a little bit? Hey, what's up guys? First off, pleasure to be here. So yeah, so I, I started off, you know, working really, you know, like a nine to five out of high school, I was working construction and a remodeling company. And I got a lot of experience working with construction and carpentry. And after a few years, it might have been two, three years, I just, you know, kind of realized I could be doing this for myself. And it always was a dream of mine to kind of start my own construction company. So I just went out and did it, bought a, bought a pickup truck. You know, bought some tools and just started telling people I was doing carpentry work. And you know, sooner or later, people started hiring me and things picked up. After a year, I was, you know, I was moving up, doing big kitchen and bathroom models. Did that for about six months to a year, which was been, you know, me and Reggie started talking more about flipping and, you know, development. We did a seminar where we learned a lot of stuff and we laughed and we said, let's, let's do it. Let's do a flip. Let's do one house, see how it goes and we'll go from there. And so we did that first one. We purchased that first one in January. It was really January 2nd, right after New Year's of 2020. So we did that one. It was in August with a small flip. And before we even finished that one, we kind of, we saw where we were going at. We saw like, you know, what we were going to sell it. We saw the profit we were going to make. We thought to ourselves, let's buy more. So before even finishing that other one, we already had offers on two other properties. And you know, this was right during the period of time, which was COVID. COVID was right in, you know, beginning of March. So the first property we listed, which was in August, we listed it the weekend before COVID shut down happened, which, you know, kind of crumbled us. I don't, to be honest, I think about it to this day. I don't know how we just, it didn't scare us, but it didn't. We just kept going. But, you know, fast forward, we that year, we ended up buying. I think it was nine houses. That was 2020. Wow. Nine houses. And, and that's where it is. And it just, you know, every year, we, we've, I mean, really last year we bought eight, nine, this year, we've bought more. We're, we're slowly shifting our business into bigger development. We have a project in Maldon that's in the pipeline. We're taking it to zoning. It's to build nine single families. We have another one in Everett that we're going to try to get 20 units on similar to, to the Gavys project. And that's where it is. We're, we're now starting to focus on, you know, more multi units where we can buy, renovate, and hold. So, but, but that, that's a gist of it. All right. So you guys see how he went from, you know, just working a regular nine to five jobs. He went to one seminar based off the knowledge of that one seminar. Him and Reggie got the confidence to go out there and be able to purchase a property. And like, I don't know if you, if you guys heard what he said or not, but as soon as it was time to sell the property, COVID hit, right? So you, you need to have some big, big guts to be able to do stuff like that and knowing, even knowing after COVID is around, nobody really knew what was going on. They bought nine more properties that year. Like, that's risk and that's a risk that pays off. Like, that's risk that like not everybody will, will take. And I, and I seen a quote today that the quote was basically saying that, no, you're, if you don't take risks, you're going to work for the people that do, right? So most people don't take the risk because they, because they don't have that knowledge, they don't have that information. They, they're always like, oh, what if this doesn't work out or what if this happens or what if like, I don't get my money back. All right. Well, guess what? You still got to go back to that nine to five. You still get to go back to that job, right? Like, so take that risk. If you don't take that risk, guess what's still going to be waiting for you at the end of the day? Still that same job that you left to take that risk, where it's going to be waiting for you at the end of the day. It's not going everywhere anywhere. So if you guys think about it like that, in a sense of like, my friend Vinnie here took a huge risk with his partner and it paid off and based off the knowledge and everything they learned from the first flip, they bought nine more properties. What does that tell you? Right? That tells you that it takes, it's not just confidence, but it's like that knowledge, just that information. And if you don't know what you're talking about, like, you're going to get, you're going to get the short out of the stick. So in this, what kind of this podcast is here to help you? This podcast is here to, for you to just be able to turn on this podcast and it, and it's like you're, you're having a conversation with me and my friend Vinnie here in your car or in your headphones or at the gym. So if you're able to have conversations like this every day for a year, imagine the kind of things that you'll learn, the kind of, and the kind of confidence that that will give you to, to be able to, to do these kind of things yourself, right? So what you said, you bought your first house, Vinnie, what, like two years ago, January 2020, January 2020. So I don't know how long is that? Almost two years. Almost two years. We're approaching, we're approaching the two year mark now. It's upcoming January. And I want to touch on something you said, you know, like about like, I think at the end of the day, I think people are really afraid of, of failure. But it's, failure is like a, a key ingredient to success. Because like everyone fails. Matter of fact, like right after we, we, we did the first house, we actually made an offer on the second house. We started plans, we actually pulled permits, I actually had a dumpster on site just because we like to move quick. But we didn't close because of COVID, like the banks didn't want to lend money. So I mean, on the second house we did, I think we lost maybe like $20,000. But I think it was just our mindset at the time. We were like, we believe in this and we just kept going and you know, thankfully we did. We, you know, our investment strategy was very aggressive. You know, despite losing some money on the first one, we just kept buying without knowing where the market was going to go. Really, we just, we were just hopeful. Yeah. And see, and that says a lot too, because if you, if you're able to, if you're able to just take a $20,000 loss, like they just, by the way, if you guys hear anything in the background, that's my dog. He's kind of going crazy really quick. So don't please bear in mind that that's him. All right. When I'm torturing anybody, anybody here in the background. So he took a $20,000 loss on a house and that goes to show you that they won and they bought more. That goes to show you that like feel like for you guys that are, that are scared to fail, this man in his partner lost $20,000. And you guys are scared to lose like a few thousand like on a little investment or a few thousand dollars on a, on a course or some sort of something that's going to make or go to a, a networking event that they like that it's cost $500 and you say, wow, that's too expensive. Like is it going to be worth it? I mean, you got spent $500 just going out drinking on the weekends, right? So we might as well. So if, if you, if you, if you see people take, and I've seen people take huge losses in real estate, right? Like huge. What, but for every person that I see lose like 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200,000, everything you can see in sometimes there, you can, there's a hundred other stories of people that made that in profit, right? So would that stop you? Does it, does it stop you like from getting in your car every day and driving it work knowing that there was a car accident like there? Like no, just because there was a car accident doesn't mean you're like, oh, I'm not going to go to work because like, oh, what if I get, no, of course not. It's not, you, you don't think about it like that. So why would you think about it in the sense of taking a risk and buying a property, right? So, so Vinnie and his partner Reggie here, two years ago, almost two years ago, they were, they were buying single families, they were flipping. Now they're coming into a ground up the developments and pretty soon they're gonna be doing huge huge Skyscrapers I guarantee you in like 15 years they're gonna be putting up skyscrapers all over Boston or all over the US so if you can Stop to think about it for a second like Where you were two years ago and if you were to start it and took an arrest two years ago Where you would be today like just sit just sit there and ponder that for a little while right so Imagine that two years ago you I know I know two years ago if you're listening to this podcast especially till till right now I know that at some point in your life you're thought like hey, I need to do better I needed this I need to do that but you didn't do it you kept putting it off till tomorrow and before you know it two years It passed right So with that being said what if you were to start it two years ago You could have been like my friend Vinny here that actually did start two years ago and took action And now they're going in and they're building 15 unit buildings big subdivision developments, right? So that goes to show that that with a little bit like of Of you know kind of like against normality mindset like kind of what we're trying to strive to teach you guys It goes a long way because if you didn't have this mindset like hey I'm gonna go there and when I take a risk and I'm back and gonna buy a house. He wouldn't be where he's at today If he was a normal person, right, which is nothing wrong would be normal But you can't sit there and complain about money if you if you decide that that you chose a normal life, right? That's my one pet peeve. There's nothing wrong with having a nine to five Absolutely nothing wrong working at CVS and nothing wrong with working at at stop and shop or or Costco, right? So what happens is this These people that work at stock at Costco or CVS they sit there and they complain about how much their life sucks and how much they don't have enough money They come they they say that other people have everything and they don't have anything. So what happens is this right? They know what they need to do to get themselves in a better position They just don't do it. That's the kind of thing that gets me mad. We're here. We're speaking to the people that are in that position They're here. They're working out a nine to five. They're working a regular job, but they want to do better right they want to sit there and And they want more from themselves and it all starts with obtaining the knowledge like that that you're getting from here So right now we're gonna kind of break down what What it actually means to make money on the flip right because after this podcast like you're gonna go on Zillow whatever you're gonna go and try to find a couple flips you're gonna be like wow, this you know gave the what gave So this let me take a risk and just buy this house. No, that's not how it works We're here. We're here to teach to tell you that there's a lot that you have to know before it comes into this like Vinnie How much research did you do before you bought this house? We did a lot of research Like I mentioned we did a course and that course really helped us So we left there kind of knowing what to look at when when you know kind of evaluating a property So like as soon as we left like you know Reggie like my partner being like the computer wizard. He is he literally created this like this spreadsheet on numbers that you plug in like three different numbers Like you know what you're paying where you're gonna spend a construction and how long you're gonna hold on to it for Like construction time and it just spits out like you know what you can offer So so that was like a tremendous amount of help because we could walk into a property look at it, you know Decide what are we gonna spend for construction and you know that that that that was a lot easier for the both of us because we both came from construction backgrounds But that doesn't mean that it's not something that anyone can do And you know, we decided all right. We could probably do this in you know three four months Um and then you go to the real estate agent and you ask them hey If I do this this and that what are you gonna sell this for? So you know you after you have those numbers you can You can know exactly what you're gonna offer and then you then you need to do your due diligence Which is you know make sure it's not in the flood zone make sure you can do what you actually want to do um You know the attorneys are doing all the D title work and stuff like that But there's a lot of research, you know, especially your first one you're always very you know skeptical So you double check your real estate agents work and you know you want to see the comps Um, and you want to be confident on it, but It's it's at the end of the day. It's it's just just starting just get out there check out some houses make some offers Make sure your numbers are good because You know If you have bad numbers, it's a there's there's no way you're not going anywhere exactly So it is very important what he said is it just start like I had one of my mentors just tell me like Gabriel If you if you buy a property And you break even on that property you made money why because you learned exactly what to do and what not to do So the next time you buy a property, you're gonna be a lot more Experience knowledgeable about what what wrong in the last project and how you lost money in the last project And now you know exactly what to look out for all the red flags to look out for so It's very important to just start right and we're we're coming over here. We're we're from the Boston market right So the barrier to entry in our market is huge like it is Hard to get and like you know what I mean not just anybody and and not anybody with $10,000 in their pocket can just come in and put it And offer on the property here in Boston right so in Boston we have Particularly the North Shore area like we have in markets like in Linfield right now Vinny What is an average renovated like kind of like Single family go for like per square foot around in Linfield, you know Uh, my don't know per square foot, but if you find anything under a million dollars It's the gold mine, you know, you won't find it But I want to say maybe per square foot and this is me shooting a number. It's I don't know around four five hundred Yep, could be wrong, but that sounds sounds right Yeah four five hundred dollars a square foot right so and if you look at it we have Condo is in Boston and the seaport in Boston that's so for $4,000 a foot right So if you think about it like the disparity of like somebody that like is a There's there's an inventory in this market In Boston for people and there's people that making enough money to go in there and buy a $4,000 foot condo in Boston There's the same amount of the same amount of person people is gonna be it want to go to Linfield and buy a house for four five hundred dollars a foot. So Boston is a huge Huge market in terms of like like single families and stuff like that And I see it getting to all this big commercial real estate kind of like the outskirts of like New York, New Jersey area It's gonna get there in the next 10 years. Boston is a relatively very I'm not gonna say relatively. It's a Boston is tiny City compared to like New York like LA like these kind of cities, right? But it's growing and it's getting there and And if you understand real estate and you understand like Specifically zoning right like like that's how you make the real money like I'm doing a I just finished oh not finished, but I did a zoning a deal that I have to go through zoning The last couple years I had a big deal that it's a 20-unit building and ever it We purchased a property and it took us almost a year it took us 51 no 50 weeks Two weeks uh two weeks shy of the years it took us 50 weeks From the time that we purchased the property To till we walked out of that meeting in city hall with the basically the approval to to be able to build a 20-unit building right Um, so with that being said People think they understand zoning right a lot of people think like hey like zoning is hard like not like more it took me like what it took me Like a year to understand zoning confetti. I've even had properties under contract Like based off the optimism I had on the on the sides of the lot Because I thought that I can build more that I can build on there and then you go and talk to this city like Abre you can't build more than six units over here. What are you talking about like? Like no man, you don't understand like it's like like 25,000 square foot lot like you don't see like I What do you mean I can only build non man? That's the way that the zoning works in like zoning basically works that like this They tell you You can do and what you're allowed to do up until a certain point after it gets past that point like hey like if you don't have enough Parking spots to accommodate your building or if you don't have Enough or if you have too many um too big of a building for that size lot Which is called FAR ratio They they require you to go through zoning and get special permits right So a quick little way to understand to not to understand but to Be able to identify as a project is good to get on the contract to go through zoning is you basically use comps Not on the houses that were sold but you use comps on how you Use comps on how the previous product of the previous projects that were approved. So if I know that Less than a year ago there was a project on the same street that I that I bought my My deal on and they got the special permit for the number of stories They got the special permit for the number of uh for the for the height limit They got the special permit for the FAR is on the floor area ratio which means the The size of the building compares to the size of the lot right If they were able to get through if they were able to go through zoning successfully get those permits There's no. reason for the zoning board of appeals. If I come in there with similar or lesser zone of variances, there's no reason for them to to not approve it, right? So I said my well, at least when my lawyer has been telling me for a long time is that I set a precedent in every I have a 7,180 square foot piece of land and every on a business district key words, business district doesn't matter if it's a 30,000 square foot lot on a dwelling district and ever it like you're not going to be able to put 30 units on 20 units on there like it's the matter just doesn't work it's because it's different laws and different variances like right? So on a business district and ever it now from here on out on this administration that we have currently you can expect that if you come in with the same variances that I did nothing more than me but to guarantee what I had or less you can be pretty positive that you're going to end up getting that building approved, right? So I'm pretty sure that's what my friend Vinny here is going to do, right? So he has a piece of property that he's potentially eventually going to develop in every in us in the same district, the same district that I'm approved on, right? So now based off of me my floor area ratio what I think is 2.5, right? My number of stories is 5 so I have 5 story building, I have a 63, 64 foot tall building I think you're allowed 65. So if my friend Vinny here comes in with the same things that the same variances that I did if he has let's say a 5,000 square foot lot he or 6,000 square foot law he can basically multiply that lot that's the square foot of that lot by 2.5 and that's basically the shell of the building that he can make that he can potentially get approved and most likely we'll get approved based off of my approval, right? Because these people know what they're doing when they approve your building they know that they're setting a precedent, right? So Vinny here is going to explain you a little bit of like the do's and don'ts of, you know, being able to purchase a property under contract and the different clauses that you can put in that contract to make sure that you don't get burned in the deal and to make sure that you can that you can, you know, make it work for everybody in the long run. So yeah, like, you know, like what you said about setting precedent like you were absolutely right, you know, like I kind of really only purchased this property because I knew what you were doing and you know part of my due diligence was like, all right, Gabe has a 7,200 square foot lot, mine's a little bit less, you got 20 units at best, at worst case scenario, I've got a little bit less, you know, so that was a big reason as to, you know, why we bought that, but so some of the do's and don'ts it's, you know, some of the stuff we've done, which is, you know, purchasing a property with the contingency, I mean, that's actually what we did in Maulden. So we those this big lot of land, we, I knew that there was a chance I could probably build this at the end of the day, do diligence spoke to attorneys spoke to architects, you know, came to the conclusion, probably do like nine units, nine to 10 units. So we, we made an offer to them. It was a, it was a pretty good offer and it was contingent on getting those units. So pretty much what it means is I don't have to buy this plot of land until I get the approval and that's huge because one, I don't have to carry the carry, you know, the mortgage on a land. And in this case, they think it was like, you know, 1.6 million, that's expensive. That's a big monthly payment. So it doesn't necessarily mean that it's, you don't have to make any investment because you do, you have architects, you have attorneys, by the time you're going through approval, like, by the time you're you're ready in waiting there to see if it's going to be a yes or no, I don't know, maybe you're down 50 to 80 thousand dollars. But it's a really good way to make sure that it's, I guess it's less liability on you. Whereas let's say, you know, I'm making an offer on a property and I want to do 20 units. And then, you know, I'm just not able to build it. Now I have this property that made sense building 20 units and now I can't build 20 units. So like, I'm left with this property and I have to figure out what I'm going to do. So that's something we've done. This specific deal in Everett, it was in the beginning, they did not want to accept contingency. And we just knew it was a good enough deal that it was worth it. We evaluated it at, you know, okay, if I can't build the 20 units that I ultimately want to get, and that's aggressive to try to get the 20 unit, but I think it's the way the route we're going to start. If they say no, right, just go back to where you originally thought you could be able to get, right? And that's what I thought, you know, in my head after, you know, Gabe got his 20 approved, I was like, all right, well, they said yes to 20 on his on his law and for his FAR. What if I also try 20, a little bit more aggressive, what they're going to say is no. And then you just kind of go back to the board and present, you know, with less, not as aggressive. But in this specific property, we just bought it because it made sense. If I can't get 20, if I can get 10 on this law, it makes sense. It makes sense. Yeah. And even in, right now there are two tenants in there. The rent made sense. You know, I wasn't making, it wasn't like a home run deal where I was going to make a lot of money on the rents and you know, cash flow, but the way it is right now, it made sense to pay that the rents are paying the mortgage for what is on the property. And then obviously, things just ended up working out even better that the owner wanted to push the closing forward. We were supposed to originally close, I think in August. And then the guy was like, I, you know, I can't find a new place to move. So can we push it to February? You know, in my head, I'm like, wonderful, you know, even better. Yeah, even better. That's like what, six months of monthly payments, I won't have to make. So things ended up working out, but there's a lot of very creative ways you can get into a deal without having to make too much of an investment. Keep in mind attorneys and architects, there's no way around that. They're always going to want to charge you, you know, I haven't figured out any creative way to tell an architect to make a plan and tell them I only paid them if it gets approved. I don't know if someone else has an idea for that. I'd love to hear it, but I haven't been able to get an architect to agree to that yet. But there's a lot of creative ways to get a property under contract and not put a liability on you if it doesn't get approved. Now sometimes it makes sense to take on that liability kind of like, you know, Gays project, he did. And just because it really made sense, the price he got it for what he was going to get on the lot, you know, he thought crap, like shit, like, I'll take the liability, you know, it's it can be a home run deal. Risk versus reward, my friend. That's all it is risk versus reward, right? So we're coming up on the end of this episode here, but we're definitely going to have our friend Vinnie here join us on another episode, maybe even the next one. And he's going to explain you a little bit more about how to put it in offers and what to how to be creative within how to how to make sure that you don't get burned on the back end, right? So that's that's it for today's episode. Vinnie will definitely be back on another episode. So don't worry if you feel like you got cut a little short today. We're going to be back and it's going to be even more informative than this one was. All right. And so until next time guys, don't ever be normal. Please like take the risk and don't ever be normal. All right, guys, have a good one.