Financial Freedom Through Real Estate Investing

Martin Perdomo also known as “The Elite Strategist”, is an inspired instructor, speaker, and entrepreneur that has inspired thousands around the globe and is the host of Latinos in Real Estate Investing Podcast. Martin is now available for leadership training, Sales Training, Business consulting, and coaching. Martin’s Elite Real Estate Strategies with the Elite Strategist DVD is Featured on Amazon and all major online and offline retailers.

 

Martin is the founder and host of the Stroudsburg Real Estate Investors club. With his leadership, the group has gone from zero to over three hundred members in less than two years. He currently manages and operates a Real Estate Investing firm operating over five million dollars in assets and he helps investors get above-average returns by investing passively in multifamily Real Estate with him and his team. In this episode, Sam and Martin are going to discuss why to educate people on real estate investments, the passion that Martin made him start his podcast, and the journey that led him to find financial freedom through real estate investing.

 

Highlights:

 

[00:00] – [05:45] Hustling Until You Achieve Your Goals

• Martin Perdomo is a real estate entrepreneur, trainer, podcast host, speaker, consultant, and mindset strategist. He aims to educate people and get them started on their journey to financial freedom through real estate investing.
• Martin started investing in real estate in 2007, bought his first property two years later and it burned down in 2012.
• Since then, he’s learned to focus on the long term and has shifted his thinking when evaluating properties.
• He currently owns 108 units of multifaceted real estate, including 40 units next to each other.

 

[05:45] – [11:04] Alternative Real Estate Investments

• Martin shares his story about the dream that he had when he found his passion for real estate investments, at 17 years old.
• He discusses his latest long-term goal to be true: owning a hotel. He then explains the advantages of why owning a hotel can be a great investment.
• Martin talks about his diversified assets and his strategies to make those assets scalable.

 

[11:04] – [15:33] Finding Your Public

• Martin talks about how TV commercials gave him a great lead in the area that he works.
• He shares how he identified the demographic that he wants to buy from and the strategies to do that.
• Why TV commercials are an underrated strategy to scale your real estate investments.

 

[15:33] – [19:38] Helping the Community: A Passion

• Martin shares his real purpose in the business of the real estate.
• He discusses the importance of mindset and skill set in achieving success, and how shifting to an abundance mindset has changed his life for the better.
• He also discusses his podcast and his meet-ups, and how he created those spaces to help others achieve success in the business of real estate.

 

[19:38] – [20:56] Closing Segment

• Reach out to Martin
  • See links below
• Final words

 

Tweetable Quote

 

“You gotta let people know what you’re doing. You gotta take action. Like the old saying of ready, fire, aim. Just ready, action, and then readjust and aim again and adjust accordingly”. – Martin Perdomo

 

“Once I shifted my mindset right from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset, my life changed”. – Martin Perdomo

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Connect with The Elite Strategist himself, Martin Perdomo on his Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or check out more ways to reach him out in his Link Tree. Also, check his podcast
Latinos In Real Estate Investing Podcast, and his YouTube Channel.

 

Connect with me:

 

I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns. 

 

Facebook

 

LinkedIn

 

Like, subscribe, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever platform you listen on.  Thank you for tuning in!

 

Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com

 

 

 

Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:

 

[00:00] Martin Perdomo: And if you’re doing something you gotta let the world know that you’re doing it. You’re doing something. “Hey, this is what I’m doing. You’re raising money. “Hey, I’m looking to help people, get above average return on their investments, right? You gotta let people know what you’re doing. You gotta take action. Like the old saying of ready, fire, aim. Just ready, action, and then readjust and aim again and adjust accordingly.

[00:19] Intro: Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we’ll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.

[00:31] Sam Wilson: Martin Perdomo is the host of Latinos and Real Estate Investing podcast. Martin aims to educate people and get them started on their journey to financial freedom through real estate investing. Martin, welcome to the show.

[00:43] Martin Perdomo: Sam, thank you for having me, brother. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be able to share with your audience.

[00:48] Sam Wilson: Awesome Martin. Glad to have you on today. There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show. In 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where did you start? Where are you now, and how did you get there?

[00:58] Martin Perdomo: Started investing in real estate in 2007. Bought my first property. I was a mortgage broker, so I had FOMO, fear of missing out. Everyone was buying real estate and I was giving money away basically back in those days. In ’05, ’06 and ’07. And I bought my first investment property, paid $275.000 for it. Knew nothing about real estate investing. Only did it because I knew that was a way to financial freedom. You hear it, you know it intuitively, but there’s more to it than that, as you know. Bought it two years later, a hundred thousand under water, same property, was worth $179,000 and 14 years later had an appraisal come here. Last month I bought a property not too far from it. He was using a comp property, same property, two doors down, exact same property. Sold for $385,000. So don’t wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait.

[01:47] Sam Wilson: What did you do with that house?

[01:50] Martin Perdomo: Good question. I’ve had it, I bought it cuz it was close to the university by ESU University and I rented it to college students. And what college students typically do is they rent it in, they rent it around May, and they go to May right when school starts and around May, around April, they start winding down. These kids didn’t pay their light bill, so one kid was studying with a candle in the. And the curtain caught on fire. Mattress caught on fire. They burned my house down. I like to think that I kind of attracted that because I was like my energy energetically, I was felt like, so stuck with that property cuz I didn’t know what I was doing. That it was like the universe, God was the way of getting me out.

[02:38] Sam Wilson: What year did it burn to the ground?

[02:40] Martin Perdomo: I burned to the ground in 2012.

[02:44] Sam Wilson: Okay, so you held it through the recession?

[02:47] Martin Perdomo: Yeah, I held it.

[02:47] Sam Wilson: Held it, which is, yeah, which is the right move.

[02:50] Martin Perdomo: Yeah. There was no other move. I was broken. I didn’t know what to do, brother. I didn’t have the education I have today. But in hindsight, you know, it was a, if I would’ve held on. I still would’ve won.

[02:59] Sam Wilson: You still would’ve won. And I think that’s the thing that, the lesson that so many people probably didn’t employ, you know, for those that were in unable to, hold on. That’s a different story, but everybody panics when they see that the comp value of their property goes down. How has your thinking shifted now when you evaluate and look at properties in light of that experience?

[03:20] Martin Perdomo: That’s a great question. I just bought a quad. Up the street from here. And I was just in a meeting with my business coach this morning and he asked me a similar question cuz we’re looking at: “Hey, the stuff we’re flipping”. And the difference in my mindset and what I look at now is I look at the longview. I focus on 10 years, 15 years. I look at the long view of things. I don’t just focus that interest rates are going up. Hey, this happens. Interest rates go up. I don’t concern. Prices are going down. Hey, this happens. Prices went down. There’s always a panic in the market, Sam, no matter what. Last year’s panic, what was it? “Oh, this is a bubble. People paying $20,000, 40,000 over asking 22, 21”. Right? 21 and 20. That was it. In ’19 and ’18 before Covid, what was it? “Shit, any moment of recession’s gonna happen, we’re due. It’s been, we’re the longest bull market in history, and we’re due”. So, it’s the media. There’s something about human beings. We’re always looking for what’s next around the corner that can come kill us. But if we can just, when it comes to real estate, I like to think of it as long term and when I think of it of long term, all the noise goes away, right? All of the noise goes.

[04:24] Sam Wilson: That’s exactly it. Yeah. Somebody, and this is kind of in line with that, but somebody asked me this yesterday. It was like talking about a couple bees of real estate we own. I said “Look, I’m gonna hold those forever. It’s long term I’m gonna hold ’em until I no longer want to own them”. Like we buy stuff today that produces an income and I wanna hold it. No, I don’t want to anymore. And I really don’t care what the value of it is on paper, as long as it continues to produce revenue. I’m happy man. Yep, that’s that’s really cool. You mentioned a quad, you mentioned a single-family residence. How many aspects of real estate are you involved in at the moment?

[04:58] Martin Perdomo: So, we buy apartment buildings. We currently own 108. It goes up and down cuz we flip and we also flip. So, we currently own 108 doors. We own a bunch of assets. Our biggest asset is 40 units. And 17, right next to each other. So, we do a multifacet of things. We currently have a television commercial locally. We’re marketing to motivated sellers. We’re just kind of lining ourselves and getting ourselves ready for if there is, and I use that word intentionally, if there is a real correction, because it’s just so different, you know? We have people with interest rates of 2% and 3% that, yeah, they might have overpaid last year, but where are they going? There’s an affordability issue. Where are they going? They can come rent from us, from you and from me for, you know, for what they’re paying for. The less, they’re paying less for mortgage. I don’t know, you know, there’s a lot of hype about the market this to market that. Either way I always plan for worst case scenario. I’m planning when the fear starts, because the fear mongering has already begun. Mainstream media is already, you know, putting the fear and human beings, especially people that aren’t like you and I in this business, educated, they’re gonna panic and they’re gonna get scared. We flip, we buy fix and flip properties. I enjoy that. That is fun for me. And we also buy and hold long term. We’re in the middle of buying a hotel right now. We’re looking to acquire a hotel right now. I’m really excited about the future. Future’s Bright Sam. Future’s bright, brother. That’s all I could tell you. man. Future is bright. I’m excited about the future.

[06:27] Sam Wilson: I love that attitude. Somebody asked me that a couple weeks ago. They said, Hey: ” Is now a good time to get under real estate?” I’m like: “Yes, absolutely it is. Like now is a great time to get in”. Tell me about your hotel. We’ve talked about multifamily; you’ve talked about single family residences; you’ve talked about flipping. Tell me about your hotel, and then I got some other follow up questions, but we’ll start on this.

[06:49] Martin Perdomo: Yeah, so as a young, as a kid, right? I remember, I’ll share the story with you. My wife and I, we’ve been together 25, 26 years now, and we were teenagers, we were kids, right? When we first started dating. And one day I used to work in the body shop in New York City in Harlem. I dunno if you’re familiar with Harlem. It’s, you know, common place in New York City. And it was really rough man. Really rough place. It was burnt down buildings, crack buildings, low place in the late eighties, nineties. And it was 1997. One day I used to work in this place called The Body Shop on one 25th and Fifth Avenue. My wife comes to pick me up, my girlfriend at the time, and I look across the street and I see this building and this burnt down. In the hundred 25th and fifth, and I say, you see that building across 300? I said: “If I could buy that building, fix it, and renovate it and rent it, we can be rich”. I’m 17 years old, right? And she’s no way. She’s looking at the area and she’s saying: “No way”. But we’ve always, my wife and I have always romanticized with owning bigger assets. We’re owning big assets. We’ve always talked about owning a hotel, like that’s a play. So, I’m at a place in my career where it’s about the game. You know, this is fun for me. And it’s like Monopoly. So, you buy houses, and then boom, you put the hotel. So, one of my long-term goals is, has always been to own hotels and we are about to, we’ve looked at a couple, I think we’re about to go on the contract with one. It’s 38 keys cuz that’s the language in hotel. So, it’s 38 doors equivalent to 38 doors. So, it’s 38 keys. Its small hotel here in the Poconos, but it’s the locations amazing. The locations across the street from a casino, from Mount Airy casino. Here in, in the Poconos and it’s close to the ski resorts. It’s like the strategy. We did the numbers and we’re talking about 173% return on investment to our investors when we raised that capital. It’s an amazing deal where we don’t have on the contract yet, but by the time this podcast comes out, it should be on the contract.

[08:35] Sam Wilson: Man, that’s awesome. I love that. I love that. What are you doing with it? Are you gonna turn it into? A lot of not a lot of, but many guests who come on the show that are buying hotels, are doing like the Airbnb model, getting rid of the front desk. They’re making it keyless. They’re going to…

[08:50] Martin Perdomo: Yeah, so we’re toying around with that idea because we’re in the Poconos. So, Poconos is a very resorty vacation area, so it’s perfect. It’s across street from the casino. We’re toying around with that idea. You know, we have an affordable housing crisis across the whole country.

[09:04] There’s no different here, right? We’re thinking about creating some extended stay. We’re toying around with that idea, but that’s the primary right now, what we’re thinking is creating it into an experience type of hotel. And what I mean by that is partnering up with a bus company that’ll bus people into: Hey, the ski resort, bring you back to the hotel, take you to the casino, take you to the indoor water park that we have here. Just kind of making it that hub. But not the price of Camelback where they have the indoor waterpark and all that stuff, right? But uh, kind of, that’s what we’re envisioning right now as we’re in the beginning stages of that particular deal.

[09:38] Sam Wilson: That’s really cool. Let’s talk about how you are finding opportunities. There’s, each of these channels has their own unique acquisition strategy, you know?

[09:49] Martin Perdomo: Yes, sir.

[09:50] Sam Wilson: So how are you having such a diverse asset? Or such diversified assets that you’re investing in and then finding opportunity in a meaningful way?

[09:58] Martin Perdomo: So that’s a really great question. I do multiple things. First thing is, we have our own marketing channel. All our properties, we buy ’em off market. Everything’s off market. We do it through mailers. We don’t do a lot of mailers, but yet we do. We have a television commercial, just gives us local branding recognition. We get a lot of calls from there. I’m actually hosting tonight, my every other month meetup. So, I host a meetup and I fill the room with investors and I just educate and empower and help, you know, just give, I give, I like to give. This is why I do things like this. I like to give and help others come up. And through that means it just kind of gives us that credibility and they know we’re real buyers cuz there’s a lot of pretenders out there. As you know, Sam, there’s a lot of guys: “Oh, I’m a buyer”. And we have a broker channel. We have relationships. Just through the year that I built through all the stuff that I do: the meetups, the advertising, just I’m very involved. This is what I do. I do this. Every day, all day, every day, 24/7 a week, brother. This is all I do is real estate. We’ve got multiple angles and multiple things that we work on. Property managers bring us deals, brokers bring us deals, wholesalers bring us deals. We have our own marketing that bring us deals. So, we are just constantly letting people know we’re buying. And if you’re doing something you gotta let the world know that you’re doing it. Right. You’re doing something. “Hey, this is what I’m doing. You’re raising money. “Hey, I’m looking to help people, get above average return on their investments, right? You gotta let people know what you’re doing. You gotta take action.

[11:29] Sam Wilson: I love that.

[11:30] Martin Perdomo: You gotta take action. I like the old saying of ready, fire, aim. Just ready, action, and then readjust and aim again and adjust accordingly.

[11:39] Sam Wilson: That’s awesome. Tell me about the TV commercial. That is not a medium that many people are utilizing today. How do you calculate return on investment on that?

[11:51] Martin Perdomo: That’s an amazing question. And before we did it, we toyed around with that. And the thing is, that really gets us deals for our single-family distress owners. And it’s very strategic. We’re very strategic in where we advertise, what TV channels we advertise on, and who is it that’s watching what we’re selling, right? And we advertise on like the Jerry Springers of the world shows. The court tv, daytime shows. Right? Well, who’s watching those? The people that are distressed, they’re going through a divorce, people that are losing that don’t have a job or, and we advertise day at night, right? Third shift people. So, we’re very specific on the demographics and who we’re getting in front of, you know, maybe grandma, grandpa that’s got that old house that’s falling apart or it’s got that old 10-unit apartment building that they no longer can handle. And here’s this guy on TV saying: “Hey, we’ll buy it 21 days or less, or we’ll give you an extra $5,000, regardless of the condition”.

[12:45] Sam Wilson: And that, that’s the demographic. I guess that was gonna be my follow up question is who’s the demographic who you’re shooting for? And…

[12:52] Martin Perdomo: Yeah, that’s the demographics for that’s what’s watching that, right? It’s not, you know, guys like you and I are not watching Judge Judy. Let’s be real, right? We’re not watching Jerry Springer, right? We’re working, we’re hustling, we’re running and we’re leading our teams, and we’re doing things differently.

[13:05] Sam Wilson: Yeah. No, we are not watching either of those daytime TV shows. I wish it’d be nice to have that amount of free time to go, you know? But I wouldn’t spend it doing that if I did have the free time. So regardless, I’m still not watching it. What about cost on that? I know that there is no cost when advertising works, right? It’s a return on investment is what you’re really looking for. But I am really curious, like when you look at that and before you launched into it, was it a tough pill to swallow to say: “Man, we gotta shell out X number of dollars for a TV commercial?

[13:35] Martin Perdomo: It was not cuz I just believe in investing in my business. It’s just: ” Hey, I’m gonna invest in my business no matter what”. I processed it when I looked at it, I processed. I said: “This makes sense”. And this is a model that’s working for the other investors across the country. And then when I looked at the numbers, it made even more sense. I got one of my invoices and I’m looking at the invoice, gives me the time and what channel it plays and what I’m paying for that slot. 32nd slot. I mean, I am blessed brother because of where I’m located. I’m not in Philadelphia or the New York City market. I’m like kind of in between. And so, the slots that I’m paying $15 for a 32nd commercial. Dude. I know some late-night ones I’m paying $5; some I’m paying $35. In other slots, I’m paying $50 depending on the show and the slots. So, I’m looking at it and I’m saying, hey man, what does it cost me to pay per click, right? What does it cost me on the PPC leads. The PPC leads, because I do that too, those things cost me. I’m bidding, right? That’s my money’s going up. I gotta bid a dollar amount that I bid every day, and when I use it, it’s over. I’m like: “Hey, wait a minute. If I’m gonna spend $5 in a commercial on the low end, $50 on the high end”. Depending, I got commercials from $5, $15 and $35 and $50. I’m like: “This makes sense”. And not only that, but I get the credibility in the community like: “Hey, these guys are the real deal”. If they’re on TV, they must be doing something right. It’s the psychology of what people think. And when my sales guys show up, their life is so much easier, right? Cause hey, we got you from the TV there. They’re not competing with wholesalers. It’s my guys show up and if there’s a deal to be done, we’re gonna do the deal. So, the cost is not cost prohibitive. However, I did want to go into other markets closer to the Philly market. Lehigh Valley area, which is closer to the Philly market. And now it starts getting whoa, really expensive per spot. $350 per spot. And again, I’m just, you know, in the right location for what we’re doing.

[15:33] Sam Wilson: Right.

[15:35] Martin Perdomo: But again, I mean if, let’s say that ad ran 15 times at 400 bucks a slot. That’s, let’s call it six grand you went out the door and you closed one good deal out of it. Yeah, so I did the numbers. The numbers for us. I could tell you; I don’t mind sharing this. The numbers because of my market, my demographics, the numbers wind up being somewhere close to six grand a month. After it’s all said and done, I’m probably in $95,000 a year. But if I do a couple flips and like we make usually our return on our investment in the first quarter for the year. Like we know how to run the numbers. We know the market; we understand interest rates are going up. So, we know, if we’re buying a property to flip. In this economy, we’re not buying anything that ARVs over 300. We want to stay low for affordability, cuz we’re always gonna move that product. And then, we’re always picking up stuff. We’re always adding to our portfolio. So, we pick up through that commercial, a 10 unit, a 15 unit, cuz a grandma will watch us or the grandson is gonna watch us with grandma and say: “Hey grandma, we gotta call that guy cuz that apartment building you have is falling apart. We need to sell it”.

[16:37] I Sam Wilson: It’s brilliant. I love it. You know, the other thing I love about that is that it separates you from everyone else. And I always said that with pay per click, back when I was doing single family stuff, it was like I can outspend most of my wholesale competition. And while you might say on the front end, that doesn’t make any sense. Well, like you said, you know, you’re paying for that in the first quarter. I remember my pay per click budget. I did single family 2018, and in the first 30 days I’d already paid for my years budgeting with pay per click. It was like, I can outspend you and that puts me the front of the pack over everybody else because I can do that. And it’s a different medium. This is a very different medium as well, so you’re separating yourself both by medium type and by the amount of money you can devote to actually advertising on that front. So that’s really, really cool.

Martin, before we sign off here, I do want to hear about your podcast. Why you started it and just gimme a little bit of insight on that.

[17:32] Martin Perdomo: So, for me, I’m a big personal development guy. I’m a big mindset guy. I believe that success is 80% mindset and 20% skill set, and that’s combined is a hundred percent success. And for me, coming up I realized that once I shifted my mindset right from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset and that’s a loaded statement. But once I shifted my mindset from one to the other, my life changed. And that’s when I really started celebrating my growth. And I really started making bigger and power moves. And I’ve always, the purpose of my life is to empower others to be the best version of themselves. So, while I love real estate. I love the game. I love what I do. I really do. And I also host a podcast, cuz I wanna help other people come up. I really want to wholeheartedly like: “Hey man, you can do this too”. If a poor guy like me from the ghetto and the hood in Washington Heights in New York City can come from nothing and do this. So can anyone else! If you are not, if you are really determined and you wanna, and you work on yourself, and you work on your mindset and you work on your skill set, you can do it right? Everything about: “Oh, I don’t have enough money”. It’s a limiting belief. Who says you need your money. That’s all limiting belief. It’s just, go get educated, listen to podcasts like this. Listen to Sam, listen to podcasts like mine. Go and listen to other smart people that are doing it. Gather the information. Take action. Then adjust. Ready, fire, aim. Right? Take action to adjust. So, it’s because I just love to empower and help others. I’m hosting my meet up tonight. That thing takes me five hours out of my day. Five, six hours. I gotta go set up at the church, cuz I host it at the church. I gotta go set up, prepare the content, write all this stuff, and it’s It takes a lot of work to do. But it’s more fulfilling to me when I see that guy that does his first deal and they’re like: “Martin, thank you cuz you shared that and you showed me this and you showed me that”. Man, that fills me.

[19:31] Sam Wilson: Right. That’s really…

[19:33] Martin Perdomo: It’s all worth it when like I see others like helping others and others are coming up.

[19:38] Sam Wilson: Martin, I absolutely love it. If our listeners wanna get in touch with you or learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?

[19:43] Martin Perdomo: Yeah, they could just go to Latinos and Real Estate Investing podcast, check out my podcast or check out my YouTube. I’m constantly putting out vlogs out on my projects and what’s going on. I literally just walked from one of my projects up to the road here. My roofers are putting on the roof and that property I just bought. So, I’m constantly putting up content, giving people the real deal, right? On my channel, YouTube channel. I give people the real deal. I tell you the truth about evictions and what really happens. I give it to you all straight. Construction workers, what really happens with them if you’re not, if you’re not doing it the right way, they will kill you. They will hurt your business if you know them.

[20:16] Sam Wilson: Right, right.

[20:17] Martin Perdomo: You know, they can check out my YouTube: The Elite Strategist. Or my podcast: Latinos and Real Estate Investing podcast. Or Instagram. I’m on Instagram and Facebook. “The Elite Strategist. They can let me up there too.

[20:26] Sam Wilson: Awesome. Martin, thank you so much for coming the show today. I certainly appreciate it.

[20:30] Martin Perdomo: Thank you brother. I appreciate you!

[20:32] Outro: Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast. If you can, do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank hire on those directories.

So, appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.