How do you invest in real estate while you’re still practicing law?
Yosef Lee, Managing Principal at Syndicro & Partners Capital, made this possible, and he’s here to tell us how. In today’s episode, he will walk us through his journey to real estate investing in the United States after he left South Korea.
Since stumbling upon Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, Yosef has built an active network of high-net-worth individuals and high-income professionals looking to invest in real estate. He will talk about the benefits of multifamily properties and why we should try short-term rentals to diversify our portfolio.
[00:01] – [03:47] Opening Segment
- Yosef Lee talks about this book that led him to real estate investing
- Here’s how his law practice applies to real estate
[03:48] – [12:02] Speeding Up the Process of Learning Real Estate
- This is Yosef’s secret to expedite his learning process about real estate
- Yosef believes however that education alone is not enough to learn real estate
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- Here’s what he did
- Yosef talks about this monthly meetup to build and maintain his network
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- How this is important in finding the right partner
[12:03] – [15:48] Investing in Different Asset Classes and Knowing Their Risks
- Yosef gives his outlook on his real estate investing journey
- Why he views multifamily as his “financial fortress”
- These are the risks involved in investing in short-term rentals
[15:49] – [17:06] Closing Segment
- Reach out Yosef
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- Links below
- Final words
Tweetable Quotes
“You only can go far if you do [real estate] yourself because this is not a solo practice. You need a team.” – Yosef Lee
“As you educate yourself, you got to network because you got to find potential partners and potential investors.” – Yosef Lee
“I believe that fear comes from not knowing what you’re dealing with.” – Yosef Lee
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Email esquire@syndicro.com to connect with Yosef and check out Syndicro & Partners Capital to invest in affordable, modern, and comfortable real estate apartments. Message him on LinkedIn.
Connect with me:
I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.
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Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com
Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
Yosef Lee [00:00]
You only can go far if you do it yourself, because this is not a solo practice, right? You need a team because if you’re dealing with a single family duplex on a residential site, I think you could be super mad you could do everything yourself, you can have that automation system. But if you want to come to the commercial side of multifamily now, you know the lender sees deals differently. They see different credibility, they will see how as a team you can tackle down and if you could really close so unless you network with people and find a partnership, you can only go so far.
Intro [00:35]
Welcome to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate Show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we will teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.
Sam Wilson [00:45]
Yosef Lee is a full-time attorney and also a multifamily syndicator Welcome to the show.
Yosef Lee [00:55]
Thank you very much, Sam, for having me. Very excited to be here.
Sam Wilson [00:58]
Hey, man, the pleasure is mine. Same three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show. In 90 seconds or less, can you tell me where do you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?
Yosef Lee [01:05]
Sure. I mean, South Korean, immigrant father of two, full-time lawyer in New York City, and real estate investor, more so multifamily. I started my real estate journey about two years ago by stumbling upon the book Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, which changed my mindset totally. And then we coupled with some life experiences where I came to conclusion that I needed to create some sort of passive income stream or sustainable income stream, so that no matter what my kids want to do, no matter what happened to me knock in the wood. I have some sort of financial fortress to protect my kids and family. Right. So that’s how everything started. In the beginning, as usual, as everyone analysis paralysis, but I took serious steps by joining real estate investors group, Jake and Gino and MIT mastermind in February 2020. Right before epidemic, and with the goal of closing my first deal in December 2020, which happened in December 2020. Yeah, and through that, it opened the door for the second deal, march 2021. We did our second deal, a syndication, I got a job offer in March of 2021. From one of my mentors with a team together, I became co GP of five more deals thereafter. Now, fast forward, as a GP, I have 560 units, and we’re working on the next deal to be closed in about a month or two.
Sam Wilson [02:28]
That is amazing. And you’re a full time attorney.
Yosef Lee [02:32]
Yes, sir.
Sam Wilson [02:33]
What type of law do you practice?
Yosef Lee [02:34]
It’s what, do insurance litigation, mostly personal injuries. So it’s, if you don’t meet me, that’s good, because you’re not in an accident. That means right?
Sam Wilson [02:43]
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s, let’s take a minute and maybe dig into your expertise on that side of things. I mean, you’ve had lots of insurance brokers, agents, people on the show talking about insurance, but I’ve not had an insurance litigation attorney on the show what you see, when you’re looking at a property and you’re looking to invest in it, or bring capital or whatever part of the deal you’re taking, as a general partner, what do you look at from a risk perspective, maybe that other people would miss since you are in the litigation side of this?
Yosef Lee [03:18]
You know what, to be honest, I really don’t think to look into deeply as to the insurance, ladies, I mean, I need to make sure that there’s enough coverage, right, at least 1 million. But since we’re dealing with multimillion-dollar properties, I want to have umbrella policy of at least three to 5 million, right? Things like that. Other members might miss it because they don’t think umbrella policy is needed. But personally, I think since we’re dealing with a big properties, thing, umbrella policy is needed. So that’s something that I’ll probably look at.
Sam Wilson [03:48]
Yeah. And do you see either property specific things that would lend themselves to hey, this could be a future problem? Like when you look at deals, you say, hey, there’s either something that can be corrected, there’s a structural deficiency, there is a risk hazard on the outside. I mean, I don’t know what type I’m not in your field. So I’m trying to try to ask the question in a way that makes sense. But I mean, do you see things inside of the deals that you say, hey, we need to fix this in order to de risk what it is that we’re buying?
Yosef Lee [04:15]
To be frank, my field has very little to do with real estate. So I had to just start as a zero no experience, so to say, if you tell me like be honest, there’s nothing that as a litigation attorney, that I look and then find some you know, deficiencies upfront or something that I can expect something to happen but in general, I was trained to find some flaws and structures or things like that. So I will be very much involved with legal due diligence from the beginning of the acquisition side. How I was being part of the team was, I will be communication channel and between all the attorneys we had SEC lender seller and our two attorneys for attorneys I, myself five, and I’ll be in the middle of being the communication channel, collect all the information and deliver that to my team members to make it easy for them to digest. And then if any comments I will collect, and then I’ll send it back to all the attorneys to make that process easier. So that’s how I contributed to the acquisition side.
Sam Wilson [05:21]
Yeah, that’s a great contribution, because there’s so many of us that that just sounds a lot like work. So that’s really cool. You’ve closed 5, 4, 6 doors, is that right? Yeah. 5, 6, 7. 5, 6 7, . It’s a lot of doors in a very short period of time. I know. You said you join Jake and Geno’s group, and not really kind of helped accelerate that. What else have you done that you would say hey, I did this right. And other people should emulate your step.
Yosef Lee [05:47]
First joining a mentorship group, that definitely expedited my journey, because not only the education component but also the network because I met all my partners through Jake and Gino and MIT mastermind is two different groups. I joined two different groups and taking lots of actions. I call it ENA, always do this education, networking and action. So you got to do this almost at the same time, you got to do A and then B and C to me was like you gotta do education. As you educate yourself, you got to network because you got to find potential partners, and potential investors, right. And then you can’t just sit on it. You can’t just know how to do it. You got to take actions and actually do it. Talk to the brokers talk to the lenders. So all these basic things I tried to do. And then I started virtual meetups in May of 2020. Because the pandemic happened, I couldn’t really go out and meet people, right? Because I used to meet all boring people like attorneys. But now I wanted to meet this exciting group of people, real estate investors, but then pandemic shutdown, right, everything. So I started doing virtual meetups with a co host that I met through Jake and Gino Nico. And yeah, I was just kicking it off. And it was a lot of fun meeting lots of people bringing a guest, including Radcliffe, the third month of starting, it was August 2020, we were able to have Radcliffe as a guest, and he absolutely killed it on fire. So things like that. And being able to meet the people that you looked up to when you started your journey. Like Joe Fairless being able to talk to this guy, the interview with Vinnie Chopra, these people before joining the game. I actually read their books, listen to their podcasts. And I was telling myself someday I’m gonna see this guy’s in two years as I take the journey. It’s actually happening that I met one by one. And that was just amazing.
Sam Wilson [07:39]
Yeah, I can only imagine that. Yes, it is. Tell me how you had the confidence. I mean, because you decided in December 2019. You said I think it was that, hey, I want to get involved in real estate. And then, you know, of course, the pandemic happens. So you’ve got four or five months of kind of learning about the space under your belt, launching a meetup, how did you do that in a way without having that like, Hey, I don’t really know anything about this, but I’m launching a meetup. How did you do that? And attract a following towards that? I guess that’s the real question.
Yosef Lee [08:06]
Okay, I believe the fear comes from not knowing what you’re dealing with. And given my background, I came from South Korea, pretty much as at the age of almost like 18. So to me, I had no time I had to make the decisions as soon as possible to move on to the next chapter. Next goal of mine, right. And I was trying to do that, like, if I think I have good enough amount of information, I gotta make that speedy execution and move on otherwise, because it’s always the thing that I have bet on my mind. Like I started late, I had to develop that skill set of making the speedy execution. Because there’s no such thing as a perfect plan. Otherwise, you’re going to be just waiting for like, years and years not doing anything. Right. Right. So that’s something that I pushed myself to do. So yes, it was only a couple of months that I was in the game. But through research, I had enough information that it was enough to convince myself to pull the trigger. Put it that way.
Sam Wilson [09:10]
Yeah, I like that. I like the idea that maybe not the idea that you started late, but that you have to implement a speedy execution. Like there’s just no time to delay. Is this a meet up? You’re still hosting and running?
Yosef Lee [09:21]
Yeah, it’s a monthly we started as a bi-weekly, that was monthly, actually, it’s tomorrow. It’s about an hour, what we do is we bring a guest each time, anyone from real estate investor, active or passive, someone who can talk about property management side lenders or CPAs syndication attorneys. And then we have like 10 to 15 minutes of icebreaker networking time with people and then we listen to their stories, the guests stories and we learn. That’s basically the format.
Sam Wilson [09:50]
Great, I bet that has generated a tremendous amount of traction. Who are the people that typically come to that? Is that an active real estate investor? Is that people who are interested in real estate? Who typically do you find?
Yosef Lee [10:02]
I think all sorts of, we’ve had an active investors, passive investors, someone who never knew about this apartment investing someone I just met on the street. And we happen to talk about real estate investing. I give them the information about the virtual meetup. And he showed up and yeah, just anyone is open to anyone. But the goal is to connect the people in the multifamily sectors, and we have a specific topic. So each time the poll are different, like they can choose to come or not, but we have maybe about 50% of regular attendees, and the 50% gets changed.
Sam Wilson [10:36]
That’s absolutely awesome. Would you recommend that to other people? Do you recommend that method of I guess self-educating and also building your network?
Yosef Lee [10:45]
Oh, definitely. Because you only can go for if you do it yourself, because this is not a solo practice, right? You need a team because yes if you’re dealing with a single family duplex or residential side, I think you could be super mad, you could do everything yourself, you can have that automation system. But if you want to come to the commercial side of multifamily now, you know, the lender sees deals differently, they see different credibility, they will see how as a team you can tackle down and if you could really close, so unless you network with people and find a partnership, you can only go so far, I always tell people like you gotta have a team, especially when you start because you don’t have that credibility. Your five years of experience as a single family flipper or wholesaler or investor will not get you anywhere when you come to this site.
Sam Wilson [11:39]
Right? Yeah, that’s absolutely correct. I love that. Have you worked with the same set of partners on every single deal?
Yosef Lee [11:46]
Not every single deal, but a couple. So first two, I have a team that I still manage together. And then we’re looking to see another property together. And I have another team that would do syndication together as a team. So I have mainly two different teams but consistently work together.
Sam Wilson [12:03]
Right. Yeah. And that’s not uncommon. I mean, especially gaining traction, that’s not an uncommon, you know, way to go about it. What’s the future hold for you, you’re knocking it out of the park on the co-sponsors slash co-GP side of things, where do you want to go in the future, and then tell us how you intend on getting there.
Yosef Lee [12:22]
I would just put my head down, just continue this journey of acquiring more passive income streams, enough to for me to transit into more of a full-time real estate side and reducing my attorney hours. But eventually, I want to create that system of having multifamily as a defense, I call it defense, gets more passive income, financial fortress, but I want to go into the short-term rental side, which I consider to be more offense and like sphere itself, to me, multifamily is a shield, and short term rental will be a sphere or sword, where I could get more often cashflow, with the cushion of having this passive income stream. And I mean, financial freedom and time freedom is what everyone wants. But also, to me, it’s more about setting a goal and achieving it and move on to the next. So that’s a way of proof who I am to myself. And that’s what I said when I came to this foreign country, with meeting old and new people, new cultures, new language, and things like that.
Sam Wilson [13:24]
Right, man, that’s a lot to absorb in a very short timeframe. Tell me why you define short-term rentals as offense? What do you see about that? That is not a defensive play. And then what risks are involved?
Yosef Lee [13:37]
Well, first of all, I’m not doing any short-term rental at this point. So I can’t really tell from an expert perspective, because I am not. But to me, Airbnb is, and this corporate rentals looks more promising in terms of higher cash flow, because you charge premiums as opposed to the passive income stream that you get from multifamily, which is extremely hard to grow. I still consider being a GP as an active income, not passive income, I consider the true passive income, if I could call it a true passive income only comes from being an limited partner, a passive investor side, which I try my best to get to, as well. Each time I go to go in as a GP, I try to invest as an LP to as I make money from my active jobs and active GP position, I try to shove that into an LP position so that I could grow that small passive income stream old number and net Oh, one point because I might not be able to do this much of a gap or this much of a job. Right, right. That’s why I’m saying this is more defense. But once you have that passive income stream for years down the road, you will be it’s like a fortress, it’s not going to be easily fallen, right? But Airbnb Incorporated, and again, I do see a lot of premium charge and then good cash flow. So that’s why I want to delve into it. So it’s just my coin coining that as offense is just the way I see it as a lot more active upfront cash flow.
Sam Wilson [15:05]
Do you see any risk? And again, I understand that, you know, you’re not actively buying that yet, but it is something you’re looking at. What risks do you see when you look at short-term rentals?
Yosef Lee [15:16]
I don’t want to call it a risk. But you gotta take up a lot more things yourself than the multifamily because I think the team, the pool of team and number of partners will be smaller in Airbnb, unless you probably create, like massive amount of portfolio. Right. Whereas the multifamily you have a good number of partners where you can rely on so far. That’s how I see it. But I don’t know. I think it’s just the term that gets me to act upon offense, more cashflow, defense, more of passive income.
Sam Wilson [15:49]
Got it. I love it. Yosef, I love what you’re doing. Thanks for breaking down really your story and you know where you’ve come in the legal world in the multifamily world. And then of course, what you’re looking to do, how you differentiate between offense and defense, I love all those things. And then you know, breaking down for us the benefits and how to start a meetup that is absolutely fantastic. If our listeners want to get in touch with you what is the best way to do that?
Yosef Lee [16:14]
I try to be very active on social media so you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, TikTok. I’ve been Yosef, Your Bro Sef. That’s my handle Y-O-S-E-F-Y-O-U-R-B-R-O-S-E-F, and shoot me a DM. I’m open to have a zoom call and discuss and I’m very easy to get in touch with.
Sam Wilson [16:35]
Fantasti. Yosef, thank you for your time of day. I do appreciate it.
Yosef Lee [16:39]
Thank you very much, Sam. I had a great time with you.
Sam Wilson [16:41]
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 Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, 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 higher on those directories so appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.
