Data Driven Real Estate
Data Driven Real Estate
Hyperlocal Real Estate Investing with Aaron Mazzrillo #ddre20
Aaron Mazzrillo is an entrepreneur, a real estate investor, and a marketer based in the Inland Empire. Hailing from Massachusetts, Aaron became involved in real estate in the early 90s after he and his wife decided to pack everything up and move to California. Since then, he has been buying, rehabbing, renting, and selling properties. This week on the podcast, Aaron shares how he survived the Great Recession, finding off-market deals, the importance of marketing and messaging, and how he continues to stay busy in a tight real estate market.
00:00 The Data Driven Real Estate Podcast welcomes Aaron Mazzrillo
02:08 How and why Aaron Mazzrillo got started in real estate and how he survived the Great Recession and lived to talk about it
16:21 What Aaron did that was key to his success during 2009-2012 and the one regret he has wholesaling deals at the time
18:39 Use of capital as real estate investors and what separates pros from the newbies in the business when calculating ROI
21:33 Rent or Flip? How do you make that decision as a real estate investor?
25:32 What does it take to become a real estate investor
27:17 Matching a hyperlocal list to a hyper-personalized message
30:14 Aaron shares tips on how to connect with different types of sellers
34:52 Which marketing channels is Aaron using in his business?
35:36 The importance of hyper-local marketing strategy
39:17 How did COVID impact Aaron's real estate investing?
43:36 Repeatable processes and the technology stack Aaron has deployed in his business
51:14 The difference between suspect and prospect in real estate investing
52:13 -Data privacy laws investors need to understand and how difficult and expensive compliance can be
57:26 - What real estate strategies Aaron is focused on for 2021
Welcome back to the Data Driven Real Estate Podcast Episode 20. This week we have real estate investor Aaron Mazzrillo based in sunny Southern California. He started in construction, became a wholesaler, real estate flipper, landlord, and does other kinds of projects like commercial. He has seemingly done it all over the last 20 years. We talk about the data that drives his business, marketing tactics that he's deploying and trying, and how to build systems and automations to make things scale. And one of my favorite parts is a prospect versus a suspect. That and much more. Don't miss the show this week. Hey, welcome to the Data Driven Real Estate podcast, the podcast for real estate professionals dedicated to driving business using data. I'm Aaron Norris and with co-host Sean O'Toole with PropertyRadar. And today we have got Aaron Mazzrillo. Hello, Aaron, how you doing?
Aaron Mazzrillo:I'm doing great.
Aaron Norris:Where are you park today at the beach or higher.
Aaron Mazzrillo:My background is the beach actually took this photo, but I'm in the Inland Empire. It's where I am out here Monday through Thursday evenings and then met the beach Thursday night through Sunday night. Sometimes that bleeds over to Monday, depending on how I feel but, you know, I don't serve anymore. I had a catastrophic surfing accident where I actually drowned and was drug out of the water and resuscitated on the beach, ended up in the hospital in the neurological ward, and walked out of the hospital the next day. So I said, you know what, it was fun, but I'm over it.
Sean O'Toole:Okay.
Aaron Norris:Stick with fishing.
Aaron Mazzrillo:You know, I find that surfing is more of a brutal full-contact sport than kickboxing was.
Aaron Norris:That's right, you have a kickboxing background. Do you still practice?
Aaron Mazzrillo:I don't because now I have a pretty bad neck have some problems in my neck. So, I don't anymore, and but I watch it almost every day. It's like, you know, just a tear rolls down my cheek, but it is what it is. I find other things to do. So, it was just keep pushing forward.
Aaron Norris:Now, when did you get into the real estate game?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Uh, I had a tax. So, I tell the story to a couple times before. Most people like oh, you know, I was working my crappy job and I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And then I, you know, went to some seminars, I start real estate. I had a great job. I actually really liked my job and I was making at the time I thought a ton of money. It was more money than ever made before a couple hundred thousand a year. The problem was, I was an estimator for a subcon we were subcontractor. So basically, a construction company. So, the only write offs I had were, you know, pencils and paper and you know, gas and a leased vehicle. So I was paying very large estimated quarterly taxes, which I did not like doing. And I talked to my I had some kind of interest in real estate. I like I had been reading some books I had read the Rich Dad Poor Dad book after I saw the author on Oprah, you know, I figured, well, she's got a good reputation. She must, you know, he must be okay. So, you know, I was kind of like reading some books I could find at Barnes and Nobles and stuff. But I got into real estate because I had a tax problem and asked my CPA, I was like, this has got to stop. I'm bleeding money here. I work so hard. I make all this money. And I'm giving back 50 60% of it to the government every, every three months. He's like, Well, no, no, I'm going to read. So, what I do is like, get yourself more read. I use paper and pencil like how many pens do I have to go to Costco buy like a pallet of pencils. Like where would I store that? You know? So, I What are your other clients do? What do they do? You know, you must have other people that are my situation is like, yeah, they buy real estate, like I'm gonna go buy some real estate. So, I just, yeah, I just started buying houses from the MLS, paying whatever they were asking, but this was early 2000s, make a phone call get alone, not a problem, you know, go to a seminar, some guys selling turnkey new construction, I'll take one of those. I was buying stuff everywhere and stuff in five states. I was buying whatever, whenever I could to stop the bleeding. But then that just turned into a new kind of bleeding. So, and then I actually, it was Jack Fullerton. We all know him, great guy. He turned me, I actually, the story goes back one step further. Steve Dexter pointed me in the right direction. He finally pointed me to Jack Fullerton who bribed me to go to a Pete Fortunato seminar. And I went there. And once I got there, and I saw what people are doing, I met people that I was like, this is what I'd rather be doing. This sounds really cool and fun, right? Because I'm still negotiating, negotiating large contracts, which is what I was doing in construction. But now I don't only get 5% of the gross like a commission now I actually get the house of the equity. And I kind of like and it's funny because I was also a licensed real estate broker at the time, and I had never even been to an open house. It had just taken the classes and pass the test. And it's like, oh, you're an agent. I was like, Oh, cool. And I live near Irvine Valley College. So, at night, I had nothing to do and no kids, I would just take my classes. And I was like everything electronic music and yoga and everything. So, I had taken all the classes for, for real estate, and I saw I went took the test and then I was a broker. And I had no idea.
Sean O'Toole:Straight to broker.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Yeah, I was eight...well because I had a college degree and at the time, you could be a broker if you had a four-year degree. So, I had a college degree and I had taken these classes have no idea how to do any paperwork or nothing and here I am a California licensed real estate broker. Which is scary, right? So yeah, so I was just buying houses out of the MLS. I thought getting my broker's license would help me get better deals. But you know, I could save a commission. But yeah, that's not the way to do the business. I lost my train of thought a little bit. My assistant came in, I was like, Ah, it's important, like nothing's important right now. We leave so I don't remember where I started on that bad but I got distracted.
Aaron Norris:So 05', 06' come around, did you switch gears at all? Were you still buying out of the MLS?
Aaron Mazzrillo:So I was 05', 06' I was still yeah, that's like my prime time of buying straight out of the MLS and paying retail and going to seminars and buying whatever people were selling as far as Oh, we got houses here and houses there. I just I just didn't know any better. Also Jack sents me Peter Fortunato, I liked what Pete taught I wanted to learn more about that, I started to kind of get away from the MLS stuff, but I didn't know how to market. I didn't understand how to talk to sellers. So I started going to a local real estate, a landlord meeting that wasn't far from my office. And, and I would go in and it was every Friday morning was a breakfast, and I get there, I get to my office, I you know, kind of get sorted out and then I leave, and I come back in like an hour. And then next week, it was like an hour and five minutes. And the next week was like an hour and 15 minutes. And then you know, after a couple of months, it's like I would leave on Friday morning and I would come back Friday afternoon. I would just stay with like I want to be like these guys. They just hang out all day. This is the best. Mic Blackwell was there. And he sent me to this, you know, it was his private group at the time, his mastermind at sizzler, the Tuesday lunch. But they're still doing that it's not private. Everybody goes but it's not a sizzler anymore So I started going there. And I had equity so I have HELOCs, right because if you have equity in 2006, you got to have a HELOC. Right. So I had HELOCs with six-figure checks, you could just write for fun. So I started buying from the wholesalers in the room and one, in particular, Mike, we all know Mike, right? So I started buying from one wholesaler, because I had heard a lot about him, but I'd never met him. And I really wanted to understand what he was doing. So everything he had I wanted to buy. And so I started buying stuff from him. And then the market kind of melted down. But while I was buying from him, I was studying his paperwork, and I was asking him questions. And I started to kind of figure out what I needed to do to walk away from the construction business and then go back into the construction business. Right. So.
Sean O'Toole:I'm gonna pause for a second because I don't think most people know who you're talking about actually, like, we have a broader audience. So, Mike Cantu is the guy. Right. And his, he doesn't do a lot of speaking he doesn't do much training and that kind of stuff. He did put together this series of, I guess, audio recordings or book called what was it? Real Estate Island?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Don't Get Voted Off Real Estate Island.
Sean O'Toole:Don't Get Voted Off Real Estate Island. And I have to say, I've read a lot of the books and other things over the years. And that is one of my you know, all-time favorites, just like how practical it is. And you know, kind of down to earth and like talking about how to negotiate a deal. And, you know, put it in just really good terms. It's one of my favorites.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Mike's superpower is taking very complex things, and making them extremely simple. It's just that I mean, it's he can do that better than anybody else.
Aaron Norris:I always tell him I want to create a children's book because he is famous for his hilarious one-liners of doing just that taking something complex and irritating and simplifying it into a one sentence hilarious. Just moment and I'm like I want to create an illustration book for kids to introduce them to real estate.
Aaron Mazzrillo:We need the Tao of Mike and it can be Cantuisms. Right?
Sean O'Toole:Cantuisms.
Aaron Mazzrillo:I've had this in my head and I live next to him. And I'm just like, I gotta go over there like on a Friday night and just like try to get him to start feeding me is Cantuism and writing them down and documented like the Tao of Mike Cantuisms. So.
Sean O'Toole:All right, well.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Very smart guy.
Sean O'Toole:How did you survive the downturn like because, you're saying you've got you're taking out loans, you've got HELOCs. So that means you're tapping all the equity of these things to buy more and you're doing it all over.
Aaron Mazzrillo:I'm still one of those today, still paying off one of those HELOCs today. So, I mean, I can write the check, but it's like, it's like now it's gone into the fixed-rate mode. It's not fixed, right? It's the amortizing mode. So, you know that, but it's like 2.75%. So, like, I really want to write that pay that off or so yeah. So, I had a lot of houses. And I always felt like, for me, I want to be a person of my word. But I want to be somebody who doesn't want to do it. And I'm going to do it when I say I'm going to do it. And that, to me is more important than anything else. So, I had houses that were way over-leveraged, I was over a million dollars in negative debt, but I had made the commitment to pay these loans. And I had tenants I was a good landlord, I had studied MrLandlord.com at the time, that was a great resource for learning how to be a landlord. And I had read some there were some books, you know, that had been published on landlording. And it was a local guy who bought one. And so, I felt like my landlord chops were pretty good.
Sean O'Toole:How many doors did you have?
Aaron Mazzrillo:It wasn't many, maybe between 10 and 15? I don't remember, wasn't a lot. Right. So, but when you have a $300,000 houses that are now worth, I mean, the neighbors were selling for $60 or $80 grand in 2009. And you had 200? Well, I had I shouldn't say you I had $250,000 loans. It was brutal. And at the time, there were the interest rates in 2007 worse between, I think 6% and 7%, around 6 and a quarter, 6 and a half for landlords, right? So, I was paying a pretty, pretty good rate on them. I was getting clipped pretty bad every month. But I was flipping houses and we did some great deals. And I think that in time things work themselves out. And Jack Miller used to have a saying, just get the houses dig your nails in and hang on, right? So, I kind of thought this will turn around, this will get better. It's not going to last forever. It's just a temporary bleeding. And I saw a lot of people doing strategic foreclosures, which I thought was extremely unethical. Maybe from a business sense, it made sense. But I didn't want to do that for myself. I wanted to have whenever I do an application, and I knew inside that I always want to do bigger things. I wanted to get $3 million, $5 million, $10 million loans and on those loan applications. I imagine there would be questions like have you ever had a foreclosure? Have you ever had a bankruptcy? And I always wanted to say, No, I've never had that. That's never been a part of my business model. I've always stepped up and made my payments when I had a commitment. So, I just kept working. flipping houses more in 2008 and 09' wholesaling more. And then, like I say, in time, things worked themselves out. Suddenly, I was getting like these FedEx packages, unsolicited. And it's like we have to refinance your house. And it was hard. And I had all these houses were hard loans. So they went from six and a half or six and a quarter to 30-year fixed at like four and a half. And suddenly, they're all cash flowing like crazy. So yeah, so it was if you dig nails in and hang on, Jack Miller was right. Eventually, things worked themselves out. And I still have some of those houses today. And they're doing phenomenally well. And they're worth more than what they were worth back then. So, it's it's, it's all worked out.
Aaron Norris:It's a small world.
Sean O'Toole:Go ahead, Aaron.
Aaron Norris:It's a small world and people talk, I don't think some people really appreciate that. And that, you know, your reputation means a lot in this business. So, we've had a chance to work together over the last decade and I really appreciated your perspective and your ethics and your honesty. So thank you for you know, playing that role in our industry. We need more of that.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Sometimes it can be brutally honest, and that might show through on my Facebook profile, but I don't use that for business. It's more of entertainment, which to is to my own detriment.
Sean O'Toole:We're definitely gonna have you give up your Facebook profile so people could follow you because it's it's a it's a fun, fun, follow.
Aaron Mazzrillo:I try to tell people just remember, I'm laughing when I'm writing this. I'm not trying to install you're just all can have a good time. So, I yeah, it's social media. It's not anti-social media. I'm not trying to be a jerk. But, you know, I'm northeast. I'm from the northeast. I'm New England. I'm from Massachusetts. You know, we have a reputation back there and sarcasm is how we communicate. So, I apologize.
Sean O'Toole:Your kickboxer background I guess makes you not afraid to put yourself right in the middle of things like when riots were going on and you're standing out front with a baseball bat protecting your properties was maybe not with a baseball bat but it felt like that.
Aaron Mazzrillo:It wasn't a bat it was actually a [laughter]
Sean O'Toole:It was something.
Aaron Mazzrillo:It was sorry, but it wasn't a bat a little more effective than a bat and I'm very well trained in using that tool. So yeah, I was definitely down in downtown Riverside protecting my property. You know, you can protest all you want but don't destroy people's personal property that's unacceptable in my opinion.
Sean O'Toole:Yeah, yeah. don't disagree. Okay. So, we're, we're getting through, you dug your nails in, hung on. And now you land in probably the greatest period of time to be a real estate investor of hall history, which was, you know, 2009 through 2012.
Aaron Mazzrillo:The decisions I made back then have, they've allowed me to, to make better decisions today or make easier decisions today. So, the decisions I made back then, now, it's the houses that I bought that I kept, they allow me to show up at work when I want and, and I try to run it like a business and a company. But at the same time, I don't need to, it's more. to reference back to Mike again, scoreboard, it's just more for like, he only need to beat the team by one point to win. But you know, what's an extra 20 or 30 points? That's, that's okay, too, right. So, you know, now I feel like I'm in this more for the challenge of getting that next deal. And for the fun of cashing that big check, not because I need it to go buy groceries and gas.
Sean O'Toole:Before we jump into it. There's bad feedback somewhere, sorry. Before we jump into what you're doing today, talk to us about that period from 2009 to 2012, what you did how you put yourself in a position to take advantage of that, and put yourself in the position you are in now. Like what was what was kind of the key to your success through that period.
Aaron Mazzrillo:So, I have a background in basically cold calling doing sales calls. And I had, I felt like I had, I had some skills, I developed a skill set that it put me in a good position to transition into real estate and talking to sellers. And I was listening to I don't even know if you'd call it a podcast back then I was listening to like a weekly seminar where in the back then the the gurus would they would do a recording like a conference call and then they'd mail it to everybody on the CD. Right. So I'm talking like Richard Ropp, like I was in his club. So, I'd get the CD. And I'm listening to it. And Ryan Scala is on there complaining that he has too many leads. I was like, what was too many leads, right? Especially today, right? I mean, there's no comparison. So I tracked down Mike, I'm like, Who is this guy, Ryan Scala that's complaining about too many leads? He's like, oh, he lives in Corona, he's an investor. So, I got to meet this guy. I got his phone number. And he had built way ahead of his time, he had built an amazing CRM, and it did phenomenal mail tracking, and I'm sure he showed you his latest stuff. Yeah, Sean, that you've seen it? I mean, he's a great coder. Right? Is he a great idea guy and a great coder. So, he built this amazing CRM. And he showed it to me, I'm like, I need to be on this. So, he had all these leads. So, I just started going through his leads and digging out the golden there. And we started closing deals. And once we started closing deals, he's like, Hey, you want to partner up and work full time? I was like, yeah, so I'd actually drive this house Monday through Friday, and sit in his house. And we were, we were sending mail and we were going after REO, but we were mostly focused on older absentee owners, that was really our target demographic. And we did pretty well back then probably my biggest regret was A. not keeping more houses and B. wholesaling too many of the deals that we got, I wish we'd flipped more, because we left a lot of money on the table.
Sean O'Toole:Oh, all right. Yeah, that is the downside of wholesaling. You know, it's it's an interesting thing that I find with investors, everybody looks at the cash, right, the total cash. And one of the things you need to think about too, is if you have an available pool of capital, right? What makes what really separates good investors from bad and where wholesaling can actually be good, is your ROI is based on how well you keep that cash to play, right? So, if I've, if I've got a million dollars, right, and I do a deal that makes you know, 10 grand, 1%, right. But I do that in a day. And I do two of those a week, my total return on capital over the year is going to be much better than somebody who did a deal that made 20% but took them a year.
Aaron Mazzrillo:For sure. I like I like the snowball effect. So when I was in the construction business and do an estimating, I would get a deal and I'd be excited about it. And the guy kept he was kind of coaching me he's like well listen, it's you got to keep working and get the next deal and the next deal and keep lining them up because I know you sold this contract. So I was selling windows to multifamily builders. Well, they don't go out and build 300 units at once. They do it in phases. So it might take a year. So I would get a little bit of a check and a little bit of a check. And he's like, well, you have to get the snowball effect. So once you start that building your snowball, it's going to start throwing off more and more money more consistently faster, and then your income is going to exponentially go up. And so that's why I like the flipping businesses is that I always try to have stuff in escrow that I'm buying, at the same time stuff in escrow that I'm selling, and then a pile of inventory that we're rehabbing. So we always have stuff coming to escrow. And the snowball effect where you can consistently get these five or six-figure checks on a weekly basis on a monthly basis or you know, every two months if you don't have that much volume. But if you leave half of that money, at least on the table when you're wholesaling unless you're, you know, an excellent buyer. I, for me, I always felt like wholesaling wasn't a business model, it was a way to dispose of excess inventory.
Sean O'Toole:Right.
Aaron Mazzrillo:So I think the number one thing people should focus on is raising private money, because that'll help you grow faster if you have more money that allows you to do more deals. So if you would like spend more one or two hours a week focused on just like my financial Friday, I'm going to work on my private money game, you raise private money, you get enough private money behind you, it allows you to work on that snowball to build up your inventory of flips. And then as you get more leads in, and you've run out of private money, I can wholesale those off. And that gives me the cash flow today to sell my immediate cash needs, but have these bigger checks in the works coming? So for me, that's the business model I like best and I rarely wholesale anything anymore.
Sean O'Toole:And you do keep those as well. So how do you how do you make that decision? Because that's, that's one of the other things that's really hard, right as a flipper, and Okay, I'm gonna make 30 grand on this deal today. Or I can go rent it out, and I'm gonna make$200 a month or whatever. Like, that's pretty hard trade off. So how do you decide what to keep? And how do you have the discipline to do that?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Two things. The first one, which I, my friend was high-volume wholesaler here in California. He's doing a ton of deals more than 100 deals a year. And he was just wholesaling, wholesaling wholesaling. And one day I said to him, I said, you know, what, that's a great house in a great neighborhood. Why are you gonna wholesale? It's like, do I make 40 grand on it? I was like, Yeah, but if you keep it and rent it out, that 40 grand check is still there, it hasn't disappeared, just because you rented the house out, maybe you get a little less, because you actually closed on it, you funded it, you did some work on it, you rented it out. But if you get the tenant out, and I mean, in this environment, that's a little more difficult. But you know, pre-COVID, you could get the tenant out in 60 days, or 30 days if they're less than a year, and maybe make more money on a full retail sale. So that kind of changes percent. She's like, man, I never really thought about that. It's yeah, I know where you can sell it to another landlord who might pay more than the guy who wants to flip it. Because it's rent ready or is rented out, there's a good tenant, they're paying market rent, there's a fellow investor landlord who might be interested in that. So, I just think that mentality is knowing that check just because you kept the house, that check hasn't gone away. And the flip side of that is coming from a high tax bracket and paying lots of taxes. I got on a real estate to get out of the tax, the game of you know, taking money and then giving it back to the government. I wanted to keep as much money as possible, so.
Sean O'Toole:You're basically doing enough flips to fund your operations and food and taking care of yourself. And anything any profits you generate above that. You leave them in the deals and keep them that kind of a rough way to manage your your taxes and income.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Well, I've become a little more picky because having the stuff that I bought in the 2009 to 12. It's allowed me to do that, right. So, I've become a little more picky. So in the beginning, it was like, oh, I'll keep that rental and Banning I'll keep that rental in Hemet and those are his were tertiary Aaron's good with vocabulary, like these secondary markets. Right. So no, no third, third market. So the third world markets in other markets, they're just very far away from my core business, right? So I would keep houses and Benning and Hemet and places that were like on the outskirts of I don't want to say civilization but the outskirts of where the the core population, the work, the the jobs and all that I would I would keep these houses, because I knew I could grow the equity up and keep those houses. But now it's to the point where, if I buy a house in like an a neighborhood near a good school, and flipping it knowing that, hey, I've been in business almost 20 years, and I've never bought a house in that neighborhood before. What are the odds that I'm going to get another one unless I pay retail? They're probably slim to none. It'd be crazy for me to sell that house. So, it'd be better if I sold something in San Bernardino or just took the money from this next flip and kept that A Plus or even B Plus neighborhood house, which I don't get the opportunity to buy very often, which leads me into when I drive through those neighborhoods and I see a guy flipping a house. It makes me think, like, I haven't figured this game out yet. He's doing it all wrong. Why would you sell that A Plus house that you bought at a wholesale price? To get a highly taxable check of short-term capital gains, I, that's not the business model I want. So, it's really all about tax management, the whole strategy about tax management, which is a bit scary now, because we don't know where that's all gonna go.
Sean O'Toole:Talk us about. I mean, the markets are betting that it's not going to go too crazy for us. appears. So talk to us about your, you know, game today, like you mentioned, cold calling is a personal skill, right? That's one of the strongest, I think skill sets, like people that are good at door-knocking, people are good at cold calling, nobody wants to do that everybody wants to, like, get some magic list, right? You know, do something super simple, where they press a big easy button, and suddenly get a call and buy a house with$100,000 of equity. And we know, that's not how it actually works. Walk us through a little bit what you know, you recommend to folks today, who want to get into this business of what it really takes to to buy, you know, buy off market deals.
Aaron Mazzrillo:So quickly. And just to touch back on something you said is about these, like secret lists these magic lists, right? I mentioned that to one of my friends, all of this guy's milling this this kind of secret list that he is like secret is are there neighborhoods? I don't know about? Is there, like a secret community? I was kinda like, Yeah, he's like, if it's a house on the street, it's not a secret list. Right? No, that makes a lot of sense. It's just, you know, maybe there's some other criteria in there. But every house out there is known. And you can find out information about it, maybe you need to set up some certain data points that you're looking for, to add that particular house to your list that matches your marketing message or whatnot. But there's no secret list by I mean, everybody's basically high equity, long term ownership. I mean, there's not a really a lot people are going out to these days.
Sean O'Toole:And I want to pause you just right there, because you just said the most important thing ever. It's a list that matches your message, right? There is no secret list. But there is huge magic in taking a good up a list that matches a message, right? So that targets those specific people, but it's about the message and then finding the list that matches the message, in my opinion versus the other way around.
Aaron Mazzrillo:I always like to think of when I try to explain that to people about marketing is like imagine you own a hamburger stand. If you stand outside the door and try to con every person in tea, you're gonna get lots of no's and be very disappointed. What you want to find are the people that like meat, right? You want to try to cater to the vegetarians, they need to have some money, right? So, they need equity. And there's a whole sub to and you know, all that nonsense, you know, there's that whole market. But generally speaking, you need that they need to have some equity or some money, and then they need to be hungry. Right? You might have money and love hamburgers, but if you just ate, you're not coming in my so yeah, so you got the message, we sell hamburgers. And now I'm going to cater to those who are ready, willing and able, they want to buy what I'm selling. They need what I'm selling, and they have the ability to take advantage of my services. So.
Sean O'Toole:I think there's a difference $2 hamburger joint and the $12 you know, fancy burger joint to right. And that's a different message to a different market.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, if you're looking to get started in this business, just doing mail is going to be extremely difficult in today's market. So, this is, you know, early November 5, 2020. Right now, today in the Southern California market, if you're just doing mail to absentee homeowners, you're going to throw away a lot of money, you need to be more focused, like more of a sniper shooting a rifle instead of a shotgun approach. Right. So Well, I think your best opportunity probably lies in driving for dollars, or looking at a tax default. You know, we can't really get eviction information here. That's very accurate. And currently, there's none of that anyways. So, tax default code enforcement, if you could get somebody who's on both of those lists, or and then take it another step further. If you get somebody who's tax default, they got code enforcement issues and they're a landlord who lives out of state. You know, you got you got the magic, Yeah? You got the magic number that you getting letters on your houses in Florida Aaron?
Aaron Norris:Yes, I get text messages all my rentals in Florida.
Aaron Mazzrillo:But they're probably just pulling like an out of state owner list or something very generic. And then, you know, doing some broad so we do texting here. And it mean, you have to send a lot of text messages, a lot of text messages to find a good deal.
Sean O'Toole:Oh, I come back to, you know, you mentioned driving for dollars, right. And I always tell people, even if you're going to pull a list, like pull a list and go start by driving that list and knocking on some doors and talking to those folks, because you probably can't develop a good message until you actually understand who that person is you're talking to, and how much do you think that's an issue? Like do you find for yourself, like, you connect with certain types of buyers better than other types of buyers? Like there's doors you knock on? And if you know, a particular person answers, like you're no way you're getting a deal, because you just you have a tough time chatting with them. Right? So....
Aaron Mazzrillo:Yeah, some people can be very standoffish. Some people can be angry. But the response is not you don't respond to anger with anger, you respond to anger with, you know, you back off a little bit, say, hey, all right, you know, Hey, sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you. So, we send text messages. And generally we'll end it with something that causes them not to respond with anger. So, you know, I don't want to give away all our goods. But we, we have a statement in there that it doesn't solicit an angry response from people. So, we've been able to really dilute that down a lot. We don't get many of those anymore. Were when we first started. Yeah, it's a lot of anger responses. So, like the other day, I was driving in my neighborhood, and I seen a house that I've been stalking for months. And I like put like put, you I like to leave behind. I like to put something behind. So, I'm knocking on the door. There's nobody home, I try to skip trace it, I can't find the people that turns out, they've passed away. So, I'm putting like bandit signs wedged in there in their screen door not not, you know, a door hanger or see, I'm putting an entire bandit sign in their front door, like you can see my message from the street. So, I find out that, you know, it turns out that the the heir happens to be a guy who's been on TV flipping houses, so not much of an opportunity there. But at the end of the day, this is nothing more than a conversation. Nobody needs a negotiation seminar. So I see you at the side of the street, you know, taking out bags and bags of trash to this house in the front doors, open the windows or open the garage doors up. There's something going on there. I'm going to pull over. And hey, what's going on? You need any help? Oh, no. I've already brought some value to the table. Hey, you need some help. I don't know what you're doing. But I'm gonna ask anyways. Well, you saw the house got all the doors and windows open. I mean, I'm thinking cats, you know, lots of spilled beer or something, right? There's something smelly. Maybe somebody passed away? I don't know. So what? Well, I just happen to be a local and I always present myself as a local landlord. Hey, I'm just a local landlord. And you know, I love to buy rental houses. I you know, it looks like you're having a problem here What's going on? And so you just ask a conversation, and you try to get to what are the pinpoint? What's the actual issue that would cause these people to, to consider selling? So if you can find that pinpoint, and agitate that little bit and then offer a solution? Generally, you're gonna have a better relationship than just, I buy houses. I pay cash. Right? So I mean, nobody who owns the burger stand sells we sell cheap hamburgers, right? I mean, McDonald's, they do that, but they don't say we sell cheap hamburgers. Hey, we got the dollar menu.... fill you up. It's really delicious. You know, us it's tasty is yummy. Right? So I always look at who are the big players in the marketing space? And how can I mimic what they do on a smaller scale? Right, McDonald's has had the same commercials, oh sorry, McDonald's has been advertising to their same core demographic, children, for 50 years or whatever. Right? And they have, there's, there's things in there that connect their message, right? So they always have the weird clown or the Purple Guy, or, you know, there's something in there and that, you know, the the Whopper, The Big Mac or I don't know who sells I don't know, I don't know what they saw. I don't throw in a Burger King stuff here. So, but ultimately, their goal is to just sell hamburgers, right? So I try to do the same stuff with my marketing. I don't say we pay cash, we buy houses, I say, Hey, what's what's going on with your house? Is there something I can help you out with? You know, I'm in the business of solving these problems. And, you know, maybe you could call me and we can talk about it. And then at the bottom, I have some kind of catchphrases that are consistent with all my marketing pieces. So it ties them all together. So I remember that guy because he always puts that in there. Right? So I think that's kind of the key to a successful marketing campaign is you can touch people five or six times but if there's no connectivity between those touches, then it's like you got five or six different mailers.
Aaron Norris:Uhm, how, how many different channels are you focused on right now? So you said text I've heard you say signs direct mail.
Aaron Mazzrillo:PPC driving for dollars, text messages, direct mail. And surprisingly, I bought more houses off wholesalers this year than any other source. And most of those came from Instagram of all places.
Aaron Norris:Get out of here. Really?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Yeah, I buy a lot of houses off Instagram. It's very strange.
Aaron Norris:You're not the first person I've heard that from so interesting. I'm gonna have to look at your hashtag, sir.
Aaron Mazzrillo:I just copy and paste other people's I don't know, I'm not good at the ash tagging.
Aaron Norris:Hey, if it works, who cares?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Now my Instagram is more business. So, there's not a lot of jokes or anything like me picking up or whatever you want to call it bullying deal. It's more I buy houses is what I do walk through the properties that I'm flipping and things like that. So
Aaron Norris:How important is the hyper local angle and I only bring this up because I own the property that you were in the neighborhood you had properties. It's a house I my only property I ever bought from Mike Cantu. It was my lesson house. I learned a lot of very painful lessons with the house. But you know, the area? How focused are you on specific neighborhoods?
Aaron Mazzrillo:There a wholesaler called me today on a house, it's like just on the other side of my hill here. And I was just like, I'm gonna buy and keep it and I know what I pay for it. It is relevant. You know, I was like, well, at this price point, I can still keep and make it work. I'll pay more. But I don't want to because then I I'll almost be forced to retail it. And I would hate to let that go. When I moved into this neighborhood. I there's a country club at the top of the hill. And I remember sitting up there one day eating lunch to say, all right, my business model is to get 10 houses in this neighborhood and just rent them out and I'm good. And in 20 mile 15 years, I've never bought another house in the neighborhood. And all of my friends have bought houses in the neighborhood. Like Sylvio flip one right behind me. And all my neighbors have, I was the youngest guy on by like 20 years, it was a lot of retirees, they've all passed away, all their houses have been sold, investors have come in and flipped both houses on my street. I've not bought anything, because, you know, I am a numbers guy. So it's as much as I want to deal. It's got to pencil out. It's got to work. I just, I don't I'm not in the business of losing money. And maybe I'm too conservative some points I let deals get away. But going through 2007 to 2009 it gives you a different perspective. So there's I don't want to buy deals anymore, right? I want I want to get houses that make me money. And back then I would take any I was helium hand, right? I'll take it. I'll take I'll take it right I everybody. I'll take it helium man, Aaron. I'll take it. I'm not that guy anymore. And I was like, I buy it at this price. But as far as rentals go, I mean, I've own and rentals all over the country. There were pros and cons to all of it. But I really I really like just being here because I have an assistant in my office and she deals with all the management, she can go into annual walkthroughs. It's just a much easier business model and everything's local. And we just don't really have we got some crazy laws in California, but that are quite anti landlord. But if you play by the rules, and you run a clean business, you don't have any issues. I've been eviction court, I don't know 40, 50 time?, I've never lost I knocked on some bioethicist would last at it. I've never lost an eviction. And two times, I've entered the judges, like one time the judge says, you know, Mr. Mazzrillo, we need more people like you in this business. You provide affordable housing to people. California Courts appreciate you what you do. I was like, Wow, that was cool. I never expected that. And another time...
Aaron Norris:Can I get that in writing?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Yeah, like a photo with him. Another time, he pointed at the at the plaintiff or, I mean the defendant and said, You are a parasite. I couldn't believe he said the whole court's going, ahhh! I was like, he's right. You are. Yeah. He said you're a parasite. Right? So they're not anti-landlord here. They're pro-landlord if you follow the rules that they've laid out. If you follow the rules, they're going to be on your side. And like I said, I've yet to go to court and have it not go my way. But we we do the proper paperwork, correct filings, everything's in order. And there's always a legitimate reason. I mean, I want my tenants to stay and pay. I don't want to throw out but they got to go because they're doing something that, you know, is not in the guidelines of what they agreed to do, so.
Aaron Norris:COVID-19 has caused some interesting things in the Inland Empire. I'm hearing some investors say that flips are getting $50k to $100 grand more than they were expecting when they started the project. Are you seeing that and How comfortable are you with that heading into 2021?
Aaron Mazzrillo:So, they still need to appraise and it's not likely in the Inland Empire, you're going to get people who throw down and say no appraisal contingency, at least not at the price point that I play in and I'm really pro FHA the government's giving away a lot of money. The new subprime maybe 3%, 3.5% down. These people the day they close escrow, they're upside down, they can't sell their house, right. I mean, they're there. They're negative equity at that point. By but So that's really my business model. Because worst-case scenario, I'm stuck with a couple of rentals that I probably don't want, but I can easily I can, my portfolio can carry them. So that's why I like that business model. If you're in Orange County, or if you're maybe in the middle of higher-end, then yeah, you can see that. But every single house that I've bought, I expected it to sell for X when I bought it. When I listed it, I listed it for X plus 10%. And the offers are X plus 10%, plus another 10%. On top of that, so we're making a lot of upside bonus money in the tune of 10 to 20%. I have one in Banning of all places, probably the last affordable Bastian in Southern California, I bought, I think I'd sell for $220k or an escrow for $237k. It's, it's pending an agent go and show it and said, Hey, we're gonna just slide this in, just in case it falls out.$257k, which is crazy, right? That's crazy. And my $220k price I'm still making, I bought, I think I'd make probably I don't like to do less than, like, it has to have a minimum of $25k grand, I'm not going to do the deal. That's, that's my bottom line number. So that was probably like $30k, $35k, and now, you know, we're, we're $17k grand more on the first offer. And then you know, $30k, whatever, $37k grand more on the second offer. So, and I've been seeing that pretty consistently, most deals that I've been selling, even on my FHA entry-level, they're $30k, well,$40k, $40k to $100k grand profit per deal. Oh, you've got to try to do like 10. And I try to keep 10 in the works at all times. And I'm not flipping 10 a month, I'm not making that statement, I do 10 a month. Don't ever believe that. I try to do 10 at all times doesn't always work out sometimes.
Sean O'Toole:You know, everybody who's listened to me a little bit will hear me use the grocery analogy, right? Like, the way a grocery store makes money to very small margins. But they're turning their inventory a lot of year. And I alluded to that earlier. How long does it What's your average time from the time you buy it? Put the money out to the time you're out of the deal?
Aaron Mazzrillo:165 days.
Sean O'Toole:165 days.
Aaron Mazzrillo:From close to close. So, I have a contractor, I only use one contractor it's two brothers. They're both licensed. If I brought it into the contract, I could probably current turn deals faster. Because I have my my contractor also doing I do other stuff other than just flip houses. So, I have the I don't know if you've seen my development project downtown. So, this is a$400,000 rehab so I'm do i do other things besides just the turn and burn on the FHA houses but I like relati nships. I'm this faithful as a d g, my cat is 21 years old, o ay? been married for like 22 yea s. I just I find what I like I my wife ran out of town one ti e. And it was like at the time w s like, like, not vegeta ian, but you know, not eating a lot of red meat. I ate tofu h tdogs every day for 30 days s raight. Like, I find my thing. And I just stick with it. Which s good. Like, if you do visit ith me, I can probably get ch aper money. But I have my guy an he's a great guy. And I just, don't care at all 8, 7, 3. But I got my guy. He's 10%, I love t at guy. I'm just going to call h m because he makes it easy, ight? So, I just I have my thi gs that I like, and I stick ith him. So yeah, I can probab y get them turned faster. But I ave my guy and he does a great ob for me. So, I just stick ith him.
Sean O'Toole:It sounds like this happened for you naturally because it's your personality. Right? But like one of the things that we see when we look at our customers who are really successful, right? Is they put in place systems and repeatable processes sounds like that's just a natural thing for you. Is that something you focus on at all? Or you know, is that something you build into your businesses?
Aaron Mazzrillo:So, the conversation I had with my, I have an acquisitions guy that works from a conversation I had with him right before this call is, I said look, we're getting these text messages back, right? There's going to be the these you're going to see this this consistent responses. I don't know how many there are because we haven't quite figured that out yet. But there's going to be a consistency in in this response every once in a while you get the off off you know, color one or whatever but generally they're going to be you know, one of so many things. So, we we need to build out like a tree, right? So if we get this response then the next response from us should be this and then the next response would be so we can build out this this reply tree and then we can create this marketing that essentially takes us out of the game and it's an automated so off like your replay that guessing game 20 questions, right. So, it's was it that no, it must be this or that right? So yeah, when I was in the window business, we had a lot of different materials. So, there was aluminum, there was vinyl. And then there was different colors. And then there were different types of glass. Well, my, my friend started the business and we were just wholesalers, we were selling other manufacturers stuff. And then they brought me in a sales. So, we didn't have anything, we didn't have any forms or anything like that. And so maybe you call me you want to order like bronze aluminum windows. So, I'd have to create a new sheet and put in like the all the heat gain and the sound things and fill all that out. And then you know, you call up you on vinyl windows, and I do that, you know, and then I ship those bits out now, you know, I was like, man, why did I keep recreating this stuff? Why don't I just have a form that says all the information for bronze aluminum windows with low E glass and white aluminum windows with low E glass? So yeah, I've always been the mcdonaldization of things. It's always been at my core. And, and not because I'm extremely efficient. It's because I'm extremely lazy. I don't want to do this stuff, right. So, I just I want to make it super easy. Like, you know, medium chocolate shake, there's a button, you just push and put the cover. And you know, as long as you got the right size cup, you're good to go. That's the way your business should be run like oh, somebody comes in. And, you know, here's the houses there. And we know, I say like I from a cold call, I know nothing about the house. From the time the phone rings, I can have you an offer within 10 minutes. Because of the system that I've created. I have a spreadsheet, totally dialed in every, all I have to do is change the square foot, I changed the square foot, so whatever Redfin or the MLS says, based on the size of the house, the age and location what that rehab budget might be and have done enough house, I'm usually pretty good at guessing that I never go look at any of these houses. And then I will add in like a rehab premium, like, oh, it needs a new roof, that's going to be an extra eight or 10 grand as a swimming pool. That's actually a grand. So, I have just so those three numbers, if I change those, that's all I need to do. And I can have an offer, it tells me what I should pay, like the most I should pay. So yeah, I like to systematize things only so that I don't have to work. And then it allows me to have way more time to go do the things that I mean, I truly enjoy and love real estate, if you stop down the street, and start talking about real estate, my wife and go crazy, like we shut up already stopped. You know, I can't stop. But I also like to do other things, you know. And so, if I can focus in and get this all dialed in, and then go on with the rest of my day. That's that's great for me.
Aaron Norris:You said you have it as an assistant. And I know your sales guy. How about your guys doing your rehabs? Do you have a technology stack to sort of keep on top of that? Or do you let them handle that on their own?
Aaron Mazzrillo:So, my system does that. You know, I'm not out picking collars and you know, taking Facebook photos or any of that. And on some walls today, if I have to go for a walkthrough because I'm meeting an architect, or there's a design change in the plans, then I will go and, you know opportunity presents itself I'll take some photos, post, he here's some stuff that I' doing. But yeah, we we manage i on slack. So, every channel is property. And it's great becaus you can go to that one specifi channel and get all the data the entire history of tha rehab. So, the bids go in all the photos go in, updates go i my acquisition guy has to go. W try to get him out there once week to walk all the jobs. M assistant will at the beginnin every week. She's like, what di you get done last week? And wha do you expect to get done thi week? Right? So, then we ca check. Well, all right, wha happened here? Why did you no get the windows done? Or Oh they forgot to order them o whatnot. Right? We can kind o keep track of that. So yeah everything's done on slack. An we I never go to the jobs I tr not to I want to see him Usually, when they're done, I'l go out to do my agents visua inspection because I am a broke and I do sell my own listings because it's extremely easy It's one trip to the house t the agents visual walkthrough and 20 to 30 minutes to do al the disclosures and you know agents, you paying people, tw and a half 3% for that. That' you're giving away way too muc money. It's so easy to do this
Aaron Norris:It's a good thing. You're after Patrick Ferry just covered that same sentiment, so.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Yeah, yeah, there's no reason to be listing your in house flips with an agent not gonna happen. So, I kind of want to talk about data, I mean, data driven, and it was such a data-driven society now write a word like. So, here's a great thing that I was thinking last night. I pull on this too, too. I have the Starbucks app on my phone. Right? I don't know if Target has an app. But you know, I have Google Maps on my phone. I have Facebook on my phone. Right? So, I pull in to the Starbucks parking lot. And I'm thinking, Man, they know where I am. Right? Somebody's tracking this and software is tracking this. Why am I not getting hit with a coupon? Hey, Aaron. We got a Venti Soy Latte waiting for you. Five bucks instead of 550. Come get it right now. Yeah, I'll take that and walk in and grab my starter. Right and then I'm walking her through the store and they know Oh, you're at you're at Target because you buy, I don't know what I don't really ever go to Target, but I was there for a toothbrush last night which... Generally I don't go there, but If you do go there a lot, you know, like maybe you buy cat litter. Hey, you know, you must be here for calorie cat litter. Hey, we got cat toys on special buy, you know, buy cat litter get, you know, 50% you know, so I think you can take, I see the world going that direction where I don't know why they're not doing that already and everybody blindly signs use's agreement so they could just slide in and like hey, you give us the right to market to you when you're in the park a lot of stores that are on board with us. You can get to that point with data. Right? So I'm sure you've been online, none business at some point today. Each of you right we've each done something right had to check some return or whatever bought something or check the news on the on the on the election. You're essentially leaving behind a digital thumbprint. Right. So you online is tracked, everything is tracked everything. I mean, I like to say Facebook knows when you take a dump, right? Because that's that's the 10 or 15 minutes a day where suddenly you stopped moving, right? And you're scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. So they know, right? So they might hit you at that time. Say hey, you like to buy you know, Marshall toilet paper. Here's a guy Oh, man, I am fresh out of it. Hit that button, buy that right there. But they know everything about you? Well.
Sean O'Toole:You're here a little too long. Here's a softener product.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Everything going okay there? So, but you can essentially do the same thing with your with your, I like to call them suspects. They're not as their prospect when they call it contact me. Until then their suspect. Are they seller? I don't know. Right. So we have suspects prospects, right? So they're suspect, you can do that with your suspect. So, you know, we're hitting them on Facebook, right? And there's, there's, you can do redirection where they go to some other site, and, you know, your ad starts showing up there. There's just ways to track these people and find them. So my brother's, he's a software developer, he's worked for the government. And so I reached out to him, it's like, you need to create a platform where, you know, people take all these leads that they've skipped traced, they can't get a good email or a phone number for them. And then you can start giving back, hey, you know, here's their Instagram account, here's the Facebook profile, here's, you know, and people pay good money for that. I would I mean, I pay $5, $10 dollars a lead for that kind of data.
Sean O'Toole:It's interesting, you know, we had, we offered the Facebook profiles for a while, and there was a company that specialized in that. And they got into a pretty big cease and desist potential lawsuit, etc. So...
Aaron Mazzrillo:From Zuckerberg?
Sean O'Toole:Yeah, exactly. So, um, you know, the, you know and then, you know, like, Face ook's fairly easy to do the matc ing on, but they're pretty aggr ssive about it, right? And we'r seeing more laws like CCPA and the rest. So, you know for us, because we're in that business of like, helping you ay, Okay, I'm looking for thes types of owners, and I want to create a custom audience so t at I can I can market to them online, like, that's a feat re we have. But there's defi itely a fine line, right, with CCPA. California just voted for PRA, which kind of takes that up, you know, add some more requ rements for privacy for comp nies like ours, you know, it r quires, you know, we spent with CCPA, but I think the indu try spent something like $50 illion to get ready for the CCPA and do not sell info mation. And I think most folk, the problem is, is ever body says they care about priv cy. But people like you kind of said, they just click thro gh on the agreements...
Aaron Mazzrillo:And they blindly agree, are you sure? Whatever, whatever...
Sean O'Toole:Everybody their information. Right? And, you know, and so they, they don't take any actions to show they actually care about their privacy. It's like everybody, if you ask people, you know, is your birthdate, private data? You go, yeah, it's private data. But then right on Facebook, people are saying, hey, happy birthday, right? There's your birth date. And there's how old you are right? Like so. And, what's crazy about like that is so we get these laws that say, Okay, if you're a legitimate US business, you can't use the that birthday that this person posted online for the world. But nothing stopped in North Korea or any company in any other country from using it and selling their goods online, including you online or on the dark web, right? Because California, the US doesn't have control over those companies. And it's the internet and we've decided we're not going to censor the internet. So, nothing stops those companies from selling it to you here and there's nothing those laws can do. So, they're kind of just anti. It's a tough problem. But so far, the privacy laws that we're seeing are just anti US company anti US business laws because they don't stop when you posted your stuff online, it's online, it's public. And so anyways, it's a I totally agree with you and but it's it's not. We have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested into our privacy compliance into our Do Not Call compliance. We have large systems we have dedicated people that if you say do not sell my information, we're gonna go research it and we're gonna make sure we don't sell it and we do compliance and there's audits and like, people don't understand like, Oh, yeah, I'm just gonna go skip trace and like, half the people selling this stuff aren't compliant with the law, and it's really hard.
Aaron Mazzrillo:I, the one that provides me I asked him, do you have the DNC that do not call? No, we don't offer that. Like, wait a minute, you're selling all this data? If you have no idea what I'm gonna do with it, and then you don't even filter out the litigators like the people that are on the list you they're like no, we don't do that. That's on you. Like I don't know.
Sean O'Toole:We don't we don't offer Do not call right. And it's but here's here's the thing, right? So you say do we offer Do not call? I can't offer Do not call unless you pay for it. So it's actually illegal for me to provide you do not call unless you are Do not call subscriber as a marketer. And what you have to do you get one area code for free. But nobody lives by area code, people move into your area and they bring their phone with them from all over the US. Do you know what your cost Aaron is to be compliant with Do not call?
Aaron Norris:Oh,
Sean O'Toole:You have to do it. Even if I provide it to for me to legally provide it to you have to do it $16,000 a year?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Wow.
Sean O'Toole:Is what you would have to pay to do it legally.
Aaron Norris:Wow.
Sean O'Toole:So it's you know, it's a fact, I mean, we could spend the whole rest of the conversation on this but so for me to legally provide you do not call you have to be a Do not call subscriber and you have to pay the fee. $16,000 a year.
Aaron Norris:Oh.
Sean O'Toole:Sorry. I didn't mean to blow your mind. This is, we could talk about this...
Aaron Mazzrillo:It's just amazing that they put these restrictions on you, then they make it very difficult to meet those restrictions. It's like, we have speed limits, but also we sell our Ferrari's. Like wait, what? Yeah. Is Ferrari's if you want a governor on it, so you're within the speed limit? You're gonna have to pay 16 grand? Wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense.
Aaron Norris:We're about up on time, unfortunately. What are you what are you excited about for 2021? What are you gonna be focused on?
Aaron Mazzrillo:A man? Well, I'm trying to buy a building, you know, if you're in real estate, and you're not seriously looking at these SBA loans, I don't know, seems like you're missing a big opportunity there. Like, it's two loans. First and a second. The first is like, three and three quarter percent. The second like two and a half percent 25 year fixed, fully amortized. So if you're running a real estate office, and you're renting space, and you're not considering buying, you only have to occupy 51% of the space, if you're not considering buying your own building, you're missing out. So that's that's what I've been focused on. I've spent a lot of time door-knocking building owners. As weird as that sounds, I've been doing that. So yeah, I've looked at a couple, one in downtown Riverside, another one over here, near the free 60 freeway. So I'm trying to find some legit office space to move my business into and capture one of those 25. And I'm not buying the office space so much as I'm trying to get a million dollars at two and a two and a half or two and a quarter percent for 25 years. I mean, it's a money play, right? Because the government's I don't know how many trillions of dollars, they're printing and just giving away. And I recently heard, like, these loans, anything under 50 grand that they gave out, they're gonna forgive. I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm so glad I got some of that money. Yeah, they're gonna give it away. And that has to cause some inflationary reaction to the market to the to the dollar, right. So if I can grab a seven figures at two and a quarter percent and inflation is three, four or 5% a year, I'm way ahead of the game. So I'm focused on buying a building and doing more more apartments I just hired, hired an architect to do I own a small building, I'm going to knock down and build a well I don't know they said 11 units, but I think it's too many. We'll probably go like eight. So and then looking for more of those opportunities. I got another one that I'm looking at a little bit further east in the state of California, which is further east of my location. That's on the market. That looks like a good play as well. So yeah.
Aaron Norris:Mentone? Blyth?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Not that far east.
Sean O'Toole:I'm shop, I'm shopping as well right now for same thing business for expansion for us in other areas. So yeah. And for my personal portfolio. Yeah.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Look, I mean, they're giving away money. Why not take it? So yeah, so it's all about capturing low-cost money while they're giving away because, you know, we're in a time where they're giving all the money away, and nobody's taking it. But they all like, man, I can't wait to get back to 2009 number of prices on houses because they're giving away houses. It's like, well, the opportunities here, but you're looking at the wrong thing. You looking at $300,000 houses expecting them to crash for I don't know what reason. So they can go back to 2009 prices, you can take advantage of something that's not going to happen again, when the opportunity is not a house play. Now it's a money play. So you should be focused on like, how can I capture more money, right? So I have a friend who's like, I haven't written it off for less than $10 million in like 18 months, and he's buying big apartment buildings. And the rates on those just keep getting lower and lower. And he's like, man, these things just keep getting better and better. So that's all money plays right now. Grab the money.
Sean O'Toole:Awesome. This was fun.
Aaron Norris:It was fun. And you have to check out Aaron on Facebook and Instagram. I will definitely post my favorites when you call out lazy professionals. In quotes, if you're listening to this, in quotes, where you take snapshots of ridiculous things, particularly that agents do that drive you bonkers. And, I laugh I'm on the other end laughing hysterically.
Sean O'Toole:Yeah, I think if you're gonna follow Aaron, on Facebook, it is a great resource for investors. But you've got to be okay with not politically correct all the time. Right? Is that a fair statement?
Aaron Mazzrillo:I think I actually think I'm like, have something wrong with me. Like this? Yeah. There's like some people like you have no filter. I'm like, I don't even understand that. Like, I just think like, maybe genetically, I have something that's slightly off or my, you know, I look at everything as entertainment. And if you can't laugh at it, then why deal with it? Right? So.
Sean O'Toole:I will say, though, I'm surprised, right? Because I think you've offend, you say things that I would think maybe people would take offense of on both sides. And, but you do it in such a way that I don't see a lot of blowback. So like, I think people realize you're saying it with a smile, even though, you know it is... So anyways, it's a fun follow. If you want followers, I assume you want followers?
Aaron Mazzrillo:Why not? That can come or go I have this app on my on Facebook that tells you who who's like removed you from their account. Every day, it's like this guy's blocked you, blocked. I'm like, I don't know why I wasn't trying to be mean. I'm just having a good time over here.
Aaron Norris:Hey, it's my holiday card do you have to send?
Sean O'Toole:Where do they find? Where do people follow you? Where can they learn more about you?
Aaron Mazzrillo:So I mean, there's only one Aaron Mazzrillo in the world very uncommon name. So that's me on on Facebook, and I'm Aaron the House Buyer on Instagram. So that's probably that's the only social media accounts I have. I like to TikTok about man and it's just the the garbage pit of humanity. I found no value in that at all. It was horrid. Yeah, if I had my daughter's five, but if she were older, I would just that I would never let her have that on her phone. That is just, it's complete trash. So yeah, not on TikTok. Not gonna be there. But Instagram. I like, Instagrams, It's really good for businesses, too.
Sean O'Toole:Aaron has no strong opinions.
Aaron Norris:I don't know. All right. Well, thanks for joining us today. This has been awesome.
Aaron Mazzrillo:Hey, my pleasure. You guys, and hopefully I get up there we can fish the Truckee one day, so.
Sean O'Toole:Come up anytime I have space for you. And the Truckee River is just a couple blocks away and there's lots of fishing.
Aaron Mazzrillo:You're killing me. You're killing me.
Sean O'Toole:I know. You're welcome. Anytime really soon.
Aaron Mazzrillo:I love your app. Thank you so much. I make so much money off every year. We use it constantly. So I appreciate you for putting that out there. It's like extremely valuable to my business. So. Awesome. Thank you, Aaron. Hey, have a great day, guys.
Aaron Norris:All right, bye. Thank you for listening to the Data Driven Real Estate Podcast, you can find show notes and links to some of the resources mentioned in the show at datadrivenrealestate.com. Click that join the community, and you'll be forwarded to the PropertyRadar community where you can ask questions about the current show and even see upcoming guests and ask questions there. We'd love to engage with you in the community. So check it out. Please don't forget to like, favorite, subscribe and share on your favorite platform where you're listening to the show. It helps us out a great deal. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.