Join Big Mike for a powerhouse chat with Matt Aitchison, CEO and founder of Imagos Hospitality Group, boutique hoteler, and commercial real estate investor extraordinaire. A UCSB alum turned top-1000 residential sales team builder, Matt flipped and wholesaled hundreds of homes before pivoting to a diverse CRE portfolio—hotels, medical offices, retail centers, and more. Also host of the top-ranked Millionaire Mindcast podcast and founder of the Wise Investor Collective mastermind, Matt shares his journey from a $106K first flip at 21 to snagging game-changing deals like a $1.06M Oklahoma shopping center (at $12/sq ft) and a 100% financed mobile home park.
Dive into creative financing hacks, spotting seller motivation, value-add upside, and the stamina needed for one transformative deal a year—plus tips on negotiating TJ Maxx leases and dodging 1031 pitfalls.
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE EPISODE
00:00 – Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast
1:21 — Family Life & Early Entrepreneurship Spark
3:15 — Balancing Business as a Family Man
4:00 — First Flip: $106K Net on a $75K Foreclosure
5:56 — Creative Financing: 100% OPM & Resourcefulness
8:09 — What Makes a Great Deal? Metrics & Mindset
9:32 — Oklahoma Shopping Center: $1.06M at $12/Sq Ft
11:52 — Seller Motivation: Inheritance & Stale Assets
14:02 — Below Replacement Cost: Hedging Downside Risk
15:57 — Mobile Home Park: 100% Financed, Day-One Cash Flow
17:24 — One Deal a Year: Scaling to $500K Passive Income
18:07 — Pipeline Building: Look at Tons to Find Outliers
20:23 — Negotiation Stamina: 8-10 Touches to Close
21:36 — Buy Box Clarity: Avoid Shiny Objects
24:32 — Current Projects: TJ Maxx Lease & 1031 Tax Strategy
27:06 — Deal-Making: Multiple Offers (Cash, Traditional, Creative)
28:31 — Deals Are Made, Not Found: Follow-Up Wins
32:02 — Anchor Tenants: $4.5M Value from One Lease
34:24 — Wise Investor Collective: Scaling CRE Portfolios
35:27 — How to Connect: Napa Event & Podcast
36:54 — Book Recommendations
If you found this episode substantial and want to dig deeper into real estate, or maybe you want to discover better investment opportunities, be sure to check out www.tempofunding.com.
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Episode Tags
#CommercialRealEstate
#ValueAddInvesting
#CreativeFinance
#DealSourcing
#SellerFinancing
#RealEstateMastermind
#PassiveIncome
Full Transcript:
Mike Zlotnik (00:02.242)
Welcome to the BigMikeFund Podcast. I’m the Big Mike, Mike Zlotnik. And today it is my pleasure and a privilege to welcome Matt Aitchison. He’s a boutique hoteler, commercial real estate investor, CEO and founder of Imagus Hospitality Group. Am I saying it correctly?
And US Santa Barbara alum, he’s started his career in residential real estate, building a top 1000 sales team. And then became a full-time investor. He flipped and wholesale hundreds of homes, diverse portfolio, hotels, medical offices, retail centers. And you are a founder and host of Millionaire Mindcast.
podcast forgive me and then You also have a wise collective Wise investor collective mastermind. I apologize if I butchered up any of these things Welcome to the show appreciate you being here. Would you be so kind as to start a little bit about you? Where do you live your family and then we’ll dive deep into the real estate journey
Matty A (01:21.134)
Yeah, thanks for having me, Mike. I am used to people butchering my last name. messing up names and businesses doesn’t bother me one bit. I am based out of kind of the suburbs of Sacramento area, Northern California. I’ve been married to my awesome wife for 12 years together for almost 16. And we got three little girls.
10, eight and one and a half. So I’ve got a lot of bossy ladies in my house, know, telling me what to do all the time. But it’s amazing. I love being a dad. One of my favorite quotes is, there’s a difference between a family man with a business and a businessman with a family. And for me, you know, being a family man is one of the most important things. That’s why I run and.
I have pursued entrepreneurship and my own business. It obviously started very humble beginnings, interning for somebody right out of college for a year and saw how much money he was making when he was flipping houses. That led me to kind of my first flip at the age of 21 and I did create a finance on that, 100 % OPM. Obviously I was broke, had no experience living at home still, but I netted 106,000 on that first house flip.
And that was kind of my big light bulb moment of men. I think real estate investing is gonna be the path for me and, you know, scaled my flipping business and quickly learned that I needed to keep some of those properties instead of just flipping them. I need to hold some of them for cashflow. And then I quickly learned that I am gonna need a lot of houses in order to get the level of cashflow that I’m looking for. So that’s really what led me into the commercial space, which I’m sure will unpack that. But grateful to be on the show and excited to dive in with you on anything you wanna talk about today.
Mike Zlotnik (03:15.469)
Yeah, that’s awesome. Appreciate you sharing. I have three girls and I also have a boy, so I know how it is to have three girls in the house.
Matty A (03:23.306)
Okay, so you’re used to being bossed around too, huh?
Mike Zlotnik (03:26.317)
Yeah, and I have a different joke. You have a very good expression. You’re a family man with a business, a businessman with a family. I used to be in technology many years ago, and we used to crack this joke about, you know, kind of work and family and the balance. It was a terrible joke, but I’ll crack it again. It comes to mind every time I think about this. So in technology, well, for most of us, supposed to be God family work, right?
But the terrible joke of these, all these tech engineers, we used to say, we pray to God that the family understands that the work comes first. It was terrible, absolutely terrible. it is, that’s the truth. And that reminds me the days of long, long hours in AT and, you know, we all had reasons why we went into the real estate to achieve freedom. So your story definitely resonates. And I assume you did your flips. It was it in California? If you make a hundred some thousand dollar on a flip.
Matty A (04:00.557)
It’s terrible, but it’s funny.
Mike Zlotnik (04:21.591)
probably one of these higher value markets.
Matty A (04:25.483)
Yeah, I mean, it was back in 2010, right? So you could have sneezed and come across foreclosures at an extremely discounted price here in California. So he was buying them off the courthouse steps. And he was kind of showing me all of his different acquisition strategies. And I was analyzing the deals and I was project managing them and I was helping him with dispositions. And I saw how much money he was making. And I was like, man, I can do this.
One of my favorite quotes that I was telling myself is I’m dumb enough to believe in myself and smart enough to take action. And that’s ultimately what I’ve subscribed to pretty much my entire career. Even when I have that fear and doubt that I don’t know something, but if I have a good plan, a good team, and obviously a good work ethic, it’s amazing what you can accomplish without necessarily always being the smartest, wisest, fastest, strongest person in the room.
And so he was somebody that kind of gave me that confidence and exposure and that led me to finding my first deal that I actually got from a bandit sign tacking up on a totem pole in a neighborhood and After a couple hundred calls of people telling me to get my ugly bandit sign out of their neighborhood this one lady called and bought her house back in 2010 so obviously as you can imagine, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a house
under sub 100,000 in California in the last decade, but this was 2010 and I bought it for 75,000. I got a hard money.
Mike Zlotnik (05:56.526)
somewhere in England, I assume it’s was an inland somewhere.
Matty A (06:00.214)
Yeah, it’s in Sacramento Valley. Yeah, Sacramento Valley and you know, decent but not the best area as well. And yeah, I did a private or hard money first for 90 % of the purchase price. And because I had such a discounted deal, they gave me 100 % of the construction as well. So really, I just needed to come up with the 7500 down for the 10 % missing on what they weren’t willing to loan me. And obviously, I the holding costs and
you know additional reserves that I was gonna need so I went and raised a private money second and I was able to obviously pay off the hard money first private money second and still pocket and net $106,000 on that very first deal as a 21 year old so as you can imagine that was life-changing money I mean really if anything it was kind of the light bulb moment of hey You don’t need to have all the resources
to get into a deal, you just need to be extremely resourceful and find a way to one, get a good deal, two, find the right people to come to the deal. Cause I remember one of my early mentors, my biggest, and I think for a lot of people, right? One of the biggest, you know, doubts and limiting beliefs is I don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars liquid and available to break into, you know, whatever asset class or investment vehicle you’re looking to break into. And so for me, that was something that I was kind of struggling with. And she said,
focus on finding a great deal. If you find a great deal, the money will find its way to that deal. And she was right. And that was something that I have subscribed to when I bought my first hotel. I didn’t know how I was gonna fund it, but I got a great deal and the money found its way to that deal. When I bought my first shopping center, I was able to do 100 % finance, create a finance on that. So a lot of the things that people tell you you can’t do are really few and far between.
I would say is, you all it takes is one deal and in commercial real estate, all it takes is one deal to change your life. And for me, you know, that mindset has allowed me to stumble my way into some pretty great opportunities that have been just that, changed my life and transformative in a very big way.
Mike Zlotnik (08:09.889)
Yeah, that’s very cool. I agree with you wholeheartedly that it starts with a great deal. And those people who don’t understand that, you’re not looking for a bunch of average deals, but definitely a great deal. And in Rezzy, we funded a lot of those deals years ago, short sale flips, and the banks were absolutely dumb. don’t know how, I got to be careful what I say on a podcast, but they were not valuing these properties correctly. And you can get an insane deal on a short sale.
in California and many other places. And yeah, I remember those days, 2010. But let’s move forward to the kind of what are you doing today? And let’s talk about a great deal on a hotel and great deal on open air or whatever, shopping plaza. So we love open air shopping. We do quite a bit of these type of deals, invest in them. so how do you know you have a great deal that you found?
in open air shopping or a hotel. Describe a great deal. Recent deal. You could use example of recent deal. Whatever comes to mind that you feel is a great deal in commercial real estate. How do know it’s a great deal? What KPIs or metrics or measurements that you use to both mathematical and then, know, intrinsic value. I don’t know. How do you value it?
Matty A (09:32.526)
Yeah, I mean, I think from from my perspective, it obviously starts with the conversations you’re having with the seller, right? And like, what is their motivation level? And I always say, you know, we can find a win win and create a great deal and an opportunity when their motivation meets my price. And so for me, you know, obviously, I have what I call my buy box criteria of, you know, assets that I like, and here are kind of the return metrics that I’m looking for. Here’s the opportunity. So
I am what I call an asset agnostic, market agnostic investor. I’m more opportunistic. I go where the deals and the real opportunities are at and I’ll give you an example. One of the most recent deals that I bought was a 90,000 square foot shopping center out in Oklahoma. If you would have told me that I’m gonna be investing in Oklahoma, I would have said no way. But because the deal was so good,
I have now, you know, a 90,000 square foot redevelopment, you know, shopping center that I am working through right now. I was able to, and this seller, and oftentimes, you know, we were talking about this on the mastermind call today, actually with my group, which was, you know, when you’re talking with owners, like, how do you know that there’s some motivation and there might be some opportunity there? you know, oftentimes it’s individuals that are
kind of older and later in life and they’re looking to consolidate management, stress, get access to liquidity and capital. Maybe their kids don’t want to inherit the property and so they’re just looking to sell it. Sometimes that’s a complete cash out situation. Sometimes that’s a seller finance situation where they’ll get a little bit of money upfront. They’ll carry paper back for us over the course of an agreed upon timeline at a favorable interest rate. And so anytime you can engineer quality
debt below what you can go and get it for at a bank right now. That’s something that is very opportunistic that I like to look at. like value add where based on where I’m getting it at. I like to get it below market from the perspective of where maybe you know, retail pricing is on cap rates. There may be below market rents that we know that we can improve there may be vacancies that we know we can fill.
Matty A (11:52.002)
You know, there may be operational inefficiencies that we can lower expenses, drive revenue, increase net operating income and kind of stabilize assets. I don’t, I’m not, I always tell brokers, I’m not a retail buyer that is looking for a stabilized income stream. I like, you know, the deals that have a little bit of hair on them because we know that we can work through those. So this last deal that I bought out in Oklahoma was on the market for about, I don’t know, two years.
I’d taken a look at it a couple times, a broker brought it to me, it was right around three million, it was at like a five cap at a 35 or 40 % occupancy. So as you can imagine, right, you’re not gonna pay a five cap for a 40 % occupied property. They kinda kept coming back, they weren’t getting any bites, these two sisters inherited this property from their dad, so people…
that are inheriting assets that aren’t active full-time real estate investors, oftentimes, what are they gonna do when they inherit something? They’re gonna go, I don’t wanna manage this. I don’t know what to do with this. Just give me the cash for it, right? I’d like to get myself out of this investment. So these two sisters tried selling the property through a broker. They were mismarketing it. They were mispricing it. And so they’d kind of had this stale asset sitting around there for quite some time.
And the broker kind of came back to me and said, hey, I think that they would be willing to sell it for like 1.8. And I said, well, I’m not really interested in buying it at 1.8. I’ll offer them 900 cash and a quick close. They countered me back at a million 60, which if you do the math on a price per square foot basis, that put us at about $12 a square foot for the entire shopping center.
So if you know anything about price per square foot, right, you always wanna get it below replacement costs. Well, replacement costs for an asset in a building like this is about 180 square foot in this particular market. So I was getting a well below replacement cost. Even land, raw dirt was selling for about $22 a square foot in this market. So I got them to a level where their motivation to sell met my price that I was willing to pay for.
Matty A (14:02.837)
And therefore that led to me getting a really great deal and kind of a cool story. I closed on at a million 60. The day it closed, the bank appraisal came in at about 2.9 as is just because of the building structure, some of the income that was there. Now I am negotiating and finalizing a lease with TJ Maxx for the shopping center. If I can get TJ Maxx in there as my anchor.
I’ve got other national tenants and brands that want to go into the shopping center as well. So I’m going through a reposition of this asset, but because I got it at such a depressed and depreciated value, worst case scenario, if I need to fire sell this asset, I’m still going to walk away making money. But so that’s how I look at deals is how do I protect and hedge as much of my downside and the risk going in day one? And how do I put together a great plan and a great team to execute
in capturing all the value that we see is there in the opportunity. And so that’s one example. I just did a mobile home park that I bought 100 % financed and walked into equity on it day one, walked into cashflow on it day one. And my total out of pocket on that entire mobile home park was less than $10,000.
So again, I’m a creative finance guy. I like to look at the different ways, kind of like a game of Tetris of based on all these puzzle pieces, you know, that we’re working with here. How do we put these together to get a picture, an end picture that works well for the seller, works well for us, and we can kind of create that win-win structure. So there’s lots of deals out there that are that are, you know, available for these kind of things. You just kind of have to have a creative lens in which you look at and approach things, understand what levers you can and can’t pull.
And there’s a lot of opportunities that can come out of that.
Mike Zlotnik (15:57.996)
Yeah, that’s a phenomenal deal. I agree with you. All the metrics you mentioned are deeply below reconstruction cost and people generally don’t come even close to these numbers. mean, the numbers you got this shopping center at, they’re mean, literally, you can get a 40 % of a reconstruction cost below 50%. I mean, these are still really good deals, but you’re getting well, well below that. It’s an insane deal.
These deals you can’t do in volume. So you have to be patient and you have to sit and wait and sit and wait and sit and wait. And I love how you think because we think the same way. You call it deep value buy. Like whatever word you use, the concept is still the same. You said at $3 million, it was at a five cap with what, 40 % occupancy? Yeah, so at a third of that, right? You basically bought it for a third.
Matty A (16:31.937)
Yes.
Mike Zlotnik (16:56.065)
So you bought it at 15 cap at 40 % occupancy. That’s insane. mean, that’s a crazy upside. And I also just wanted to acknowledge, really like how you think about creative finance. If you can get an asset financed by the seller with little cash out of pocket, with immediate cashflow, I these are dream type of deals. They do happen, but they happen fairly rarely.
Matty A (17:22.242)
Yes.
Mike Zlotnik (17:24.813)
It’s not easy to find. If you could find this in volume, it’d be a different story. we invest in some of these deals and I can tell you that it’s hard to find. But when you find them, you know you got a great deal. Like you know, you literally know.
Matty A (17:30.923)
Yeah. Well, and that’s what I
Matty A (17:35.479)
They are.
Matty A (17:40.233)
and the money will follow, right? mean, that’s, that’s ultimately so that’s, that’s, that’s always, and that’s why I love commercial real estate, you know, I’m not going to be able to feed my family off of one flip deal or five flip deals. But one commercial real estate deal a year could completely transform your life going forward. And for me, why I started to pivot and go all in on commercial real estate back in 2017 was really
Mike Zlotnik (17:42.785)
the money will show up.
Matty A (18:07.628)
this idea that I wanted to unlock $500,000 a year in passive income from my real estate assets. And if I were to just buy one commercial deal a year, a great deal, just like what you talked about, right? It’s like they’re not around all the time. And so you gotta look at a lot of deals and you gotta talk to a lot of people in order to find that one deal. But one great deal is possible every single year if you’re putting in the time and the energy and the work.
And so for me, I said, if I could just find one commercial estate asset a year at a minimum, that nets me when all said and done 50K a year, and I can do that for the next 10 years straight, just one deal, I can buy one deal a year. That’s reasonable enough for me to execute on my team to execute on. That became my model. Now, some deals have been more than a hundred thousand a year. Some have been right at that 50,000 a year. So those are the cool opportunities is when you’re consistently building a pipeline relationships.
you build a brand and reputation over time, those deposits eventually spit out an opportunity to withdraw and cash in on that. And so that’s where I get some great deals is I look at a lot of okay deals every year. I look at a ton of not so good deals every year.
And every once in a while you stumble across one or two outliers that you know there’s an opportunity. Here’s another thing I will say. Those deals don’t just slap you in the face and go, hey, I’m an amazing deal, buy me, right? You have to find a way to uncover where the real opportunity is at and negotiate to a level that you think makes a great deal for you, hedges your risk going in and gives you the opportunity to capture the upside. And so both of those deals,
took a lot of negotiating to get them to that point, right? It wasn’t the first conversation I had, these individuals were selling me these properties at bottom of the barrel prices. No, it took a lot of time, it took a lot of follow-up, it took a lot of rapport building, a lot of trust building. And eventually, if you can check all those boxes, again, their motivation, their timing of what they’re trying to accomplish, and my price eventually meet up. But oftentimes you start,
Matty A (20:23.636)
all the way up here and it takes many, many conversations to get you to find that meeting of the minds. And so we did a kind of a recap on a lot of the deals that I do. And oftentimes we didn’t end up going into contract or finding agreement until after like the eighth to 10th touch. So think about how many people take a look at one deal two times, three times, maybe four times. Man, five is a lot. Well,
It took us on average eight to 10 times in order to get traction and or agreement on an opportunity. I think about how many people give up on the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time, right? So just thinking about commercial real estate and really anything great, I think requires stamina. It requires staying power. There’s a lot of things in life that are going to kind of
discourage you, try and shake you off course, gonna try and see how bad you want it, and you really just have to trust in your plan, keep executing, and remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and therefore you just gotta stay in the race, and eventually you’re gonna get across the finish line, whatever it is that you’re looking to accomplish.
Mike Zlotnik (21:36.568)
Yeah, lots of great wisdom here. I’ll just acknowledge a couple of points and agree with everything you said. It’s very consistent with what we do today and literally it’s such great music to my ears. I’m listening to you is like, this is like listening to Mozart, if you love Mozart. From the point of view that it’s not about volume, it’s doing a few great deals, maybe even one great deal a year, but truly getting to the great deal. And like you said,
to get to the great deal, takes kissing a lot of frogs before you find a princess. And that whole process of being ready to walk away and walk away and walk away, and then thinking creatively and coming up with a solution that you ultimately can work for you. And the seller can actually, sometimes their pain has to accumulate. So real estate, opportunistic real estate, especially in the environment where
Matty A (22:09.494)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Zlotnik (22:34.733)
We are today. It reminds me a little bit in commercial real estate, a little bit the days after 2008 crisis and the recovery, 2009, 10 and residential that all you have to do is be patient and just negotiate. And I’ve seen these discussions, these negotiations with the banks and short sales. You started one place and then you torture the bank a little bit. You torture the bank and then the bank at some point, even the person who works for the bank, they lose patience.
Matty A (22:35.883)
Yes.
Mike Zlotnik (23:04.461)
And they give you at some point a better deal. Now these deals, you’re not torturing anyone. You’re just dealing with motivated sellers and seller motivation is a critical, critical concept. It’s almost the first question. We look at deals. We look at another deal today, multi-family deal in Tampa. And, you know, we started looking at numbers and you don’t hear motivation. Like you don’t hear, when did they buy the asset? Oh, 2018. Okay. So that they didn’t buy during the peak. They’re not being stressed by the debt.
They probably already refinanced. are very laid back. Yeah, it’s been seven years, but you know, and you look who is, who is the seller. What’s their motivation. After a while you start figuring out there’s no motivation. And then the numbers speak, you look at the numbers. they want this cap rate and they want, you kind of look at this and somebody found this deal and they’re pitching you this deal. and they’re pitching you this is a great deal, but if you never seen a great deal, you can never tell this a great deal. Too many people.
just don’t understand what’s a great deal until you actually know what you’re looking for. I will acknowledge another thing. I have a concept very similar to yours. Know what’s your buy box and what’s your don’t buy box. So there’s so many other things that are outside of your buy box and I’m just kind of appreciate the wisdom of having clarity of what is your buy box. Without that, everything else is a lot of and shiny objects. So let’s continue the discussion.
Matty A (24:03.979)
Yeah.
Matty A (24:15.808)
Mm-hmm.
Matty A (24:25.503)
Yeah.
Mike Zlotnik (24:32.057)
Take me through what are you working on right now? Anything interesting and exciting? Maybe a couple words about your mastermind. I guess you teach folks to do what you do. So take the conversation wherever you want to take it. Share your wisdom.
Matty A (24:43.627)
Yeah.
Matty A (24:47.808)
Yeah, I’ll share a little bit more about what I’m working on right now and obviously some of the commercial real estate mastermind and kind of maybe recap on what we were just talking about too. think for those that are out there looking for deals and hunting and just trying to find that next opportunity, a couple things that I tell my team right now as well is this is a season where deals
are made, not found, if that makes sense. And so this is where I try and always lead with that creative foot first, because I see a lot of people when they take a first pass at a lot of deals, they go, this doesn’t work. But if you ask the right questions, and to your point, Mike, understanding motivation is so critical, because there are so many times I’ve seen people make assumptions about what the seller will or won’t do.
and therefore they don’t ever offer. They don’t ever try and bring the seller into the conversation on what some of those other options may be and therefore they never get the opportunity to get a deal done. What I like to do is, hey, I think that if I offer this price, there’s no way they’re gonna tell me to F off. Well, you’re not gonna know that until you know that. And so don’t assume what might make sense for the seller. I can tell you that
And this is why I generally like to make two to three offer options. One is going to be a bottom of the barrel, quick cash close. and it’s going to be a painful price, depending on how motivated they are and how bad they want that problem solved for them, sometimes they take it. Oftentimes my assumption is there’s no way they’re going to take this and you’d be surprised every once in a while, somebody will take that offer because of their situation. And so don’t assume that they’re not going to take that.
just because you wouldn’t take it, right? The other thing is I always provide some kind of traditional offer that is taking into account a normal, you know, kind of capital stack and traditional debt structure and equity structure. And then I oftentimes will always present a seller carry, a creative finance deal structure.
Matty A (27:06.944)
And there are many times that, you know, most people go, man, there’s no way they’re going to take this and they end up taking it right because it’s solving some problem for them. So I just wanted to highlight that if you’re out there, you’re hunting for deals, remember deal and you said this sometimes it’s a third, fourth, fifth bite out of the apple where the sellers, you know, I talked to them eight months ago, 12 months ago, two years ago, and they wanted this price and these terms and guess what?
They’ve been on the market for 12 months. They’ve maybe been in and out of contract and the market’s beaten them up and a seller canceled on or a buyer canceled on them. And then 12, 18 months later, they’re going, hey, Matt, are you still interested? Hey, maybe that discussion we had, I’m willing to be a little bit more flexible on my terms or my price. So again, remember that that’s the key of the follow-up, right? Is like tracking these leads. Low hanging fruit isn’t just gonna slap you in the face.
as being a juicy, exciting opportunity. Like you gotta find a way to create the juicy, exciting opportunities. That mobile home park that I got 100 % financed and 10K out of pocket to buy wasn’t going to be that deal unless I came to the table and creatively structured that and worked with the seller and educated them on these things and helped them solve their problems because that is not what they wanted in the first place. And it took them a couple other buyers to get beat up a little bit to then come to the table and be open to doing something like that.
So again, don’t assume what’s in the best interest of the sellers and make sure that you are thinking about deals are made in this market, not found in this market. Go ahead, Mike, sorry about that.
Mike Zlotnik (28:31.386)
one quick comment
Mike Zlotnik (28:41.463)
Yeah, I was going to say, I really like the approach. A beat up seller who has gotten out of contract a few times, they’re really motivated. At this point, they feel they’ve been abused by somebody else and you’re coming into the white night. So that is a great idea and multiple offers for sure. mean, we are capital partners. We don’t deal directly with a lot of this, but so many guys and girls I know do exactly that. It’s your offer, very, let’s just call it
liquidation price cash or whatever you want to call it, quick cash close, seller finance and then traditional. And when you give those three options, it’s kind of funny depending on what the first option you create a pivot, you create a foundation. It’s like, no way I’m going to accept this price. Okay, I’m willing to step up, but now you got to work with seller financing. And it’s a very powerful way to negotiate. And for sure you, I guess you’re creating a rapport, a relationship with them where.
Matty A (29:27.742)
Yes.
Matty A (29:32.075)
100%.
Mike Zlotnik (29:40.427)
They feel you’re their friend, not somebody who’s taking advantage of
Matty A (29:44.298)
Well, and I think too, I like to present multiple options. I don’t know about you, but if you go into a restaurant and there’s only one option on the menu, you’re kind of like, all right, well, I guess this is my only option. And it’s either I like it I don’t like it. Whereas if you give me three options on the menu, I’m like, well, at least I have some variation to choose from. Maybe I’ve got some variants that I can consider some certain things, right? So I always just think it’s a good way to put your best foot forward in giving multiple options and just saying, Hey, Mr. Seller, like, I’m not sure which situation
or offer a structure is gonna make the most sense for you. Here’s the three that I know we can do and I just wanna give you some options to explore. What are your thoughts on this? Which one kind of resonates with you or which one are you leaning towards, right? And we can talk more about that. So I think that’s important. And the other thing too that I always tell people is don’t force a deal. Like the worst thing you can do is buy a bad deal versus buy no deal. And an early mentor always told me is,
Real estate deals are like buses. There’s always another one around the corner. And so oftentimes we find this urgency, this impatience to like want to force something. And I can tell you, I know a lot of people that are in a lot of trouble right now in their portfolio because they were trying to force deals because they had capital that they needed to deploy or they were just really overly, you know, ambitious and aggressive with their modeling and they wanting to get in the market and thinking that it was going to keep going up. So,
Again, just remember like real estate investing and wealth building, real wealth is made in the crock pot, not the microwave. And I think we’ve become this society that has been trained, right? With quick hits, quick clicks, know, fast dopamine hits. And, and, and therefore we think that some of these things should be faster and easier. But the one thing that you want to make sure that you continue to do is just play the long game as a real estate investor because
over time that continuity of quality investments compounds into some really big and amazing things. So just to kind of keep that in mind as I know some people might be feeling that sense of urgency of like I need a deal or I want to get a deal. You know those are some of the things that I would continue to keep in mind. So what I’m working on right now we are optimizing the mobile home park right now. I’m working through that TJ Maxx lease.
Matty A (32:02.931)
And the challenges that go along with you know negotiating with 800 pound national tenants that you know know their weight, but you know obviously that’s been a long slow negotiation with them, but I’ll give you an example of why those tenants are so powerful I mean if I can finalize the lease with at least where all of our final terms are looking like they’re gonna land that one lease
and the income that that lease will bring to my center for how long it will be in the center, that lease value will be worth about four and a half million dollars. And it’ll cost me about $1.8 million to build them out. But not only is that going to be a good financial infusion of value and income into the center, that tenant brings a significant amount of clout to the center, a significant amount of foot traffic to the center, and ultimately is going to elevate
the other tenants that want to come into the center and be around a tenant like that. So that’s kind of a fun project that I’m working through that has challenges and ups and downs that go along with it. I actually have a failed 1031 exchange from a sale that I wasn’t able to get capital placed into one of my identification properties. So I’m working on tax planning my way out of that 1031 capital gains tax burden.
that I need to figure out buying something by the end of the year. So talk about, you know, some pressure to not have to stroke a big check to the government by getting my money deployed into an asset that meets my buy box. And at the same time, remaining disciplined enough to say, don’t just buy a deal to tax plan your way out of something. And then you buy a bad deal. And now you’re illiquid and stuck in an asset that doesn’t, you know, serve your goals. Sometimes it’s better to just pay your taxes and
You know, you don’t go broke making money, even though you’re paying taxes. It’s some something that, you know, I’m continuing to work through right now on that front. So just actively looking to, you know, find more deals and deploy more capital that obviously align with the buy box and the investment thesis of my group. And then obviously, we’ve got commercial real estate investors all around the country that are doing awesome things and are a part of our community, you know, either buying their first commercial asset or scaling their commercial real estate portfolio.
Mike Zlotnik (34:23.297)
That’s the Mastermind community.
Matty A (34:24.905)
That’s Wise Investor Collective, yep. So we’ve got commercial real estate investors or people with significant, you know, real estate investing experience on the single family side that maybe want to consolidate some of their single family holdings and roll that into commercial assets. Understanding that the skill set in single family translates very well into commercial, but you get a much higher ROI on your time, your resources, your capital, your skill set, in my opinion.
And we have a commercial real estate mastermind event here that we’re hosting in Napa Valley, California here in September for commercial real estate investors that want to get together. And it’s, we’ve got some pretty awesome hospitality adventure based activities and experiences, some great speakers, world-class, you know, food and wine. And we’ll be talking all about commercial real estate and scaling people’s portfolio and wealth in Napa Valley in late September.
Mike Zlotnik (35:17.421)
So how do folks reach out to you? Is there a website? Is there a best way to reach out if they want to learn about the mastermind, potentially come to this event?
Matty A (35:27.955)
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, anybody that’s maybe interested in the real estate event, they can just text the word Napa to 844-447-1555 and that’ll kind of shoot you some information on the event. It’s a two and a half, three day event out in Napa and it’s gonna be a lot of fun there. And anybody that wants to reach out to me, obviously I have my Millionaire Mindcast podcast. I have published three episodes a week. We’ve been doing that for 12 years now. Been in the top…
Top 25, top 50 investment and business podcasts in the world. And so I get to interview awesome people like you, Mike, and other successful business owners, investors, wealth builders, so they can always tune in and listen there. Or just reach out to me at mattya, M-A-T-T-Y-A, at millionaireminecast.com. And myself and my team will respond to you there. But I always love connecting with anybody that is interested in commercial real estate or hears me on a podcast.
Mike Zlotnik (36:25.421)
Yeah, appreciate your wisdom. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for Both the mindset and the the actual strategies how to do it so great great to have you on the podcast and Yeah, I don’t know when this episode will come out But if it comes out before the September event, hopefully folks get a chance to reach out Appreciate you Matt and a final I always ask you do you have any any great book to recommend?
Matty A (36:54.291)
Yeah, I mean, I think obviously it depends on what you’re interested in. I’ve got a pretty, I see you got a…
Mike Zlotnik (36:59.543)
Commercial real estate. about how about the commercial real estate? So people recommend the holy Bible, right? So people recommend
Matty A (37:04.975)
Yeah, yeah, right. If I were to let’s see, let me pull up. Let me pull up my my I would say one of the books that I just recently read that actually was from real estate developer, I really enjoyed it. It was
Making it in real estate by John McNellis, a big commercial real estate developer over 40 years, had a really cool story and was a great storyteller, but tons of great tactical stuff on kind of commercial real estate, scaling his portfolio, a lot of peaks and valleys along the way. That’s always a good one. And one of the recent ones that I just read not too long ago, 10X is easier than 2X. Great book.
applies to anybody that wants to think bigger in their life, their business, their bank account. Great book there too.
Mike Zlotnik (37:56.589)
Yeah, I don’t know the first book, but definitely know the second one. I’ve read it many times. Talk to my team. 10 X is easier than two X. Just as a mindset problem and good luck with the lease with the, uh, said Mark, uh, not Marshall’s, uh, TJ Maxx, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great, it’s a great anchor tenant. And just like you said, you get them, you get the critical mass before, you know, you solve multiple problems. You get the income and the critical mass in you.
Matty A (38:12.159)
TJ Maxx. Yes.
Matty A (38:22.699)
That’s right.
Mike Zlotnik (38:24.941)
You 10x the whole center. So good luck and thank you for coming on a podcast.
Matty A (38:27.647)
That’s right, Mike. Yep.
Thanks again for having me.
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