Brett:

I'm excited about our next guest. He is out of the great state of Kentucky, originally from Italy, and spent some time in Arizona. He's a licensed commercial real estate agent specializing in income-producing property transitioning from a career in software. He began to bring a strong typical background and love for dissecting complex problems to his client interactions. These characteristic characteristics enable him to provide innovative and effective real estate solutions to help his clients get the most out of each transaction. Please welcome to the show with me, Raphael Collazo. Raphael, how are you doing?

Raphael:

Great. You did a great job saying my last name so that's awesome.

Brett:

I do the best I can I got the Swarts. I think it's a little bit, butchered sometimes. But I'm with you and with you. And I appreciate you being on the show. And, and excited to get to know you a little more. I had the privilege of being on your show, which we'll mention here later during the show. Let's dive right in. For our listeners wanting to get to know you a little bit more. Would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Raphael:

As you mentioned, kind of in the introduction. My name is Rocco Yasuo, I'm located here in the great state of Kentucky at Louisville in Louisville. Actually, I was born in Italy, my dad was actually in the Air Force. We traveled a lot when I was younger. Tell us about 14. I lived in Italy, Belgium, and Germany and then moved to the United States, went to college at Arizona State University to study engineering, gotten the software did that for about five years. Then back in mid-2019. Got into commercial real estate and I've been doing it ever since. Like you said in the introduction, I've been focusing a lot on the income-producing side of real estate. I've done several deals in the retail side shopping centers multifamily. We're starting to, I'm trying to get more into the industrial side as well to, to simulate in that. It's been great. I've been a great couple of years.

Brett:

For our listeners who are listening on capitalgainstaxsolutions.com, and on our YouTube Channel. iTunes, as well. I forgot to mention, we also bring on guests who have the expertise to 1031 exchanges with investment, property tax deferral, we'll be talking about that here in a minute as well. But if you're listening there, too, we so appreciate you the interests are a little bit different, but there's a lot of overlap there. But let's dive right back into Raphael’s story. I want to want to get into that more in a minute. But I want to take a step back to, to maybe the days in Italy. Maybe the days of amazing food and amazing culture and history and just so much stuff that Europe has to offer that Americans have. I want you to go back to those days, I believe we've all been given certain gifts in this life. Some people call them a superpower. Some people call them strengths. I believe their God-given gifts, and they've been given to us to be a blessing and help to others. I'm curious, what are those one or two gifts that you believe you were given? And how does that help you help him bless people today?

Raphael:

That's a phenomenal question. I've always been very good at dissecting very complex problems, I've always kind of had a knack for that. Along with that, I think through my experiences of traveling so much, I've had to assimilate into unique environments. Otherwise, I was kind of that kid that no one liked. Because you, you essentially get put in a situation on a regular basis where you don't know anyone.it got me to the point where I was able to relate with people very well. That helped me build a pretty sizable network by just having the fact that I was moving so much. I guess those are some of the two superpowers that I have, I really love working with on complex problems. And commercial real estate offers that opportunity. In particular, we're talking about the investment side when you start dealing with taxes and everything else.

Brett:

I especially have that background. I imagine you speak multiple languages, and graded dissecting complex problems, which is so needed right now in this industry. With so many challenges that we're facing and trying to make deals make sense, which we'll talk about here in a minute. The second thing is simulating well with others, being able to you had to move around a lot so that just naturally you had to get to know friends and connect with people quickly. Is that a fair summary?

Raphael:

I would say so. That's a very fair summary. It's one of those things where you're kind of forced into it, but you naturally adapt through just being forced in those situations.

Brett:

Well, let's dive right into what we're talking about today, which is commercial real estate brokers and investments with Raphael Collazo. Raphael, what's the I think the number one secret right now for succeeding in commercial real estate in Louisville, and I think we talk a little bit about retail, a little bit about multifamily kind of give us what you're seeing on the ground there. What's your take on opportunities and deals?

Raphael:

I think on the business generation side, obviously, technology has afforded us a lot of unique opportunities. I mean, I love the fact you're doing the podcast, I also have a podcast to YouTube several meetups as well. There are different nodes that you can put out there to be able to generate leads outside of the traditional prospecting, cold calling, not only not, that's a that's not a great opportunity to be able to do that. I still do have that in my repertoire. But there are so many other nodes you can create, from a business standpoint in order to generate a significant amount of leads through mediums like YouTube, podcasting, etc. As far as deal opportunities are concerned. I mean, we're seeing a lot of activity in the multifamily space, we have a pretty good industrial background here in Louisville. A lot of people are looking to invest in those types of properties, and particularly if you're a business owner, having the opportunity to maybe buy up a property and then lease out half of it, or how much through the through acquiring like an SBA loan is something that I've seen a lot of it in recent months, and over really over COVID. Those are just some of the things that I've seen, I don't know if you have anything particular more that you'd like to know about?

Brett:

I'm just curious about the ground, the local ground in Louisville. I mean, in your place like Nashville, Tennessee, or Tampa Bay, Florida, and in Austin, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, a lot of the migration from New York or California are going to these different areas. I haven't heard much about Kentucky one way or the other. I'm just curious on what's the temperature of the market? What's the kind of migration patterns? Where do you see some good opportunities?

Raphael:

I mean, we're definitely not experienced the same level of growth, as you see in some of these other larger markets. But I think we're well-positioned within the middle of the country to experience some of that growth in the near term. I think from an investment standpoint, we're well-positioned and that our market is pretty affordable. We're one of the I think I saw an article the other day that said that Louisville is one of the top 20 cities from an affordability standpoint. From a cost of living perspective, there, people can live here and have a pretty good life on not necessarily the highest salary, as you can see in some of these other larger markets. I think there's a unique opportunity for people who are looking to buy investment property in particular because you can get closer to making the math work from a cash flow perspective because I see it feel like a lot of these larger markets where you're seeing a lot of cash investment, cap rates are compressing and the cash flow almost doesn't even work. Whereas within Louisville, I feel like a lot of investment properties, cash flow pretty well.

Brett:

Affordability and seeing some growth there. How about just the ability to build, if you wanted to build 100 to 200 300 units? What's the red tape like they're in Louisville? What would it be some micro-locations that you think are up and coming?

Raphael:

It depends on the sector as you identified, there are certain subsidies within Louisville or sub-sectors within Louisville, where there may be some contention depending on what the project is, we have, we have a parcel of land that we had listed for a while we were trying to encourage a developer to come down there and build affordable housing for veterans because it was located across the street from a veteran community. That was our the veteran, hospital, I should say. That's some of the initiatives that we were pushing for just in that particular area. But there's a lot of opportunities, particularly in workforce housing, affordable housing. That's something that's really across the country. There are various sectors of the city where there's land that could be utilized to be able to develop some of this larger workforce, housing communities. Also the on the industrial side, there's a lot of industrial activity. You're seeing a lot of industrial developers starting building these massive 500 square foot facilities, and they're getting filled, which is the demand there. It's very interesting.

Brett:

Appreciate you sharing that. What would you say are the biggest challenges right now for either some of your clients, when it comes to either (A) finding deals that make sense and underwriting, or (B) just out there's so many you're getting outbid, or multiple offers, give me kind of the strategy right now they're talking to sellers and buyers.

Raphael:

From a seller's perspective, and this is something especially on the multifamily side, I've had several listings over the past couple of months, and just throwing it out there is pretty much enough you get 810 offers on a single property, even if the cash flow at the time you sell it is not justifiable, it's just there's so much money out there and people are doing 10th are exchanges where they need to place money and they're just they have to place their money somewhere. we're getting a lot of that money coming into the market. It's great for sellers as far as buyers are concerned, I mean, really just being quick and active on a deal. If you do like it, you need to execute quickly. There's a lot of situations in particular on the retail side, and sometimes primarily in the multifamily side and even sometimes on the retail side where it's hard to gain access to some of the units because of what's going on with COVID and everything. Being comfortable with making an offer, even if it's not on the scene is something that's becoming more common, which hopefully over the next six to 12 months changes, but that's just the reality that we find ourselves in.

Brett:

That's a great common question I have for a lot of my commercial real estate team and brokers that work with is the source of those listings, because listings are gold right now, and you're absolutely right, I have a couple of multifamilies since right now, it's exact same thing. It's red hot, multiple offers, and it's they're few and far between to find deals that make sense. For those deals, I'm curious about the tracking of those, or those cold call relationships from years ago, or those Podcasts, YouTube, like what meetups were, what were the source of those ones.

Raphael:

actually, it was a combination of things. The most recent ones I got, actually was, surprisingly, from postcards. Then once I got the individual reach out to those individuals, it's just closing, I have a book that I wrote, it's called Before You Sign That Lease. I created a really nice packet that explained everything that we could provide them gave him a copy of my book, and then we sat down mad, and just kind of bonded through that experience, and I was able to get two listings from one individual. There's another listing that I had, that was primarily related to the cold calling efforts, and then, through the meetups and podcast episodes, and, and YouTubes that I do, I've gotten a lot of buyer clients, and a lot of people who are looking for a property that kind of looked at me as the expert within the market.

Brett:

I heard a strategy and I'm considering doing them because I grew up in Sacramento, Roseville Bay Area, and I know this market very, very well intimate from the very beginning. There are people now and maybe you're doing I don't know but have a cameraman, you're walking the properties, you're walking locations, you're walking the schools and the restaurants and wherever you're at and, and you're just sharing what you've always shared on these tours that you normally would share with anyone anywhere, but you're just taping yourself as you do it, then you put on YouTube, and then people are like, he really knows the market because he does and then they can see that it what any strategies there that you're doing there.

Raphael:

We're looking to do with one of my business partners, that we have a development firm that we're looking to start, we're looking to do something called the Small Business Spotlight where we identify business owners within the market that are doing cool things, and just kind of sit down and interview them. There are various benefits to doing that. Number one, you get to meet business owners, which are kind of our target audience. Number two, you create a piece of content that's out there.it shows that you're in the market and the market. Then another thing is the business owners love sharing that content because it really highlights their, their goals and what they're trying to accomplish within their business. It's a kind of like a three-pronged approach when it comes to just interacting with your target audience. And obviously, what you're talking about is phenomenal to like blogging about different things that you're doing. And I've seen plenty of people doing that and they seem to be doing very well with it.

Brett:

I think that's a good idea. I think the I saw I focus on multi families like my specialty and then have I wonder if that the answer would be you go to the property manager. You're like, can you do a spotlight on the apartment complex and just kind of get your take on the occupancy and the concessions and things that are helping to bring traffic and because that's valuable too because a lot of what we do as brokers is we do rent surveys, and obviously sales comp surveys where you're figuring out why, where, and what's the pulse of the market? Are they offering concessions? Are they offering specials? Where are the leads coming from? Is it Craigslist? Is it ads? Is it print ads? Is it a postcard? Is it a referral base? If they're giving a referral what are the referrals and the wall full-size washer and dryers and they charging for rubs? Are they charging for parking and these are all these things that you're already doing? But if we put them on camera, then everyone else gets a chance to benefit from that. Any thoughts on that strategy? I'm kind of thinking out loud as I'm talking here. But what do you think about that?

Raphael:

I Agree with you I mean I every week what I do is I have a Frequently Asked Questions section and I just create a video on frequently asked questions that I get or, I think that someone would think about that is pertaining to commercial real estate and so it's just me acting like I'm sitting across the way from someone and just explaining exactly what, I would do in this particular situation and I can't tell you how many times I've had people say like that video was awesome like I didn't even know anything about that or I've had other people that I've sent the link to and said hey actually did a video on this so content is king in my opinion and I think what you're doing with this podcast is a great testament to that so cool.

Brett:

I appreciate you sharing that and I'm curious too for you mean you can plug your show because people can learn more about real estate and what you're doing what's the YouTube channel on which your podcast?

Raphael:

The YouTube Channel is just My name is Raphael Collazo and I talk about, Commercial Real Estate concepts and talk. I have several meetups that I run one is the commercial real estate one meetup, I run the local real estate investor Meetup group. Then the podcast you're referring to which actually Brett was a Guest On Our Podcast, he did a great job, learn a ton about what you're doing and it's a really interesting tax strategy, which I didn't know much about prior to having you on.it was really cool to be able to do that. But the podcast itself is called the Commercial Real Estate Academy. Essentially we're trying to become the go-to resource for all commercial real estate questions and needs whatever else. We love having people like you and other people within the industry talk about different concepts within commercial real estate because I feel like the content in commercial real estate is very fragmented. If there's a way we can kind of compress it into an area where people can go to it, it would be a benefit to the industry.