Denis Shapiro | Real Estate Background
- Fund Manager at SIH Capital Group, which has an income fund and allows their investors to invest in specific deals they are GPs on. The income fund mirrors what one would find in a REIT but more consistent and is not publicly traded.
- Portfolio: LP on multiple syndications in various asset classes such as apartment buildings, mhps, self storage and atm funds. Also has 10 Residential syndications, including Ashcroft deals
- Has two upcoming GP deals in the works: a 50 unit Affordable Housing community closing in 01/22; and a 9 unit STR community closing in 02/22.
- Based in: Freehold, NJ
- Say hi to him at: www.sihcapitalgroup.com | https://www.facebook.com/sihcapitalgroup
- Best Ever Book: The 5 Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman
Click here to know more about our sponsors:
TRANSCRIPTION
Ash Patel: Hello Best Ever listeners. Welcome to The Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever Show. I’m Ash Patel and I’m with today’s guest, Denis Shapiro. Denis is joining us from Freehold, New Jersey. He’s a fund manager at SIH Capital Group and he is an LP on a number of funds, including apartments, mobile home parks, self-storage, and ATM funds. Denis also has two upcoming GP deals in the works, one of which is an affordable housing community and the other is a short-term rental community. Denis, thank you for joining us and how are you today?
Denis Shapiro: Thank you, Ash, for having me on. It’s awesome to be here again.
Ash Patel: Good. It’s our pleasure, man. Before we get started, can you give the Best Ever listeners a little bit more about your background and what you’re focused on now?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. I gave a more detailed background last time I was on so I’ll keep it really, really short. I’ve been investing in stocks for 20 years, the last 10 years, I’ve transitioned into alternative, but I’ve never pulled the cord on traditional. I feel that traditional and alternative can complement each other really well if you have stocks and bonds, and then you also invest in private securities like real estate. So for the last 10 years, I’ve gone down the rabbit hole… I went from single-family rentals and I quickly didn’t really want to do anything with that. Then I went to note funds, ATM funds, life insurance policy, but then I feel like I had the gateway moment is when I went towards apartment building syndications. Once I went down that rabbit hole, I feel like everything else opened up to me after that.
Ash Patel: You found the Holy Grail, huh?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah, it was definitely — when I first found it, I was like, “Oh, this is too good to be true. You get all the benefits of investing with a multimillion-dollar property, but you can do it for as little as $50,000.” I started crowdfunding so I was doing as little as like $10,000, but that was a disaster in itself. It was hard to believe that you could literally get all the benefits with a fraction of the investment.
Ash Patel: Yeah, the power of leverage. Denis, when you say traditional alternative investments, what does that mean?
Denis Shapiro: For me, traditional is anything that’s publicly traded, and alternative is anything that’s private. I wrote a book on this, The Alternative Investment Almanac, and I was trying to find a pinpointed definition of what exactly is alternative, because some people don’t consider real estate alternative. So the conclusion I came up with from all these different opinions is that it’s just a matter of is it publicly traded or privately traded, and that’s it.
Ash Patel: When you started investing in multifamily, did you start as an LP in other people’s deals?
Denis Shapiro: Absolutely. Besides my own single-family rental and duplexes, when I got into the commercial real estate space, it was strictly as an LP. My goal was just to become the best possible LP investor. Because, truthfully, if that is the only thing you accomplish, you can be an extremely successful investor. You never really need to go the GP route; but if you just really hone in and become the best possible LP investor that you can be, it’s an extremely powerful wealth creating tool.
Ash Patel: Denis, how does one become the best LP investor?
Denis Shapiro: Probably the easiest answer is investing with the best operators. But the journey — it is a journey. It’s something that people need to understand. My first investment wasn’t a good one; my second one was slightly better, and then after I had a dozen or so under my belt, I got the variables down path. I knew which ones I wanted, I knew which markets I wanted to be in, in which markets I did not want to be in, I knew where I was overexposed, underexposed… So it’s just time, knowledge, and experience. It’s not something that you’re going to wake up and you’re going to be like, “Wow, I’m a great LP investor today.” It takes a while to get to that point.
Ash Patel: What made your first investment not a good one?
Denis Shapiro: So much. And you know what? It’s easy to blame the operator, it’s easy to blame the underwriting, but honestly, it was just me and my lack of experience. I did not know how to evaluate a deal, and it doesn’t really matter who the operator was at that point, or anything else. I should never have made that investment, because I was not at the place where I should have been at that point before sending in that $50,000, or whatever the amount was.
So the second part of that answer, I guess, is what were the key variables that I learned that I kind of applied from the mistakes from that deal is not invest in deals where the overwhelming majority are one-bedrooms. So it might look like a big property, like 100 units or 200 units, but if 80% of those are one bedroom, you’re never going to get high 90s occupancy; it’s always going to be transitional. One bedroom – people leave, they move in with a girlfriend, they need to upsize. One bedroom’s are the most transitionary lifestyle unit composition, so you want to stick to the twos or threes. It’s okay to have a couple sprinkled in, but when you’re buying a complex and its majority are one bedroom, then you’re asking for problems.
Ash Patel: Interesting. I’ve never heard that before, but that sounds like great advice; it makes a lot of sense. I think back to all the one bedroom I rented or the studios that I rented; I was there for a year. I moved in with a roommate, moved in with a girlfriend… Yeah, that’s a neat perspective. What else do you look for in GPs?
Denis Shapiro: Okay, so from an operator’s perspective, a lot of things that I look for, is I like to take the word conservative and I scrape it out, because every deal gets labeled conservative. What I really look at is what is the range that they’re projecting. I don’t invest in deals that project over 20%. I don’t do many developmental deals, so my sweet spot, what I look for in IRRs is between 13 to 15. What I’ve found is the operators that tend to go for that 13 to 15 sweet spot, they tend to actually perform into the high teens and the 20s. And it’s the operators that — like, when I did that crowdfunding, when I started out with crowdfunding, it was littered with a bunch of people who were projecting the 20s and the Moon. Part of my inexperience was I was attracted to that. These days, I scrape that off the plate, unless it’s an operator that I really, really know. If I get any deals from any operators that I don’t have a relationship with and it starts with a two in front, I usually just delete it.
Ash Patel: Your crowdfunding experience – was that through one of the big platforms out there? We’re you an LP on that deal?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. I was an LP. The bottom line is it was a technology company disguised as real estate. I feel bad, because I was one of many investors that were basically… I don’t want to use the word defrauded, but it’s pretty close to that, where the advertising — and they were advertising on some of the bigger podcasts, well-established real estate podcasts as well, right before they shut down. As a real estate investor, you never want to hear the company that you invested through, because they didn’t get a VC funding, then they’re shutting down; then there’s a big problem there. It was a huge, huge — honestly, probably the biggest learning experience of my life was investing into crowdfunding where I thought it was better to do 5000, 10,000-dollar investments than to do 150k. Today, that probably cost me 100k to $150k of my net worth, that decision.
So it’s definitely — in the syndication world, in the private securities world, you get what you paid for. Usually when they preach, they advertise, get into these deals that $10,000 or whatever it is, usually it’s kind of a get-what-you-paid-for scenario.
Ash Patel: Yeah. And the way I look at it is if you’re taking on $10,000 investments, that’s a lot of accounting overhead. Why not just market yourself, get the 50k, the 100k investments, right? If you have the track record, it shouldn’t be hard to do.
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. But the problem was a lot of these operators that did get on these platforms didn’t have the track record. They either had a sponsor on the team that had a track record, or whatever the case was. But there’s forums out there where you can clearly see how bad it is. I have a lot of people that reach out to me from an investment perspective and say, “What should I do to get started? Should I go that route?” I say, “Absolutely not.” It’s not that every platform is bad. Yes, my particular experience was really bad, but the bottom line is that when I started taking on that responsibility for myself and doing the vetting, and calling the operators, and learning some underwriting, doing all those skills – that skill and knowledge base transformed my whole career… Versus still being on a platform where I would log in — yeah, I’d have a really nice portal and I would see this beautiful pie chart, but I would have learned nothing in that process. Versus having those calls, having those conversations, building up my network, and having people to actually go to for an opinion that actually means something. All of those things a crowdfunding platform cannot do for you.
Ash Patel: Yeah, and all of those things will help make you the best LP investor.
Denis Shapiro: Exactly.
Break: [00:09:35] – [00:11:13]
Ash Patel: Denis, how many different deals are you in LP on right now, roughly?
Denis Shapiro: A few just one full circle, but I would probably say high single digits. Probably high single digits, because I have an investment club that I do a lot of deals with; so I would probably say between 10 to 11.
Ash Patel: Do you spread your money out in different asset classes, or is it all multifamily?
Denis Shapiro: No, we do — so my investment club and my fund are two very, very different things. The investment club is a private fund with me and two other individuals, and they have very unique backgrounds. One of them is in crypto and the other one is in startup. So I personally wouldn’t feel too comfortable investing in crypto or startup, because I don’t have that experience. I’m a commercial real estate guy. But when they offer something to the club, I have complete confidence in them. So it allows me to have a more diversified portfolio. But when it comes to the actual fund that I actually administer, all that stuff basically is commercial real estate.
Ash Patel: If you find a really good operator, why not just go all in on that one operator, and keep doing more deals with them?
Denis Shapiro: I think it’s like a lifecycle. At first, when you’re new, I think the first couple of years, it was exciting to get on calls with new operators, and especially well-established operators. I remember the first time I spoke to Joe and some of the other big operators. It was fun, it was an experience, and it was worth those conversations, and it was worth doing a lot of deals with a lot of different operators. Now that the deals went full cycle and now that you have an evolved portfolio, now it does make sense for me to be more selective. And I do go all in on selective operators; like, for our fund that we administer, we only have four operators. But those four operators give us exposure to almost 196 properties out there, so we’re still really well diversified. But if I was earlier on in my career, I wouldn’t advise it. But I feel like after you go to full cycles, then you can kind of apply your 80/20 principles, and then at the end of the day, it becomes okay, as long as those operators are well diversified. If you’re doing a fund to funds or something like that, so you’re not putting all your eggs in one specific property, with one specific operator.
Ash Patel: Got it. Are you doing that now, a fund of funds model?
Denis Shapiro: We do two things. With SIH Capital Group, we have an income fund. The goal is literally just to provide the highest possible income from day one, and for it to be consistent. But those returns are capped. And then for email list, we’ll do the deals that we GP on; those deals we will offer to our investor list and they get access to the full total returns. So I always like to say, if you invest in the fund, you get less potential returns, but you get a well more diversified portfolio to back those returns; and they’re good for those specific goals. Now, if you invest in the individual deals, you will be subject to the performance of that specific deal.
Ash Patel: The deals that you guys’ GP – do you have a team that you work with?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. I have different partners for the different things. We try to avoid doing the deals everybody else is doing. We’re not doing like value-add deals, we’re not buying in Texas and Florida and the Carolinas. There’s nothing wrong with that model; I’m an LP in many, many of those deals, so this is not me throwing shade at that model. But the GP deals that we’re doing, we’re actually trying to stay local, because we are asset-managing them ourselves.
So we have one deal in Pennsylvania — because I’m in central New Jersey area. We have one deal in Pennsylvania that’s about two hours away. It’s actually an affordable housing community, so this is not what many people associate with when they think of low income. This property looks like a class B, beautiful townhouses, plenty of parking spaces, safe, private area. That’s a 50-unit affordable housing unit, and then we are also doing a short-term rental community on the shore. It’s personally something I really wanted to do with short-term rentals. The shore is one of the only areas in Jersey that I would invest, because it is a blue state. So because it’s a short-term rental, you’re not dealing with the tenant-landlord laws as much, so it’s a little less of a headache. But those are two deals that we’re kind of doing on the general partnership side.
Ash Patel: Affordable housing. What does that mean? Does that mean they get their rent subsidized?
Denis Shapiro: Yes. What happens is — the community was built in 1998 so it was a very fresh property. When it was built, it was mainly built through tax credits. Then it gets into a system where there’s vouchers on it. What I learned in the process is that there’s project-based vouchers and tenant-based vouchers, and then there are just people that are getting utility allowances. So in one shape or form, people are getting assistance, but that assistance varies.
What I’ve learned is there’s a lot of value in the project-based vouchers over tenant-based vouchers, because tenant-based vouchers will go with a tenant, but project-based vouchers actually stay with the property. So what ends up happening is if you get a bad tenant on a project-based voucher, you have a lot of leverage over them… Because if they’re not strictly affirming to the lease, if you evict them, then that voucher still stays behind with the property. So they lose that voucher, and because of that, they usually are some of the best acting tenants that are there. Versus the tenant-based vouchers, usually they feel like the power is in their court, because, “Hey, if I leave, I know people want my voucher.”
So one of our business plans — it’s not the typical value-add, “Hey, we’re going to put granite countertops.” One of the pieces of our business plan is actually to up the amount of project-based vouchers versus the tenant-based vouchers. It’s a very unique business model, where it’s not based on income, it’s about controlling the tenant population there and making sure it’s a safe, great, and affordable community for the tenants.
Ash Patel: How do you up the project-based vouchers?
Denis Shapiro: [unintelligible [00:17:09].10] It’s about relationships with the housing authority. My partner on this deal, he already has affordable housing with this housing agency, so it’s all about relationships. It’s just something we’re going to just apply when we have it. The property also had vouchers that were not being used, and we’re going to be able to go in and use those vouchers right away, because there’s a certain amount allocated to the property. That means the next seven vacancies we could fill in from day one. So there are some cool interesting aspects when you’re dealing with affordable housing that you don’t really see with typical class C and other properties.
Ash Patel: If somebody doesn’t have a voucher and wants to pay full price, can they lease a unit at that property?
Denis Shapiro: They could, but there’s incentives of doing the voucher. It’s a higher market rent, so there’s usually incentive to go to the vouchers. We do have a contract with the housing authority. So we usually would try to stick with the vouchers, but we do have the option to also rent it out.
Ash Patel: You can’t really turn me away though, can you? If I come in and say, “Hey, I’ll pay your full price. I want this unit.”
Denis Shapiro: Actually, there’s already a waiting line. One of the benefits of doing affordable housing is because there are built in waiting lists through the housing agencies. So it’s not like we have to put this on apartments.com to fill it. The average occupancy since we went into contract has hovered between 90% to 100% with a waiting list. That waiting list is the month deep. This is why I really like this space.
‘I think, going forward, SIH Capital Group is going to really try to hone in on the affordable housing space because it’s so much less competitive where it’s not going to get bid by 35 different buyers. Because you need to understand the vouchers, you need to have affordable housing property management background, you also need to have a relationship with the seller where they can feel confident that they will sell this property and will get approved by the state. So there are all these different little nuances where it allows a smaller buyer pool and much more of a relationship transaction than typically what you get when you’re dealing with a commercial broker.
Ash Patel: I grew up about 10 miles from where you are, in Holmdel, Central Jersey, and a lot of my buddies back there are like, “Man, there’s no deals out here. You’re lucky you’re in the Midwest. You can’t find a deal in Jersey.” I don’t buy that; you could find deals anywhere. How did you guys find this deal?
Denis Shapiro: The affordable housing deal – that was directly through… My partner purchased a property from them three years ago. So we’re buying it from one of the largest affordable housing developers in the state and in the country. He has a direct relationship with the disposition manager; that’s how we got that deal. The New Jersey deal that we got, which is the short-term rental community – that deal was also kind of off-market, where the brokers kid goes to school with one of my other partner’s kid. It was a very weird circumstances that we kind of just jumped on. But it was a very unique property. If you’re familiar with the shore, the shore real estate is probably some of the most desirable. It’s almost like the Hamptons situation, but on the Jersey Shore. This is like a mile away from Asbury Park; the location really sells the deal.
It’s a hard business plan to execute because we’re going to be converting these short-term rentals, so there’s going to be heavy renovation. It’s almost the complete opposite of the affordable housing deal, because the affordable housing deal is a very simple, easy to follow business model. The short-term rental community is a little bit more complicated. But that’s kind of what you need to be good at when you’re putting a deal together in New Jersey, because it is a blue state. There are certain complications that don’t allow it to be like a, “Oh, the market rent is $2,500. The rent here $1,700. I’m going to purchase it and bump it up.” When you’re dealing with the state of New Jersey, no, it’s not that simple. Because while there’s no rent control, there’s a term in Jersey where it says if you raise rent over a certain amount, it’s unconscionable. The term unconscionable is completely subjective on how the judge feels that day. So it could be $1 increase or it could be a $600 increase.
So just my point is that it’s not that the deals are not there, it’s just you need to be more creative with the deals to make them work in a blue environment. But you can’t replace a location that’s four blocks away, 40 minutes outside of New York City.
Ash Patel: Yeah. So you got these deals based on your network. It’s that’s simple. All you guys out there that are complaining about no deals – build your network, extend your network; put yourself out there.
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. Both deals were actually offered to me basically day one. My partner, toward the affordable housing community, texted me that day, he said “Are you in?” I was, at the same time, meeting up with the other deal in Jersey. Both deals were presented to me; it’s not like I personally found the deal, but I just jumped on it when I got the opportunity.
Ash Patel: Alright. Let’s dive into the numbers on the affordable housing project. It’s 50 units, is that right?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. I’ve just got to keep it high level, because we’re closing this month and it’s a 506B, so I’m going to keep it very, very high level for the affordable housing, if you don’t mind.
Ash Patel: Yeah. Tell me what you could tell me.
Denis Shapiro: Okay. It’s 50 units, 100%, occupied, built in 1998. We have five project-based vouchers, but we have up to 12 that we can use; so there’s seven vacancies we could fill, about 18 tenant-based vouchers, the rest have utility allowance. We’re getting Freddie on it. The other big, big advantage when you’re dealing with affordable housing is you get expedited service to the mortgage brokers, so we kind of jumped the line on the mortgage queue.
Ash Patel: Why is that?
Denis Shapiro: Well, we’re going Freddie and they have a mandate for affordable housing. So if two deals go to the brokers at the exact same time, they will expedite the affordable housing over a regular deal every day of the week.
Ash Patel: You’re from Jersey; are you sure you’re not paying off somebody?
Denis Shapiro: No. This was just a benefit that we actually didn’t know about since day one… But when we started finding out about the delays that are going on right now, we definitely were appreciative of this benefit. And we also got a reduction on the mortgage so we got about a half a percent off. We were going to be looking at 3.8, we’re coming down to like 3.3, and potentially a little lower, because the rates kind of dipped down a little bit. We’re going to be locking in about a week or two in that range. We’re getting a nice reduction… but we can’t take any IO. That was a little bit of the downside but we’re going to be paying down principal day one.
Ash Patel: You can take… What’s IO?
Denis Shapiro: Interest only.
Ash Patel: Okay. And what’s your down payment on this?
Denis Shapiro: I think 25%. I think we’re going to be at 74% LTV on this.
Break: [00:23:54] – [00:26:51]
Ash Patel: Can you tell us roughly what you’re buying each door for?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. Total sales price is 5.725, and it’s 50 units, so a little over 100k a door.
Ash Patel: Okay. What are your rents right now?
Denis Shapiro: They’re ranging between $1,100 for the two bedrooms and $1,300 for the threes, and they’re all threes and twos.
Ash Patel: Can you raise these rents over time without the program?
Denis Shapiro: So here’s the interesting place… If you look at 99 out of 100 syndications, the typical business model is geared towards the income. Besides a few little levers that usually operators will use, the focus of every business plan has always been on the income side. Put the nice flooring down, fix up the kitchen, and get an extra 20 bucks a month. Over here, the business plan is so simple because the operating expenses are in the high 70s. So the real opportunity here is to bring it down to a lower level. The industry norm for a 1998 build is probably in the 50s. And just by doing that, we would be successfully execute the business plan.
Ash Patel: How will you cut expenses?
Denis Shapiro: We have a lot of these from day one. We already got the insurance quotes came down, a lot of it is through relationships. One of the GPs on this deal is the property manager on my partner’s other deal. The current property manager is charging the current seller 9%; we’re already at 4%. We’re doing a water conservation program since day one… So we have five or six levers that we’re going in literally day one. We’re going to be getting rid of about $140,000 worth of expenses in year one.
Ash Patel: Denis, is this similar to a section eight deal where if you add a washer and dryer, you get to increase rents, or if you add amenities, rents go up?
Denis Shapiro: You have to be careful… So you got to check on what you could do and what you can’t do. For example, during due diligence, we found out that every single person has a dog, and the lease definitely says you’re not allowed to have a dog. But the good thing is this is five acres, and it’s townhouses, and there’s a lot of families there, so we actually don’t mind the dog situation. But we don’t want to close our eyes and pretend that the dogs are not there, because dogs do cause some damage. So day one, we’re going to put a little pet park there and we’re going to charge pet fees. So we had to check with the housing agency that pet fees are allowed to be charged, because now you’re bringing up their income to a higher amount than normal.
So you can do certain fees, you just have to check with the housing agency that it’s okay. The current seller also has laundry and dryers for every single unit, and that’s not being charged, and they’re also fixing them up when they break. So that’s a really nice amenity; so we just plan on just charging a washer and dryer fee, really just to subsidize when these things start breaking. We’re not really looking to generate much extra revenue from it. But every single one of these things that we’re looking to add, it’s kind of like we’re going to be checking with our property manager who’s checking with the housing authority. So it’s not as simple as other deals where you could just do it and just do it. It’s an extra layer of compliance.
Ash Patel: I’ve got to ask you a question… And this comes from every time I buy a property. When I buy a building, I usually improve the lighting, the landscaping, the signage, to let the tenants know, “Hey, this new landlord is actually going to improve the property.” You guys are going in and you’re going to start charging all these fees; how do you reassure the tenants that they’re in good hands?
Denis Shapiro: We are very fortunate that this place is 100% occupied; this place is already safe, so we don’t have to go in and do a lot neglected — we don’t have to fix a lot of neglected items, I want to say. But we are also going to be fostering a certain culture, where we’re not going to say, “Look, hey, we’re going to pretend that you don’t have pets. But in exchange, we are also going to build a pet park where your dogs can come and run, and there’s going to be places for you to get the dog bags.” So it’s more about explaining to the tenants that we are adding value by doing those kinds of things, and “Now you don’t have to hide your dog anymore.” Because technically, that’s breaking your lease, and you could actually lose your apartment for that. This might not be a day one type situation, this might be when the leases turnover, where we might be doing this as the lease’s turnover for the whole year, we’re going to start implementing it.
So it’s not about we’re going to go in there and just going to be, “Hey, we charging you an extra $200 a month for stuff that you’re already getting.” It’s more about, “Hey, we are going to be providing certain benefits. Here they are.” We expect an open dialogue of communication.
Ash Patel: Got it. You’re an investor with some of Joe Fairless’ deals. You’ve seen that they’ll do ice cream socials, pizza parties… Would you do any of that? And then take it a step further – what if you bring in some financial literacy experts and educate some of these tenants on how to get ahead financially? Is that something you would consider doing?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. So the first part with Joe and his community – one thing is this town is really cute; it’s like that Hallmark type of downtown.
Ash Patel: What town is it?
Denis Shapiro: Oxford, Pennsylvania. It’s about 20 to 30 minutes south of Lancaster. It’s a smaller town, everybody kind of knows everybody. We went out and we went with a couple of investors to the local downtown, and I had the cheapest meal I had in 33 years of living in New York City/Tri-state area.
Ash Patel: It’s Jersey though, that’s a problem.
Denis Shapiro: [laughs] Yeah. So it’s a very homey thing, but there’s a bunch of these local businesses there on the strip. I went into a comic shop and I got like a bunch of comics for my kids to bring home. They were like literally $1 each. I was like, “How great would it be if we host a comic day?” We’ll literally buy 100 comics and bring it out for the kids. We have a community room in the clubhouse, and we’ll just get the kids to come out, they could pick out one or two comics…
So we already have things like that to do, where we’re going to really try to incorporate as much local businesses as possible to that. Then on the flip side, the financial literacy program – I love that idea. I’ve seen an operator or two — I think the DaRosa group was working to implement something like that. I’ve got to check with them how it actually works, because a problem sometimes with a lot of those free services – a lot of people won’t sign up for them unless they have to pay for them; and you obviously don’t want to charge them. So I think that’s going to be something that we would consider, but I would want to see some feedback on some of the operators that have done that already in the past, see how successful and if it was worth the time.
One thing I will say is that my group SIH Capital Group, one thing we wanted to do is we want to do like a scholarship. We want to do that scholarship where it will be localized to the properties that we are GPs on. For example, for the Oxford Village, because the short-term rental community, obviously, this wouldn’t apply for – for the Oxford Village deal, it won’t be a huge scholarship, but maybe we’ll do something every year that we own the property, and it will just only be for the tenants that are there.
Ash Patel: That’s incredible. I love the comic book idea. Two great ideas, so I commend you on that. Denis, what is your best real estate investing advice ever?
Denis Shapiro: Be 100% okay to fail. I have to say my first mutual fund I ever invested in – complete failure. First individual stock I ever picked – complete failure. First crowdfunding deal I ever did – complete failure. First syndication I did – not a complete failure but not a good deal. Every single time, the second deal was finally better, the second trade was certainly better, and then it was just better and better. That’s the biggest piece of advice. If you’re scared to make that wrong investment, you’re just never going to invest. That’s the biggest mistake you can make… Because 10 years from now, I don’t really remember the $1,000 I lost on that mutual fund; it doesn’t mean anything. But I do remember my whole stock portfolio that I built subsequently because of that mistake. So that my best piece of advice, just be happy to fail.
Ash Patel: Denis, are you ready for the Best Ever lightning round?
Denis Shapiro: Yeah. Let’s do it.
Ash Patel: Alright. Denis, what’s the Best Ever book you’ve recently read?
Denis Shapiro: Oh my god. Okay. I am actually reading The Five Love Languages of Children. I don’t even know if it’s love languages… But it’s a derivative of Gary Chapman’s book. I have a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a three-year-old, and it’s given me some interesting perspective on parenting. The best book is always one that you could actually take and just relate right away to. I would recommend that, it’s an interesting book for any parents out there.
Ash Patel: Thank you. I didn’t know there was a challenge edition of that book. I’ll check that out for sure. Denis, what’s the Best Ever way you like to give back?
Denis Shapiro: It’s definitely going to be more scholarships, more stuff in the communities that we are invested in, and it just feels like a natural extension to give back at the same time.
Ash Patel: Denis, how can the Best Ever listeners reach out to you?
Denis Shapiro: The best way is, if you’re interested in a copy of my book, The Alternative Investment Almanac, that can be found on Amazon. But otherwise, the best way to reach out to me is on sihcapitalgroup.com. What I did is I created two abridged versions of my book. If you sign up to my email list, you can get one of each. And then if you like what you see on the email list, please feel free to reach out there.
Ash Patel: Denis, I got to thank you again for being on the show today, sharing your story from starting out investing in stocks, getting into single-family homes, then becoming an LP investor, starting a fund, and being a GP. I appreciate you sharing all your lessons, stay away from entire communities that are one bedroom, and all the other advice, man. So thank you again.
Denis Shapiro: Ash, it was awesome being here. Thank you so much.
Ash Patel: Best Ever listeners. Thank you so much for joining us and have a Best Ever day.
Website disclaimer
This website, including the podcasts and other content herein, are made available by Joesta PF LLC solely for informational purposes. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions expressed in this website do not constitute and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC are providing or undertaking to provide any financial, economic, legal, accounting, tax or other advice in or by virtue of this website. The information, statements, comments, views and opinions provided in this website are general in nature, and such information, statements, comments, views and opinions are not intended to be and should not be construed as the provision of investment advice by Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC to that listener or generally, and do not result in any listener being considered a client or customer of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC.
The information, statements, comments, views, and opinions expressed or provided in this website (including by speakers who are not officers, employees, or agents of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC) are not necessarily those of Joe Fairless or Joesta PF LLC, and may not be current. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC make any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions contained in this website, and any liability therefor (including in respect of direct, indirect or consequential loss or damage of any kind whatsoever) is expressly disclaimed. Neither Joe Fairless nor Joesta PF LLC undertake any obligation whatsoever to provide any form of update, amendment, change or correction to any of the information, statements, comments, views or opinions set forth in this podcast.
No part of this podcast may, without Joesta PF LLC’s prior written consent, be reproduced, redistributed, published, copied or duplicated in any form, by any means.
Joe Fairless serves as director of investor relations with Ashcroft Capital, a real estate investment firm. Ashcroft Capital is not affiliated with Joesta PF LLC or this website, and is not responsible for any of the content herein.
Oral Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as an offer to buy or sell any securities or to make or consider any investment or course of action. For more information, go to www.bestevershow.com.
