The Fastest Way To Build A Six Or Even… Seven Figure Real Estate EMPIRE!
Today, I’m speaking with Chris Grenzig. Chris began his real estate investing journey in 2016 by attempting to flip houses on Long Island NY, but ultimately failed to flip a single property despite spending tens of thousands of dollars and several months trying.
Instead of giving up, he shifted his focus to multifamily real estate and started by investing passively in an 8-unit property, then joint venturing on another 100 units worth over $4.5M.
Chris’s experience landed him a job with Toro Real Estate Partners, which gave him an opportunity to learn from experienced investors. Over the course of 4 years, he became responsible for overseeing all of their Florida portfolio which consisted of 7 properties, totaling roughly 1,000 units worth $70M.
In 2020, Chris’s persistence in the real estate investing game finally paid off as he ventured out on his own and founded JAG Communities — a vertically integrated multifamily investment firm that specializes in creating an exceptional living experience for residents.
In this conversation, Chris walks us through his journey, from failing to flip houses to quitting his job and making a way in multifamily real estate. You’ll also hear us dissect his first two deals, including a 16 unit and 24 unit property, along with his 10 year plan for reaching $500 AUM!
Key Takeaways with Chris Grenzig
- Why the numbers don’t always tell the full story when making a deal — and one of the biggest drivers for Chris when he’s looking at an investment property.
- Chris shares his 10 year real estate game plan, from closing on his first property to getting to $500M AUM!
- The importance of leveraging your strengths to invest in deals that are best suited for you.
- The opportunity cost of managing deals that require more work.
- How Josh is able to find and fund deals with 0% of his own money.
- Why Chris failed when it came to flipping houses — and how he transitioned into multifamily real estate.
- How Chris used Toro Real Estate Partners as a bridge to start his own real estate investment firm — and why he strategically moved from NY to FL to manage his first deal.
- Advice Chris would give to someone who’s just starting their real estate journey.
- How to leverage the strengths of others to free up your time and scale your business.
Chris Grenzig Tweetables
“What’s cool about the property was the story. The numbers are important for sure, but for me, a lot of times the story is way more important.” – Chris Grenzig
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” - Bill Gates
Episode Resources
- JAG Communities
- Chris Grenzig on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook
- The Real Estate Investing Experience Podcast
- Toro Real Estate Partners
- Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan
- Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself by Mike Michalowicz
Connect with Josh Cantwell
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Click Here to Read the Transcript: Chris Grenzig
Josh Cantwell: So, hey, welcome back to Accelerated Real Estate Investor with Josh Cantwell. I’m excited to be back with you and share yet another guest interview today. My guest is a gentleman named Chris Grenzig. He is the founder of JAG Communities out of Jacksonville, Florida. He started out actually as a residential real estate investor back in 2016. And in this interview, he’s going to tell you why he completely failed at flipping houses in the New York Long Island market and why he quickly pivoted to multifamily and apartments. He’s also going to talk a little bit more about how he worked as an acquisitions manager for Toro Real Estate Partners as their Head of Florida operations. Toro purchased over 4,000 units worth over $300 million, which Chris was a big part of. Chris left Toro about 8, 10 months ago in November 2020 to start his own investment firm in the Jacksonville, Florida market. He now has 40 units. And in this interview, you’re going to hear me talk to Chris. Primarily, we’re going to start with, number one, his two most recent case studies. We’re just going to really break down a 16-unit that he just bought and another 40 unit.
Number two, we’ll talk about why Chris strategically moved from New York to Florida and why he picked that market over other markets. Number three, Chris will tell you why he’s focused on the small to medium-sized apartments, the 10 to 80-unit deals instead of the 100 units and up, and how Chris is able to make a higher yield and a higher profit in a shorter amount of time, focusing on the smaller deals. And finally, Chris and I will talk about, number four, we’ll talk about the value-add process of forcing appreciation versus achieving organic growth. So, I think you’ll love this interview with Chris Grenzig from JAG Communities. Take a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
Josh Cantwell: So, hey, Chris, listen, I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a long time and hearing more about your transition from New York to Florida and getting going in a whole new market. So, thank you so much for joining us today on Accelerated Real Estate Investor.
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. Thanks for having me, bud.
Josh Cantwell: You got it. You got it. So, let’s jump in right away. Chris, you just moved to a new market. You just kind of went out on your own in the last five, six months and you’ve got a lot of new things cooking. So, why don’t we start by just telling us about something that you’re working on right now that kind of gets your juices going that you’re passionate about. So, maybe a deal or something going on in this new market that you’re learning about and investing in. So, what do you have cooking that’s on your plate, literally, like today or tomorrow, next week that you’re excited about working on?
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. So, I mean, my move down to Florida coincided with closing on my first deal and then very quickly closed in my second deal. So, I’ve got 40 units right now and both I’m doing renovations on. So, I’ve got nine total units right now vacant that we’re in the process of renovating. The first deal is a much heavier lift. Second deal is pretty easy but doing them in slightly different avenues and my background was more of like the financial side. So, the past five months have been a deeper dive on the construction side, property management side, operational side. So, it’s been a really interesting process the last five months.
Josh Cantwell: Yeah. So, help me understand. So, you actually had the deals take you to a new market and you’re in Florida, which doesn’t suck, right, moving to a whole new area. So, let’s peel back the onion a little bit on the 16-unit. That was the first one that you locked down that you closed on. Help me understand the numbers. Let’s do a deep dive here on the numbers. Help our audience understand the case study. What did you buy it for? You said it’s a heavy lift. What’s the renovation plan? What’s the stabilized value? What’s the timeline? Are you self-managing it? Are you bringing in a separate construction project manager, general contractor? Just peel back the onion. Tell us a little bit more about the deal and what we can learn from it.
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. So, 30-second back story, worked five years as an asset manager and acquisitions guy running Florida properties. So, we had 1,000 units. So, I was originally just going to buy that deal on the side and just keep working for them but then decided it was a good time to leave and do my own thing. And I wanted to move down here and do the self-management, the construction management because there was always a gap in my knowledge so I knew it was very much going to be a learning process. And my ten-year vision is to get to 500 million under management and I knew by working on this stuff on my own deal at a much smaller scale is going to set me up for the future. So, yeah, this deal was at 16 units. It’s in a submarket of Jacksonville, Florida, called Orange Park. In my last company, I bought a deal around the corner from there with almost identical floor plans so I had like a six-month case study on it and we had offered on five or six other deals in there. We’ve gotten very close but never taken any down. So, I knew it fairly well but we bought it for about 73K a door. Rents were 875 plus utilities. But what was really cool about the property was the story behind it. I’m big on story.
Numbers are great but people are going to run deals differently depending on different things. I’m not as big of a numbers guy. The numbers are important for sure but for me a lot of times the story is way more important. So, I will focus on that very heavily. And it was a guy out of California that bought it five years ago and his ex-wife had been managing it for a while and just apparently had been doing a very poor job because they had really high bad debt, really high concessions. They had to get rid of a lot of tenants. And they brought in this other management company about twelve months prior to when the deal first hit my desk and I could see literally in the financials all the financial slowly getting better and better and better. I mean, they got worse before they got better but I could see the trend and I just timed it really great where the management company had finally gotten to the tail end of cleaning it up. So, when I first got a hold of it, it was good but it wasn’t great. But then by the time we close, the numbers got significantly better because literally two days after we took over, the last nonpaying tenant was kicked out. Everybody else was paying, well, several late payers but we’re working on that. And it was just clean property and a really nice area. And it’s really cool, too, because it’s four buildings, four units each and there’s actually a pool that sits in the middle, which is pretty rare for such a small property. So, I really like it. It’s a really great solid B location and just a really nice area.
Josh Cantwell: Nice. So, that deal, when it does pencil out, like I know you said you’re more of a story guy but you buy deals for what? So, what does this mean in your overall portfolio? Like, it’s the kind of the launching pad, right? Five hundred million is the goal. First deal, 16 units. What have you learned so far? You said there’s a gap in your knowledge. So, is that filling the gap? And what is that going to translate into the next deal?
Chris Grenzig: Yeah, for sure. So, just backing up, big picture of what we’re doing with it, my plan to kind of maximize dollars, right, because I don’t have the money to go buy $500 million worth even if I brought on investors. The rough math, what I did is I took the 10-year picture, broke it down of how I have to get there. You create measurable goals. So, 500 million, roughly a third of that is going to be in equity so call it 175 million. Typically, investors want to see the principals co-invest 10%. So, that would be 17.5 million. I’m not close to that nor do I think I’ll have that in 10 years. So, I’ll have to have partners and different things but I can start to figure out how to get there. So, for me, it was, okay, if I’ve got to build up capital and equity and assets, the best way I can do that is by finding a deal, getting through it quick, refinancing, and pulling out as much money as possible, having this great cash-flowing asset that’s going to continue to appreciate. And once I get through the renovation, it shouldn’t need a ton of my attention that’s going to allow me to then redeploy that capital into some other stuff, maybe leverage more investors.
So, instead of a 16-unit, maybe it’s a 30-unit, maybe it’s a 50, maybe it’s a 70. But at least it allowed me some time to really figure out my systems and processes on the management and renovation side and then also use it as a case study and a track record for going slightly bigger while also having a deal that kind of owes me nothing if you can actually refi everything out. So, I saw that and I thought this was a really great deal for that because it was built in 1965. It had the original cabinets, countertops, really old flooring, really old appliances where a lot of the bones were really good. They had replaced a lot of the mechanicals, the ACs, the roofs, what else, the electrical was all good. So, some of that stuff was really good but a lot of the cosmetic and aesthetic stuff was there. So, we’re spending about $15,000 just on cosmetic stuff on the interior. So, all new cabinets, granite countertops, undermounting sink, backsplash, vinyl plank flooring, ceiling fans, light fixtures, paint, 6-panel doors, bathroom vanities. I mean, I could go on to make it really nice. And my best estimate as of today, we should have our first rent-ready units in about four days, five days. We’ll probably get about 1,150 so we’re talking almost a $300 rent bump.
Josh Cantwell: Yeah. Nice.
Chris Grenzig: One thing that happened while we took it over, I knew the plumbing was old, was galvanized, and cast iron. So, they galvanized with the supply lines, all the water coming in for your shower, your sink, stuff like that, and then the cast iron was all the way. So, all your plumbing for your toilets and all that stuff. We actually decided to spend extra money that we hadn’t planned on spending to re-pipe every single unit as we renovate them in the first year. And the reason being was, one, everybody I spoke to said it’s a matter of if not when, which I kind of already knew but originally I was going to do a less extensive renovation. Two, they said if you’re going to do it, this is the best time to do it and you’re ripping everything out. And, three, I figured because we had already had a couple of plumbing issues by doing all this work, I don’t know exactly how much it’s going to affect my future expenses but it should lower some of my like repairs and maintenance costs, some of my capital reserves cost in the future because I won’t have to spend that money in the future because we’ve done it all in one go. So, that’s been interesting as well.
Josh Cantwell: Yeah. If you’re going to hold it for the long-term, add a little bit of money now to spend less money later, little cash flow like crazy down the road. That’s fantastic. So, tell us about the 40 units. Great to move to a new market. I know you have some experience in the market being a manager for another company but the 40 units have used more like it’s more down the fairway. Easy deal. Simpler. Tell us about that one and how is that going so far?
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. So, the second one is 24, so a total of 40 units.
Josh Cantwell: Oh, total of 40. Right.
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. It was awesome. I found the deal through a wholesale actually. Somebody was buying. It’s actually six quads, very close together. So, it’s multifamily but not in the traditional sense but the numbers just really worked really well and the units and the buildings themselves are really, really nice and I think they’re going to be super desirable for a tenant but is actually a wholesale, which is pretty crazy. But the original owner bought 21 of these buildings from the developer back in 1985 and they’ve owned them since then. They’ve done an immaculate job of keeping these properties up, keeping them in great condition where I was expecting come in. A lot of times mom and pop it’s like hodgepodge and you’re worried about, “Okay. Are they really taking care of things? Or because it doesn’t owe them any money, they don’t need to push rent so they don’t need to make things as nice.” It was the complete opposite. I was floored when I walked in, so I was very happy but the rents are below market. So, they’re in like the 700 range and they should be again up over in the 1,000 range. So, we’ve got our first unit just turned and listed without doing any upgrades, $1,000 and we’ve got like 10, 15 leads in the first couple of days.
So, hopefully, we’ll have actual applications coming in. I think I saw two in my inbox this morning actually. So, we did have some applications rolling in and hopefully have at least up soon. And then because they’re so clean, they’re dated but we’re really only going to come in probably do appliances for like $1,600. So, fridge, stove, dishwasher, stove hood, vinyl, plank flooring throughout because they’re all first-floor units with private backyards and patios, which is really nice, new ceiling fans because people in Florida love ceiling fans. It’s modern light fixtures. Just paint the trim and new interior 6-panel doors because those really pop and make it look nice. But, yeah, those are a lot easier. I don’t have to worry about ripping out cabinets and new countertops and plumbing and all this stuff. So, it’s really funny. My time in the last two months, which is when we close the second deal if it was my time was 100, I’ve spent 80 of it on the first deal and 20 on the second deal. The numbers aren’t that much better on the first deal and it’s eating up a lot more of my time. So, it’s been a really interesting case study, too, for me of like, “Okay. How much do you value time? How much do you value the risk when you have more moving parts for a deal?” Because even this morning I found out some of the closet doors we got were the wrong size. I’m going to have to go figure that out when we get off of this.
Josh Cantwell: Okay. Got it. I love it. Well, a lot of stuff to take away from that. So, first, love the idea of and we love to buy buildings this way where proof of concept is already there, where you have a building that you buy, maybe it’s one bedroom, one bath. The classic units, the not upgraded are at 650 but they’ve already turned a couple of the one beds and the ones that are turned are getting 800, 850, 900 so you’re like, “Okay. Proof of concept is there.” So, for the fact you get a win on a 24-unit, you’re worth 700 and I leased the first unit out to 1,000 like, man, what a breath of fresh air like I could feel that. When that happens for us, I’m like, “Oh my God, this is going to work.” You think it’s going to work. You pencil it all out. But then you want to see it actually work, so that’s exciting to see. And then, yeah, I think in today’s market there are really those two types of deals and I think we have to be open to kind of looking at both where, yeah, we got deals that need a lot of value and improvements, a lot more construction, bringing in a contractor or doing our own site supervisor, bring in our own subs.
Either way, we’ve done both improving at large CapEx versus more of a deal that’s already improved. I walked the deal yesterday, 54-unit that we’re buying. It closes next Friday and we were buying it as completed because the guy that bought it, he just bought it a year ago and he was in the middle of improving it. So, we’re like, “We’ll pay this for it.” He actually bought it for 1.2. We’re buying it for 2.4 in nine months. But he improved 34 out of the 54 units already. So, we walked in yesterday. I’m like, “Oh, this is going to be awesome,” because 34 of the 54 are already done like the LVP is in, the paint’s in, the new appliances are in, the cabinets, the countertops is all in, it’s all done. It’s like okay so I’ve got a 220-unit that we just bought with a $1.4 million budget like I’m excited about it but it’s going to be a lot of work. Then I’ve got this 54-unit that I’m like, “Oh my God, this is going to be simple.” Leasing agent, bang, knock out those 34 units. We’re actually considering we might even just lease the 34 and flip the building, right? And man, what a win that would be to make about $1 million and just have to lease it up and not have to do a lot of the construction. So, I think it’s a matter of as an operator, you and I making those kind of decisions of what can our team really handle? What can I handle when we buy our next property?
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. I think it’s interesting something you bring up, too, because I bet a lot of people think and are like, “Hey, why wouldn’t this guy just lease it up and sell it for $1 million more?” And you have to recognize like people have their strengths and weaknesses. Like in actuality, the best use of my time was not buying that 16-unit and managing all this construction myself. I made a ton of mistakes. I’ve wasted a bunch of time. But for me, it was coming down and learning so that I could kind of fill up that stuff. But if I was like, “Hey, I’m just maximizing my time, maximizing my dollars,” I either would just like hire a GC, hire a construction manager, or I would have just looked for a different type of deal or a different business plan because everybody has their strengths. So, for him, it’s probably easier instead of leasing it up and going through that process if he’s not as knowledgeable, if that’s the truth, where he can go find another deal and do all the construction, do it again, then trying to do something he’s maybe not as strong at.
Josh Cantwell: Yeah. Well, the deal ended up being a kept up kind of a catalyst for you to learn a new skill. And once you learn that skill, you’re never going to give it up so you only use that deal for a specific purpose, not necessarily like you said at the beginning, just making money. It’s about what can I learn from this and maybe doing something that you’re like, “You know, next time I’ll probably do it differently,” but this deal serves a purpose along the greater journey over the next five or ten years. That’s fantastic. So, Chris, help me understand like how did you structure these deals? You mentioned at the beginning that investors like to see principals bring in at about 10%. So, I just have to comment on that. We own 3,500 units. It’s about a $300 million portfolio and I put none of my own money in, zero. So, just keep you open-minded to that, right? If you got a great deal, you found it, you’re going to own or operate it, you’re putting a lot of sweat equity. I know other people will say, “Well, you got to put 10% of your own money in,” I would tell you and our audience, yes, that is the case in some deals. I’d like to see you put your own money in. But if you can convince them that, “Yeah. I found the deal. Yes, we’re going to operate it. We’re going do the CapEx. I’m personally signing on the loan or I arranged the loan even if it’s non-recourse. This is all the things I’ve done,” no, I’m not putting any money into it. I haven’t had anybody push back on that.
And so, we’ve been able to get limited partners to come in. We structure our deals typically where we own 70% to 80% of them. We just syndicate a small piece of it, 20%, 30%. We pay a 10% profit and a lot of times they also get a piece of equity. With the deals you’ve done so far, how did you structure those? Did you bring in investors, use your own capital? To get to 500 million, you’re going to have to structure deals different ways, right, and bring in a lot of limited partners. What’s kind of your preferred method of acquisition and syndication?
Chris Grenzig: Yes. So, for these two it was just with close family. I was probably 25% of the equity. I saved up a good chunk of money And I like having skin in the game. I also like investing in deals. I think when you have money and that’s when you really grow your money, you’ll see people try to hit like 2X multiples for their LPs in like five or seven years. Oftentimes when you’re the GP and you co-invest 5%, 10%, 15%, that 2X returns turned into a 3X or 4X once you had the GP profits on top of it. So, it really, really multiply really quick. So, it’s not only for me that investors want to see it. I also think it’s a really great use of my money as well. I like the deal. I believe in it. I’m convincing other people to do it. I want to put my own money into it as well. But going forward, I’ve had a few dozen people reach out just privately, haven’t really marketed or asked about it. I’ll probably start looking at like JVs, some stuff. So, maybe I’m only 5%, 10%, 15% and I’ll just take a bigger percentage of the pie to finding the deal, running it like you said, doing all that stuff. But eventually, you go into syndication route of finding limited partners.
One of the other reasons I wanted to come down and have property management in-house from day one is if I ever want to go the more institutional route of raising money from family offices, private equity, hedge funds, endowment funds, let’s say 50% to 70% of them won’t even talk to you unless you have property management in-house. They want to see you vertically integrated. They want to see you as the operating partner. They don’t want to see you just take their money and then hire somebody else to run the show day-to-day. So, we saw that a lot with Toro because we would use third-party management and not that there’s anything wrong with it but this is just what they look for. And for me, I said, “Okay. If I really do want to grow to a large number of assets, one of the quicker ways could be through those types of partners.” I’m not saying I’m going to go that route because I know when you have a 90-10 partner, one investor brings 90% of the capital, you do give up things. So, maybe it’s less fees, less hurdles, less profits, less control but what it does is it at least allows me the opportunity to do it if I want to, and I can always decide not to retain. So, that was one of the other smaller reasons of why I decided to move on and do it. But I’m looking at a lot of different options but eventually syndicating money in one form or another will be a big part of that.
Josh Cantwell: Yeah. That’s great that you’re getting your – I love the way you’re thinking about it strategically and thinking, “Look, I want to have this experience in case I need to use it down the road,” or in case you even bring out a third-party manager. They know how to manage them because you’ve done it yourself, right? You did the CapEx yourself, you did the property management yourself. That’s fantastic. So, Chris, let’s back up to your kind of start. You started as a residential investor. You found some success in that but you really didn’t get your footing like really get going and really feel super excited about the business and have a lot of success until you went into multifamily and apartments. So, give us an idea of what that pivot was like, what was working with residential, and what wasn’t working that you made the pivot into multifamily and apartments. And then when was kind of epiphany that popped off and said, “You know what, I’m going to leave residential behind. I’m going to focus on multifamily and I’m going to go from here.”?
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. Well, residential was not working and we completely failed.
Josh Cantwell: All right. Tell it how it is, Chris.
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. So, the way I got started was my mom, my cousin just happened to buy a flipping course back in January of 2016. I was working a job I hated and they asked me if I wanted to come so I said yes. And got sold on it and it’s the whole pitch and nothing wrong with it but we tried flipping nights and weekends up in Long Island, New York, and it’s a very tough market. Not only is it on the municipality side, it’s tough from the margin side, it’s tough from the cost side of things. You know, there’s a lot of barriers to entry now. There’s plenty of people that do it up there. So, I do not blame the course whatsoever. It’s one 100% on us. We didn’t execute but the way the course was set up wasn’t perfectly set up for us. And because we were so new, we didn’t really have the experience to kind of tailor it to that. And when we started having that conversation, we said we started learning more about other options so we looked at like flipping out of state. We looked at taxes and we just said, “Look, we could probably figure it out one way or another but in the grand scheme of things, we really and as we know more and know there’s other options, we don’t want to be doing house flipping on Long Island.
So, we looked at doing it out of state, lent some money to a guy. He actually was John Cohen’s cousin. John Cohen was one of the co-owners at Toro, where I worked for four-and-a-half years. We co-GP’d about 100 units before I joined Toro and then eventually, I hopped over there because as I was doing it, I was learning and doing stuff when I figured getting one not only access to much larger deals where Toro bought 100 to 500-unit properties, $300 million in total over four-and-a-half years. You know, I was going to learn a lot more by having them around me all day. You know, I’m just somebody who learns by being in something, just being surrounded and learning by repetition and osmosis and stuff like that. So, I knew it was going to be a really good environment for me. So, that’s kind of how I eventually transitioned over.
Josh Cantwell: Yeah. Why did you make the decision to go out on your own?
Chris Grenzig: It was something I always wanted to do. My dad had a business when I was a young kid and eventually sold it, and he always has done odd things on the side. My mom, even though she’s worked for school districts and companies and stuff, she’s been pretty entrepreneurial as well. So, I don’t know, I just always kind of had the bug. And even when I joined Toro, they always knew that my intention was kind of use it as a bridge. I don’t think any of us expected it to last four-and-a-half years but they were just great people to work for. I really enjoyed it and it was a really good situation, I think, for everybody involved. And I was super lucky and grateful that when I did let them know that they were instantly incredibly supportive and happy for me and wished me luck and stuff but, yeah, I mean, it was just kind of always the right plan. When I left, it was October of last year and I was kind of sitting there. Part of my job was acquisitions but we weren’t really buying anything at the time so I wasn’t working a ton. I had been living in Brooklyn, moved out to Long Island at my mom’s place when COVID hit.
So, I was living technically in my mom’s basement, even though it was nice and finished. I didn’t have a house, didn’t have a girlfriend, wife, kids. The only thing that was really tying me there was a job and family, which are great but I kind of started thinking about it more and more. I was like, “If not now when?” type of thing and I didn’t want to turn 80 and be like, “I should have done that then.” So, I figured worst-case scenario, I go down, I try it, I hate it after three, six, nine, 12 months, two years. I’ll just leave, move back, and find another job. So, that was kind of it.
Josh Cantwell: No going back now, huh?
Chris Grenzig: No.
Josh Cantwell: No. Good for you. So, Chris, listen, as you think about this journey this last five years and you think about the journey of the next five years, getting to $500 million, what have you already learned that you wish you had known before? Like, what have you already learned about yourself, about the process, about deals? What advice would you give your younger self or would you get back to our audience to say, “Look, like if I could do it differently, I would do this and I would have done it differently.”? Whether it’s about entrepreneurship, leadership, a self-development hack or about real estate, about apartments, what are some things that you’ve learned along this five-year journey so far that you think you want to apply to the next phase?
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. I think two things. The first one is a quote I love. It’s we overestimate what we can do a year and underestimate what we can do in five. And I sit here and I look at where I was five years ago to today and I don’t think I would have ever imagined it at the same scale. And when I say ten years, 500 million, I really struggled to like come up with that and I really don’t like putting a dollar amount on it. The only reason I do is because there’s a really cool study where if you drop somebody in like the woods but there’s no markers and you ask them to walk straight, the best they’ll do is walk in a 60-yard circle. So, without a path or something to follow, we naturally deviate and just wander. So, having some sort of path is great but like, I actually stroke, like I thought about going even higher because I started backing into it and I’m like, “Well, if I think this is even a slight push, there’s probably a really good chance I can do even higher,” but you can always adjust it as you move forward. So, I really love that saying because sometimes, damn, be like some days I feel like things are just moving so frickin slow and I’m making no progress but then I look back three months and I’m like, “Okay. We’ve actually made pretty decent progress,” so I look back three years and like we’ve come a long way. So, I love that.
The second one I think is I wish I would have learned to leverage other people and other people’s time sooner. I’ve started hiring people, as I started hiring people for like social media and our podcast about a year ago and it’s been an incredible journey and it really helped me hire. I actually now have a part-time maintenance guy and manager in-house that are helping me with these. Truthfully, it’s probably too early but I just saw viscerally how powerful it is, and even though you hear it all the time, but it was like just a really cool learning experience for me. So, I’m actually trying to find ways to bring in other people to allow me to free up time even before I can afford it because I just know it’s going to propel me so much further quicker.
Josh Cantwell: That’s great stuff, man. So, final five, five quick questions. Ten to fifteen, thirty-second answers. Question number one, what’s your favorite way to find investment properties and deals?
Chris Grenzig: Networking with anybody and everybody.
Josh Cantwell: Nice. What’s your favorite way to find capital limited partners or joint ventures?
Chris Grenzig: Same answer. Networking with anybody and everybody
Josh Cantwell: Got it. Love it. What’s your favorite book that you’ve ever read that has the biggest impact on your life, on your development?
Chris Grenzig: So, I’m not the biggest reader but recently I really love the book Who Not How and Clockwork.
Josh Cantwell: Oh, great. I love Who Not How. Fantastic book. I have to take a look at Clockwork. Haven’t read that one yet. Chris, favorite place to decompress, relax, and think?
Chris Grenzig: So, right now my apartment’s on the river and it’s got this really nice like lounge area and hammocks so just like day-to-day, I really like that. But I also like going like hiking and stuff too, just getting out and being active and not really having to think.
Josh Cantwell: Got it. Last question. Who has been the most impactful mentor or leader in your life and why?
Chris Grenzig: So, big picture lifestyle-wise it’s been my parents. I’m a very big proponent of living way below your means, which is why I’m able to have the money and assets I do today. I wouldn’t have had that if it wasn’t for them because they live that lifestyle my entire life and they’ve both retired early and are just enjoying their life now. So, them for that specifically but tons of other ways as well.
Josh Cantwell: Yeah. Fantastic stuff. Chris, listen, thank you so much for joining us on Accelerated Investor. I had a blast with this interview. If our audience wants to reach out or learn more about your podcast, connect with you on social media, where is a good place for them to reach out?
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. So, I’m still in the process of getting all my stuff set up for the business and stuff. So, always I’m on all social media. Two main ones are Instagram @Chris.Grenzig or LinkedIn, Chris Grenzig. But if you go in any single one and search me, you can probably find it. My name is somewhat unique, so it’s not like I’m John Smith. You can check out our podcast called The Real Estate Investing Experience. It’s on all platforms, including YouTube. Or you can go to TheREIEXP.com/Podcast and you can find it there. Or if anybody wants to shoot me an email, they can do that, chris@jag-communities.com.
Josh Cantwell: Fantastic stuff. Chris, listen, thank you so much for joining us today on Accelerated Investor.
Chris Grenzig: Yeah. Thank you.
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Josh Cantwell: So, hey, there you have it. I hope you really enjoyed that interview on the Accelerated Real Estate Investor Podcast with Chris Grenzig. If you can reach out to him on social media, on his website or email, it would be great if you want to learn more and touch base with him. I love the fact that Chris is really focused in on these small to medium-sized apartments, these 10 to 80 units. We just bought a 54 unit. We just bought an 80-unit, a 16-unit, a 52-unit. Those are properties that when you buy them separately, get some yield, some spread between what you’re paying and what they’re worth, and they’re faster and easier to operate. And then if you manage them, if they’re close enough, let’s say within a half-hour to an hour of each other and you manage them as one larger portfolio, you can actually get a higher yield, turn properties faster, turn units faster. We love that model. We love Chris’s model. So, I hope you enjoyed the interview. If you did, please leave us a five-star rating and review on all of the different podcasting platforms, including YouTube. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button so you never miss another episode of Accelerated Real Estate Investor. Thank you so much for joining me. Share this all over social media. Thanks for being part of the community. We’ll talk to you next time. Take care.
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