Oliver Fernandez  0:00  

We all use the word quality. It’s like a place that someone can call home that they can be proud of. It’s not a like a, like a crappy job. And I just use this basic analogy and I, we’ve done I’ve used this analogy on basically the $80 million worth of construction we’ve done to date and it’s what I want that done at my mom’s house. And if the answer is yes, we’re good to go. If the answer is no, we got to tear that out. And we’re going to do it the right way. And we’re going to make it so that someone that rents this place or someone that is deciding to raise their kids their raise their family in this place that they’re going to be proud of it through the workmanship that we that we’ve that we’ve done it that proper

Announcer  0:48  

Welcome to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast whether you’re an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant we are here to learn from the experts.

J Darrin Gross  1:08  

Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks, CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J. Darrin Gross. This is the podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio.

Today’s program is sponsored by Building Insurance and Risk. Don’t put your real estate investment in peril, work with building insurance and risk and receive multiple coverage offers with a side by side coverage comparison. To learn more, go to Building Insurance Risk.com. 

Today, my guest is Oliver Fernandez. Oliver is a business owner and real estate investor that has successfully completed over 80 million worth of construction projects and accumulated a real estate investment portfolio valued at 150 million in the past nine years. And in just a minute, we’re going to speak with all of her about adding value through quality construction and multifamily real estate. 

But first a quick reminder, if you like our show, CRE PN radio, there are a couple things you can do to help us out. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, you can leave a comment, we’d love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you’d like to see how handsome Our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can find us on YouTube at commercial real estate pro network. And while you’re there, please subscribe. With that, I want to welcome my guest, Oliver Fernandez. Welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Oliver Fernandez  2:51  

Thank you, Darrin, it’s super excited to be here with you guys today.

J Darrin Gross  2:54  

Well, I’m looking forward to our conversation. But before we get started, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little bit about your background. 

Oliver Fernandez  3:03  

Yeah. So the reason why I got into real estate was when I was a kid growing up. My dad was in construction and my my uncle like focused mainly on real estate. And he was buying like, you know, single family homes and like converting them into like duplexes and triplexes. And he was also buying like, three and 3458 family properties. And I saw that he continued to grow with it, I saw that when something tragic happened in his life. I mean, that passed away. That real estate took care of his two year old son at the time, who’s now 22, but it took care of his son while he wasn’t here anymore. So that really left a massive impact on my life, especially in comparison to like watching my dad, like, you know, build a construction company, and they are taking the risks that construction has involved in it. And not having the same results as my uncle. So my uncle bought that real estate and that real estate, took care of his son for the last 20 years. And obviously his mom did a really good job with them as well. But that real estate definitely helped out in the process. And it really inspired me to you know, get into real estate and understand more about real estate. When I was when I was when I was coming up. And then you know, I went to school and my first job that I got out of school was for a company in Atlanta, Georgia. And while I was at that job, I was I was also taking some night classes. And you know during those night classes one of the instructors who was a person that you know taught classes at nighttime, but also work in the real world during the day, which is always the best teachers and he recommended that I list I read this book, The Rich Dad Poor Dad book and in that book it, like, totally rearrange the furniture in my head. Whereas like, here I was, I wanted to take care of my mom, I wanted to take care of my sisters. And now I had this job that I thought was going to be able to do that. But after paying my student loans and paying for my living expenses, I didn’t have much money left over. And I wasn’t able to do the things that I wanted to do. So I was like, reading that book, gave me the framework, while I gotta get to the right side of the quadrant, like real estate, businesses in and moving in that direction. And that company, you know, I was living in Atlanta working for them. And they, they, they offered me a position to move down to Savannah, Georgia. And I was in the middle of those night classes. And I really, I really didn’t want to go, and I ended up telling them that and they ended up laying me off the next week or whatever. And that was like a, like a pivotal changing point in my career. Because it was like, I was before I was kind of shielded by someone else’s boat. And now I was like, in the water by myself, and I needed to figure out what I was going to do. And I need to figure it out quick, because I didn’t really I didn’t have you know, any additional resources, and I had some pretty big debts from school, you know, that were that were that were due. So that’s when I got into taking action on on, you know, building my real estate portfolio and really only started with a single family home, I went in and I, I worked with every one of the trades like the electrician, the plumber, the the drywall people, I worked with every one of those trades. So I wanted to understand the business, I wanted to understand how to like, put these things together. And that was one of the reasons why I really one understand that is because prior to buying that single family, I had owned this condo, and it was fully renovated. And I walked in and you know, it was totally everything was done for me. And I bought that at the top of the market. And I realized that when you buy something at the top of the market, and you don’t add any value to that, what happens when the market actually goes down is that all of a sudden you’re you’re underwater, whereas if you’ve gone in, you’ve added value to this thing, you could still be in a good situation with the property. So working on that single family home, I knew I wanted to get good at this construction thing, because I knew that later on in life, I would be able to not be in a bad position from, you know, purchasing real estate because I could actually go in and add value to these properties. So that that that knowledge that I took from that that single family property is what I’ve now used to go in and we bought over 1500 units, we’ve renovated, I’ve done a value add strategy, we’ve done really cool things. And from a construction value creation cashflow creation standpoint. And that’s where we’re at today.

J Darrin Gross  7:59  

Awesome, I appreciate you sharing your background like that. The the AHA, when happens, it’s pretty powerful, especially when you see you know, and the way that you’ve done it or that others have done it and haven’t had success versus the way you can do it and actually, you know, create that equity or that value. That’s That’s great. So let me ask you, so the 1500 units. You mentioned you started with the single family. Are you buying multiple family property, single family properties? What’s your, what’s your strategy there?

Oliver Fernandez  8:30  

Yeah, our focus now is 100 plus unit properties. We bought 182 unit property. In Atlanta, Georgia, we got 128 unit property in Daytona Beach, Florida. So we’re buying and we’re focusing on 100 Plus unit properties now, but that single family game is where I learned, like valuable skills, you know, to that I’m now implementing, but just on a larger scale.

J Darrin Gross  8:59  

Yeah, true. And so the the title kind of the topic here was adding value through quality construction. The word quality kind of stood out in my, my mind, tell me what you mean by quality has a level of finishing does it? What is it you’re doing to to create a quality construction project?

Oliver Fernandez  9:28  

Well, a lot of the stuff that we’re buying is not brand new, it’s typically 1980s Bill 1970s Bill, some early, you know late 2000 on 2000 or 1990s bill. So we’re not buying the best of stuff but we’re buying stuff that a lot of miracle is and they want to be proud of their their, their the place they live in just the way you know someone who lives in a class a beautiful building wants to be proud of what they live in. So when we Unlike we’ll use the word quality, it’s like a place that someone can call home that they can be proud of. It’s not a like a, like a crappy job. And I just use this basic analogy. And I, we’ve done, I’ve used this analogy on basically the $80 million worth of construction we’ve done to date, and it’s what I want that done at my mom’s house. And if the answer is yes, we’re good to go. If the answer is no, we got to tear that out. And we’re going to do it the right way. And we’re going to make it so that someone that rents this place or someone that is deciding to raise their kids, their raise their family in this place, that they’re going to be proud of it through the workmanship, that we’ve that we’ve that we’ve done it that property.

J Darrin Gross  10:49  

Got it. So you mentioned that you’re not doing ground up construction, correct.

Oliver Fernandez  10:55  

We’re not doing grant construction on we, we, we, we when we first got into like the multifamily space, you know, 234 unit properties, we were doing, like a, like gut renovation projects, where we go in, we would we tear down the, you know, chair on the back of the house extended back, we’d also dig out the basement, so that we could put a unit down there, and then we’d also go up a level. So that was a, you know, that was a lot of a lot of work that went into that. And when I realized when we were doing that is that I was taking on a tremendous amount of risk, like, you know, those projects would take, you know, a year to two years to really get to the finish line. And during that year to two years of doing that construction, there was no income coming in, you know, everything was going out the door, we’re paying for the drywall or painful for and we were paying for the Windows you’re paying for everything was going out the window, Were you good paying, you know, paying the taxes. Whereas now we’re investing in multifamily real estate, and we still can do the construction. But in the meantime, we’re still receiving some cash flow, we have other tenants that are paying the bills. So I was like, wow, you know, I don’t have to carry this 800 pound gorilla on my back the whole time I can, I can do these bigger properties, you know, maybe work on 10 units a month, have the other 90 tenants that are occupying the space and renting it out, paying paying paying the bills at the property, the mortgage taxes, the maintenance, while I’m still continuing to add value in those properties, through renovating the units or you know, doing the exterior things that need to be done so that people are proud to live in live in that space.

J Darrin Gross  12:43  

So that cashflow thing, there is a key ingredient to you know, making it work. I’m kind of curious, you mentioned how in the beginning, you you recognize the risk you were taking on At what point did you have the aha experience the upside of having a larger property that had cash flow while you were doing the renovations?

Oliver Fernandez  13:05  

Yeah, so really good question. We had done another property where we did, you know, blow up the back, the top dug out the basement. And during that project, we had gotten into some difficult situations with the neighbors, and then they were going down to the local authority, which was DC at the time, and they ended up hitting our project with a stop work order, which meant we could not do anything on this project at all. And this was a project where we were planning on getting in and out in a year, we did a hard money loan on it, we paid three points down at one point a month. So we had we had a lot of fire, you know, under our butt to get this thing done. And now all of a sudden, we had to stop work order. And these people were not living up, you know, they were just just continuing to complain and, and say we were changing the architectural elements of the building and all these things that were totally out of my control. And I was like, Man, I don’t ever want to be in a situation like this anymore. Because I was we were paying all the bills, we were paying the mortgage or paying the insurance, you’re paying for all the construction. Now we got hit with a stop work order, and there’s no income coming in. And I came across this podcast, and then that’s why I love doing these things because there’s just so much value, especially when that one person gets that Aha, because I was that person that got that Aha. And I hear this guy talking about, you know, these 100 Plus unit properties. And even if you know 10 tenants or 10 tenants leave at the end of the month, you still have 90 tenants that are paying the bills, and then you could start renovating on those 1010 units. And I was like, Man, that sounds like a great idea. And I’d love to be in that situation right now. Because it’s much better than where I’m at. I’m having to put you know, pay these bills every month, whereas that guy has 90 other families helping them pay those bills every month while we still own that asset. So that was the that was the Ah, for me when I was like, I gotta, I’m doing the right things. I’m in the real estate, I’m adding value to projects. But there’s a better way. And then that’s when I found the multifamily game.

J Darrin Gross  15:12  

Got it. So in the quality construction, I wanted to ask you, because you mentioned, you know, you kind of tried to do it like you would expect for, you know, if your mom was living there, I’m kind of curious. So on on a cost basis? Do you have a sense of the difference between the cost to do it, the way you’re doing it with quality? Materials, quality finishes quality construction, versus more of like a builder grade? Get it done? And move on to the next one?

Oliver Fernandez  15:44  

Yeah, so that’s a really good question. And what we mean by like, quality is like, like hardening the unit, you know, like, yeah, we can go in and spend, you know, 500 bucks on laminate countertops, or we could go in and spend, you know, 1000 to $1,500 on granite countertop. Now, that unit, I’m not going to have to when that person, if that tenant moves out there, I’m not going to have to deal with all the burn marks all over my countertops are not going to have to deal with you know, like, you know, the laminate flaking off or peel it off. It’s Yes, there is a higher cost up front. But over the long run, which I’m looking at, you know, five years to five or 10 years, when we’re in these properties, doing our value add that unit is going to, I’m not going to have to replace that countertop again.

J Darrin Gross  16:36  

Yeah, that makes complete sense. And is your strategy more of a buy and hold thing or when you get into the multifamily? Are you are you syndicating these these properties? How are you going about raising capital and apartment properties?

Oliver Fernandez  16:50  

Yeah, they’re, they’re done through the syndication model. And we are we buy these properties, we have typically a five, five to seven year pro forma on the property. After you know, the value add usually takes, you know, one to three years to complete. And once we once we complete that I had, we’re starting to feel offers, but if we don’t get anything that we like, we just refinance, take the cash out and roll to the next property and just manage the asset and continue to collect cash flow from that asset

J Darrin Gross  17:26  

is a market has continued to evolve and you know, competition for properties and that, is there a particular like a type of property that you found or a mentor, you mentioned kind of the age anything from the 70s to the 2000s. Is there any like location type that you found that works better? Are you going into like any, like su 71 necessarily going to be to gentrified neighborhoods, but is it basically suburban urban? What’s what’s kind of your model as far as where you’re finding your properties? 

Oliver Fernandez  18:07  

Yeah, that’s, that’s an interesting question. So we’ve actually done it a little bit of both. So like, we’ve never like the properties I was buying here in Washington, DC, they were right in urban center downtown. And the price point per unit was was significantly higher. For example, a unit here in DC is $500,000 a unit. So if you have a three unit building that each units, a million, and each of each units at 500 grand, it’s a million and a half dollars, whereas you can go down to Atlanta, which is not downtown, but like in you know, like an East Point area or one of those areas like that. And you could go down there and buy those exact, you know, a unit at $90,000. So like we were, what I was doing is trading out of these higher, higher cost of living places. Not as friendly from a regulatory standpoint, high tax states and flowing our capital down to like the Atlanta markets or the Houston market or the Austin market. And being able to distribute out that that risk over more units versus just one unit here in Washington DC or, you know, a few units we could get way more units or we made way more bang for our buck down in the south, basically that the bottom part of like a smile. Florida adds Atlanta, Texas areas.

J Darrin Gross  19:42  

So you mentioned 100 units is kind of the the focal point of the properties you’re working on. So right. That is correct. And as far as the the strategy, when you acquire a property, do you have like, just kind of a general sense of what you or your capex will be and what you hope to your exit will be in relationship to your acquisition price.

Oliver Fernandez  20:07  

Yeah, we we have, we definitely we put together a budget in the beginning of what we’re going to be spending on, you know, exteriors, what we’re going to be spending on interiors, what we’re going to do on interior, like, here’s a property that we bought in Atlanta a couple years, two years ago, and it was 152 units, that property had 30 down units. So there was a lot bigger of a budget that was going into the interiors there than we were putting on the exterior, because the exterior look pretty good. Actually, they had taken all the to t 111. Signing off. They had they had done some some roof work, even though we still needed to go in there and do a little bit more. But a lot of the work that needed to be done at that property was going to be on the interior. So our budget for the interiors was much higher than then than just going in and you know, just doing a unit turn or you know, updating the kitchen here and there, you want flooring. So actually a cool story on that. That property that we bought in Atlanta, the reason why they had 30 down humans because some of those units were in the basement, or the lower level. And they had water and water infiltration, which created a mold situation and multiple of those units. So when we when we bought that property, I was I was actually excited because I had previously dealt with a situation with water coming into the basement on one of my smaller units here in DC, we we had renovated this place it was brand new, we had the tenant move in and we had been doing construction in there for over a over a year is closer to like year and a half, two years. And the first day the tenant comes in, he calls us and he’s like I got water on the base never had water at all during construction. But the first day the tenant moves in, we had water in the base. So obviously I was like, Oh crap, what was you know, and these small units, the reason why I don’t like them as well is because like we were we had to self manage these things to really make money with them. So the phone call actually came to me whereas like, you know, these bigger properties, the phone call comes to the property manager and then we’re, we’re driving the property manager to the end result. So this phone call came to me and we had to go in there and clean this thing up, and the learnings that I got from that from that that basic flooding is the exact same learnings that I was now able to multiply over like 15 of those 30 down units in that property in Atlanta and we were able to bring those things online and all of a sudden now you have 15 units paying 1000 bucks a month dropping right to the bottom line so it definitely had a massive impact on on the value of that property. Another cool thing about that property Atlanta is the reason why we were able to get it is because a lot of groups already there was like two or three groups that have already had that under contract, but they backed out because they were afraid of that that water damage. So that thing that I was crying about with when I got that phone call actually became the thing that drove a lot of value at that.

J Darrin Gross  23:22  

That’s awesome.  A little bit of experience kind of separates you from the competition when you’re you know when you have a sense of how to overcome something as opposed to you know the others who are like I don’t know what to do about that. That’s good. Let me ask you this. So when you acquire a property you do your renovations is that primarily your your your value add strategy is to improve the the unit get the rents up? Is that is that kind of the the kind of your strategy as far as your your thesis and how you guys are trying to operate?

Oliver Fernandez  24:02  

Yeah, our that’s definitely 100% Correct. And we also love like when you got like some management efficiencies that we can capture you know, we’re always looking to streamline and you know, automate you know things on a management standpoint. But um yeah, construction is where we we really create a lot of our value is becoming more and more difficult. I mean, you know, like the supply chain is becoming a problem. So we’re having to get creative I mean, there’s there’s situations now we’re looking at all the appliances and seeing how we can reuse existing appliances because you tried to call and get any of this stuff and they’re telling you it’s it’s six months out or it’s four months out. So we have to plan ahead we have a lot more planning to do a lot more communication with our with our internal team and, and the team on site so that we have the the appliances the products that we need on site to actually get the unit rental ready

J Darrin Gross  25:00  

Yeah. So I’m curious, do you have any kind of sense of for $1 invested in the renovations? Kind of a percentage rent increase you expect to get? Or we’re, you know, maybe we just say like, you know, we we spend X on renovation per unit, then that equals X percent rent increase? And how that translates into the value? Do you have any kind of a general, when you’re, you know, if you’re looking for a property based on all the numbers you’ve done that you would expect?

Oliver Fernandez  25:34  

Yeah, we’re looking for 20 to 25% Return on the money that we invest. So if we’re going to invest, you know, $100,000, we’re looking to get a return on that investment of 20,000 to $25,000. A year. Yeah, to continue to drive that value, some compound that over time.

J Darrin Gross  25:57  

Got it? And that’s, that’s the the revenue percentage, or is that the value?

Oliver Fernandez  26:03  

That’s a, like a revenue percentage.

J Darrin Gross  26:06  

Okay. Got it. Now, I’d say that the management stuff, if you can find out that, to me is kind of like the gravy are the icing on top. Whereas, you know, the the value add stuff, when you’re having to physically change things, and, and, you know, the capital improvement, budget capex budget, that kind of thing. That’s, that’s, I mean, you can see it because you’re, obviously you’re changing the appearance in that. And hopefully, you’re creating a more desirable space that somebody is willing to pay more for. In the work that you’ve done, it sounds like is a lot of the are percentage wise, exterior to the interior. Overall, do you have a sense for how much of the budget you’re putting towards exteriors versus interiors,

Oliver Fernandez  26:56  

we’re probably 7030. So 70% of our, of the money that we’re spending, we’re going to the interiors, and 30% is going to the exteriors. And the reason we look at it that way, it’s, you know, most tenants don’t want to pay to have a new roof, you know, like, but they’ll pay to have new flooring, they’ll pay to have a new fan in their in their unit, they’ll pay to have better lighting, they’ll pay to have granite countertops, they’ll pay to have, you know, stainless steel appliances, but they don’t, they don’t, they don’t, they’re not going to pay to have, you know, you know, a new window, you know, so, so we try to we focus on, you know, spending majority 70% of our money on the interiors, the 30%. On the exteriors, it’s really to protect the money that we put on the interiors like, for example, we had a property that the roofs are leaking, so like, it didn’t make sense to go and do anything on the interior. If the roof leaks, we’re just going to destroy it. So we go in, we do all the x to harden the exterior so that we don’t have any water infiltration issues. So that when we do invest this money on the inside, it’s actually protected. And we don’t have to worry about redoing this work.

J Darrin Gross  28:06  

No, I’m a fan of your your thinking there. I’ve always kind of made it a a, you know, kind of a policy with my renovations that if you’re opening a wall, and it’s old, and it’s inside, you know, if we’re going in there to replace something and you see like some old waist lines that look like they’re rusting, replace them. Let’s not do all the work only to find out we get we got a water leak inside the, you know, the totally redone unit and thing. So I hear you. So tell me a little bit about any of your your syndications as far as the, you know, raising capital, your team financing, how’s that been? And you know, going from the single families and the smaller units, were you were doing those on your own? Or did you have a team that you were doing those with? Or how did you go from that to this?

Oliver Fernandez  29:04  

Yeah, that’s really good question. So when I was doing those single families and the duplexes and triplexes, and the quad, it was all me and my wife was was was a part of that as well. And there was the problem with that was that anytime there ever was an issue, it was my wife getting a phone call, or me getting a phone call, and we were constantly trying to grow and then we were just getting pulled back into the minutiae of all of these investments. So, you know, when I heard that podcast and then started to go to like the multifamily events and and then I started to see like, wow, this is a team game. You know, all of a sudden you buy a big enough property, you buy one property, and you have 10 partners. Now all of a sudden, you have 10 people working on one problem versus one per one person working on 10 problems. We’re where I was like, I want to be on that side of the equation where we got 10 people we’re just every Buddy is focusing on what they’re really good at, like I got partners that are really good at operations, and I’m really good at construction, then I had another partner that’s really good at dealing with the banks and doing all the loan requests and, and making sure our drawers are on time and all that stuff. So we can now focus and be extremely intentional about what we’re really good at and, and come together and create a bigger result together. So I was doing those smaller properties here in DC, and where I met my partners was on a 282 unit deal down in San Antonio, Texas. And we were we were all excited, you know, like, there was a lot of, you know, value to be created, there was a 1970s built property. There’s, there’s a lot of opportunity there. And we came together on that property, and we just we we, we continue to execute, we turn that property around, there was a bigger, bigger team that had that and they just didn’t really have their full attention on it. And we were able to go in there, turn it around, we created a really good relationship. At the same time, we had bought that unit, those departments up there, Atlanta 152 units. And then so we were they were they were boots on the ground there and I was boots on the ground in Atlanta. And we just continued to develop the team and develop our communication and develop, like what we were really excited about. And as we continue to develop that, like the dream and the goal got so much bigger than I ever would have when I was just me alone, because when I was just me alone, I just wanted to get, you know, like 10 minutes to 20 minutes. Now listen, we were like we had like it was 1000 units, and is now it’s in the same thing is even happening now. It’s like, you know, we continue to double down on the business plan, we, we created a fund a three unit three unit building fund this this past year, and it was 128 units, 198 units, 180 units. So now all of a sudden, instead of just buying one by itself, we bought three together, and just continue to double down on what we’re really good at. And focus on that. And that’s like, you know, something that’s been a driver in my life since day one is like being extremely intentional about where you want to go, putting all your energy and effort behind it, and then find other people that want to come along with you. So like, I’m allergic to like small minds, you know, like, it just, it just doesn’t work. Like you know, when you when you’re thinking big and someone else is thinking small. So it’s like putting yourself around big thinkers, but also someone that’s willing, that knows how to get from point A to Z, and then something that you don’t need to constantly babysit. And that’s that’s kind of how we’ve grown the partnership and continue to do deals together.

J Darrin Gross  32:54  

Got it? So it sounds like there are the three guys or three three individuals on your team essentially that the Okay. And you as as an investor when you were doing your your properties alone, what how do you see like the the other rewards to you, I mean, the financial rewards going on as a team and doing the syndications versus doing the the one at a time on your own kind of thing?

Oliver Fernandez  33:26  

That’s an interesting question. So when we were doing that, you know, doing deals by ourselves, we did really well with that, you know, we I’m actually in the property that I first renovated here in Washington, DC. And while I was doing it, I was like 2223 years old, and I was in the back alleyway here. And it was, you know, throwing some trash away, and I ran into one of the neighbors and that neighbor, you know, he’s kind of like, Hey, what are you? What are you doing, and he saw it up, told him about the project, we were doing up the street, and he he asked if he could come see it because he had been in the neighborhood for a while and he saw the destruction and the drugs, the you know, the all of the crime that was going on in the area. And when he came in, he’s like, Oh my God, you did this and like he couldn’t believe like that, that we were transforming the way we were transforming this property. So you know, after he came in, we exchanged phone numbers and we continue to develop our relationship and I remember just calling with Colin and he was a 9090 year old World War Two bet. And I would literally sit my phone in a couple there I was going to and from work and he would just, you know, talk and talk and tell me all these crazy stories, but it turns out he ended up owning two properties down the street and he ended up owner financing those properties to me, and I was telling I was like 2223 years old, put down $20,000 And it was like a million dollars worth of real estate unfinished at Time. And we, you know, we had to go in there and do construction. I mean, the properties were disgusting. I mean, the way I don’t even know how he was even living in there, I oftentimes will tell some of my team members, like he had this the way he would shower, he had this, he had this water line that was running through the property, and he literally cut in a hose. And you literally go into the basement and turn on and turn on the hose, the valve, and then the water had come down. A little bit, but, you know, so these properties needed a ton of work, they were, you know, they were they needed, you know, hundreds of hundreds of $1,000 to get back into livable condition. But it was that opportunity that he gave us was was was was amazing at that time. In those properties. I mean, we refinance out half a million dollars on a one and a half million dollar the other. So like, the one properties by yourself, it’s, you know, there’s definitely money there. The problem that I have, though, is that all the problems and all the questions and all of the, the driving of the project came from me, you know, and I wanted to build a team, I wanted to do something where I was starting to separate my my income generation, from my time in these larger projects has helped me separate my income generation from my time. So that if when the opportunity comes, and I want to, and I will then have the ability to step away from that, but then still have all this income generation coming coming to me.

J Darrin Gross  36:32  

Right. Now, I the kind of the Yang and Yang, I think you identified it well is that, you know, going alone, as you’re going along, and it’s all yours, I mean, the good and the bad. But having kind of a larger scale with a team, you have the opportunity to separate and operate more like a business, rather than everything’s, you know, you get the call, you get the to deal with it, you get to do all the stress, all the pain, all the agony and the reward. So that I get it, I think it makes a lot of sense. Where do you see your yourself going here in the next couple of years?

Oliver Fernandez  37:11  

Yeah, so we’re doubling down on the construction side. You know, during COVID, we saw like what was important, you know, like, you know, food, water shelter. So real estate is extremely important. They told everybody to stay inside. And only way, the only reason you could leave is if you needed to go to the grocery store for food and water. So I saw how important real estate is, especially, you know, housing, residence, multifamily real estate, residential real estate. And then I also saw how important construction was because I mean, during during that time, same time, everybody wanted to get their projects done. So we’re doubling down on our construction business really going after a ton of projects that are that are really focused on what we’re really good at. And, you know, continuing to build that vehicle to continue to put money into real estate and continue to grow and then scale the team through the on the real estate side as well.

J Darrin Gross  38:14  

That’s great. That’s great. Oliver, if we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. By day, I’m an insurance broker. And I work with my clients to assess risk and determine what to do with the risk. And there’s three different strategies we typically consider, firstly, to see if there’s a way we can avoid the risk. And when that’s not an option, then we look to see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And if we cannot avoid or minimize the risk, then we look to see if there’s a way we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. It’s a risk transfer vehicle. And now such I like to ask my guests if they can look at their own situation could be their clients, investors, the market tenants, political issues, geopolitical issues, and identify what you consider to be the biggest risks that you face. And again, for clarification, while I am an insurance agent, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. And so if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Oliver Fernandez, what is the biggest risk?

Oliver Fernandez  39:23  

Yeah, this is a really interesting question. And, you know, my mind went a couple of different directions, but the direction that it just keeps going back to is the biggest risk is not being intentional about what you want to do. And the reason why that’s the biggest risk is because when you become 8090 100, or whatever your time is, and you look back on your life, and you’re like, did I do everything I wanted to do, I don’t want to ever be in a situation where I was like, Man, I could have done this differently or I could have done that differently. Alright, I really, I didn’t, I didn’t really focus on what I wanted to do here. I didn’t want to focus on what I want to do there. I want to look back and just say I was super intentional. I did everything that I said I wanted to do. And I didn’t leave any stone unturned. I didn’t, I didn’t leave any, any any opportunity that I really was excited about it. But I didn’t have the courage to go for it. Like I don’t I don’t want to be in that situation. So I want to focus on being extremely intentional about my life where I want to go or family go where team to go from my businesses to go. Because I also know the opposite side of that when you’re not intentional and you’re just letting the the world just kind of control you and put you in situations. You know, that’s never a good situation. So the biggest risk is not being intentional about life.

J Darrin Gross  40:56  

Very well said. Hey, Oliver, where can listeners go if they’d like to learn more connect with you?

Oliver Fernandez  41:03  

Yeah, if you want to connect with me, you can reach out to me at www dot invest with oliver.com

J Darrin Gross  41:11  

All right, Oliver, I cannot say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. I have enjoyed our talk, learned a lot and look forward to doing it again soon. Looking forward to it as well. All right. For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow. That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks. CRE PN Radio.

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