In this video, we sit down with a young and successful real estate investor who has built a 1000 unit empire before the age of 25.
Our guest shares their journey from starting with a single family property to transitioning into multifamily investing and scaling their portfolio rapidly.
Throughout the conversation, our guest offers valuable insights on the strategies they used to find deals, secure financing, and manage properties efficiently.
They also share the challenges they faced along the way and the lessons they learned from their mistakes.
Whether you are a seasoned investor or just starting in the real estate industry, this interview will provide you with valuable tips and inspiration to help you achieve your own investment goals.
Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe to our channel for more exciting content like this!
Chris Bounds 01:00
Good, good. Good having you on. I want to start off because you’re doing some big deals. You’ve been a part of some pretty big deals lately. And can you share with everyone, just how you got started in real estate?
Jeffrey Donis 01:19
Yeah, so initially, I got into real estate a few years ago. It was with my two brothers. In the beginning, we were focused on was single family. So we were doing wholesaling, and some creative finance deals as well. Eventually, we decided to transition into the multifamily space. But that was after the first year. We did about 15 total deals in the single-family space, primarily, 13 deals or wholesale deals. And then, we did two creative finance deals. And then one fix and flip that we ended up partnering with someone else. I can kind of I don’t know how far back you want me to go. But I’m kind of the college student at the time that I got into it and learned a lot of the process and now we’re doing what we’re doing, but yeah, I mean, I hope I can like not go too far back but just let me know what all you want to hear.
Chris Bounds 02:13
Hearing this story reminds me of myself because I flipped four houses in college. So, that’s what you did in college. How old are you now?
Jeffrey Donis 02:23
I’m 21.
Chris Bounds 02:24
Pretty much. Okay. You’re doing this stuff in college, single family, you’ve transitioned over into multifamily now, you’re 21 and you’ve got a couple how many units do you have under management right now?
Jeffrey Donis 02:37
We’ve partnered on over five. Five units which is a total of over 1000.
Chris Bounds 02:42
Awesome. So, five communities, 1000 units, right?
Jeffrey Donis 02:45
Yeah.
Chris Bounds 02:46
Huge. That’s like major congratulations there. I didn’t quite have the, so I flipped for houses in college, and then when I graduated definitely wanted to get into multifamily. The information and education weren’t quite as readily available as it is today. So it didn’t quite have like that how to. But I don’t know. I’m using it as an excuse and I just didn’t explore hard enough. You did. So, huge congrats there. What was the reason why you transitioned over into multifamily? Because most folks like me,
Jeffrey Donis 03:25
Yes.
Chris Bounds 03:26
And others, stay in a single family for a while. And they’re like, “Hey, I’m gonna save up. I’m gonna save up. I’m gonna save up.” And really you don’t need to do single-family first, most too, you don’t have to. But here you’re 21 years old going into multifamily and doing something that a lot of people talk about for decades and they never do. What pushed you into multifamily?
Jeffrey Donis 03:46
Yeah, so initially, we were listening to podcasts all the time. And when we started with a single family, that was the same approach. And slowly we started just listening to more, I’d say multifamily content and different types of gurus or thought leaders in the space. And they kept saying they wish they had gotten started sooner in multifamily. One individual who’s a little bit controversial is Grant Cardone, so that was really the person that sparked the interest in multifamily. He kept saying, you know, go bigger, like just a lot less risk, things like that, what the benefits were.
Eventually, we decided to look into it further. So, now instead of focusing on the single-family content, we really were obsessing ourselves over the multifamily content. So we kept as I’m sure you know, all the benefits and the reasons people get started in multifamily. The scalability less risk, obviously, for us it was gonna be our goal was to build a long portfolio and a long-term company and single family. It’s hard to do that. We were so transactional, we were working all day, pretty much, but we weren’t really owning any assets, other than the two credit finance deals that we did. Wholesaling was very transactional, meaning we would find the deal then have to go assign it, and then do it again and reinvest it back into the business.
And at the end of the day, we didn’t really have anything that we could hold on to. Our goal was to build long-term wealth. And we saw that we could do that a lot quicker and multifamily. So that was another reason. And initially, the reason that we got into real estate in general, is to retire our mom. So without us owning anything, it was going to be hard to do that, because we wanted to be able to have something that cash flowed consistently, and wasn’t so reliant on us working in it, a single family business that we had and how that was.
Chris Bounds 05:32
You’re decades ahead of even a lot of the thought leaders that you mentioned. I think it was even like Robert Kiyosaki, I want to say he was late 30s, maybe 40s before he was really heavily pursuing real estate. So, congrats there. So but these are big communities. I mean, five, I mean, there are roughly 200 unit communities. How at the age of 21, are you assembling the team?
Jeffrey Donis 06:00
I’ll preface this, a lot of people say hey, multifamily is the same as a single family. And I really disagree with that.
Chris Bounds 06:05
In general mechanics yet, I guess it’s the same, but it’s not. Like a multifamily, there are a lot of components that come into play, you’re buying other business. And that business is worth only what the business is produces income, or NOI single family is different because it has intrinsic value to owner occupants, not just investment purposes. So that requires certain various specialized team members, whether it’s the actual operators, property managers, the asset managers, the KPs, you get your lending team and you get your due diligence team. And then you get your acquisitions team and all that. So to get in these deals, how did you approach that?
Jeffrey Donis 06:44
Yeah, that’s a great question. So obviously, for us, in me being young, I had a lot of limiting beliefs that I really had to overcome. That was the first hurdle that we had to jump. And the way that we did that was first and foremost, educating ourselves. So I read the best ever apartment syndication book by Joe Fairless. That’s really what’s at the foundation of what we now know. And then that book, let us know that we needed to find a mentor. Once we learned that we started looking into, you know, multifamily, different mentorships and mastermind groups that we could join, we came across a few. And eventually you join one, it was a lot less expensive than the one that we ended up joining.
The first one was, again, on top of the best ever book, it really helped us learn a lot about the ins and outs of syndication. And then after that, we joined one little bit more expensive, but what we were paying for was really a network versus the knowledge which you can really find most, not everything, but most of it for free. This was more specialized. And at the end of the day, it brought the network. So the multifamily group that we joined was called, ‘Think Multifamily’. I’m not sure if you hear that Chris, but- Cool. It comes with a partner that you can partner with Mark Kenny.
He’s a KPR on our deals. And then in the group, it’s an ecosystem, react to consider it a family, where I have partners who can help with earnest money, they’re helping find deals, they can help raise capital, sign on loans, if I need that, but typically, Mark just does that. On top of that all. My Mark has a lot of experience. So when I’m speaking with partners, Mark is someone I can leverage when it comes to that. So obviously, I’m young, but Mark has a lot of experience. So they’re not only investing with me, but they’re partnering and investing with Mark.
Chris Bounds 07:50
Yeah. In the weekly newsletter, this week I talked about proximity as power. And you are the average of the five people you hang around. So hang around with the most Stephen Covey quote, and there’s this Covey, Jim Rohn. And then Tony Robbins talks about proximity as power. But a lot of people think, “Well, how do I get close to in your case, Mark Kenny, or Grant Cardone, or whatever.” And really, like, you’re probably not going to be sitting, like, you’re gonna be able to call him up and sit, sit down and coffee a couple of times a week.
But what you can do is go to networking events, you can go to masterminds, I mean, you’re gonna pay for those. But there are networking events, there are audio podcasts that sound like you listen to those audiobooks, reading books. And there are so many ways that you can get proximity to get in that proximity of people of influence, who are or have done, what you’re looking to do, and where you are trying to go. And you get that proximity.
And then that’s really where things really start to grow. In your case, also limiting beliefs, like the limiting beliefs that you start to realize that it’s just a, it’s just BS, like it is what it is. It’s a limiting belief. It doesn’t have to be true.
Jeffrey Donis 09:38
Yeah, when we first got started, we would go to these events, and we hadn’t done any deals and I would be in circles and just networking with people and I would be overhearing their conversations. I’d be a part of it, but I didn’t have much to input at that time. But I would just listen to their problems. They were raising millions of dollars they were submitting offers on properties worth 10s to $20 million, and all of these things in, I guess the conversations they were having I was immersed in. And slowly I started asking questions. And I would look around and see all these people. And at first, you started to get the impression I had this impostor syndrome.
And I think, to a extrajudicial deal, I still do, but you start to just realize that these are just normal people that just like what you’re trying to do they work hard to get there. So you start to think, “Okay, well, they can do it.” And I think this is where a little bit of my own naivete kicks in, is like, “I can do it, too.” And that’s what really led to us just overcoming limiting beliefs, and saying, you know, what, there’s nothing really that I have to take anything away from them, but they kind of inspire me to be able to see if they can do it, I can do it. So eventually, we just decided to go after our own deals, just like the lead sponsors in our groups where instead of just co-sponsoring, for example, things like that, really, were things that I was able to sort of believe on my own, after spending time with people that were actually doing it.
Chris Bounds 10:54
Yeah, I love it. I mean, imposter syndrome. When you’re growing, I think a lot of us go through that, you know, I’ve had it. I remember, I don’t recall having it when in college when I started flipping houses, because I took a little weekend weekend, boot camp is had a bike pre foreclosures. So here I am 21 years old, I’m like knocking on doors to people who are grown adults. Like, I mean, these are folks that are 40s, 50s, maybe 60s, and they’re losing their home, and I’m like, 21 years old, I have no job. And what credit I have is on a credit card that just got in the mail. And I’m like saying, “I’m gonna buy their house.” Like, how they’re going to trust me?
But I jokingly saying I was dumb enough. And really, by jokingly saying dumb enough, I was humble enough to believe what my mentor taught me. I just did it. And you just take massive action, and especially the massive action usually, like you don’t have time to worry about like the imposter syndrome, or all the limiting beliefs. You just like, “doo doo doo doo doo.” And then, like, learn to just keep doing more loans. Just after three months of knocking on doors. I got my first deal. And it was so exciting. And that brought a whole new sense of belief like, “whoa, whoa, whoa”, like, this really works. I’m 21 years old, don’t have a job. I’m still in college, and I just bought a house like, that’s very cool.
Jeffrey Donis 12:25
Yeah, would you say it got harder for you to sort of keep that mindset, because like in regards to taking massive action without necessarily overthinking it,
Chris Bounds 12:32
It can. I’ll say this, a sales order. I didn’t take a job afterwards. Business partner at the time, we went our separate ways. And I ended up becoming a manager and an inside sales company. And in experience personally, but also more so from observation. Once I became a manager, I was able to observe and I was a manager of new sales agents. New agents that get trained that come on my floor, join my team, and they usually stay with me anywhere from one to three years.
And but I was able to observe what happened and usually the new agents would outperform the veterans. And the reason is the veterans are, they come in, they come in saying, in a call suck today, the leads suck today, no one’s buying today. I’m just backlogged the customer service, yada, yada, yada. I’m like, Dude. So I would tell the new agents, like, keep that mindset as a hungry motivated sales agent, the longer you can keep that and if you can keep your your mindset in that zone, you’ll do well, the moment you feel privileged, to where you just are privileged to get deals and you don’t have to work for it. That’s when it’s going to become harder.
You’ll always especially in sales, which real estate’s pretty much sales, and actually most of your life is sales in some form. You’re gonna go through iterations that and versions of that. It’s just even Grant Cardone talks about like, in his book, like, some days, he didn’t feel motivated, but what does he do? Like, he gets after it anyway? Yeah, Robbins talks about it. Like he gives himself I think what he says like, it’s like a 15 seconds or 30 seconds. Like, he gives himself a little bit of time, feels down about something, a little frustrated about something, and then boom, snaps back out of it, gets in zone go after it.
Jeffrey Donis 14:29
That’s awesome. Yeah. I mean, like, I think I’ve obviously been in business as long as you have. But I’ve, it’s like ebbs and flows. And I’d like it to just I’m interested to see if that’s something that ever goes away or is it something that you tried to stay conscious of. I appreciate you sharing that.
Chris Bounds 14:46
I really would imagine if you talk to Elon Musk and Zuckerberg and like Ray Dalio, pretty much anyone. I would imagine, their, success over a long timeframe really comes down to their ability to refocus when things get troubled. Whenever they have bad news or downtimes, whatever, it just sucks for a couple minutes, but they just get right back after it. And they’re able to do that. And not everyone has the natural ability to do that as quickly as a maybe Tony Robbins, but it can be learned. And especially, if you surround yourself with the right people, which that’s really the important part of that proximity that being around successful people. Because they’ll put you in check. Like you start making excuses. They were like, “Man, shut the heck up.” Like, get out there and do it. I’ve been on baby.
Jeffrey Donis 15:38
Alright.
Chris Bounds 15:42
What did your first deal look like?
Jeffrey Donis 15:44
Yeah, so first single-family deal. It was, as I mentioned, we were initially in college. We were cold calling and our dorm rooms are so after I first-
Chris Bounds 15:55
Okay, so you’re talking about the first single-family over here, right?
Jeffrey Donis 15:58
Right. Would you like to talk about-
Chris Bounds 15:59
Those are my first single-family deal. And then the first multifamily deal.
Jeffrey Donis 16:02
Cool. Cold calling eventually led to a lead coming in. We were coming back from walking another property and a single family. It was a property that was here locally, where I live here in Durham. And we were driving back the seller that we had called the week before with an offer. She rejected it at that point. But she called us back that day. And let us know that she was willing to move forward, and got that under contract. And then that was the first time of us getting anything under contract.
Chris Bounds 16:28
How do you feel that moment?
Jeffrey Donis 16:29
It was good. But we didn’t really like it was cool. We never had actually done the next step. So we were like, “Okay, what do we do now.” And that’s where it plays a huge role. Like YouTube was really easy. We call it YouTube University. So we just looked at what to do next. Eventually, we learned you know, you can show it to different buyers, and eventually found one. And that was the biggest deal that we did that entire year was the first one. So that was the first deal in single-family for multifamily after joining Think Multifamily. That was in February of 2021, six months after we ended up closing on our first deal in the, because of the group.
It was another sponsor in our mastermind group that founded and we just provided value, we are a part of the marketing team on the front end. But really, we had some connections that we can make and bring in some investors, and also participate in some of the aspects of the asset management more so by being a fly on the wall, but that was the first one it was in Jacksonville, Florida. It was 138 units. And yeah, now we’re about going into our second year of ownership. So maybe like a year in a few months.
Chris Bounds 17:39
Yep. I love it. I want to point out something that’s key there. I hear this all time and probably one of the biggest pet peeves for folks that are busy, successful entrepreneurs. I get it a lot. I know all the other ones get it alot. It’s, “Hey, can I go take you to lunch and pick your brain? Or can I go buy coffee and pick your brain?” And like, the moment I hear that I cringe because ultimately what it means is, “Hey, your time’s only worth 12 bucks, or $6.” But I want to go soak out all the knowledge from you over an hour and a half in exchange for that which you’re also going to spend time like traveling to and from and really not going to providing any value in return. What you did is you put yourself in a position to be with community, be with folks that are very successful, there was an opportunity that you didn’t find, but you found a way to provide value to them.
Anyone listen to this, or want them to really take note of this like, “Don’t do that. Hey, can I pick your brain thing?” Because usually what I tell folks like if they said, I’d say, “Hey, bring me a deal.” I bring me a deal. I’ll let you know if I like it. If you want to sell it to me, cool. I’ll let you know that. But even if you just bring me a deal, and I don’t like it, I’ll let you know what I think. That’s at least bringing some value. That’s what you did and or if someone else has got a deal, which is what you did. How can you provide them value? How can you help them when you will be able to win to guarantee you even if it’s just knowledge and you’re just observing? Or maybe in your case, you get to participate a little bit? And that’s like you’re getting to play the game and getting paid.
Jeffrey Donis 19:23
Right. And I think it’s awesome, because there’s just so many fun ways to bring value that people don’t necessarily think about. So, just trying to see how you can get creative with it. Some people you know, they they have money or time or just providing your service, things like that. But a lot of people that are more successful, I think they tend to be you know, in the nitty gritty of certain things. But if you’re, let’s say, young and you don’t have a lot of money, you might be really good at social media or something like that where you can offer that kind of service for free in exchange for just even having access or what I like to do is just lead with value, perhaps make a connection, and don’t expect anything in return. And you’re just now known as that person that can connect people. I think your reputation is obviously big. And maybe one day that does come back. But regardless, leading with value is something that we’ve done, and it’s really helped.
Chris Bounds 20:11
Yeah. I mean, especially being young. I mean, you’ve got time, probably on your side, busy entrepreneurs, they’re busy. And if like, I’ll say this, there was an operator who called me, he was like, “Hey, there’s this deal on in Houston, which is where I live, and they’re like, “Hey, can you go check it out?” And if it works out, I’ll let you in the deal.” And I was like, “Sweet.” I went and checked it out, had given my notes on the community in the area, took some pictures for on the deal didn’t work out. But those are ways you can create value, it’s just find a way what do they need that you can help them out with? And do it. And that’s how you gain a little bit of leverage. Not that you expect anything. But guarantee if you do that, consistently, good things will happen. What’s your strategy for this year? Goals for 2023.
Jeffrey Donis 21:03
Yeah. My brothers and I were looking to take down one to two deals a quarter this year. We’re already pretty much over halfway into quarter one. Right now, we haven’t found the first one for this quarter things our deal flow is a little slower than we’d like it to be. But it’s picked up last week, and we’re looking at a few deals. So we’ll hopefully win one of those. And that will mark us down for our first of this year.
And then we’re looking to do two more every single quarter moving forward, which audacious or audacious goal was about 100 million in acquisitions this year. So hoping to do that, hoping to continue attending conferences, I want to go to at least one a quarter. Now on top of that, to continue building our investor network and continue operating the properties that were already on.
Chris Bounds 21:47
Love it. Love it. Well, a couple questions. I asked everyone who comes on the show. This one’s not really. So usually I say, “”Hey, if you can give advice to your 20 year old self, what would that be?” But I mean, that was like a year ago for you. What if you get to give advice to say your 14 year old self, because I imagine you had a much different vision of life than you do now. What would it be?
Jeffrey Donis 22:15
Yeah. I mean, 14 years like-
Chris Bounds 22:23
a while back, I mean, you pick a year there?
Jeffrey Donis 22:26
Yeah, I mean, I’d say for me, it’s to really focus on the things that I think God, I wasn’t as faithful as I used to be. And now I’ve come into my faith over the last few months. So think about God in my life at an earlier point, I would have made the right choices. I used to play soccer, and my vision was to go pro. That didn’t happen for various reasons. But I think if I had God, and I would have perhaps either found my way into entrepreneurship earlier or just stayed on that path, and either way, I’m happy where I am, but I think that would have been the thing that I would have told myself.
Chris Bounds 22:57
Love it. love it. What book or books have greatly influenced your life?
Jeffrey Donis 23:01
Yes, I just listened to Trevor Noah’s book. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it Born a Crime. Try to get, Trevor Noah.
Chris Bounds 23:10
Yeah.
Jeffrey Donis 23:11
But you should listen to it a few. It’s like a metal. But mighty that was just really good. I like who not how it’s well for business. It’s all about like, who, what I do literally every day just talking to people continuing to cultivate my network and build it.
Chris Bounds 23:27
In the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life?
Jeffrey Donis 23:32
Yeah, as I mentioned, I’ve been more active with my faith and just learning more about God and go into church. So things like that, has really played the biggest role.
Chris Bounds 23:42
How can people get reach out to you?
Jeffrey Donis 23:44
You can find us at Donis brothers on all social media platforms. And then we have a free checklist for anyone that’s looking to either that or just looking to a passive investment, feel free to check it out. It’s www.donisinvestmentgroup.com backslash checklist.
Chris Bounds 24:01
Love it. Thank you very much, Jeffrey, hope you crush your goals this year. You’re on the right track. So look forward to seeing how this plays out over the next 5, 10 years for you. Thanks for tuning in. If you got any value out of this at all, please like, comment, subscribe, follow and love to hear from you. And for more real estate related content, market observations, upcoming events, you can go to invested x.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter. I promise you won’t regret it. Thanks again.