Kyle Marcotte Real Estate Background:
- 21-year-old syndicator
- Syndicated 119-units at 20 years old
- Left UC Davis to pursue apartment syndications
- Located in Austin, Texas
- Say hi to him at :https://kylemarcotte.com
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Best Ever Tweet:
“There was a tremendous amount of pushback when I was looking to leave school and go full-time syndicator” – Kyle Marcotte
TRANSCRIPTION
Theo Hicks: Hello, Best Ever listeners. Welcome to the best real estate investing advice ever show. I’m your host today, Theo Hicks, and today we’ll be speaking with Kyle Marcotte. Kyle, how are you doing today?
Kyle Marcotte: Good. Thank you for having me on.
Theo Hicks: Absolutely. Thank you for joining us. A little bit more about Kyle – he is a 21-year-old syndicator, he syndicated his first 119 units between two different deals at 20 years old, and he actually left UC Davis to pursue apartment syndications, currently located in Austin, Texas. You can say hi to him at kylemarcotte.com. So Kyle, could you tell us a little more about your background and what you’re focused on today?
Kyle Marcotte: So a little bit about my background. I was a pre-med student at UC Davis and playing division one soccer out there, and was just giving a lot of my time to other people and pursuing things that I wasn’t fully passionate about, and I just started to realize that in order to put the time in that’s necessary to be really successful at something, you have to really enjoy doing it as well. So I just knew that I was doing the wrong thing and I didn’t know really where I was going to find this passion or this thing that I could start pursuing, but ended up finding real estate through Rich Dad Poor Dad. I know, very cliche, but that is what happened. I was in my apartment in college, my sophomore year early on, and I just read the book and it put words to the feelings that I was having, which was I didn’t want to trade my time for money all the time especially as a doctor; you go to school for God knows how long and you’re in quite a bit of debt and you trade quite a bit of your time… And it’s a noble profession and I love the service aspect of it, but I just couldn’t see that being something that was going to light me up inside. So I found real estate and quickly jumped into it and then found multifamily through Jake & Gino and realized that that was going to be the best way to scale out of my business so that I could run a 107-unit deal one hour of the week is really all it takes, because you have a full-time property management because of the scale, and that just made a lot of sense. And by my mid sophomore year, I did a 107-unit deal in Louisville and then I ended up actually dropping out of school and pursuing this full time.
Theo Hicks: Alright, thanks for sharing that. So before we get into specifics of some of the deals, I just had to ask a follow-up question. Most people that are doing this are older, and for them, it’s about leaving a job. For you, it was about leaving college. Most people, they’re leaving, and then you talked about this in Rich Dad Poor Dad, what you’re “supposed to do”, that you get a lot of pushback from people. So what was the hardest part about deciding to quit, in this case, college, not necessarily a W-2 job, in order to pursue apartment syndications?
Kyle Marcotte: So there was a tremendous amount of pushback, as you said. My parents, for one, were not the biggest fans. I don’t think that parents are super excited to hear that their kids dropping out of school their sophomore year, especially when it’s an out of state school… And I’ve been pursuing soccer my whole life too, so telling my soccer coach that “Hey, thanks for recruiting me all the way from Austin to the Sacramento area and spending money on me, but I’m no longer going to finish out the year with the team, and everything like that.” So that was probably the hardest conversation for sure, just because soccer had been a part of my life since I was very little. It was the one thing that I had poured my heart and soul into, and to have to move on from that was definitely difficult, but there’s a great quote that says, “Be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you want to be at any time,” and you have to be able to see that change is inevitable and change is often a good thing, so you just have to embrace it and step into it if it’s what your heart’s telling you to do.
So even though literally nobody believed in me for a six month period where I hadn’t really done any deals and I was not going to school anymore, and getting the parents behind everything was difficult, and even my roommates were judgmental because from their point of view, it was me saying that I was smarter than them and I didn’t need school and that they did… And that’s not actually what it was; it was just that I was pursuing something I was passionate about. Yeah, it was definitely one of the hardest six months of my life, having pretty much no one really believing me and even myself not believing my own self at times. So it definitely taught me a lot about life and a lot about sticking to your guns and believing in yourself, but it was definitely not an easy road for sure.
Theo Hicks: Did you leave college after you had done the 107-unit deal or, or was that six months the period in between the first deal and the second deal?
Kyle Marcotte: Well, I hadn’t officially unenrolled from college in that six month period, but I had stopped going to classes, because you didn’t have the time necessarily… Because I was going and speaking at meetups at night and researching all day, reaching out to brokers all day, going to meetings all day, and I’d fully committed myself to this, but I hadn’t officially enrolled because it was mid-quarter, and on UC system, it’s the quarters. So we have three little sections of school, and then summer, but I was in the middle of, I guess, the spring quarter, and I just decided to stop going, and that was definitely difficult. And then we had that 107-unit I got under contract, and I unenrolled or whatever, but I hadn’t closed it, because escrow takes a little bit of time; raising money and all the hiccups that can come there.
So it was definitely a risky decision, but it was just one of those things where I was just listening to my heart and everything felt right and I just decided that if I’m not going to do it now, then I’m never going to do it. People always say that they’re just waiting for the perfect time to do things, but there really is never a perfect time. The only time you can really do it is now. The longer you wait, the less likely it is that you’re going to actually take the jump.
Theo Hicks: Exactly. So you already mentioned that you were networking brokers to find these deals. So I’m assuming you found this deal through networking with brokers, correct?
Kyle Marcotte: Yes, that’s correct.
Theo Hicks: Okay. So what was that like, talking to brokers as a, at the time, 20-years-old?
Kyle Marcotte: It’s insanely difficult, and it’s also not only the brokers. I’d say the hardest part was the raising capital part. The brokers is over email correspondence, so they don’t necessarily ask your age off the bat, and if you’re providing really good underwriting back to all their deals, following up on a bi-weekly basis and putting them in a system to where you know that you’re going to be following up on them, you have a good CRM, so you know their daughter’s name and that they play soccer or that they are a Girl Scout, and you can follow up in a personal basis and make sure that you’re developing a relationship, they probably thought I was 30, 40 years old on the email, because it just didn’t come up in conversation until I had built a decent relationship with them, and then they were like, “Okay, I really don’t care how old you are. This correspondence has been very professional and official.”
But looking at someone in the face and asking them to invest in you and them seeing that you are, obviously, 20 years old, that is the hardest part for sure, and they’re like, “Have you ever done this before?” Obviously, you can’t say yes, because you’re 20. What — were you doing this at 16?” It’s not possible. So telling people that I’ve never done this before, but I was going to work extremely hard and put everything I had into this and then I was putting so much on the table, I think that people just decided to take a leap of faith with me, but overall they’re just super blessed that they decided to do that.
Theo Hicks: So that process for good underwriting, following up on a bi-weekly basis with personal notes… Is that something you read in the book, you learned naturally, did you get that through Jake & Gino? How did you come up with that process?
Kyle Marcotte: I think I read it in some book. I think it might have been maybe the [unintelligible [00:09:11].04] book and then the real estate agent guy from New York, I think it might have been that book. But I read just so many books that first year. Honestly, I probably read at least a book a week, including the Best Ever Syndication Book, and just a lot of different books that talk all about business relationships and how to do especially real estate, but also business in general, because I’ve found that it’s important to know business, not just real estate, and the relationship side of things and the systematic side of things as well is super important, and that’s from books like E-Myth teaching me not to be auto emailing those people, but try to set up some system. Yeah, I was really just reading a bunch of books and just copying what other people had already been successful with.
Theo Hicks: Let’s focus on the raising capital part. So you mentioned that you were putting a lot on the table. Can you be more specific about what you meant by that?
Kyle Marcotte: Yeah, putting a lot on the table means to me is I’m giving up my dream of playing soccer, I’m dropping out of a really good school, one of the best public schools in the country, and taking a complete risk on my future to pursue this thing. So I’m against the wall. It’s like, if this doesn’t succeed, then my life goes down the hill. So when people are in that position, we often show up and rise to the occasion. It’s just human nature. There’s no real option other than to succeed. So people can see that in your eyes and hear that in your voice when you’re talking to them too, because at that point, I was at a level of commitment that was pretty noticeable to other people when they were talking to me, and I think that that made up for the lack of experience; it was just that they were like, “Wow, this kid’s really going for it. Let’s give him a chance.” These people really do want to help other people out and I definitely knew what I was talking about as well. I was speaking the lingo and showing people models and showing people my detailed underwriting and also them coming to the table and saying how committed I was, it made up for the obvious age.
Theo Hicks: So how much money did you raise for this 107-unit deal?
Kyle Marcotte: I had partners on the deal, but I raised over half a million dollars, somewhere around $600,000.
Theo Hicks: Okay, how many investors was it?
Kyle Marcotte: It was about four investors.
Theo Hicks: Four investors. Do you mind telling us who those four investors were and how you found them?
Kyle Marcotte: Yeah, so the main investor was a guy named Lalo, who I met at a local meetup. I had slowly become an expert in the area just by positioning myself at a meetup. So I would go in and at first, I would just say, “I like this meetup. I found it this way,” and tell them a little bit about the marketing, and then I would go and I’d bring a friend and say that I’ve been telling people about it and that it’s a good meetup, and then they were like, “Okay, cool. This kid’s bringing me some value, bringing people to my meetup,” and then I’d come back again and I’d ask, “Hey, can I start checking people in and maybe scheduling some speakers for you in the future?” Just doing little odd jobs, helping clean up after the meetup, and the guy was like, “Yeah.” I did that for about six meetups, seven meetups, and then I’d just ask, “Hey, can I start speaking on stage maybe, 10, 15 minutes, just about multifamily?”, and then he says yes to that, and you start to get on stage and you’re holding a mic, and people take you more seriously, and that’s actually how I met Lalo, and then he introduced me to a couple of his friends from work, and then that snowballed, and that’s how I raised almost all the capital – from him and then through his connections, and they also ended up liking me as well.
Theo Hicks: That meetup strategy is very solid. I think that’s very practical advice for people who want to raise capital and don’t have a lot of experience. So thank you for sharing that. So before we get to the money question, can you give us the numbers and some of the details on that 107-unit deal? So you’ve already talked about how you found it – maybe go through that again, what the purchase price was, what the business plan is, and then how it’s doing today, and when you bought it and things like that?
Kyle Marcotte: Yeah, of course. So the purchase price was four and a half million, $4.55 million, to be exact. It’s about 42k per door, and the business plan was really that we had actually bought it thinking it was 106-units, but we found a down unit fully plumbed, just had a bunch of storage in it. We quickly moved the storage out and converted the unit back to being operational and that adds $12,000 NOI on an annual basis, and then on a five cap, that’s quite a bit of value on the back end. So that was a home run day one, and then another big business plan – the main thing, the reason we bought it was because the payroll expense was almost double the market because the manager on site was actually the owner’s relative. So it was somewhat of a charity case and he was getting paid a decent salary to be an onsite manager, double the market rate, and we were like, “Okay, we can cut payroll day one,” which is amazing for adding quite a bit of value there, and then the down unit was just icing on top. But right now, it’s doing pretty well. We’re thinking about either doing a refinance or just holding it through the five-year term, but it’s pretty much stabilized at this point and we’ve been providing the preferred rate of return to our investors and things have been going pretty smoothly.
Theo Hicks: What was the compensation structure you offered to those four investors?
Kyle Marcotte: So there was more than those four, because my partner Eli also helped raise a little bit of money as well, but the structure was 70-30 split with an 8% preferred rate of return, with 70 in favor of the LP.
Theo Hicks: Do you mind just quickly telling us about your business partner, how you found him, and then maybe how you two split the general partner duties?
Kyle Marcotte: So me and Eli actually met at a Jake & Gino event in Jacksonville, and there’s a longer story behind how I actually afforded that plane ticket to Jacksonville, but long story short is that I actually applied for jobs in my college town. The only person hiring was an elderly living facility and I had the 6 am shift to noon shift, where you’re waking up the tenants who live there and getting them ready for the day and that means showering and everything like that. So it was definitely a rough job, but it was the only one who would hire and I had to make the money to make this plane ticket in a one and a half month period, and I ended up getting a red-eye. I think it stopped in Dallas, Charlotte, and then Jacksonville finally three hours before the event that morning, and I ended up meeting Eli there. We got to know each other a little bit better, and then about a month later, he was like, “Hey, I got this deal in Louisville. I think it’s gonna be huge. Could you raise any capital for it?”, and I just said yes before I knew that I could, and committed, and then figured it out, and the rest is history.
Theo Hicks: Last question before the money question, I promise. What’s your structure with Eli? How does the compensation break down? Because it sounds like you’re specifically raising capital and he is doing everything else?
Kyle Marcotte: He didn’t do everything else, but he definitely did the majority of the underwriting and some of the financing, things like that. This is actually where I learned the majority of the process-based tasks as far as building your team around it and securing financing and things like that. But we split the GP up where capital raise typically gets about 30% of the GP and then the asset manager partner gets around 50%, and then you have some leftover percentage for the KP, which is people who are going to sign on the loan and also put up risk capital; I think that’s something that you guys are doing. The GP is not putting up risk capital. Risk capital, meaning money you’re not going to get back if the deal does not close. So that’s inspection costs, lawyer fees and some other things like that. So we actually had an LP come and put that in. So we gave him extra GP share, I think it was about 10% of the GP just for signing on the loan and putting up some risk capital.
Theo Hicks: Okay, thanks for sharing that. Alright Kyle, what is your best real estate investing advice ever? Let’s answer it for people who want to get started in apartment syndication so they’re more specifically raising money with really no experience doing it.
Kyle Marcotte: I think the best advice I have is either that meetup strategy or just getting on social media and posting as much as you possibly can. I personally post almost ten times a day on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. I think it’s just really important to establish yourself as an expert in the industry. So in real life, the meetup strategy, I laid it out earlier in the episode, but it’s first you come to the meetup, you’ve got nothing to give other than telling that guy how you found this meetup, because that gives him really valuable feedback on his marketing, and where he can start spending more money and less money. Then you bring a friend the second time, which shows him that you’re talking positively about his meetup in public, you’re bringing people to it, you’re liaisoning people to his meetup that makes him feel like you’re adding value again, and then the third time is just picking up all the odd jobs that I’m sure this guy does not what to do, which is scheduling people, sending out the weekly emails, putting people’s name tags on and just basic things like that, check-in… And then once you start establishing that relationship with the guy, you’re adding value over time, you can start to build up the goodwill to ask the big question, which is, “Hey, can I speak for just 10 to 15 minutes?” Don’t say, “Hey, I want the whole meetup. Give me the whole stage for an hour.” No, just ask for 10, 15 minutes, establish yourself as an expert, and if you can’t do that, because you live in a place where meetups don’t exist, either start your own or focus on social media, which would be LinkedIn, for sure, is huge right now… And you’ve got to post more than once a day. I know it’s really difficult, but if you do it for three weeks, it’ll become supernatural, and you’ll stop questioning if you’re capable of posting. You’ll just start doing it automatically, and then over time, people start to take notice and immediately just associate you as an expert in the space.
Theo Hicks: Yeah, that meetup strategy is essentially how I got my job working for Joe about four and a half years ago. So it definitely works. If you want to accomplish at a meetup group, they’re great places to find jobs, find partners, find deals, things like that. Alright Kyle, you ready for the Best Ever lightning round?
Kyle Marcotte: Yeah, let’s do it.
Break [00:17:18]:04] to [00:18:31]:03]
Theo Hicks: What is the best ever book you’ve recently read?
Kyle Marcotte: The best book I’ve read right now would probably be DotCom Secrets. It’s a book about sales funnel and marketing copy and things like that. It’s been huge for me and my business for sure.
Theo Hicks: If your business for it to collapse today, what would you do next?
Kyle Marcotte: I would probably just go out and try to get another deal and make it happen again. If it was to collapse due to pricing, I would assume that the rest of the market would be rather cheap, and I would try to galvanize people to invest in a new deal and try to offset any of the loss that we got from the 107, because I would be assuming that that would mean the market would go down and our price point would no longer make sense, and we wouldn’t be able to meet our debt coverage. Honestly, the best thing to do would be counterintuitive, but it would be to buy more, and I think I would try to go and find another deal, and hopefully make some asymmetric returns on that and make people whole again.
Theo Hicks: So this question’s besides your first deal and your last deal, what is your best ever deal? But you’ve done two, so you can’t do your first or your last… So just tell us a little bit about that 12-unit deal.
Kyle Marcotte: So the 12-unit deal was a group deal with some students in the Jake & Gino community, and we did a 12-unit in Austell, Georgia, which is outside of Atlanta. It was another home run, easy deal. The only thing we’ve had problems with is the management, but we’ve recently remedied that problem, and we’re deciding to maybe demolish the single-family home that’s actually on the property as well and maybe selling that land or doing something with that as well.
Theo Hicks: What is the best ever way you like to give back?
Kyle Marcotte: Me personally, I go to Bible study on Friday mornings and just giving back to that group of guys and everybody just coming together and talking about our faith and grounding ourselves in real reality in real truth, which is that we’re not as big as we think we are and that maybe we should take our lives a little bit less seriously. So on Friday mornings, I like to come back to that group of guys and just to feel grounded with them.
Theo Hicks: And then lastly, what is the best ever place to reach you?
Kyle Marcotte: Probably kylemarcotte.com, because you have all my resources there and some links to my social media. But yeah, kylemarcotte.com is definitely the best place to reach me.
Theo Hicks: Well Kyle, thanks again for joining us today; a very inspirational conversation. It’s always great to hear about younger people getting into real estate. I got into real estate when I was about 23, I think; so similar to you. So props to you for getting into real estate. You talked about the hardest part about quitting and leaving school was getting a lot of pushback from your parents, even some of your roommates were pushing back, having to tell your soccer coach that “Hey, you brought me out here, but I’m leaving to go on and do things.” So everyone listening who’s quit their job can definitely relate with going through that… But you came out the other side and did the 107-unit deal.
We talked about how you were able to network with brokers, which was easier than raising capital because networking with brokers was more virtual, and when you actually met them in person, you’ve done their legwork where they were going to take you serious, regardless of how old you were. So specifically, you provided a good underwriting feedback on their deals, you had a good system that you followed up on a biweekly basis, with personal information about them, about their lives or family, and then all the processes that you used. You read a book per week and just tried to copy what other people are doing.
We talked about how you were able to raise capital, and it really came down to you putting a lot on the table and burning all bridges behind you and needing to succeed, and the people took the leap of faith and invested with you, and it’s working out for them and as well as for you.
You said that you found the main investor at one of the meetup group, and you walked us through your meetup strategy, which is step one, to show up; step two, to bring a person to the meetup to add value that way; and then thirdly, to do some of the smaller tasks that they probably don’t wanna do themselves – check people in, schedule speakers, clean up afterwards, and then eventually you took it a step further, which was to asked to speak on stage for 10 to 15 minutes about multifamily.
We talked about your 107-unit deal, $4.5 million deal. The two biggest value add plays was finding an extra unit that was down, and then you converted it to an actual unit and added about $12,000 to the net operating income, and then the payroll expense was abnormally high because of a relative situation. And then you met your partner Eli at Jake & Gino event. You talked about how you paid for your ticket by working at an assisted living facility for about a few months, getting up super early and doing some tasks I’m sure you didn’t want to do, but you grinded it out, got that ticket, met your partner. He found a deal, asked you to raise capital for it. The split was 30% to you, 50% to him, and then you had some allocation left over for the KP and the person who paid for the upfront costs.
Lastly, your best ever advice besides the meetup strategy already mentioned was to get on social media and post as much as you can. You post ten times a day to LinkedIn, Facebook and I think you said Instagram, and your advice on how to get that as a routine is you do it for three weeks and it’ll become second nature, it’ll become easy. So post as much as you can on social media to get to position yourself as an expert, and then follow that meetup strategy as well. So thanks again, Kyle, for joining us today. Best Ever listeners, as always, thank you for listening. Have a best ever day and we will talk to you tomorrow.
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