← Living Your Legacy
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- [00:00]
A
People get into real estate and they buy some Airbnbs or single family homes or fix and flip and you know, you don't have to share the numbers, but you probably did a bigger build and more like revenue there in one two and a half year single project. But that's because you're playing at a big level like that is a scary idea for most real estate investors. Right.
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B
I spent on average about 20 to 30 million dollars a year in private notes. Individuals typically will only put a certain amount of money risk. You know, I had a vision for myself back when I was 17, 18 years old. Everything I've done since has been working towards that goal. Mark Vincent Fanzler is a real estate powerhouse with over 40 years in the industry, building a vertically integrated group of companies from the ground up. Rising from humble beginnings to senior leadership roles at some of the nation's largest firms, he now channels that experience into coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs.
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A
What are a few tips? Someone's, you know, got a business, they're listening, they're making a million a year, they want to get into real estate, but they don't know where to start.
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B
Generally the best thing for them to do until they get some knowledge and some legs underneath of them.
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A
It spans the globe like a super high cold Internet. Elvis Presley. Today, Apple is going to reinvent.
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B
It's not over until I win. The Living your Legacy podcast for those.
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A
Who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible.
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B
Oh, that is sensational. Jordan, Open Chicago with the lead. You said Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream.
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A
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Legacy Makers. Joining me today is M. Vincent. He's a serial entrepreneur and just like me, has a big passion and love for real estate. So we're going to talk about all of his entrepreneurial ventures, real estate, how to invest and how to grow and build teams around what you do. That's exactly what he does when he finds opportunities. And one thing I've learned, entrepreneurship, it's all about jumping on big opportunities. When they present, they can be life changing. And I'm sure we got some stories of that. So welcome to the show.
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B
Thank you. Glad to be here.
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A
So I know you've got a lot going on and we could probably spend 15, 20 minutes just talking about what you do. But let's try and summarize it into a minute. Like what are the big projects you've done and are doing that you're really proud of?
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B
Yeah, we, we focus primarily on national commercial, mixed use Ventures, anything from adaptive reuse. Like I'll buy old hospitals and convert them into something else. Hotels do the same thing. Big land development deals. Got 75 acres in Texas. We're putting 2.1 million square feet on it. Wow. About a third of that I'll keep and own. The rest I'll lease out. I have large tracts of land in Colorado that are the largest undeveloped commercial tracks within 100 miles of it. So we're going to put big development in that, big commercial mixed use development in there.
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A
So, so how did you get in? You know, most people, when they think of real estate, they think of buying an Airbnb, right? Or, or maybe, you know, if they get more advanced, they go into a little multifamily, something like that. How did you get into this? More like big kind of. You know, I always say boring businesses generally win. Right. Like, you know, and this is kind of like taking an old distress building and changing it around. How do you get into that?
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B
It started in my youth. You know, I had a vision for myself back when I was 17, 18 years old. Everything I've done since has been working towards that goal.
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A
Okay.
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B
I started early on in a corporate life as a carpenter. Ended up as senior vice president for companies that were doing 3,400 million dollars a year. Left the operational side, moved to the business development, marketing, branding side. Eighteen months later I was a vice president there. And then when it came to all things construction, this was all commercial, mixed use, same stuff. I moved over to the owner side and a year later I was a national director for the company's continental U.S. holdings. So we were responsible for sourcing the asset, figuring out what to do with it, what market windows we were going to hit, get them zoned, approved, build out stabilized, and then I turn it over to an asset manager for permanent.
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A
Nice. So what's like one of the coolest or biggest projects you've done so far that you really loved or proud of?
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B
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware I was working with, this was the last company I worked for in my corporate life. I did 99 acre lease, did multiple back to back leases. They just perpetuate, put in little over 2.7 million square feet on one site. At 927 condos, 350 to 400,000 square foot urban inline retail, which is ground floor stuff with apartments, condos above it, office, medical office, big box retail.
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A
Those are basically a whole town. Yeah, yeah.
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B
Hilton Garden Inn on the same site. Yeah. So, wow, that was a pretty cool project.
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A
How long did that take it took.
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B
Me about two and a half years to get through the entitlement process.
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A
But what's fascinating, I think with like I always teach to go big, right. And it's like people get into real estate and they buy some Airbnbs or single family homes or fix and flip and you know, you don't have to share the numbers, but you probably did a bigger build and more like revenue there and 12 and a half year single project than most real estate investors will do in their whole life buying hundreds of houses and single stuff. Right. And. But that's because you're playing at a big level and most people having a rough. Like that is a scary idea for most real estate investors. Right. So how do you get into the mindset of going that big?
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B
It just came from a lifetime of being in and around.
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A
It's just stepping up each time, I guess too. Right.
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B
Even. Even when I was in corporate life doing different parts of it, it was always on big jobs.
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A
Sure.
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B
So I was never around small stuff.
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A
That's good though. That's your environment. Right. Because it's like, I think you're like entrepreneurship. You're kind of like, you know, the, the shark in the fish. The fish tank bowl. Right. Like you grow to your environment because you are surrounded by the big stuff. Even when you were just doing it more in a job versus it all being your money and name on the line, it got you kind of trained mentally to take that big stuff on.
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B
Exactly. And then I retired in 2008, time frame, started doing small projects just to. For stuff to do because I was in retirement, wasn't ready to stop, stop, you know. And here I am 10 years later and I got a national. Couple national businesses and four regional ones in a couple state.
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A
So. So was there a moment when you're doing these really big projects where you're like signing the contract or whatever or the loan and you're like there's an old crap moment like tell us about every time. Every time.
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B
Yeah. And it's not because of the job. It's because of the capital got raised.
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A
Yeah. Y. I mean.
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Yeah, yeah.
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A
You put in.
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You know, when you put something together like that, the kinds of people that you used to raise capital from on the smaller jobs are not the same people you raise capital from for the.
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A
Big ones to tell us about that a little. The people don't get that. You know, Explain it a little.
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B
I spent on average about 20 to 30 million dollars a year in private notes.
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A
Oh, wow.
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B
That's just individuals like you and me who have capital.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Who aren't in the business of lending, but look for other things to invest in. So they invest in projects like mine. Right. So you do stuff like that. Individuals typically will only put a certain amount of money at risk.
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A
Yeah. Half a million mil and maybe more. Yeah.
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B
When you get into the kinds of projects I'm doing now, they're 20, 30, $40 million minimums.
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Yeah.
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So it's very different.
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A
And these are investment firms or it's a variety.
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Some of them are individuals. I still have 50 players that invest with me exclusively.
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A
Okay.
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B
I can generally stack a couple of them together in a syndicated deal.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And the rest of it is all in a fund, which is one of the companies I own. We raise capital to, you know, just fund my own ventures. We don't. We don't invest in anybody else's stuff just to earn.
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A
Yeah. And what's the. If you're willing to share the most you had to raise for a project.
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B
The fastest and most initial raise was just to show proof of capital. I raised $7.1 million in 72 hours.
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A
72 hours. Wow.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. That was for the hospital job down in daytar.
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A
Okay. And let's talk about, you know, I love to talk about too, if you're willing to share entrepreneurship. Everyone looks from the outside and like, they're probably listening to the first 10 minutes or so this episode and like, wow, this guy's a big real estate investor, crushing it, doing building towns. But there's been failures along the way, I'm guessing, if I was the betting man. Right.
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B
Of course.
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A
So what was one of the ones where you lost. Lost. You know, you lost your ass on it and you had to figure it out because that's part of the journey, Right?
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B
Yeah. And often when that happens, it's not because of anything you've done.
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A
No.
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B
It's something that somebody else did. They got in your way. Yeah. One of the first ventures I bought was a big due diligence job. And I hired team to do the due diligence for me. And I asked some questions of having come where I come from, I knew the kinds of things to ask, and they gave me all the answers that they thought I needed to hear instead of the right ones. Closed on a piece of property and it end up. It was a landlocked piece of property.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The easements that came with it were just explain that.
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A
A third grade level for people listening to buy something and you can't do much with it.
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B
Right. In order to have access to a property, you either need an easement or right away or public. Right away to a site. That's a legal way to access the site. This particular property came without any of those. And I needed access across three properties to get to it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
The easements that were on the property that we had gave an old railroad access to our properties to maintain their tracks, which had been long since bifurcated. It was gone. But my team misrepresented what they were. I closed on it and we ended up having to go. I had to sue Wells Fargo. Couple. A couple of neighbors were able to work with me. Wells Fargo had to go after. Because they foreclosed on the property and I had to sue the corporation to get it, to get my easements. Oddly enough, they were the easiest ones to work with because they wanted to sell the assets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they couldn't because when you put a lawsuit against a property and record it, there's. It's called a list pendants. And they can't do anything with it till they settle with you. And they wanted it off their books. Yeah.
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A
They just want rid of it. Yeah.
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B
Well, you had to take that to Superior Court to get.
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A
Wow.
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To get it all resolved.
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A
Wow.
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And in the end, we got what we needed. I made a little bit of money, but the battle certainly wasn't worth it.
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A
Yeah, yeah. The time energy. Well, since Warren Buffett always says, you know, arguably the best investor of all time or one of. He's like, you know, you're going to win and lose in investing. Just make sure your wins are big and your losses are minimal. Right. So that's kind of what you want any other. Yeah, yeah. You're trying to do here. And I think that's just. It's so good to hear because it's not all sunshine, you know, whatever. If it's a business or real estate, it's. It's not all sunshines and rainbows and especially real estate. There's, you know, I own a few properties. I've been doing real estate for 15 years almost now. And there's just so much that can happen after you sign the contract that you don't. You can do your due diligence and your surveys and stuff. Yeah. And then you have to fight with the government or the. You know, this.
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B
Yeah. Most of the losses don't come from failed jobs. They come from properties you get into and find out during due diligence you can't do what you wanted to do and you have to leave the job and the money spent is gone.
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A
Yeah, yeah. Oh, there's a pipe under here or this bit's protected or you can't get this light. You know, you thought you could get this thing and that's so important. So what about your other businesses that you know, we talked a lot about your real estate. What else do you do on top of that?
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B
Yeah, so the businesses that I own, we have a real estate fund that raises capital. I mentioned earlier, there's two. One for debt, debt capital and one's for equity capital. So I play both. Right. The other is the invincible we talked about briefly. And a partner in one company is called M. Vincent Assets. Scott Deputy and myself own the company. It's a realty division and we're in six states and growing. We're brokered by EXP on the realty side and the commercial side so we can represent nationally with the licenses that we have. So it's a pretty cool package. And we, we got teams. We're building in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida and North Carolina. Currently Texas and Colorado are next. Because of the ventures I have there. I'm trying, you know, I want to keep the commissions back in house.
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A
Sure, right.
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B
Because when you're talking like Colorado, 350 condos at a minimum. 350 each. It's 120 million in gross sales. We want the commissions to stay with us. Right. Obviously. I own a property management company with an in house broker because EXP doesn't play on the property management side. So we have an in house broker for that. I own a maintenance company. All invent. All of these are invented related. Own a steel building business that produces steel in 13 states. I bought into it so I could produce steel for my pictures. It cost obviously, but we can provide steel building packages to developers across the country. It's not big structural stuff, it's, you know, stuff like this building is.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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B
And then I own a marketing company that we market to homeowners for the purposes not home property owners, for the purposes of acquiring real estate.
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A
Yeah.
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About half of it residential, half of it commercial. The commercial stuff is all for me to buy, keep and long term, the residential stuff, I sell off most of it, you know, either through wholesale packages or we're renovate it and sell them off so that I can have the capital I need for the.
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A
Yep.
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Commercial deals. And we hit about a half million properties a month.
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A
Wow. So. So last couple of questions, you know, we talked a lot about what you do in all this real estate. What are a Few tips. Someone's, you know, got a business, they're listening, they're making a million a year, they want to get into real estate, but they don't know where to start, do they? What, what's just some tips you'd give them?
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B
Generally the best thing for them to do until they get some knowledge and some legs underneath of them, is to invest in somebody that knows what they're doing. Take a ride on somebody else's venture. There's plenty of people around.
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A
So like just invest in a fund.
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B
With someone that they found or a particular deal. Right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right. The difference between the two is if you're a private fellow and then I'm just negotiating a deal with you and I needed $400,000 for a job, you would be the only lender on the job. You would have the first lien position. You'd get all the same documentation you would get, you know, if you were buying a property that you would get from a bank, you'd get the same thing from me, including the lien against the property. That's private money. When it's in a fund, you're investing into a fund for one or two things. It's either for raising capital for a specific deal and it's a large deal and you're going to be one of many people in on it, or it's a fund that doesn't have a deal selected yet. You're just committing dollars. And when a deal presents itself, there's a capital call and then they, they.
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A
Put their money in and great. And then second part, follow up to that is someone's like, no, I want to get into it and learn and start building my portfolio and have tens of millions of dollars of real estate in 20 years. How, how, you know, but they're still running their business. There's so many types of real estate they can buy. Storage units, RV parks, Airbnbs, multi family office, commerce. Right. What are two or three that you would say are a good starting point for an entrepreneur?
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B
Multifamily is almost always good.
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A
Okay.
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B
It's very, very seldom that it's in a down market.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Right. So they're fairly safe. But with all the rules and regulations around the tenant landlord laws, Delaware in particular is a very tenant friendly state.
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A
Most are, I find. Right.
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B
And it's getting worse. Make sure you have a good property manager. Don't try to do it on your own.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Because the mistakes you can make will cost you far more than you can make.
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A
Sure. And what about, you know, two popular ones Airbnbs and fix and flip. You ing about those.
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B
Well, Airbnbs are good again, you need a manager.
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A
Yeah.
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B
That you should have that's specific to the Airbnb market.
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A
That, that different Airbnbs are like the everyday investor. Right. It's like going and doing the, the 5K run at the park. It's not like you're doing a. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
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B
Because they can keep a week or two for themselves and go vacation.
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A
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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B
Out the rest of the time.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So that's a good, it's a decent investment. But generally you want to make sure that you're finding those in places that.
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A
Are destination locations and those I feel you're not like printing cash. It's just your way, riding it for 10, 20 years and it should go up appreciate. Right, right, right. Yeah. And what about, you know, a lot of people get kind of look at the fix and flip, you know, buy something, renovate, trying to exit out, make 50, 100 grand.
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B
Yeah. They're, they're the more risky pieces of investments. Right. Because when you buy a piece of property, it's generally ready to be lived in now. And you have to take it apart and turn it into something to turn it into something else. And if that's not the life you're in, you can make a lot of mistakes pretty quickly. And most properties, you know, outside the Miami market. Right. Are not making 50 or $100,000 a house. Yeah, they're lucky. Most people are happy if they're making 20, 30 grand. Yeah, that's not me. You know, if you make a mistake, that's gone.
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A
Yeah. And what I learned too with real estate is like, you know, I'm pretty handy and I know what should take, how long stuff should take. But if you don't, everything's going to take twice as long, cost twice as much. And you'll probably get taken for a ride in the Renault too.
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B
Right. And one of the most expensive parts of the capital is the capital.
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A
Yeah, Right.
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B
Because it's not cheap money because it's short term money. So if you're doing a job and you're expecting to be in and out of it in three to six months, you know, when they're charging you 12, 13, 14% plus some points that'll eat.
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A
Into some property that plus no rent. Right. It gets you in the hole pretty quick.
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B
Yeah, absolutely.
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A
Good. Love it. So, last couple of questions. What are people, what can they expect from your episode and where do they find you if they want to learn more about everything you're doing and all the. The real estate.
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B
Yeah. So we're just going to talk about in the episode my journey, you know, from where I started, you know, I came up without a college degree. I can share, you know, how I got my education.
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A
And now you're building towns.
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B
So, you know, I'm not. I don't have advanced degrees, but I'm probably one of the most educated real estate guys you'll meet because I'm very particular about the kinds of things I want to pick up on and how I got from that to here and some of the hardships that I came, how I came through it. Yeah. I have an internal drive that's insane. It's hard to contain at times and I have no off switch.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You know, that's something I have to govern.
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A
Yeah, sure. I love it. And where if they want to contact you or learn more about you, what's the easiest way to find you?
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B
Easy. Just Google me at M. Vincent Fanzler and last name is F as in Frank A N S L E R.
- [18:20]
A
Love it, Love it. Well guys, that's a wrap. Awesome episode. Talking about real estate. Hopefully help you and. And that journey of playing big and. And you know, hopefully some tips at the end if you're looking to get into real estate. It's a fascinating investment and a pretty tried and true and good one. I think most will agree. As long as, you know, warming I blunt with real estate like stock is done by if you need to exit out of it quick because that's when you can get caught up. You agree with that last statement? Okay, good. All right, well that's a wrap guys. Keep working hard, have an impact, build a legacy and I'll see you soon. Take care.