Podcast 199. The Velocity of Money Mindset with Chris Giorgi

Average Joe Finances:
0:00

Hey, Welcome back to the Average Joe Finances podcast. I'm your host, Mike Cavaggioni and today's guest is Chris Giorgi. So Chris, super excited to talk to you. We talked a little bit off camera, and I think we're gonna have a great conversation. Welcome to the show.

Chris Giorgi:
0:15

Thanks, Mike. I've been waiting for a long time to talk to you. As I told you, listen, just about all your shows. I listened to two of them today just to make sure, I got my mind right and so I'm excited for this.

Average Joe Finances:
0:26

Awesome. I really appreciate that. It's always awesome to bring somebody on the show that's, that listens to the show because you know what to expect and the conversations are a little bit smoother. But hey, I wanna start this off this same way I start every podcast episode off, and you should know how this works by now. And we wanna know more about you. So if you could share a little bit about yourself, share your story. Tell us who is Chris Giorgi?

Chris Giorgi:
0:53

Surely Mike, thanks. As Mike said, my name's Chris Giorgi. I'm currently doing this and leaving right now in Bavaria, Germany. Happily married to my wife, who is also an American and are two daughters 9 and 11 years old. As I told you, Mike, they're in the German school system. They're one of the reasons that why we're staying here in Germany. And so they're completely bilingual, which is for me was very important. And so they won't get out to get out of the high school for another seven to eight years. So that's my investing timeline. I work for a defense contracting company. I'm an army veteran and that's what we're doing now. But if you wanna back it up, my investing career started when I was 16. And that's only cuz my dad, I think met with the financial advisor when he was, whatever age he was when I was 16. Okay. And so he started a mutual fund for me for all the kids. There was four of us, and I think we put $2,000 of like baby bonds that we had growing up into it. And from when I was 16, almost every paycheck from when I was a pizza delivery guy, pizza maker, lifeguard, I put a little bit of money into that mutual fund, and I still had it in 2018 when I started repurchasing properties. So I was 16, bought my first property after my first deployment in 2004. It was a foreclosure condo. Didn't really know what I was doing, but I went all in on that. I was in a unit that had a lot of combat engineers and a lot of other guys like plumbers, electricians. Guys that knew tile carpeting, and so I just hired all these guys, 20 bucks, can you come over here, show me how to do this. Figured all that stuff out. I was pretty handy already, but I had never really done that stuff myself. So that was my first one. Six months later, I met my now wife. So we were we dated for a little bit. I deployed my second deployment after I got back. We moved in together in Savannah. We did two flips there, turns out she's more handy than I am, which is very useful. So we did two flips. She sold one of the property as for sale by owner herself, and we did a couple, we did a two year live-in Flip where we completely gutted the place, like a 2,700 square foot house pretty big. And we did, took two years to do that, had our first daughter there. Then we bought a couple other properties. Until about 2013 and then 2013 I went to Estonia for 10 months. She stayed back cuz she was pregnant with our second child. She had the kid and then she came over in December. But bottom line, life just got really busy, got a little higher and rank, took some harder jobs, more deployments to Iraq or Kuwait. And so we didn't invest anymore from 13 to 18. In 2018. I knew I was getting out. So I stopped all investments to the TSP, which I was heavily investing in the TSP. Actually the first thing I did was I read Rich Dad, poor Dad, which, I kicked myself, my buddy gave it to me in 2003 when we were in Korea. I looked at it and I was like I don't have time to read this. And I put it back down and then I didn't pick it up again until 2018. And then from 2018, like September is when I bought my fifth property until. Mid 2021, I went from four properties to 36, and then I sold four of them last year, and now I'm thinking about maybe getting back in the game and purchase some, purchasing, some other ones even with the the interest rates as high as they are right now.

Average Joe Finances:
4:28

Awesome. Yeah. So you have 32 active right now then. Right?

Chris Giorgi:
4:32

Yes. One of those is a 12 Plex. We'll talk about when or whenever you want, but one of my mistakes was that 12 Plex.

Average Joe Finances:
4:41

Alright, Chris, so I gotta ask you obviously you read the purple Bible, right?

Chris Giorgi:
4:45

Yep.

Average Joe Finances:
4:45

And kicked yourself after that oh, I wish I would've read this sooner. I totally get that man. I try to make sure, every young person I meet, I tell them to go read that book. But yeah. So you were in the army and you were, obviously deployed a lot. Because for most of us that served at least I, my entire 20 years in the Navy was during wartime, so got plenty of deployments under my belt as well. Understandably, that could be very difficult especially if you have a family, right? So you got married, you started having kids. That can make things very complicated. Now, you stopped buying properties in 2013, and then you didn't start purchasing it until 2018. Why is it that you stopped in 2013? Was it the op tempo schedule you had with the deployments, or what was it that made you decide to pause for a little bit.

Chris Giorgi:
5:37

A couple reasons. One, yes. The OP temple. So I was an operations officer, I was in the brigade staff. Those are not nine to five. They're not nine to five jobs, right? Nothing in the army is, but you're going to 19:00-20:00 at night tied to the Blackberry. I actually thought I, what I was gonna do is retire and then start flipping houses. And I figured. With 50% retirement pay. I only had to flip two or three houses a year and we'd be good. Then when I was like, we're staying in Germany now, I kicked myself for not buying stuff from 2013 to 18 at the same time, there was two or three deployments in there.

Average Joe Finances:
6:21

Yeah.

Chris Giorgi:
6:21

There was, it was just life two kids and just trying to. Keep it all together and keep my sanity. There was one time when I was a company commander, we were flipping a house and after work it was like 1800. I'm driving to the property, I fell asleep in this broad daylight out and I didn't crash but, my car hit the center median and it woke me up and I was like, cuz I'd stay there, it's like midnight and then wake up at five 30 in the morning to go PT and it was just like that. I can't keep on doing this. Like it's gonna have to, something's gotta give. And so the real estate investing gave a little bit.

Average Joe Finances:
6:54

Yeah that's pretty taxing on the body. And that was the thing that had to give, right? Because you had a contract with the United States government and you were owned by the Army during that time, so that had to be number one. Okay. Now I wanna rewind back a little bit further, Chris, because you were talking about when you were 16 years old, your dad got you a mutual funds account, right? And did he teach you about that? Like why he was putting all of your bonds and money into that. Was there any type of education that came with that?

Chris Giorgi:
7:26

Not really and I think my mom was actually against it, but, so I wasn't dumb with finance. I had a personal finance book for dummies. I think I was reading it when I was 14, and so I understood the concepts. I just didn't know. All I knew was put money into this account. My dad said, put, always put some money into this account. I wasn't even sure what it was invested in. Probably like the broad stock market. Some index fund back then. But it was either that or put it into a savings account and I knew the bank savings account wasn't paying anything. So I put it in there and I know you get the monthly or the quarterly statements, you could see it going up and going down. I was always a long-term optimist. I knew the market would go up and down. But I wasn't, I didn't know why or anything. I just knew put money in here and it'll be there and it'll continue to grow.

Average Joe Finances:
8:19

Okay. Yeah. Right on. Reading that book at 14 probably really helped you out a lot when it came to this. Now did I hear you correctly when you were sharing your background, that you were taking your entire paycheck and putting it into this, or was it just a very large amount?

Chris Giorgi:
8:33

Yeah, it was a very large amount. So when I was deployed, I would, sometimes I'd put 60% of my paycheck into the TSP. On top of that, I would put other, another percentage into non -TSP.

Average Joe Finances:
8:46

No, I was talking about when you were 16 into the mutual.

Chris Giorgi:
8:48

Oh no. Okay. Okay. When I was 16, not the entire paycheck, but I was putting probably 40 to 50%, it wasn't, so it could have been, 500 or a thousand dollars a month in the summer when I was working and which was a lot of money for me. I was never a huge spender on stuff.

Average Joe Finances:
9:45

Okay. So actually, excuse me. With the TSP, did you, were you part of, or did you switch over to the blended retirement so you can get some type of TSP matching, or were you still stuck under the old plan like I was.

Chris Giorgi:
9:59

Yeah, I was stuck on the O plan.

Average Joe Finances:
10:01

Okay, so everything you were contributing was straight up your money. There was no employer contribution or anything.

Chris Giorgi:
10:09

No matching. My company does that now, but nothing like that in the army. And I hear about it now and I'm like, oh my gosh.

Average Joe Finances:
10:14

Okay. On net. Did you roll your TSP over until a 401k with the company you're with now?

Chris Giorgi:
10:19

So I actually rolled it over to self-directed IRA and with that money.

Average Joe Finances:
10:23

Very smart.

Chris Giorgi:
10:24

I'm invested in multiple. Syndications with that money.

Average Joe Finances:
10:29

Okay. Hey, let's talk about that real quick then. So how did that work out? So you rolled it over into a self-directed 401k. Can you explain to our listeners how a self-directed 401k, I'm sorry self-directed IRA can be used to invest in multifamily real estate the way you did it.

Chris Giorgi:
10:48

Sure. It was actually pretty easy. I listened to a bunch of podcasts and when you listen to it once you're like, okay, you hear the concept and then you hear three or four people talking about it, and then I'm like, okay, maybe this is worth something. So I got on Google, just did some research, found a few companies talked to them, and I was like, it is really as easy as finding a self-directed IRA custodian who will take your money. You put them in contact with the TSP, there's paperwork you gotta fill out and then you literally just fill the TSP paperwork. They will roll over all of that money into a self-directed IRA account. Now it's still considered a IRA account. It's still retirement, but from there you can use that money to invest into real estate. You invest in many things, I think anything but there's three or four things that you can't invest in, but if you're a real estate investor, you can definitely invest in real estate. And so I took that and I split it up into multiple syndication deals.

Average Joe Finances:
11:47

Yeah that's pretty awesome man. So a another way to, take some money that you've been saving up quite a bit of, cuz TSP, I mean you, with how much you were putting into it, that was definitely a lot. So you probably had a nice chunk of change there to throw into a couple deals as a LP.

Chris Giorgi:
12:03

Right.

Average Joe Finances:
12:03

Yeah that's awesome, man. Now, besides that, now you started back up in 2018, you started purchasing properties again yourself, right? Yes, but at this point you were in Germany, right?

Chris Giorgi:
12:17

I was in Germany still.

Average Joe Finances:
12:18

Alright, Chris, then this is what we need to discuss now is how did that work out? Because I could tell you I bought a duplex back in Virginia when I was out here in Hawaii, and it was such a painful process. I did everything sight unseen, everything over video and pictures. Very difficult probably because I didn't have the right team in place when I did it. Yeah. So it was one of those hard lessons learned for me as I went through that process. But you went from four to 36 properties from 2018 to 2021. Obviously you were in Germany that whole time, so to increase of 32 properties. What does that look like, especially living overseas?

Chris Giorgi:
13:01

So I can tell you it's a lot of late nights, a lot of early mornings. Number five. So I read David Green's Long Distance Real Estate Investing. Read that book, read it I think twice. And then I just, I was like, okay I'm buying something. And so everything was in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I spent two years there. I knew the market decently. Or at least I knew the area and the property manager that I had who was still managing my first condo, I called her up and I'm like, this is what I want to do. She really didn't understand. She's you wanna buy something from there? I'm like, yes, but I want you to do everything for me. And she's okay. That was bottom line, that one that was so painful, and she didn't understand that I wanted to do it over and over again. And so it didn't work with her after I bought the fifth one. So I did a quick Google search, found another company. They had a really good website. And they looked professional, got good reviews. I sent 'em an email. That lady called me that morning and it was Saturday morning, I think it was like seven o'clock her time, and I'm still, she then I told her what I wanted to do and she was. I'm an investor. I flip houses. I was born and raised in the Fayetteville area. I can do this for you. And I was like, sweet. And We didn't even have any the five stages of team developments, the storming phase. We were just clicking. Actually she might have got mad at me cause I kept on sending her all of these, all these areas. And so she's Chris, if it has this address or this zip code, don't even send it to me. I'm just deleting it. But she was the number one reason why I was able to scale so quickly. She even managed some of my. I didn't flip anything, but we did burrs. We did complete rehabs, and she was the the manager of all those, all the subs. She took a little fee, but Okay. Without that, I wouldn't be able to continue to invest.

Average Joe Finances:
14:48

Yeah, absolutely. Especially if she's taking care of everything for you.

Chris Giorgi:
14:51

Yeah. We had it down at it'd be WhatsApp video. She would do a walkthrough. She would, if I wasn't able to attend right then, she would video for me, send it to me later. And, it was just, I found a good property manager. I found a good title company. I was able to use the law office on post to get the notary done. Everything, after you do it once or twice, it's just like an SOP battle drill.

Average Joe Finances:
15:16

Nice. Actually did you come up with something like that? Like something in writing or was it just known because of the relationship that you guys had?

Chris Giorgi:
15:25

We had some things in writing. Like we were using Google Drive, we were sharing Excel sheets for I would do as much of the research I could. I knew she was busy. She had plenty of other clients, so I'd put Zillow links in there. I'm like, Hey, go here. Look at this. Tell me what you think. But After a while, she would school me on my analysis or lack of it to help her out, which I definitely appreciated. So yeah so we used a lot of Google Drive and then usually WhatsApp to communicate on the videos.

Average Joe Finances:
15:56

Okay. On now. When you were searching for deals yourself in Germany, you mentioned sending over Zillow links. Was there anything else that you used to try to find the right kind of deal?

Chris Giorgi:
16:11

Let's see. I'm Trulia. They used to have the crime map. They no longer use it. So I would, I tried doing everything I could. To make sure make her job easier, because I, what, the one thing I didn't wanna do, I didn't wanna piss her off, I didn't wanna waste her time. Because she, I don't think I was gonna be able to find somebody else that would do as much as she was doing for me. There was a couple apps I was using I forget the name of one of'em, I'll have to get it later. But, you just pull the address in, it pulls it from, is it Zillow and it populates everything. And within. Within a minute you can tell what the ROI is gonna be, what the cash flow is gonna be you tell, it calculates all that stuff. And so I got pretty good at doing my own analysis. And so when I give it to her, it wasn't gonna be one that she was just gonna say no right away.

Average Joe Finances:
17:00

Yeah. So you have already vetted it and made sure that, you know it passed your initial sniff test. Now it's gotta pass her sniff test. Did you, so after you figured out like your method of screening a property. Cause obviously, before that she was telling you to kick rocks on a bunch of them, right? Yeah. So Chris, how, after you figured out how to do it, I guess more to her liking, right? How many were kicked back after that? Or did you have a much higher acceptance ratio?

Chris Giorgi:
17:30

I had a much higher acceptance ratio, and then it got to the point where she knew I was a serious buyer and I would tell her, Hey, at this point, I got enough for. Five more properties or something like that. Or also I can buy like maybe five more loans, or also I can buy a few with cash and then I'll get a, do a cash out refi later on. And then she just knew a lot of people, like she knew wholesalers, she knew people, she was connected and the real estate market, obviously. And so people, I don't know, I think they call 'em pocket listings or listings that weren't official on the MLS yet? Yeah, she give them to me. And she offered them to me first, according to her, over any of her other clients. And so I got like the right of first refusal and some of them were just too big to take down. Some of them weren't the right deal for me. Many of them I actually ended up buying. And so it was good.

Average Joe Finances:
18:21

Okay. So 32 properties in a three year period, she must have been taking you seriously. From the first one that you bought, which is your fifth property to the final one that you bought, which was your 36th property. How many, like, how, what was that transition like between 2018 and 2021? Because obviously in between that we had a pandemic, right. And things were different. Probably where you lived in Germany versus what was going on back here in the States. How did that affect you in that time period when, when we moved from 2019 to 2020 and there was so much of this unknown, like a lot of people stopped buying real estate. Obviously you kept going, right? You kept going until 2021, so.

Chris Giorgi:
19:05

Yeah.

Average Joe Finances:
19:06

What did that time period look like for you?

Chris Giorgi:
19:11

So in Germany, they took Covid very seriously, right? I remember looking at the screen, seeing the hot flashes. It started in northern Italy. And you're like, okay, it's from China and now in Italy. And everyone's okay, it's Italy's not here. Then all of a sudden you hear a report somewhere else. And then Germany went full. I won't say it, they went full lockdown, right?

Average Joe Finances:
19:32

Yeah. Shut down.

Chris Giorgi:
19:33

And so I actually, because I worked for a defense contractor company, I really couldn't work at home. I had to show up on, on post, cause that's what the contract called for the whole army was gone. But Fayetteville, North Carolina didn't really do too much covid, lockdowns, it was very open from what I remember. And properties were still cheap. So in that time period, you can find$40,000, single family, three bedroom, two baths that needed maybe 20 or 30,000 work there was tons of them. And that's what I was, that's what I was buying those in duplexes. Covid. I was lucky I didn't have anybody. I'm not even sure if I had anybody not pay the rent. She was pretty ruthless when it came to, she knew all the laws. There was a time when you couldn't kick anybody out, and that was well over a year and a half. There might have been actually I stand corrected. I think there were a few tenants who didn't pay and then we ended up just getting rid of them and replaced them once North Carolina rescinded that. Whatever law it was that you can't kick out somebody during covid. But it wasn't as bad as it could have been for the amount of properties that I had. And at the time, I didn't really have too many reserves because I was, if you think about it, you're buying all these properties. I'm not buying these brand new, right? All of 'em need between 10 and 20, 30,000 worth of work and. I wasn't sitting on a boatload of cash to put all the stuff in, so I was using all the rents, recycling it right back into the properties and using my W2 income, my wife's W2 income, just to stabilize everything. We grew a lot faster. Like my goal was 20 properties by 2022, and I hit that I think in 2019, and so I was like, holy the cow, and then it went to 36. So it wasn't exactly the plan, but some of the deals were just too good and.

Average Joe Finances:
21:25

Yeah, just too good to pass up. Nice. Yeah. And on top of that, you're doing all of this completely sight unseen. So what was this what was it like? So I know you did some video calls and stuff over WhatsApp. I did the same thing. I did stuff over video and text and pictures and all that. But to, and I did it for one property and it like, made me want to lose my mind. You did it for 32. So I, what's the secret sauce here, Chris, that, that made this work for you? So if any, there's anybody else, any Americans living overseas that still want to invest back in the States, how do they do? How do they do it the way that you did it, where it worked out successfully? Obviously I know that there was times where you were probably ripping your hair out and stressed out. But that's gonna happen even if you hear on site, right? No matter what stuff like that's gonna happen. But man, sight unseen for 32. I need to know how did you make this work?

Chris Giorgi:
22:26

So I think one of the most important things for me was that my property manager was also my realtor. When you try to split those two up, they each have different different motivations, right? So your property, your realtor, she's just trying to, she or he is just trying to sell you something. So they get that commission and then they can move on to the next person. Your property manager is just trying to manage whatever you give them, right? When it's the same person like. There's times when she wore multiple hats. She's okay, Chris, I'm talking to you as your realtor. As your broker. Yes, I can tell you this, but as your product manager, I'm not managing it for you. And I was like, okay, then we're not doing it. Let's go to the next one. Where if you had two different people, I would've been in a world of her. I probably would've stopped because I would've bought a couple that, they briefed well, they were good on paper, but there were in areas that my property manager had. I not told her about it. If she was somebody different, she just wouldn't have managed it and it would've not have been good. So I think that's number one. Number two is, not every property, but almost every property. I got a home inspection and I know some people will skip 'em, not that expensive. Three to 600 bucks and a few deals I actually walked away on. I would go through it with my property manager. I put all my notes on there and I'm like, what do you think about this? And, sometimes it was like a group decision. It's ultimately my decision, but, she would gimme her point of view and then just okay it's up to you. If you want this, we can do it. I'll manage it for you. But there's other deals out there. And so I really trusted her, and I didn't try to think that I knew better than she did, especially since I had no plans on going back there. It's not. Not like a quick airplane ride to get back there.

Average Joe Finances:
24:08

Yeah. No, definitely not. That's, it's yeah, that's like a whole day's trip for something like that. But, I like how. You pointed out to get the home inspections done right, because I think that was one of the biggest mistakes I made was especially because at the time when I purchased it, it was like I was trying to make it move fast. I waived the home inspection because I had my GC walk through there and just give it a quick look and make sure everything's good. And, I got, the report back from them. And, I thought, they knew to look at everything and then next thing you know we make the purchase and everything starts breaking or falling apart and this and that or the other, and I'm like, huh. Okay. I messed up a little bit here. So yeah, getting that property inspection is huge. To spend, three to 600 bucks to save you thousands in the future is huge. And it lets you know what you're walking into, right? It, it gives you an idea of this is the must-haves, the needs that you have to fix. And then here's other stuff that might be cosmetic or. Might not be as big of a deal, right now at this time. And it makes you more comfortable to, to make the purchase. I think even more than that though, especially with you doing it sight unseen cuz you are in Germany. This is back in North Carolina. That's huge. That's it gives you that I guess the take some of the pressure off your shoulders, right? When you go to sign the contract and make this happen.

Chris Giorgi:
25:33

Yeah. I think the more pictures you can see, the more videos that you can see of the property, especially I was using the same home inspector for a while and then. Eventually he said, Hey, you want me to just do the big ticket items, the roof, the hvac, plumbing, electrical. And he's it can save you a little bit of money. I was like crap. I didn't even know that was the thing cuz I already know I'm gonna gut the place. Yeah, just do that. And so I was able to save some money and he just concentrated on those and it was a better report and everything else, I knew I was ripping out so I didn't need him to waste time or money. A full home inspection, I did do what you did a few times. I waived it and every time I waved it I regretted it later on.

Average Joe Finances:
26:15

Oh man. At least I only did it once, but it's all good. No. And Chris, that's it's those kind of lessons that you learn that you're like, okay, I'm not gonna do that again, because not, it's part of that expensive education you get as a real estate investor. You're either gonna pay for a course or you're gonna pay for it by making the mistakes that you would've learned not to make in a course or with a coach or whatever. Okay. So with all of that being said obviously to go from four to 36 in that short window is a lot. What do you have any like CRM systems or management tools that you use now to manage these properties? Especially, growing that quickly in that three year span. Obviously you can't just wing it anymore, right? And there's gotta be something that you are using. So is there something that you can't live without a system or CRM system or anything like that?

Chris Giorgi:
27:10

So I don't have anything fancy. The biggest thing I do is I have QuickBooks. So I set that up in okay, 2018. And I think in 2000, late 2018 or 2019 I started it became a little much for me. I one of the accounts, I couldn't figure out how to split it all up and it was just, I was banging my head, especially cuz I started. QuickBooks after a little late. And so I was trying to play catch up. So I listened to one podcast and they introduced me to Upworks, where I found upworks.com, where I found a virtual assistant. Oh yeah. And so I got a QuickBooks Master, he lives in the Philippines, and so he logs on all the time, and he knows which accounts he, he's gotta sort for me and which ones I'm gonna do. And he does that at the end of the year. He does all reconciliations. So that's one of the biggest ones. Without that, some of those are now short term rentals. So those are done just a little bit differently. I wouldn't have been able to keep up with it. But yeah, so again, nothing fancy. Everything is stabilized now. In 2018 through, not too long ago. It wasn't. Yeah. And but now I'm just hoping to reap the benefits of all this work that I put into it.

Average Joe Finances:
28:21

Yeah, absolutely. I second using Upwork to find a good VA. That's actually where I found my assistant right now that does everything for my podcast. She's absolutely amazing. And it's, man, you could find some real quality folks on Upwork five or two, but my experience has always been that Upwork usually had higher quality VAs depending on what you're looking for. But yeah, man, that's awesome. Good to know. This is one of those things I feel like at once you get to a certain level it is very hard to manage by yourself, right? So you have your team, right? You have your real estate agent who was also your property manager. You have your person that works all the books for you, right? And it frees up the time that you would spend into that. So you can still work that W2 that you got right now. Yeah. You said now you're actually getting ready to start looking at scaling again, right?

Chris Giorgi:
29:12

Yeah. So I'm actually, I went from no syndications in 2018 to not even understanding what a syndication was to, I think I have 11 or 12 now, and so I think that's enough money in those, and I'm now talking to another company, real estate company. They're pretty popular and they do turn, they sell turn turnkey rentals in Ohio. I'm researching that market to make sure you know it meets my buy criteria, but some of the returns, what they're saying, it's 15 to 20% ROI. And I was looking at one today and I was like that. That's crazy. So I'm trying to pick it apart and I have a meeting with them scheduled later on this week, but I think I need, and so I'm a little risky having so many properties in one market, which I know, but. It's hard trying to go to somewhere else when I don't wanna start all over with the the lady and her team who are managing my properties. But I think if I do buy some more maybe in a few MSAs, different ones in Ohio, and that's what I'm looking at.

Average Joe Finances:
30:13

Yeah. You're also in 11 or 12 syndications too, which I'm sure in different markets. That provides a lot of diversity. I don't think people realize the benefit of being in a real estate syndication and being completely passive. It's pretty awesome that you get to put your money into this, sit back and collect your dividends, AKA rent while it's, while they're seasoning it, and then turn around and get a nice check at the end when the asset sells or they cash out refi. It's my preferred way to invest right now. I enjoy doing that. It's I like being a little more hands off so I could free up my time for other things. But yeah, man that's awesome. And now you're gonna be looking to get into another market. So I wouldn't sell yourself short and say that you're stuck in one market. You're pretty well diversified. I think.

Chris Giorgi:
30:53

Okay. Yeah, so I actually just got an email today. It said capital call on it, on the subject line for a syndication. I'm just like,

Average Joe Finances:
31:02

You better read that one. Those are, yeah, those are important to read. So I thankfully have not had to deal with any of those yet, and I hope to not deal with any of those. But it happens. It happens, man. Yeah, unfortunately. And in an ever-changing market that we're in right now, you could probably expect a few more. It's just the reality of where we're at right now.

Chris Giorgi:
31:22

Correct.

Average Joe Finances:
31:22

Okay. Now, you had mentioned earlier too a 12 unit is part of the 36 properties that you have, that 12 unit as well?

Chris Giorgi:
31:30

Yes. So, that's probably why it's 36. Cause I guess it was 24 before that.

Average Joe Finances:
31:35

Okay.

Chris Giorgi:
31:36

Or 20. And then I bought.

Average Joe Finances:
31:37

Was that the last acquisition you had was the 12 unit?

Chris Giorgi:
31:40

No, I actually bought two properties that were being sold by an old, older gentleman that it wasn't on the market yet, but my, again, my broker knew him. She, yeah, it was two different houses on the same lot. He was fixing one up. She was like, this first one would be great for an Airbnb, the back one, a long-term rental. And so that's what I was able to get it. And it just appraised for like well over six figures from what I bought it, and I only bought it. Like a year ago.

Average Joe Finances:
32:09

It's very nice. Oh, so you even got some short term rentals going on too?

Chris Giorgi:
32:13

Yeah I had unfortunately, so I had six and I'm down to four now. Okay.

Average Joe Finances:
32:18

Okay.

Chris Giorgi:
32:18

just pulled two out, made 'em medium term rentals. Everybody jumped.

Average Joe Finances:
32:22

You've got short term rentals, medium term rentals, long-term rentals, multifamily and syndications going on. You got the whole gamut going on, Chris.

Chris Giorgi:
32:33

Trying to stay diversified.

Average Joe Finances:
32:35

Yeah. When are you gonna start your podcast? Geez, man. You could talk about it all. It's awesome, dude.

Chris Giorgi:
32:40

Probably.

Average Joe Finances:
32:42

I just, I'm just saying I didn't realize that. You did all of those as well, I'm thinking, 36 units. Okay. He's got 36, long-term tenants, and getting his, getting paid monthly. But no, you've got, couple of them are short term, couple of 'em are medium term, couple are long-term. And you're talking about, I'm not sure if I'm diversified enough. Oh man, come on dude. No this is good stuff. This really is Okay. So how did, how'd you get into that 12 unit then? Because if if you were buying like, smaller multifamily, like duplexes and then some single families to get into a 12 units, that is a commercial multifamily, right? Anything six or more. So what was the difference between going after what you were doing before to going after this asset?

Chris Giorgi:
33:27

I found it on Facebook marketplace. I literally was.

Average Joe Finances:
33:31

Of all places.

Chris Giorgi:
33:32

Of all places, I took my phone into the bathroom doing my business, swiping up and down. I see this 12 Plex and I'm like, and I think it was $710,000. And I'm like obviously I can't afford cash for that. But I probably, with the money that I had remaining from that fund, remember that fund, I was 16 years old, I had some money. That's where I used most of that for my all my down payments. And. So I had a little bit left and I think I was doing a cash out refi at the same time too, and so I figured I had enough to do to take a commercial loan, pass it over to my broker. She found out that a guy was wholesaling it and the owners didn't know it, so they broke the contract with him and they sold it to me. And yeah, so I always wanted to get into something about 10 units. I said. I was told her, if you give me a 10 unit, I will fly back and do the inspection, and then we can finally meet, blah, blah, blah. And but the timing didn't work out. I think it was during Covid and I didn't actually get an inspection on that one. She walked it through. She's this is solid. The owners are just trying to get out of it. They wanna move on somewhere else, and she's it's worth a lot more, but it's gonna take some work. It's not it's kinda like a syndication, what syndications do, right? Heavy value add. Increase the NOI and then sell it again. And so it's completely rehab. Now two of those are, three of them are short term rentals of tho those apartments. And now I'm just really doing. Doing the math if I should sell it now or wait until next year, but the rents aren't gonna go up too much more. So I think I know what I should do.

Average Joe Finances:
35:17

Yeah. Yeah. Right on. All right, man. That's fantastic. It's good to know, Chris, like all the different areas that you've dabbled in and the, also, the strategies that you've used to do it, you were able to cash out some of that some of those mutual funds that you had since you were 16. You did some cash out refis and some properties that you had. So you were very what's the right word that I'm looking for here? Having a brain fart, you're very creative with how financed these properties. You use creative financing tools, which is great for the people that are listening right now that maybe have bought a couple properties and they're like, ah, I don't know if I can qualify for another loan. Or what's another way I can do this? Being able to hear somebody else talk about how they were able to keep buying by doing these different creative ways of doing it can really help. Kinda get them pushed in the right direction. So I definitely appreciate that. But now Chris, what I'd like to do cuz I didn't realize we, we could probably talk about this stuff all day, but we've been going for for a minute now. I'd like to transition this into what I call the final round. It's where I'm gonna ask you the same four questions I ask everybody that comes on the show and It gets us a little bit deeper into your mind when it comes to some of the mistakes that you've made or what you do when you're under pressure. So if you're ready to go we'll get this party started.

Chris Giorgi:
36:29

All right. Let's do it.

Average Joe Finances:
36:30

All right, Chris, let's do it. First question is, what is the biggest mistake you've ever made in real estate?

Chris Giorgi:
36:38

I've made just about all the mistakes, but one of the most, One of the hardest one was on that 12 unit, right? I told you I bought it, scraped up enough money for the commercial loan, but that was all I had. So I had $0 for CapEx, $0 for repairs,$0 for paying the very first mortgage.

Average Joe Finances:
37:00

So you were 100% leveraged at that point.

Chris Giorgi:
37:02

Yes. I had nothing. I only had whatever was coming in from my W2 job and then the other rentals. But they were paying for.

Average Joe Finances:
37:08

Dangerous spot to be.

Chris Giorgi:
37:09

Yes, and I had a very conceptual plan in my head. Okay. I would fix up each unit as the tenants moved out. This would take two or three years. The very first night that I owned it. The tenant started a fire in one of the buildings and the place didn't burn down. Yeah. But the fire department came, there was a fire, there was a closet with four of the water heaters. They threw a pan in there or something, and so created a lot of smoke. There was some fire. The insurance company luckily covered a bit of it, but not. As much as what I needed for the rehabs. And so my landlord said we gotta, or my private manager said, we gotta rehab all four of these at the same time. And I'm like.

Average Joe Finances:
37:49

Was that one of the smoke damage?

Chris Giorgi:
37:51

The smoke damage.

Average Joe Finances:
37:52

Oh, wow.

Chris Giorgi:
37:53

And so at the same time other tenants were moving out. And so I had Multiple credit cards with that brand new LC. So I bought, obviously I bought it in the name of LC and I had some credit cards. Those saved my life. In fact, next month will be the first time that they're all paid off. It was like 125,000. Wow. Wow dollars. Yeah. That I had to do for rehab. This includes like the short term rentals, furniture and furnishing and all of that. But it was a lot of money that I didn't have at the time. And so there was some sleepless nights there

Average Joe Finances:
38:26

And at a very high interest rate too, man, credit cards are no joke when it comes to that. Now the insurance company must have been like, dude, you've had this thing one day. What is going on?

Chris Giorgi:
38:35

They were but luckily it's the same insurance company that I was using for all the rest of my properties. And okay. Right on. It's not like I was their, I was a first time customer. I had, I used them for just about everything else, and so I never had a claim before. I don't think they were happy about it, they raised my rates the next year, but there's nothing I can do. I really wanted to hurt those tenants.

Average Joe Finances:
38:56

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes people don't care about things if That they don't own, right? Yeah. It's just, it is just, it comes with territory, right? Depending on the quality tenants that you have and everything, which you have no control over, that when you're buying an asset that already has tenants in place, right? You have no control over who, right? Who's living there and you had no way to screen them or vet them. Yeah, you can expect things like that to happen. So it sucks, but obviously you made it past it and now have all of that paid off, which is fantastic. So congratulations on that, man. That's awesome. Thank you. Okay, so the next question, Chris, ties into this last one, they all tie into each other, but is what is something that you've learned that you wish you knew when you first started?

Chris Giorgi:
39:38

Two things. One is a mentor, and I know you're big on mentors and coaching. I wrestle with should I buy or should I pay for a full-time mentor or full-time coach? What I've settled on is, I found a few people, podcasters like yourself, but other guys who are doing the same thing or have done the same thing that I've done, and I just reached out to them. I said, Hey, Do you do offer any coaching or offer any pay for mentoring services? And they actually said, the one guy who I've used multiple times, he's yeah, I charge one 50 an hour, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, shit, that's, I can afford that. As opposed to, I don't know how much I thousands of dollars for longer term ones. Myself, I pride myself on. Doing the research, doing as much as I can, trying to educate myself, not just going, Hey, will you mentor me? Will you teach me everything? I'm like, no. I'm gonna figure out as much as I can. And when I get stuck, or if I'm trying to make a very strategic situation like I did last year when I was deciding if I should sell these four properties. I did all the math. I had the calculations, and then about an hour of the guy's time and he looked at it and we walked through for an hour. And that really helped me. It gave me a lot of clarity and I was able to make a better informed decision right after that. And you don't have to buy a full-time coach or full-time mentor. You can do it for a lot cheaper, but it is worth it.

Average Joe Finances:
41:03

Yeah, man. I think at this point you could probably start coaching people, especially with all the experience that you've had, that's that's good stuff.

Chris Giorgi:
41:09

I've been thinking about it.

Average Joe Finances:
41:10

Yeah. No, awesome man. Or even make a course or something that, you know, that you can go over, Hey here's how to invest from overseas. Cuz I don't think I, you don't see too much of that out there actually, and that's why I think you should start a podcast or have a course or start coaching or something. I think you've you'll really have something there because there's a market for that. There are a lot of Americans that live overseas that like to invest back in the states. I know a guy in Japan that does it. And it's very it's a very big thing. And there are other people that he talks to that wanna do it, but they're not quite sure how to do it right. And he's trying to help them out and stuff like that. So I know that there's a market for that, and I think you'll really be able to make a positive impact for a lot of people overseas. Okay. Next question. Do you have any tips or tricks that you would recommend to someone that is just getting started today? And we'll say somebody that is overseas starting to invest in real estate today?

Chris Giorgi:
42:02

So the, so this one's not for a brand new person, right? But maybe within a year or two. It's understanding the concept of the velocity of money. And so we talked about this a little bit, but we haven't used those terms. And that's about, how fast can you get your money back? How fast can you get the ROI back, and then made that money invest it somewhere else. And so what I did, I don't know if you've heard of Keith Weinhold with Get Rich Education, big podcaster, big on economics, big on real estate. He always, almost every podcast he was like, return on equity is zero, return on equity is zero. And I didn't understand it for a year and until finally another guy that I was listening to, he mentioned the same thing. And so I got on Google, did some more researching and then, we all have, as. As real estate guys, we all have an Excel sheet, and so I have one with all my numbers on there, but I didn't have the return on equity on there, and some of my properties were fully paid off, but, they were condos and they weren't pulling that much money. And so some of the return on equity is 3%. And so what that meant was I'm only making 3% on what I have invested in there. So if I have $80,000 and it's making 3000 a year, After everything. I think it comes out to about a little less than 3%. So what I did was I did all the cash out refis of those and then, I was listening to a few podcasts a while ago and they said, never sell. So I was pretty dogmatic about that. Never selling, but then I started actually doing more math than just what's my cash flow and selling the properties. I looked at it and it was, it would take me 10 years to make. What I would make if I sold it. And so the cash I would get selling it, say it was a hundred thousand, it would take 10 years to make that in monthly cash flow. So then from there you'd do like another formula. Okay, if I invest this into a syndication, I could two x it in five years and then I could, yeah, two x that. So four x it, and the amount of time. And so it just didn't make sense to keep some of these. So understand the velocity of money, understand some of the. Other calculations other than just, Hey, what's my ROI and what's my cashflow?

Average Joe Finances:
44:16

Yeah, no that's fantastic. That's great advice too for any, anybody here that's listening. Understanding what that return's gonna look like over that time period, holding the property versus selling now. Yeah that's really great, man. Appreciate that Chris. Okay. Final question of the final round. It is not like the other questions. This is more of an opinion based question. But you've already named the Purple Book, so I'm gonna ask you not to name that one this time. But do you have a favorite business investing or real estate related book or podcast or both?

Chris Giorgi:
44:49

So I have both. So I'm gonna recommend Travis Watts with the Best Ever Real Estate podcast. And Keith Weinhold on Get Rich Education. Both of those guys. Phenomenal value for real estate investors. And then for the book, this is one you never had. And of course my screen goes out at the same time. Hold on one second. It's called Grandpa's Fortune Fables. It's by Will Rainey.

Average Joe Finances:
45:16

I have had that on here before. Cause I've had Will Rainey on the podcast.

Chris Giorgi:
45:19

Yes. That you're where I got him from.

Average Joe Finances:
45:22

Yeah. Oh, have you ever My kids absolutely loved that book. I think every parent should get that book for their kids. A hundred percent.

Chris Giorgi:
45:30

I'm reading it. I've read it to my oldest daughter, and I'm on like chapter six with my younger daughter, and every night she's daddy, let's read it. It's time to read it. And so you could just see in their minds, like the seeds are being planted on how to invest in different ways to look at money.

Average Joe Finances:
45:47

It's amazing. Yeah, a hundred percent. There. There's two books, two children's books that I will always recommend. That's one of 'em. And the other one is how to turn a hundred dollars into a Million Dollars. Both fantastic reads because that one's more for maybe like tweens and teens. But it explains compound interest a little bit better. But the grandpa's fortune fables is more of, to me, when I had Will on the podcast and we talked about it, I told him, I said, this feels like it's the richest man in Babylon for kids. That's what it felt like to me when I read through the book. And then of course my wife was reading it to the kids and they absolutely loved it. They thought it was fun. And they really understood the concepts and I really liked that it was a fun and easy read for them that taught them so much. That's, no, I appreciate you you bringing that book up, man. That's awesome.

Chris Giorgi:
46:37

I wasn't sure, but I thought I might have heard him from your podcast.

Average Joe Finances:
46:41

Yep. Yeah, no, yeah, I had will on that, that was a great interview. Just like this was a great interview. And Chris, I just wanna say again, thank you so much because you provided so much value to, to my listeners here today. And with that being said, I do have one more question for you. And this is the most important question of all, because, there might be some people listening to this episode right now that are saying, I wanna learn how to invest from overseas cuz I live overseas and I listen to the Average Joe Finances podcast from overseas because it's so awesome and I wanna know how, where I could find more information about Chris and how he does this. So do you have a website or social media, anything like that you could share with us today?

Chris Giorgi:
47:22

So I'm pretty at linkedIn it. So if you just look me up there, I'm also on Facebook, but I'm pretty active on, on LinkedIn and I respond to every DM if you send me something.

Average Joe Finances:
47:33

Okay, perfect. So Chris, I'll make sure I have your LinkedIn put in the show notes to make it easier for everybody to find you. Hey, my listeners, just copy and paste or click away. Just don't do it while you're driving. Again, Chris, thank you so much man. This was fantastic. A lot of value. I enjoyed our conversation especially talking with another veteran. That's doing amazing things, man. I just wanna say great work. And you know what another thing I wanna point out too is that, a lot of times people in our space, Lose sight of their why, and I feel like you've crushed your why for why you're doing this. You even got out of the military at 15 years. You just had five more to go where you could have retired and got that pension for the rest of your life, but you made that choice at 15 years to get out and pursue this real estate so you can keep your family in Germany and live that dream. That you had for you and your family, which is amazing. So I commend you on that. And again, thank you so much for joining me today, Chris.

Chris Giorgi:
48:39

Thanks Mike. It's been a blast.

Average Joe Finances:
48:40

Absolutely. And hey, to my listeners, I also wanna thank all of you for joining me and our special guest, Chris Giorgi, on the average Joe Finances podcast. Go leave us a five star review and tell us what you liked about today's episode with Chris. Aloha from Hawaii and from Germany, and have a great rest of your day.