Experienced real estate investor, real estate agent, and Founder of Heartsill Capital Partners, Victoria McGuire, shares her journey from accidental landlord to multifamily syndicator, detailing the transition from single-family homes to large-scale multifamily investments. She provides insights on raising capital, the importance of joining mastermind groups, and the challenges of underwriting and managing properties.
Victoria also highlights the emotional aspects of real estate investing and the necessity of maintaining communication with investors. Her story is not just inspiring but also filled with practical advice for anyone looking to dive into real estate syndication. Tune in to discover her strategies and tips for achieving success in real estate investing.
Key takeaways to listen to:
About Victoria McGuire
Victoria McGuire is a real estate investor based in St Petersburg, Florida. She and her husband, Marv, started building their real estate portfolio in the early 2000s before pivoting to larger investments and founding Heartsill Capital Partners. Now they partner with well-established operators on larger multifamily deals to help everyday people accelerate their financial freedom and generate legacy-building wealth. Victoria and her husband specifically target investments in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas.
Victoria has been a residential real estate agent since 2005 and not only specializes in helping her clients find their dream homes but also on how to invest in real estate to multiply their financial legacy. She is an expert in her field and has been frequently featured on local television and radio shows serving the greater Tampa Bay region.
She is passionate about educating new passive investors and hosts a Youtube Channel, Living in Tampa, where her clients can learn all about the Tampa area. Aside from real estate, Victoria is an avid marathon runner and proud mother of four. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Georgia. GO DAWGS!
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Victoria McGuire:
To connect with Randal and learn more about passive investing, visit www.ridgelineig.com and follow our social media pages below!
Experienced real estate investor, real estate agent, and Founder of Heartsill Capital Partners, Victoria McGuire, shares her journey from accidental landlord to multifamily syndicator, detailing the transition from single-family homes to large-scale multifamily investments. She provides insights on raising capital, the importance of joining mastermind groups, and the challenges of underwriting and managing properties.
Victoria also highlights the emotional aspects of real estate investing and the necessity of maintaining communication with investors. Her story is not just inspiring but also filled with practical advice for anyone looking to dive into real estate syndication. Tune in to discover her strategies and tips for achieving success in real estate investing.
Key takeaways to listen to:
About Victoria McGuire
Victoria McGuire is a real estate investor based in St Petersburg, Florida. She and her husband, Marv, started building their real estate portfolio in the early 2000s before pivoting to larger investments and founding Heartsill Capital Partners. Now they partner with well-established operators on larger multifamily deals to help everyday people accelerate their financial freedom and generate legacy-building wealth. Victoria and her husband specifically target investments in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas.
Victoria has been a residential real estate agent since 2005 and not only specializes in helping her clients find their dream homes but also on how to invest in real estate to multiply their financial legacy. She is an expert in her field and has been frequently featured on local television and radio shows serving the greater Tampa Bay region.
She is passionate about educating new passive investors and hosts a Youtube Channel, Living in Tampa, where her clients can learn all about the Tampa area. Aside from real estate, Victoria is an avid marathon runner and proud mother of four. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Georgia. GO DAWGS!
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Victoria McGuire:
To connect with Randal and learn more about passive investing, visit www.ridgelineig.com and follow our social media pages below!
[00:00:00] Intro: If you're a real estate agent earning 200, 000 a year, and you want to grow your passive income, this show is for you. Learn secrets other agents use and hear from experts in our field who will guide you on your journey to investing in assets like apartment communities. So you can take your commissions and turn them into cashflow.
[00:00:20] Intro: Here's your host, Randall. Let's dive in.
[00:00:22] Randal McLeaird: Hey, welcome back. It's good to have you today. I have an awesome guest on today. We're talking real estate syndication. We are talking about. Apartments, Victoria McGuire is my guest and she is the owner of Heartsill Capital Partners. We talk about her history.
[00:00:37] Randal McLeaird: She's been a real estate agent for a long time. She started in 2005. I believe that was the timeframe she gave me. And we talk about how they, Became forced landlords, what that looked like for her, started her investing career, 2008 ish, and then how she's transitioned into apartments with her husband and they raised capital at four and syndicate deals, co GP on deals.
[00:00:56] Randal McLeaird: So it's a really interesting conversation. I dive deep. I try to get her to give me [00:01:00] some tactics on what she's doing in order to raise capital. So if you're looking to start a syndication business, we cover a lot of that stuff in this conversation. Some of the tools that you can use, some of the platforms that you can go to.
[00:01:09] Randal McLeaird: Some things that she's using and her husband are using. So really good conversation. She's a marathoner. So she was literally calling me from, I think, hotel and she's going to run a marathon tomorrow. So that was really awesome. And she's telling me how she's going to run six back to back in November. So six, one a day, fly to another city, run another one, fly to another city, run another one.
[00:01:27] Randal McLeaird: So avid runner, very awesome. So anyways, good catching up with her. I hope you get a lot out of the show. It's a great conversation for me. If you're getting some value out of the show, please go on written review. Helps us a ton. Let's jump in. So are you buying property there or what are you doing in Kansas City?
[00:01:44] Victoria McGuire: No, I'm in Kansas City. I'm actually going to meet with some of our partners here that we team up with, but I'm also going to run a marathon. Oh, nice. Yeah, I love running marathons. I'm on a quest to run one in each of the 50 states. So this is off Kansas. [00:02:00] And so I'm putting in some work too, so that I can kill two birds with one stone.
[00:02:05] Randal McLeaird: Yeah, for sure. I was looking at the rock and roll San Antonio is in December. And so I was looking at signing up for that. My dad runs a, or he doesn't run he cause I like trail running. And so he does the ham radio operation to like, as a Marshall for a lot of these off road, like in big band and places where you don't have cell reception.
[00:02:25] Randal McLeaird: And so he does want a big band. I'm going to sign up for, I think and do a 50 K there. But yeah, I like the idea of going to every state. Are you doing the ones that are like a rock and roll or like a really well known, like the, those types of deals? Or is it just like any run that gets you a marathon?
[00:02:40] Victoria McGuire: It's a mix, right? Like I like to do some of the bigger runs, but then also, I don't know if you've heard of this website that's called mainly marathons, it's kind 50 states and what they do is they set up like a series. Back to back where you can run like six [00:03:00] marathons in six days in six different states.
[00:03:02] Victoria McGuire: So it's a fast way to knock out a bunch of them if you're trying to catch up, like I fell behind a little bit in my goals last year because my husband ended up in the hospital and some of the ones that I was going to, I wasn't able to and so I'm playing catch up this year. So I'm going to try to do that.
[00:03:17] Victoria McGuire: But those are all more like the races you're describing, like a trail run where, you're just doing some loops and you're completing the marathon, checking the state, and then you're going to the next state and doing it all over again. But I do like to do the bigger ones too. They're
[00:03:30] Randal McLeaird: definitely a lot more fun.
[00:03:31] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. The first 50 K trail run I did, it was three loops around a park here in San Antonio. Oh yeah. I was like I like seeing new things, so yeah. I wanna go like one Yeah. By the third loop, you're like, oh
[00:03:42] Victoria McGuire: my gosh. Yeah.
[00:03:43] Randal McLeaird: By the third loop. I tweaked my knee and I was walking and I was like, oh, yeah, this is not, yeah.
[00:03:48] Randal McLeaird: but, so we can talk on the. Investing side of the business, like what you guys are doing, what you have done. I know you built a portfolio based on what I've read on your bio [00:04:00] and then you guys have transitioned into capital raising. So you are syndicating as far as I understand, correct?
[00:04:06] Victoria McGuire: Yeah. So my husband's more on the capital race side.
[00:04:09] Victoria McGuire: So we're a husband and wife team. That's his thing. Superpower is what we call it in our mastermind group that we're a part of. We're part of Radcliffe's Warriors. I don't know if you've heard of them. I
[00:04:18] Randal McLeaird: literally just saw a quick short on him. I was at a few events and he's talked at a bunch of events, but yeah.
[00:04:24] Victoria McGuire: Okay, yeah. He's down in Sarasota. We live in Tampa. The beach is part of Tampa. So he's just south of us. We joined his mastermind about two years ago and just jumped in full speed ahead. And long story short, my husband's super power is the capital raise and I'm more like on the underwriting side, but I am trying to get better about helping my husband with the capital raise as well so that we can get more of the, GP percentages.
[00:04:51] Victoria McGuire: On the deals that we're raising capital for. So I'm doing similar to what you're doing. I'm trying to help agents get into this because I [00:05:00] can't believe how many agents have never been heard of a real estate syndication. I was at an event for my brokerage, our annual meeting, and I was speaking with the former president of the Florida association realtors.
[00:05:13] Victoria McGuire: He'd been the association realtor for five years of the whole state of Florida. He'd never heard of it. Wow, the really getting the word out and the education of this is another way that you can invest your money and kind of diversify your portfolio. That's a passion of mine now.
[00:05:27] Victoria McGuire: And so I'm really focused on educating realtors as well. So when I saw your podcast, I was like, this is awesome. I listened to some of the episodes and they
[00:05:38] Randal McLeaird: really resonated
[00:05:39] Victoria McGuire: with
[00:05:39] Randal McLeaird: me. Nice. Yeah. It is shocking because you can get siloed pretty easily on the residential side of things and not.
[00:05:45] Randal McLeaird: Understand that there is this whole other world. So yeah, that's great. So tell me, then husband and wife team, but you have been a realtor since what? 2005, yeah. Okay. So you've seen some ups, downs, you've seen all kinds of different things. So [00:06:00] when did you start investing? Were you buying property back then?
[00:06:03] Victoria McGuire: No, we didn't start investing really, it happened by accident in 2008. My husband got orders. He was Navy. We were stationed in Jacksonville. He got orders to Tampa. Everybody knows what happened to the market in 2008. Like we were completely upside down in our house and we were stuck with either short sell it, which was not an option for us with him being military.
[00:06:25] Victoria McGuire: That's just, we're not going to do that. Or rent it out. So we became an accidental landlord that way, and it was a nightmare, but long story short, we kept the property long enough to where in the end, at least financially, it's still worked out, although we had, tenants that left in the middle of the night.
[00:06:43] Victoria McGuire: We had someone in the had run their car into the air conditioner unit in the. Garage. We had so much damage to this house that we just wanted to cry because it was our primary residence before we needed a rental. So when you walk in and you just see all this [00:07:00] damage, it was pretty emotional. And so in the end, we did make money on it.
[00:07:06] Victoria McGuire: And that's when the light bulb clicked. I was like, Why aren't we doing this every time we move? Because we moved a lot back then was in the military, every couple two or three years. Yeah. So that's what we started doing then intentionally buying properties specifically to rent them, not for us to live in and then rent them.
[00:07:24] Victoria McGuire: Cause I don't recommend that to anyone.
[00:07:26] Randal McLeaird: Say that again, you don't recommend people living in them and renting them while they're in them. Is that well,
[00:07:30] Victoria McGuire: and then renting it like we had to do because you're emotionally tied to that house. And it's so hard to see your home, that you. Took all this time to make it yours and we had put up crown molding and it was our home for three years and then to see people destroy it.
[00:07:48] Victoria McGuire: It's just a whole different ball game when you're buying it specifically for it to be a rental and you never lived in it. You're not as emotionally tied to it and it doesn't really matter if they tear it up as much as it does if it was your own [00:08:00] personal home, if that makes sense.
[00:08:01] Randal McLeaird: For sure. No, it makes sense.
[00:08:03] Randal McLeaird: You're buying the investment property based on the numbers, not on emotion. Yeah, your house, it's your home. I definitely get that. That's rough. The stories of being a landlord. We could have a whole podcast on that just alone. I interviewed somebody the other day and they have one and it was all geared towards landlords and like the struggles of being a landlord.
[00:08:22] Randal McLeaird: And so she told me some stories. It was funny. So you got into it and this was 2008, 2009 ish. So how long did you have to keep it as a rental before you guys were able to sell it?
[00:08:31] Victoria McGuire: I think we sold it in 2013. It's when we finally ended up selling it and we made a pretty nice profit on it. And like I said, it gave us that.
[00:08:39] Victoria McGuire: Incentive to keep doing that. And we did, we built a small portfolio, mostly a single family homes. And then we started seeing the same kind of thing though Oh, we'd have to replace the roof or the AC would go out. We'd have to replace an air conditioner. There was almost all the profit, for the whole year.
[00:08:56] Victoria McGuire: Because it's, you're making pretty small margin. And that's when we [00:09:00] started thinking like, there's gotta be a better way to do this. And we started going bigger and we start buying duplexes and quadplexes and still we were like, I think we can scale this and that's what got us into multifamily.
[00:09:13] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you got into multifamily at what point? This is, we were just talking
[00:09:18] Victoria McGuire: recently, two years ago.
[00:09:19] Randal McLeaird: Okay. So I'm curious because. Similar background, I was flipping houses 2009 all the way up to 2020, whatever it was and same thing, like I got to go bigger, there's got to be a better way to do this and buy bigger properties.
[00:09:33] Randal McLeaird: So got into it around that time, didn't buy anything, started learning. So I'm curious, you are syndicating now. For those who are listening, if you don't know what a syndication is, go back. We have a ton of episodes on what syndications is, but you're raising capital to put into a larger deal.
[00:09:48] Randal McLeaird: So you're pulling people's capital and then it's going into 150 unit property or 200 unit, whatever. It's
[00:09:53] Victoria McGuire: Right.
[00:09:53] Randal McLeaird: So how has that been in the last few years on the multifamily front where, because I know you guys are [00:10:00] investing in Texas and Florida and South Carolina and somewhere else, right? Georgia.
[00:10:04] Randal McLeaird: Georgia, that's right. Okay. How has that been and how are the properties performing that you guys have gone into?
[00:10:10] Victoria McGuire: It's been really great, when we first started, it was slow, there was a learning process. And what I do highly recommend for anybody that wants to get started into actually syndicating deals or capital raising is to find a mastermind group, find some education, something to, help you get started because it is a lot in the beginning.
[00:10:30] Victoria McGuire: There's so many things you have to learn. It's like a whole new world. There's. Acronyms that I'd never heard before, learning how to underwrite so that what a deal looks like, all of that takes time. So that first kind of year that we were exploring this space, that not a whole lot was happening and it was a little bit frustrating, the time that it took, cause we were just ready to go.
[00:10:51] Victoria McGuire: But then I think the power of the first deal, right? Once you get that first deal, it's like pushing a rock up a hill and then all of a sudden, You're [00:11:00] going down, like people see, oh, this person knows what they're doing. This person was successful in doing that. I wanna align with them. And then things just start coming your way.
[00:11:10] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. You wanna talk details? Is that all right? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Our first
[00:11:14] Victoria McGuire: deal that we did, what was recommended to us, and I would recommend this to others as well, because it did serve us well. We invested as LPs when we first started, that's a limited partner for people that aren't familiar with that.
[00:11:26] Victoria McGuire: It's basically, you're just putting your money in. You're not really doing anything. The reason behind that and why I think that's so powerful is if you are going to be raising capital later, that does give you that knowledge of what those people are going through. So it's a little intimidating when you're giving your money, let's say 50, 000 or a hundred thousand dollars.
[00:11:46] Victoria McGuire: To somebody, and you have all this paperwork, the PPM docs or, a hundred pages or whatever, and you're having to go into this portal and sign up, and there's a lot of different steps if you're not familiar with that and you can't empathize with the people that you're [00:12:00] asking for money, I think it gives you more credibility when you're able to say, I've been there, I've done that, and you can answer their questions better and all the feelings that they had, because you're having those same kind of feelings of anxiety.
[00:12:11] Victoria McGuire: That come with investing into something that you're not familiar with. So that's what we did first. And then actually the operator that we invested with as an LP, they invited us on their next deal. We had, told them we're very confident that we can Raise some capital. We felt like it would be very doable for us to raise a million dollars for their deal and they took a chance on us and gave us a shot and we worked really hard and we actually raised 2 million for that first deal.
[00:12:42] Victoria McGuire: So that's when everything started falling into place. And then if people know you can raise money, they want you to be a part of their deal.
[00:12:50] Randal McLeaird: Yeah, for sure. Agents that are listening, right? They want to go and do this. Maybe they want to raise capital because I always have to clarify there are multiple parts of the business.
[00:12:57] Randal McLeaird: If you're trying to get into syndication, [00:13:00] doesn't matter what asset class you're in. So if you're syndicating to, buy a multifamily, a storage facility retail center, whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. There's an operator who actually goes and they're going to be the one that's running it almost asset management.
[00:13:12] Randal McLeaird: They're the ones who may have sourced that deal. So the lead sponsor in the deal. And then there's co GPs that come in the deal and there's limited partners, right? So the capital raise side of it is almost a business in its own, right? You can have somebody who's just capital raising. So are you guys looking to stay in that arena where you're like, we're really comfortable.
[00:13:32] Randal McLeaird: We raised 2 million on our very first deal, which is awesome, by the way. If you're listening to this, that. It's not the norm, like I wouldn't think, so you guys really knocked it out of the park and I understand that. So congrats on that. Is that where you guys are trying to stay or?
[00:13:44] Victoria McGuire: We do like capital raising and we do see a future in continuing to do that, but we definitely want to operate our own deal because there is a little bit of frustration.
[00:13:53] Victoria McGuire: Sometimes with being a co GP, you can't only capital raise. Let me make that clear to everybody that's listening. If [00:14:00] you're going to be in a syndication, It's illegal for you to only capital raise for a deal. You do have to have some other roles in the deal. So we help with, the asset management.
[00:14:09] Victoria McGuire: We do participate in due diligence. We put our own money into every deal that we raise for. So we are participating like in earnest money as well, which also checks that box for the SEC of materially participating in the deal. But there's, you are limited, right? You only have so much input into decisions with the property and decisions with the management and things like that.
[00:14:33] Victoria McGuire: So my husband and I, we are actively looking for our own deal, which has been frustrating because it takes a lot of time. I'm an underwriter. That's my role. And I probably underwrite, gosh, I would say probably 20, 25 deals. A month and it can take two or three months before we find one that is good enough for us to submit a letter of intent on.
[00:14:56] Victoria McGuire: And then we submit the letter of intent and it's pretty [00:15:00] competitive out there. So we don't always win, right? So far, we haven't been successful, but we keep trying. And that is our end goal is to keep trying. Have maybe one of our own deals each year and then capital raise for a couple, two or three others a year.
[00:15:12] Victoria McGuire: And I think that would be our ideal situation.
[00:15:16] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Okay. So there's a lot I want to talk about on just deal volume that you guys have done, but you mentioned something a second ago that It's frustrating and not being the lead. I get that. Like I'm the same way. I'm like, I need control.
[00:15:27] Randal McLeaird: I need to be able to do this, and this, if this isn't happening. So deals that I'm on that I'm not the lead on, it is a when you have those conversations, the asset management calls, or if you're having the conversation with the property management company, There are so many times I'm like, do this, we have to do this instead of that, right?
[00:15:42] Randal McLeaird: Come on. It's right. Yeah. So I get that. But knowing that, what are some of the common issues that you as an LP going into that very first deal saw that as a lead, you would change? If it were mine, I would do this differently.
[00:15:56] Victoria McGuire: Yeah, that's a great question. Even just as an [00:16:00] LP, maybe not even if I was the lead, I would just say also from a sponsor standpoint, right?
[00:16:05] Victoria McGuire: If I bring an LP into a deal, the things that I would do differently, and that we do differently because of our experience, The main one I noticed right off the bat was communication, right? We just did not get a whole lot of communication after we invested our money. And that bothered me. If you put money in the bank, you get a monthly statement from the bank showing you what that money's doing, right?
[00:16:26] Victoria McGuire: Any brokerage account, same thing. You get an update, if you will. What's happening with your money. And I was expecting at least that from, the deals that we invested in as LPs, and we did have one sponsor that was really great about doing that and relaying every month to us. Here's, the PNL, here's what happened this month.
[00:16:46] Victoria McGuire: Here's how many units we renovated and was very thorough in conveying all that. And then another deal we invested in is complete radio silence. We have no idea what's going on with the deal unless we. Initiate contact and try to [00:17:00] find out. So I definitely never want to do that to our investors. I want to be super transparent.
[00:17:06] Victoria McGuire: We're committed to always providing at least that monthly update and them having access to like their portal where they can see live, real time what's happening with the investment.
[00:17:17] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. So having been on multiple deals with different sponsors, like different, not all the same, correct. Your investments and your, okay.
[00:17:24] Randal McLeaird: So having done that. What portal or platform do you prefer and like the most that provides that information, because I know there's invest next there's, sponsor or something, there's a number of them.
[00:17:35] Victoria McGuire: Yeah. So the one I like the best is cashflow portal. Yeah. That one is phenomenal. And the functionality that it has, I have to say on our last raise, I was actually the one in charge of tracking all the wires and the investments and doing all the communications with the LPs.
[00:17:54] Victoria McGuire: And it's an impressive platform. I really encourage people to check it out. They're adding some sort [00:18:00] of CRM function to it now. So I'm excited that, they're adding more and more functionality to it, but it's really phenomenal in what it can do. And the investors seem to love it too. They say it's easy to navigate.
[00:18:12] Victoria McGuire: They can access all their documents, all their updates and everything are right there.
[00:18:17] Randal McLeaird: Yeah, that's good. I sold them at Old Capital did an event in Dallas a while back and I went to it and they were, they had a booth there and I started talking to guys. But how does it compare in pricing to say like Investnext or Appfolio or something like that?
[00:18:29] Victoria McGuire: I think their pricing is very competitive. And what I like about them is if you're not in a lead role yet, you can still have your account with them. Have it linked with, the lead sponsor and you're not paying until you have the, your own deals, so to speak. And then They base it on the size of the deal is what you're paying.
[00:18:50] Victoria McGuire: So it varies, on how much capital is being raised for the deal. Yeah, it's very competitive. Yeah. All right. So good information.
[00:18:56] Randal McLeaird: Very helpful. If you're going, and again, you're looking to [00:19:00] set a business like this up, there's a lot of tools and things that you can use. So we just name dropped a few of them in there.
[00:19:07] Randal McLeaird: Put some links in the show notes. As far as deal flow that you're seeing now, 30 deals gets you One LOI, right? 30 underwrites gets you one LOI type of thing. In the last two years, how many have you guys done? How many raises have you done or how many deals have you been on? And what does that look like? Again, you're Co-GPing a deal, you're raising capital to other people's deals.
[00:19:26] Randal McLeaird: So it gives you an opportunity to look at deals that are already active, right? So it may be a little bit easier, faster. You can cherry pick some that you want to raise for or not raise for. So how many have you guys actually gone into and done?
[00:19:37] Victoria McGuire: Yeah. So last year we did three deals. I am pretty successful on all of them.
[00:19:41] Victoria McGuire: We raised 2 million, the first one, 2 million, the second one, the third one was a little bit smaller deals and we only raised a million for that one. But, that's our goal is three a year, because when you look at how long these deals take, it's typically going to be at least a 90 day process, with you, your due diligence [00:20:00] and then your 60 days to close and all that. So trying to do more than three or four a year is pretty difficult because I don't know how other people do it, but when we're doing a capital raise, my husband is literally on the phone, probably 10 hours a day talking to investors, calling investors, answering questions, we're doing our webinar.
[00:20:19] Victoria McGuire: And then I'm so actively involved on the cashflow portal side of it with tracking all the investments. It's very time consuming. So to be able to dedicate our attention to more than one deal at a time. For us, doesn't make sense, and I don't think it's fair to the lead sponsors either if you're raising capital for more than one deal, it also puts you in a precarious position if an investor finds out you're raising for two, they're going to act like which one's the better deal, where would you put your money, so I think just doing one at a time makes the best sense for us personally.
[00:20:51] Victoria McGuire: And as far as the deal volume, yeah, we are seeing a lot more volume now, but we are still seeing [00:21:00] sellers have not come around to the reality of pricing. Most of the deals that I underwriter still like 15 to 20 percent high, and I don't know when the sellers are going to wake up to it because it seems like even the sellers that are in trouble that have debt.
[00:21:15] Victoria McGuire: Coming due they're already bleeding money. They're still like holding out for higher offers and not getting them. So I don't know what it's going to take to wake some of them up.
[00:21:25] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. There's still rescue capital chasing after some of these deals too, with pref equity. And so I'm surprised they're going after some deals, pref equity, because they are in that position, but that, and some lenders are still Extend, at least on some of the deals that I've talked to in the mastermind that I'm in, they don't want them back.
[00:21:46] Randal McLeaird: But yeah, I agree. I've made a bunch of offers on things and I'm at least 15 percent at a minimum below what everybody is asking or what the listed price is, sometimes even more. We've noticed that there's a lot more lender monitored sales as well.
[00:21:59] Victoria McGuire: Oh yeah. [00:22:00] So
[00:22:00] Randal McLeaird: that's coming down the pipe. A friend of mine who owns a number of properties solo by himself here in San Antonio, we were talking the other day and I was like, what are you seeing?
[00:22:08] Randal McLeaird: Do you have the capital to deploy? Are you ready to go buy? And he's Nope, I'm still waiting. I'm going to wait until 2025. Rates are going to stay higher for longer as we've all seen. So anyway, yeah. On your front of actually buying deals, are you looking at all those States as well, or are you only targeting those States for the syndication business?
[00:22:25] Randal McLeaird: Yeah.
[00:22:26] Victoria McGuire: Yeah, just for the syndication business for our personal investments, we want to keep those close to home. So our portfolio of like mostly duplexes now we're just looking right in our local area for those.
[00:22:38] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. So I guess if you're looking to buy an apartment complex, though, solo, are you going to buy it solo, or are you going to syndicate that? Yeah, we would syndicate it
[00:22:47] Victoria McGuire: unless it was small enough. Like we're looking at one right now in Spartanburg, South Carolina, if you're familiar with that market. This property is a mess. We bid on it way back. I want to say the first time we offered on it was maybe in [00:23:00] September of last year.
[00:23:01] Victoria McGuire: Missed it by 100, 000. It went with another buyer. It came back on the market, put in another LOI. Then some group came in with 1031 money said they were going to take it at way higher price. Now that's falling apart. Now it's back around again. They can see, it's just, it's. It's what 70 percent I think occupied now because they pulled their property managers off and the properties just, now you have to get bridge debt before it was agency debt.
[00:23:30] Victoria McGuire: Now it's bridge debt. It looks a lot different. So we're probably about 2 million less than what we originally offered. Yeah. And because the purchase price has gone so low and it's bridged now, so we don't need a whole lot of equity. Now we're looking at it more as a JV. If we can get into that one, we can get, three or four partners.
[00:23:50] Victoria McGuire: We can take that one down as a JV, it'll be a lot more profitable. But if it's larger than couple million dollar equity raise, we definitely need to syndicate something like that.
[00:23:59] Randal McLeaird: [00:24:00] Yeah. And for any of those, you're looking in those four states, not just in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. I got you. Okay. So the smaller deals you're close to home syndicated deals anywhere.
[00:24:10] Randal McLeaird: Right.
[00:24:10] Victoria McGuire: Yeah.
[00:24:11] Randal McLeaird: Again, I guess the ones that you're on that you guys have bought recently as CoGPs, how are those things performing in the last couple of years?
[00:24:19] Victoria McGuire: Doing great, really. So what we target is value add. I guess I should have gone over our buy criteria. We look for about 100 to 200 units class B, C plus in the area and we do the value add model.
[00:24:34] Victoria McGuire: So we're looking for some meat on the bone. So to speak, we want to have some units left that need renovations. And then, we can increase the rents that way. We've been really lucky in finding properties that have been severely under market rent as well. So even just bringing them to market has helped tremendously.
[00:24:53] Victoria McGuire: And then when you incorporate the value add into that and being able to push them even a little higher, it's been super [00:25:00] profitable so far. Everything's been going really smoothly.
[00:25:03] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Awesome. Okay. That's good to hear because a lot of people I know that bought in A couple of years are having trouble.
[00:25:10] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. So when you guys bought them, are you, I guess is one lead or one operator performing better than others? And it's evident and you're like, okay, let's pile as capital allocator. We're going to pile more money into these guys deals or this gal's deals or whatever it is.
[00:25:26] Victoria McGuire: Definitely.
[00:25:27] Randal McLeaird: And
[00:25:27] Victoria McGuire: that's where, it's powerful to pick who you partner with and really vet them because a partnership is like a marriage.
[00:25:33] Victoria McGuire: You're going to be with these people for probably five, six years, depending on the length of your business plan. You really want to make sure that you're. In alignment with those people, and we have found through this process that there's certain people. Yeah, that's going to work for that deal, but we're not going to partner with them again thing.
[00:25:49] Victoria McGuire: So we have found some partners that we really click with that, they underwrite like we do super conservative. We're putting in an entire year worth of reserves on most of these [00:26:00] properties. So even if they're not occupied for a year, we'd still be okay. And that's our worst nightmare is to lose someone's money.
[00:26:08] Victoria McGuire: So we only are going to invest in super conservative deals. And we know that these people that we partner with feel the same way. So we're definitely going to continue to align with them.
[00:26:18] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. It's good to that you guys had diversified in a sense that you have raised from multiple different types of people.
[00:26:24] Randal McLeaird: And so you get to see that. So let's talk about this. I'm curious. I'm always asking the types of deals. Are they five, six BC? Can you talk about the return profile or what are they?
[00:26:33] Victoria McGuire: Yeah. So we usually will start out as a 506B on most of these deals. And then if we need to, we'll transition to a 506C.
[00:26:41] Victoria McGuire: But the last deal that we raised for our GP team as a whole, we raised $10 million in seven days. It was such an enticing property. Crushed it. Yeah, we did not even need to think about changing it over. We had one prior to that, that it was a much larger raise. We did end up having to transition that [00:27:00] one.
[00:27:00] Victoria McGuire: To the 506 C, but we prefer not to. It's just easier and it costs more money to build that into the paperwork, all the attorneys fees and all that as well. But I can tell you some of the returns on some of the properties that we've closed on and how they're doing right now. We have one that's in Savannah, and we weren't supposed to start paying out our distributions until about month nine is what we had told investors to expect, but we've been able to stabilize it so much quicker and raise the rent so much faster than we thought we'd be able to that we're already paying out distributions on that one.
[00:27:41] Victoria McGuire: And it was only like three months that it took us to get to the point where we could pay out distributions. So we were super proud of that and like that one we're projecting we're doing an 8 percent preferred return, and we're projecting about a 17 IRR in a 20. ARR and at [00:28:00] least a two equity multiple, it'll probably end up being closer, like two and a quarter.
[00:28:04] Victoria McGuire: That property has just been doing gangbusters. That's probably our best one, to be honest, that we've had so far. But the one that we raised 10 million in a week, that one truly is what they call a unicorn. This was owned by a family. They had owned it. Since they bought it as 30 year old property, they were managing it themselves 108 units and they focused more on just keeping people in there and they didn't really care about the market rent as much.
[00:28:34] Victoria McGuire: They weren't really keeping up with it. And if you can believe this, they were almost over a thousand dollars under market rent. So we're going in renovating everything because nothing's been renovated, and we know because we're raising the rent so drastically, we're going to, lose probably half of the people that are in there.
[00:28:53] Victoria McGuire: Now, those tenants aren't going to be able to afford paying double what they're paying. So we factored that into our [00:29:00] underwriting, but that one truly is a unicorn. And then that one, I think it could be close to a two and a half equity multiple, conservatively, I think it's 2. 3 and it's just killing it already.
[00:29:12] Victoria McGuire: And we just closed on that one in December. So we haven't even, been operating it that long, but we've already proven our business model with doing some renovations and raising the rents. And it's going very,
[00:29:23] Randal McLeaird: very well. So on something like that, are you doing bridge? And then refinancing, what's the strategy for you guys?
[00:29:29] Randal McLeaird: That one, we got seller financing. Oh, wow. Yeah. So were you buying on actuals or were you buying on Proforma? We were buying on actuals.
[00:29:40] Victoria McGuire: That's incredible. Yeah. And that's, the beauty of buying from like a mom and pop kind of thing. It's a lot easier. Like the one we're working on right now, we're buying from institution.
[00:29:50] Victoria McGuire: Yes, we're buying it from an institution and it's been taking forever. Like normally this team that we work with, they will negotiate and get under contract [00:30:00] and due diligence. Everything will be done like so quick, right? This one, it's taken almost three months just to get to PSA and we're still going back and forth with red lines on the PSA.
[00:30:11] Victoria McGuire: And it's been really frustrating how long it takes to negotiate with them. But they have so many. Different people that have to approve it.
[00:30:18] Randal McLeaird: How many units on the institutional and how many units it was a hundred units, give or take for the seller finance deal. Mom and pop. Yeah. So that one was 108.
[00:30:25] Randal McLeaird: This one is 203. Yeah. I'd take seller finance on mom and pop all day. Yeah, that's incredible. So again, to the extent you can talk about it, when you guys are setting up your syndication and you're setting up your raise, how do you guys typically structure your deals? Again, I don't know if it's a 5 or 6C, I'm guessing you can talk about it.
[00:30:43] Randal McLeaird: Like is an 80, 20 split with an 8 Pref, whatever that looks like.
[00:30:46] Victoria McGuire: Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm happy to talk about that. We target and the partners that we partner with do the same, which is nice. We do a 70 30 split 8 percent pref is our main criteria that we focus [00:31:00] on and then the returns we were just talking about on that other one, our minimum underwriting standards are like a 15 percent IRR.
[00:31:07] Victoria McGuire: And a 2X equity multiple, we might go a little bit under that for the right deal, but 2X is really what most investors want to see.
[00:31:15] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. That's a very good, let me see. So on the capital raising side, cause that's seems like you guys are rockstars at it. It's mostly
[00:31:26] Victoria McGuire: my husband. Yeah. He said
[00:31:27] Randal McLeaird: 10 hours a day on the phone.
[00:31:29] Randal McLeaird: And a lot of management of the cash coming into the account. Who's he calling, right? What are the strategies that if somebody is listening to you talk and here's your success and what you guys are doing, how can someone else replicate that? What exactly are you guys doing? Where is the list coming from?
[00:31:45] Randal McLeaird: Who is he calling and how do you go raise capital?
[00:31:48] Victoria McGuire: Right question. When we first started, of course, you always hit up first your family and friends, right? That's really all we had at that point. So we went in and started using ActiveCampaign. We were talking about that a [00:32:00] little bit before.
[00:32:01] Victoria McGuire: ActiveCampaign allows you to set up drip campaigns. So we first called, everybody that we knew and told them, this is what we're doing. If, really no pressure, just Hey, if you're interested in following along on our journey, we'd like to sign you up for our emails.
[00:32:17] Victoria McGuire: So you can keep track of what we're doing. We made sure to talk to each person one on one individually. Not just throw them in a database and have emails start going out to them. We wanted to get their permission and put them in, give them a heads up that they were coming. And then we built a drip campaign of about 10 emails that were designed to educate them about what a syndication is.
[00:32:39] Victoria McGuire: Because most of the people we were talking to had never heard of one. So we did that, we did a series of those where they send about every 4 or 5 days. And we tell them to expect that way they don't think we're like spamming them, we tell them that's going to be going on for about 10 emails and then it'll, back off to maybe one or two emails a month, and we'll let when we have a, an investment opportunity that you [00:33:00] might be interested in.
[00:33:01] Victoria McGuire: And we're definitely not like a high pressure, high sales kind of thing. And we feel like we're bringing you an opportunity. If you like it, you take it great. If it's not for you, that's fine too. We love it. We love the returns and we know it can make a big difference in your financial situation. But if you're not interested, no skin off our back, we're never going to push it on anybody.
[00:33:23] Victoria McGuire: And that's the way that we've, approached this from the beginning. And then once we did our first deal, it's the same thing as what happened with deals coming to us. Our investors started talking about it and how good the experience was and how quickly they started getting their distributions and, then they were like, Can I tell my friend about this?
[00:33:44] Victoria McGuire: Yes, please tell everybody about it. And our list just slowly started growing, right? We only have about 300 people in our database, so we don't have thousands and thousands like some of these people [00:34:00] have that do this, but we try to make it super personal, Marv goes through every week and he focuses on, okay, this week I'm going to text everybody in my phone from A through C.
[00:34:13] Victoria McGuire: And he'll just go through and shoot everybody. Hey, I'm out on my walk. I'm thinking of you. How are you doing? And just that personal relationship, right? We're really work on building that. And he's super great at doing that. But that's why he does that. I don't because I'm on the computer with the numbers, right?
[00:34:28] Victoria McGuire: But I'm really good at supporting him with. Sending out the emails and, setting all of that automation stuff up for him because that's not his forte. So we kind of compliment each other's skillset that way. Now, recently what he's done, because you can only get to so much with family and friends, right?
[00:34:47] Victoria McGuire: So now what he's done is started on social media, which has been a game changer. I can't believe how well it's working. I never would have thought that it would work, but he sets his [00:35:00] intention. He's very intentional about it, very methodical about it. And he makes sure he posts at least three times a week.
[00:35:06] Victoria McGuire: And he does it on LinkedIn and he just talks about the business and he has a call to action. And he's very intentional about reaching out, connecting with people on LinkedIn. And he's getting a lot of reach outs from that. In fact, like last week, he had three new investors that he talked with just based off of LinkedIn posts.
[00:35:28] Victoria McGuire: So that's really been like a game changer because we thought, Oh gosh, we've your family and friends, you can only ask them so many times for money and that's going to be tapped out. But now we've found this new way to continue to add investors to our database and help more people learn about this.
[00:35:47] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. That's awesome. Like very tactical ways that you can replicate what you guys are doing. And. I don't know, but I would assume that you got some of this and some of the training from the mastermind that you were in [00:36:00] and the how to's.
[00:36:01] Victoria McGuire: Absolutely. Yeah. That's why I just so recommend that to people. Cause there's things you just don't think about, or you don't know, and having that network of people to not only what they teach you at the mastermind, but also what you can learn from other members of the mastermind has been super powerful for us.
[00:36:17] Randal McLeaird: Yeah. Are you guys in the middle of a raise for anything right now? We're starting next week. Okay. All right. Is it a public or is it you starting with the 506B again?
[00:36:28] Victoria McGuire: Yeah, we're going to start with the B again.
[00:36:30] Randal McLeaird: Okay, alright.
[00:36:31] Victoria McGuire: Yeah. If
[00:36:32] Randal McLeaird: you want to get to know Victoria and, sorry, what was your husband's name again?
[00:36:36] Randal McLeaird: Marv. Yeah, I'm going to put your contact info in the show notes.
[00:36:39] Victoria McGuire: Thank you.
[00:36:40] Randal McLeaird: And reach out. They're doing some awesome work. They, as you heard, have properties and all kinds of investments that they're working on in different states. So Victoria, I appreciate you jumping on your information, just sharing the tactics.
[00:36:51] Randal McLeaird: It's very helpful for anyone who's looking to do this sort of business. Yeah, I appreciate the information.
[00:36:55] Victoria McGuire: I hope it will help people and really just take action, whether syndication [00:37:00] is for you or not, if you're an agent, you have to get started investing in real estate. Stop making all your customers rich while you're not invest your commissions.
[00:37:10] Randal McLeaird: I just had another guy that I was talking to and he's realtor in Ontario and he was like, man, I was just. Crushing it for all these investors for so long. And then finally I'm like, I'm just going to buy one. So then you bought one. Yeah. It's simple enough. Just go do it.
[00:37:23] Victoria McGuire: It is. I think we get analysis paralysis and it's the fear factor, but just do it.
[00:37:28] Victoria McGuire: The best time to invest in real estate was 20 years ago, but the second best time is right now. So do it.
[00:37:34] Randal McLeaird: Yeah, that's right. Awesome, Victoria. It's great catching up with you. Have an awesome day. We'll catch you guys on the next episode. Did you know that 80% of the agents we speak with got into real estate in order to gain passive income so they could obtain financial freedom and become work optional?
[00:37:48] Randal McLeaird: If you wanna stay up to date, the best way is to make sure you're subscribed. So if you haven't done that, go ahead and do it now. We'll catch you on the next episode.