Speaker 0 00:00:01 Unlock more to life with Adrian Penoza real estate investing podcast, where we broadcast interviews with successful real estate investors across north America, to empower you on your journey, to unlocking more to life with real estate and investing. Now, now here's your host, Adrian Penoza
Speaker 1 00:00:27 Hey everyone. It's Adrian. Penoza here with executive properties capital, and I'm the founder and CEO of the company. And I want to take this opportunity to welcome you on the more to life real estate investing podcast. I want to take a second to introduce myself for those of you who don't know me. And I guess my journey in real estate investing and tell you all about the ups and downs and how I started and where I've gone and where I am now sort of speak. Um, I'm incredibly excited and over the moon to host this more to life real estate investing podcast and bring you guys some really, really amazing content, some really amazing speakers in relation to the real estate investing world and how real estate investing not only changed my life obviously, and gave me more to life, but also their journey in real estate investing and everything to do with that.
Speaker 1 00:01:22 So, Adrian, Penoza obviously I'm 47 years old. I've been a real estate investor now for 11 years and I'm married and I have one child who is in her twenties. I'm actually, um, super excited to get into my story, but, um, I thought it'd be important for me to mention as well for my first episode, obviously the launch of our podcast, I thought it would be fitting to record it at our cottage up in Georgian bay and real estate investing gave me more to life. And here's just one thing that it gave me more than the average person being able to afford to have the luxury of owning a cottage in the beautiful Georgian bay area. So if you hear some birds chirping in the background and whatnot, I'm in the, uh, the middle of the Georgian bay area filming and recording at our cottage this morning.
Speaker 1 00:02:20 So my real estate journey 11 years ago started while I was a police officer and I was, um, a police officer in the GTA. So I had about 10, 11 years on the job at that time when I started investing in real estate and I wanted to buy one or two rental properties to subsidize my pension when I retire from the police force. So not having any money in the bank at that time. Um, my wife and I, after I convinced her, uh, decided to leverage everything we had as, and the only thing we had at that time was equity in our home. So we decided to leverage the equity we had in our home to begin purchasing rental properties. And if I'm not mistaken, we started with a $200,000 line home equity line of credit, which got our real estate career started. So things went obviously, you know, knock on wood.
Speaker 1 00:03:26 Things went really good for us. And one property, two properties, three properties all while I was a full-time police officer in the GTA. So we hit three properties plus our principal residence. So we now own four homes. And again, starting 11 years ago, all in, at that time, all in Hamilton, um, where we were purchasing our rental properties. So fast forward, um, to 2017, that was the year essentially that changed my life. And I realized that there was more to life than the typical nine to five or working for somebody else or for being a police officer for that matter. And don't get me wrong. You know, I wanted to be a police officer. That was my dream ever since I was in junior kindergarten in elementary school. That was my dream. And all I wanted to do was be a cop, obviously, you know, my mindset after 12 years and then beginning my real estate journey then slowly but surely started to focus towards real estate investing.
Speaker 1 00:04:47 And I started to see at that time, some of the rewards that was coming to me, uh, as a result of those choices I was making in the real estate investing world. So some of you are wondering, all right, well, you're successful in the police department. I got promoted through the ranks. Um, I had an amazing career learned so much taught me so much. I wanted to do that ever since I was a little boy, why did you leave? Why did you want to leave police policing and that stable paycheck, decent money, obviously pension benefits, um, set for life, so to speak what made me leave and, and just really wanna focus on real estate investing? Well, I was starting to get a little tired and overwhelmed by trying to juggle being a real estate investor and being a full-time police officer. Now, when I started, you know, for me, it was doing everything on my own and you know, some people say, I don't have the time for this, or I don't have the time for that.
Speaker 1 00:05:58 Or where would I find the time to, to do all that? Well, I'm living proof that if you want something bad enough, you know, you make the time to do it. And that's exactly what I did. So juggling being a dad, um, a husband, a full-time, uh, police officer, uh, and at that time, a part-time real estate investor. I made the time I found the time and I did it and I never looked back so fast forward again in 2017. Um, again, the year that I changed my life, I left and I retired from the police department and it was a very emotional decision for me to make and my family at that time, because the policing was everything I knew. And the regimented lifestyle schedule scheduling was obviously, yeah, it was everything I knew at the time. And one thing I did know was that I knew there was more to life than being a police officer and the taste I had of real estate investing and the life that I was seeing I could have.
Speaker 1 00:07:08 And the freedom I could have by being a real estate investor started to really open my eyes. And my passion for policing began to shift towards real estate investing slowly but surely. And again, 2017 came along and I left and I retired with great accolades after an amazing 21 years of being on the police department. And I had amazing opportunities. You know, I was part of the drug squad street, crime unit, uh, hold up squad where we investigated bank robberies and home invasions. I had an opportunity to work in high schools with, um, uh, teenagers and influence their lives, obviously in a positive manner. Um, obviously work the road, um, you know, the beat sort of, sort of speak. Uh, I worked in auto crime detective office, um, and, and so on. So I, I got a really, really good array of everything. The police department had to offer 2017.
Speaker 1 00:08:17 I made the decision, I can financially afford to leave the police department because of the choices I was making in real estate. And my properties that I purchased, um, when I started were all cash flowing, very generously. So I was mimicking my salary in the police department from my cash flow for my properties. And that's when that hard, hard decision came around and I left, um, and wanted to focus on full-time real estate investing. So we began to our journey then took me to obviously getting into business with my business partners. It took me to beginning to join venture with like-minded individuals, like-minded investors who wanted to leverage the experience that I gained over my police, my police, sorry, my real estate investing career thus far and joined venturing since 2017. Up until today, we've managed to increase our real estate portfolio from owning. If you recall, in my journey, three rental properties, plus my personal home.
Speaker 1 00:09:28 So four homes, we now own 65 multifamily homes, which is equivalent to just over 265 units, millions and millions and millions of dollars in owning real estate. So amazing accomplishment for myself. I, I felt very fortunate that I was able to do that in such a short period of time. So a lot of people ask me, you know, was it easy? Was this journey that took me to 265 units easy? Well, absolutely not. It wasn't easy. There was a huge learning curve. There was a lot of effort and work to be done that was done. Uh, but at the end of the day, um, it was a hundred percent worth it, a hundred percent worth it. So I can fast forward kind of towards, uh, some other influencing factors that helped me make that decision to leave the police department and work towards, um, being to where we are today and, you know, through the bump and grind of being in the police department and court and scheduling and juggling life and real estate investing and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 00:10:48 It, I came to realize that I really missed what more to life had to offer. And I missed spending time with my family and all that time was taken away by working in the police department and all the different, crazy shifts and so on and so forth. And the demands that that job had on my life. And, you know, I miss doing small things in life that I've forgotten were very important. And, and obviously that is spending some quality time with my family and, um, my closest friends, as much as I enjoyed serving the community and the GTA with my police career, you know, back then I realized that I had to put my family first again and be home with them and start thinking, start really looking after myself, my family, and, and crossing things off my bucket list for that matter. And that's exactly what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1 00:11:43 And I knew there was more to life out there, and I just had to unlock that financial freedom, but not only that just unlock the freedom of my life and being able to do what I want when I want and how I want that being said, you know, I couldn't have done it without the power team, uh, behind me and helping me achieve those goals that I set for myself. And, you know, throughout this podcast and the different people we're gonna interview and bring on and who are gonna share their journey and give you tips and tricks, you're gonna probably hear that time and time again, power team is so important in the real estate investing world and thanks to my power team and my business partners who helped me along the journey, I was successful, obviously getting to building this massive real estate empire sort of speak that some people call it to today.
Speaker 1 00:12:41 So shortly after my full time, uh, real estate transition of my life, I began to realize, obviously there's more than meets the eye in real estate. Obviously it's not all glory and, um, amazing experiences. There's been some ups and downs for sure. So what I mean by this is obviously, you know, you're always gonna have the one or two bad apples experiences with some bad tenants, but if, you know, you jump through the hoops properly, those can be mitigated pretty, pretty, pretty quickly. You know, some not so pleasing experiences with contractors that, you know, ghost you after two months of starting your project and you're in the middle of it. And now you're like left with, you know, holding the hammer yourself and what are you gonna do? And you're in the middle of these renovations, um, having to maintain your properties both inside and out.
Speaker 1 00:13:31 And, you know, I couldn't have, as my portfolio began to scale, there's no way, you know, I could have done this and continued to grow the portfolio without the strength and the power team in my corner. So my mindset then was, you know, as things started to escalate and grow after I retired from the police force, I thought, you know, we have an, an incredible opportunity here to grow this business, grow my real estate portfolio in the joint venture fashion. But more importantly, I wanted, I had this vision that I wanted to create like a Costco effect, a Costco power team, and have everything under one roof through our organization of companies. So we started to get really, really good at the buy renovate refinance and rent strategy and adopting and employing that strategy with our, uh, rental properties that we were continuing to buy with our joint venture partners and creating that Costco effect within our organization essentially meant, obviously I was now, uh, successful in obtaining my real estate license so I can transact in real estate and, um, go out and find amazing deals and amazing opportunities for myself and, uh, potential joint venture partners, uh, above and beyond that we wanted to in adopting the buy renovate, refinancing rent strategy, we're involved with a number of renovations, pretty much most of our purchases in the last, I wanna say five years really just focused on buying distress properties that had value add to them and forcing that appreciation in those properties by the renovations, which led us to start our own construction company and that company's vision construction management.
Speaker 1 00:15:43 And it really gave not only myself and my power team, peace of mind, really that we no longer had to rely on, you know, fly by night contractors, uh, on K Gigi. We had our in-house construction company that really focused on just working for us, obviously and our, on our payroll and facilitates some amazing renovations in the multifamily space. And the peace of mind that, you know, projects were done on time and projects would be done on budget, gave our joint venture partners and ourselves that piece of mind, along with this transition of, uh, the Costco effect I like to call it, um, you know, mindset was, we have all these properties, we're joint venturing with a bunch of different people and why don't we, um, start our own property management company. And that's exactly what happened, um, where we could take care of our own properties, our joint venture properties that we own with our business partners and, um, give it that personal touch that we have in our company.
Speaker 1 00:16:51 And that company is called executive properties, Inc. Uh, we scaled that company over since 2017 to today to managing just over 500 units in the Hamilton and surrounding area. Again, super proud of that achievement that we we've managed to make with our business partners and our power team. And lastly, building some strong relationships with ships with, um, our mortgage, our preferred mortgage brokers. And, um, in that space, we've been able to direct business their way and their knowledge and expertise in the, um, buy renovate refinance and real estate investing world have been able to work with our clients and our joint venture partners, getting them qualified on their mortgages for these properties. And so on. Again, part of our power team, uh, working with working with these mortgage brokers has, has changed obviously the direction of travel for some of, or most of our joint venture partners and, and really opening up their home equity lines of credit, their, their leveraging and borrowing power and rinsing and repeat repeating rinsing and repeating the buy renovate, uh, refinance and rent strategy.
Speaker 1 00:18:16 So just to recap, then obviously 2017, I retired and then 2017 began to really focus on full-time real estate investing and scaling my portfolio, uh, from four properties to 65 properties after taking that leap of faith and focusing on real estate investing organization of companies, the Costco effect, all that happened, uh, since 2017 and now being co-owner of obviously these very successful companies is something that, um, again has changed my life and it all started guys. I can't stress enough. It all started with a home equity line of credit and, you know, the thought of owning two rental properties to subsidize my pension after a 30 year career in the police department. One last thing I forgot to mention is, um, we also started our own landscaping company, that it facilitates everything on our properties, right from grass, cutting snow removal, uh, deck building, fence, building, um, everything to do with your exterior maintenance on the properties, right to planting flowers and the flower beds.
Speaker 1 00:19:36 So what we wanted to create, um, was everything under one roof and provide our joint venture partners with a hassle free handsfree real estate investing experience. I want to touch upon the success we've had with the buy renovate refinance and rent strategy. Obviously there was a bit of a learning curve there and you get good at something too. And I found in my experience, you get good at something by taking action and succeeding or failing forward. And obviously taking action is one of my middle names. I have several middle names, but, uh, not middle names, but, um, what word am I looking for? Um, nicknames taking action is one of my nicknames. I've also been called, um, in the real estate world. I've been called many things actually, but in the real estate world, taking action, Mr. Cash flow, bur boss, um, and on and on, but nevertheless, taking action in the Burr strategy and being involved in probably close to 40 Burr projects to date, we've managed to refine this process to a fine art, right from the acquisition to the analysis on that property, to the renovations and property management, and then, you know, very, very important, uh, the refinance and obviously the goal of any bur project really is to extract as much capital as you possibly can on the refinance and not leave any money in the property and still cash flow and still have that pay down and still have passive appreciation.
Speaker 1 00:21:30 We've fine tuned this strategy that we've really been focusing on over the past five years, and we are now able to deliver our joint venture partners, 9,500 indefinite return on investment by extracting all of the capital through the power of the refinance with our bird projects and in conjunction with our joint venture partners. So what amazing experience would you have if you put, you know, a ton of capital into a property six to eight months later, you're able to refinance that property and extract all of your 20% down payment and all of your renovation costs, still cash flow still have, uh, passive appreciation and debt pay down with none of your money left in a deal. That's the handsfree hassle free environment that we provide our joint venture partners. And we've perfected again, taking action and being involved in, you know, close to 40 bur projects has enabled us to do that.
Speaker 1 00:22:39 So now that you know a little bit about me, my family, where I came from, how I started my, my journey in a nutshell, the Kohl's notes version of my journey and the successes we've had in real estate investing has done for us over again, to date 11 years. And I hope that really resonates for you because more to life can happen for you. Like it happened for me and a lot of investors that I know, but you have to take that action. You have to get off the fence and pull the trigger and the fruits of your labor with real estate investing. Can't start unless you take that action and get started. So I wanted to put this podcast together to touch people's lives in, in one way or another, and spread the message that no matter what walk of life you're coming from, what career you're in, whether you're a lawyer, doctor, fireman, police, officer, teacher, you know, cetera, et cetera, cetera, entrepreneur, whatever walk of life you're in real estate investing can change your life.
Speaker 1 00:23:50 And you have to take action though. So what I wanna do here and what my goal is through this podcast, again, that brings some amazing speakers on that have been very successful in real estate investing. And they can share their stories and their journeys with you and their tips and their tricks on how they made it and how real estate investing gave them more to life. And they were able to escape. I mean, the ultimate goal is to live life on your terms and to escape the nine to five grind that most people get accustomed to and feel that's basically the only way to continue to live their life. That's what the goal here is guys. And, and my goal is to achieve that, uh, and to help you see that and take that step, take that first step, take that action. And if it's not your first rodeo, take the second step, maybe get involved in a joint venture partnership with us or anybody else, you know, that does real estate investing at a high level and leverage their knowledge or my knowledge to, you know, grow your portfolio and, and build an empire of 65 plus properties or more for that matter, or just have enough properties to change your life and show you there's more to life than the nine to five, you know, bump and grind every day and your life on someone else's schedule because you work for them.
Speaker 1 00:25:17 So if you're looking to take those first steps in real estate, investing, diversifying your portfolio, building generational wealth, growing your portfolio, escaping the nine to five grind, potentially retiring early, uh, from your career, you need to listen, and this is why you're gonna listen to this podcast for that matter, because we're gonna talk to you all about that. And our speakers are gonna show you how they did it and, and help you do it by the information we're bringing forward. And if there's nothing else I succeed at and I can help you do that, I, it's definitely a way I can give back to the real estate investing community and giving back in one way or another, I think is what it's all about too. It's not all only about being successful and thinking of only yourself. I think it's about giving back above and beyond that as well.
Speaker 1 00:26:09 And that's gratifying in itself. Not only being real estate can be lucrative for yourselves and your families and create that generational wealth. But for me, I've done that. And I've done that obviously at a very high level. And I'm, I'm very fortunate and lucky at how it turned out for me, but I wanna now I'm at a point where I want to give back as well and, and help you change your life. Whether, you know, you're in the 9 1, 1 community or not, you can do it. I did it, and I'm living proof of that. So I hope I got everything out there that can encourage you to take that first step or encourage you, that you can definitely grow your portfolio into an empire like me and, and who knows where it'll go from here, sort of speak. So if you're interested in unlocking and using real estate to unlock more to life for yourself and your family, then I really encourage you to spread the word about our company, our podcast, follow us on our social media pages, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, um, follow us on this podcast.
Speaker 1 00:27:22 Um, we have a bunch of great things on YouTube as well. Just Google my name and, uh, we're all over those, uh, social media pages, YouTube, um, visit our website, www.investwithepc.com. Um, send me an email, shoot me a text. My contact information is really not hard to find it's all over social media, easiest and quickest ways. Just email me executive
[email protected]. And I'd love to hear from you. If there's anything else you want to hear on this podcast or different speakers you want me to bring in by all means, shoot me an email, reach out. I can definitely work on that for you guys and, uh, love the feedback, how we can improve the podcast and the content of the podcast. Again, we're at a really, really infancy stages, but there's probably, you know, in owning 265 units, there's probably no real estate or yeah, there's probably no real estate situation.
Speaker 1 00:28:25 I haven't been in, whether it's transactional wise, construction wise, the buy renovate refinance, the financing component, the joint venture components, working with permits, working with the city, working with different paralegals, you name it, um, different insurance providers, different mortgage providers, everything to do with real estate investing. There's probably no situation that I haven't been through myself that I can share with you and help you and give you the proper advice. So on that note, it's been great. I'm so excited about this, um, and to grow this podcast and deliver you amazing content and, uh, yeah, we'll see you on the next one. Episode two, we're gonna be hosting two episodes per month and bringing in some amazing, amazing speakers and content guys. That's it for today. So from George and bay more to life real estate investing podcast, I wish you an amazing week and, uh, see you on the next one. Take care of cheers.
