My First Syndication!

[Bernadeau C.]

Back in 2017 my wife and I had the vision and goal to invest in real estate in order to better our family's future. I started by diving into books, podcasts and meetups. I became instantly hooked and decided to start my own meetup called "Orlando REI" in my local market, which took off and connected me to some amazing people who I have learned a ton from over the years. In 2019 my wife and I took the plunge and bought our first property, a small single family home. My wife believed in me and my passion so much that she did not even see the property before we had it under contract. She's the best! The SFH was a success and we learned a ton! We decided to shift to small-multifamily so we can scale a bit faster and bought a few duplexes which added to our experience as real estate investors and we realized quickly having two doors is more efficient than just one. After the success of our duplexes we said to ourselves if we can buy two at a time, why not four or eight, well this past weekend we just closed on 66 units! We made a lot of rookie mistakes on the way and would not have gotten this far on our first syndication without mentor's in the industry. it is true what they say, tell me the people who you surround yourself with and i'll tell you where you will be.

I chose the hardest deal to pursue for my first deal, as it was a fractured condo but i identified that it was a great deal and dove head first. Lots of Highs and Lows on this one, this acquisition itself could be made into a book or a movie but my partners and I stayed calm and focused on identifying solutions instead of focusing on the problems. I learned so much through this process and had a lot of failures which I call lessons and as a result definitely know what not to do on the next deal! 

As I celebrated my daughter's first birthday this past Saturday, it reminded me of why I have chosen to go on this path. It might seem at first glance to people that are not a part of our community that the reason is money but the reality of why we have chosen to go on this path is not for money but for the one asset that we cannot buy more of, which is time. Investing in real estate is allowing us to choose how we spend the time that we have with our family and loved ones. Our goal was to acquire 2-4 units this year to add to our portfolio but we more than 10Xed that and added 66 units. We started with one back in 2019 and now we have grown to 116 units overall in our portfolio. Looking forward to the next one that we take down!