Investor, Broker, Property Manager from Albany NY

[Adam Gelman]

Hi Everyone, 

I have been listening to the BP podcast for a while now and have really enjoyed them, as well as the web site.  

I started out my real estate career investing in property on my 21st birthday, back in 2001.  My main focus was the student rental market in the city of Albany.  At the time I was a UAlbany student and didn't know what I was going to do with the rest of my life, as everyone kept asking over and over as graduation was rapidly approaching.  I didn't know much about real estate, but I knew I wanted to be in business for myself. 

We met a great real estate agent, and began our journey.  It was pretty wild at first, at least for me.  I was a Sr in college, student athlete, and over night we had 20 units and I was also a landlord.  We kept growing over the next six months and eventually amassed close to 60 units.  

At that time I had graduated from college and started working for a contractor to help me learn how to fix many of the issues that would come up when owning old real estate. Eventually, I became sick of smashing my fingers with a hammer and had learned enough to know the contractor side of things was not where I wanted to spend my time.  I thought the next logical step would be to get my real estate license. I went to the classes, took the tests and in Feb of 2003 was a licensed Realtor.  

Since then my journey has been fun with many ups and downs as you may know from 2003 to now with the real estate market. We eventually amassed close to 100 units and I had also started a  property management company.  I figured if I was doing all this work on my own units, why not help others with their properties.  Albany has many out of town investors that I was helping buy houses, and why not then be full service.  It worked out well.  I was able to have almost full time contractors for my own properties at good rates because I kept them so busy, then be able to pass that savings along to my clients.  

Around 2007 we sold many of our properties, keeping only the ones that I purchased on my own and had a different business model for than when we originally set out.  I continued to manage property for others as it was still mutually beneficial. I also stepped in the franchise restaurant world around that time.  It was quite the journey again.  After trying to figure out if it was better to have employees or tenants, I chose tenants. 

Since then and continued today, I am a full time realtor, landlord, and property manager.  I specialize in student housing mostly, as well higher end rentals and my partner specializes in lower income housing.  We have a full time team that can handle all of our clients needs. From the basement to the attic, and from defining an investment strategy to the closing table. 

I look forward meeting more and more people from BP and hope I can be of help to others as well!