As a realtor and mortgage broker, Dale Corpus has been in the industry since 2002. He invests in syndications and mortgage notes. In today’s episode, Dale shares his story of how shifted to the real estate and finance businesses as the right path to financial freedom for him.
For Dale, getting into the real estate business is one of the things that happened to him. He graduated with an engineering degree from Santa Clara University and took the real estate license test the year he graduated.
After getting laid off from his engineering job, he realized that it actually wasn’t even something he was interested in in the first place. He ended up going down the mortgage route because being a realtor is expensive.
Even during the COVID pandemic, certain industries are still booming. Some companies are even doing IPOs. As for the rest of the industries, Dale believes that San Francisco will bounce back once the pandemic is over.
Suburban areas have been seeing a lot of draw as people are now seeking areas where they’d be able to stretch their legs after living through shelter-in-place restrictions. Plus, there’s been a trend of people wanting bigger homes.
There are still a handful of folks whose units are not rented and who also don’t want to sell while the market is down.
There is a key difference between homes that go quickly and the ones that sit for a while. Right now, the homes being sold and those that aren’t are probably different property types. But Dale suggests that it’s important to have the house look presentable.
In some cases, the property could be overpriced. A lot of times, a 5% reduction in price is all that is needed. With multiple offers still coming in, property owners should do everything to get their property out there.
Social media is now key to getting the word out about your available property. With shelter-in-place, buyer’s agents can do virtual open houses with the buyer through FaceTime or Zoom.
Matterport is another technology being used in listings as it is able to provide a 360 view of a house similar to Google Street View.
When thinking of investing, Dale thinks of cash flow. For him, appreciation is just extra. He used to do out-of-state rentals but got out of that game when he realized it would take much more effort to make it scalable.
Having a background in finance, he got interested in the mortgage note. The way a mortgage note works, if you own it then you are the lender. Dale believes that this offered the opportunity for him to truly get real passive income.
A lot of times most people don’t know where to go. But for Dale, he has a business partner brokering for him. Doing a gut check and making decisions based on his gut feeling about a person also plays a role.
When it comes to investing in single-family homes, it takes a lot of effort as you first have to find the deal and spend some time getting the loan. Plus, since some of the property management companies make only 5-10% of the gross monthly rent, they wouldn’t spend that much time to cut costs, save money or do things better for the property owner. For them, they would want to be more hands-off because they’re already managing a lot of units
Syndications presented a whole different opportunity for Dale. Being regulated by the SEC, it had more checks and balances. All he had to do was ride up the coattails of what others have already built. He wouldn’t need to build up that network all by himself.
Syndications also offered him the opportunity to no longer have to keep thinking about how to deal with the property.
The real estate world is fun but there’s a ton of things Dale believes he could be doing. Dale plans to keep growing his real estate selling business and maybe someday have his own syndication as it feels like the next natural step.
It’s great to educate yourself about real estate investing. But take action. Learn what you can but understand that you’ll learn even more by jumping into it. Don’t be paralyzed into thinking that you’re now ready yet.
Even if you mess things up, there will still be a valuable learning experience there.
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