How a Foreign Investor Built a NY Real Estate Portfolio — Then Survived COVID Chaos

Bruce greig (00:00)

Eventually, yeah, they gave me about $80,000 and that was great, but it was all gone in about an hour. But, but, when they sent me the 80,000, ⁓ it came with a note on the bottom that I hope nobody would really act on. But it said that I’m not allowed under any circumstances to evict these tenants for another two years. And under any circumstances means even if they don’t pay rent. So.

Dylan Silver (00:07)

Yeah.

Bruce greig (00:28)

Unfortunately, my tenants all knew that and they just continued to not pay the rent. So that’s how I ended up in the hole. And then of course I ended up with a $200,000 tax bill, which I had to get from a hard money lender.

Dylan Silver (02:17)

Hey, folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Bruce Greig, is an investor in Binghamton, New York, by way of New Zealand. Bruce, thanks for taking the time today. Welcome to the show.

Bruce greig (02:28)

Good to be here.

Dylan Silver (02:30)

Now, when we talk about investing in New York, when we talk about getting into the real estate space in any market, especially coming from outside of the country, there can be somewhat of a learning curve here. Walk me through how you got started investing in real estate.

Bruce greig (02:48)

Well, I was investing in property in New Zealand. ⁓ through a long story, came here. I was actually coming here to buy cars and import them into New Zealand. And ⁓ for various reasons, had to be in, I had to own, I bought a new Dodge Ram and you had to own it in the United States, crazy law, but you had to own it for three months in the United States and use it and prove you use it.

take it back to New Zealand because of the left-hand, right-hand drive thing. So I was kind of stuck here for longer than I wanted to be. And I ended up in New York actually looking at a Buick Wildcat that was for sale. I never bought the car and ended up kind of sitting here wondering what to do with the last month of our time here. ⁓ And ⁓ we were staying in a hotel, getting kind of bored. And so I saw this.

House for sale in Binghamton for I think it was 25,000 at the time. Now I just sold a house in New Zealand and I got like 250,000 for it. And ⁓ so I thought that a similar house had to be worth trying at 25,000. So I bought it wondering what the catch was and ⁓ property is very expensive in New Zealand. ⁓

Dylan Silver (04:07)

Yeah.

Bruce greig (04:08)

So I bought the house and rented it out and then I found I was getting the same rent as I got for my $250,000 house in New Zealand. So that had to be a better deal. But I was really just playing with it. We went back to New Zealand. Long story, but I ended up coming back the following year and I bought a second house in Binghamton.

Everything was going okay. ⁓ Being a landlord from a distance wasn’t ideal, but it was working. Anyway, then we had a massive earthquake in New Zealand and the city I lived in was completely destroyed. And then around the same time, yeah, it was 2011. I lived in Christchurch, New Zealand. ⁓ My insurance company went bankrupt. and then at the same time we had a flood in Binghamton.

Dylan Silver (04:49)

Wow. Which city?

Bruce greig (05:05)

and one of my houses was flooded.

So my property manager was clearly incapable of taking care of it. About that same time my marriage ended, so I ended up taking a flight to New York to fix my house myself. When I got here I found there was actually probably no damage to it really. The property manager was just making stories to get money out of me. But anyway, so now I was back here. So I did some work on the house anyway, and while I was here I ended up… ⁓

I met a woman that I later married and I met another woman that became my agent for my art business, which enabled me to get a visa and work in the United States. So then I went to get on the plane to fly home and I thought, what am I really going even home for? All I’ve got is a city. And you’ve to think that Christchurch was significantly damaged. I worked a lot doing ⁓ artwork and bars and stuff and

Dylan Silver (06:37)

Yeah, yeah.

Bruce greig (06:53)

You weren’t even allowed to go into the central business district. It was all cordoned off. So there was no work for me back in New Zealand. My fiancee was here. She was just my girlfriend at the time. So I really just went back to New Zealand, sorted out my fears and came back to the United States.

Dylan Silver (07:11)

want to ask you specifically about the New Zealand real estate. You mentioned you were involved in real estate in New Zealand. ⁓ Were there any major differences between real estate over there versus in New York where you’re at?

Bruce greig (07:26)

Yeah, the banking systems, I would say it’s easier. I’ve had a lot of trouble with banks in America so much so. mean, I can’t bank in the standard. Anything with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, it’s not for me because I’m not a citizen. ⁓ I’m at the last stages of getting my citizenship, but ⁓ I don’t really need to borrow money now. And ⁓ so yeah, the banking system is very different. In New Zealand, I would largely just walk into my bank.

So want to buy this house. They’d look at my collateral. They would look at my ⁓ income and they would, the bank manager himself would be the guy made the decision. Over here, of course, you fill out forms for the bank manager and they have no say in whether you get the loan or not. It all goes to Fannie Mae and that way. ⁓

Dylan Silver (08:12)

Yeah, I mean, that’s

right. And then post global financial crisis, I’ve said this and it may be changing, but it does feel like especially for younger people that you need good credit, you need credit history, you need a significant down payment. It almost seems like you need like practically a blood sample and like the name of your next of kin and you know, a letter of good standing in order to get

alone and now you’re talking about an increased level of scrutiny or difficulty because you’re being a foreigner, right? And so navigating that, I can imagine, was maybe a little bit challenging when you were just getting started.

Bruce greig (08:49)

Yeah, very much so. I mean, in a funny way, it kind of worked in a good way. The first house I flipped here, I went to my lawyer and ⁓ he was very impressed that I made a bunch of money in such a short space of time. And he offered me his 401k ⁓ money as hard money loan. Now, I mean, it was a 10%, but he’s turned out to be a great thing for me. He’s very easy to deal with. He’s very common sense. He largely looks at two things.

know, whether the collateral is there and whether I can pay it back. And he doesn’t care about anything else. So he’s been a real godsend to me in that way. And that money allowed me to ⁓ move forward and, you know, do up the houses with the finances that I had. It was all going pretty well, actually, until COVID.

Dylan Silver (09:42)

Now COVID hits, COVID affects everybody, right? And you’re seeing distress in really every segment of real estate. But then also you’re seeing people who had effectively their rents being backed or subsidized by the government. I’ve heard a mixed bag here. I’ve heard people talking about landlords specifically and investors, people talking about they received the rent money because their tenants were getting supplements or support from the government.

And then I’ve heard other people saying, you you had that moratorium on rents and so they weren’t receiving any money. What was your ⁓ experience going through COVID?

Bruce greig (10:59)

Okay, well when it first happened, of course, they stopped paying the rent and the government said that I had to apply for the scheme, which I knew it was going to be disaster because everything in New York ⁓ bureaucratically wise is.

So I filled out all the forms and they said that you you couldn’t apply until like eight o’clock in the morning on a certain day. So I had everything ready and I had my computer going and right on eight o’clock I pushed that button. About two minutes later the whole system crashed and didn’t even come back for two weeks or something. It was just flooded. I mean as it would be you know every every landlord in New York that’s like a million applications and about 20 minutes. So anyway.

So that was the first experience, I, thankfully I anticipated that and I sneaked in there before the whole thing went wrong. So then, ⁓ then I had about eight months of just dealing with bureaucratic craziness. ⁓ people at call centers. ⁓ I learned a great trick. You drink the call center, you get somebody that they clearly didn’t know what they were doing at the call center. They were out of their depth. And so I learned a great trick. ⁓ my daughter, she’s actually a lawyer and she taught me this trick. It’s brilliant.

But you just ring the call center. It takes some time of course. You ring the call center, you talk to somebody. If you don’t get the answer you want, you just hang up and you ring straight back and then you get somebody else. Eventually you find somebody that kind of gets what’s going on. So that sort of helped things. ⁓ Yeah. And then it took about nine months I suppose before I got a cent from the ERAP scheme, but eventually they did give me.

Dylan Silver (12:25)

Yeah, roulette.

Bruce greig (12:38)

Money. didn’t give me everything that it had cost me, but the worst part of it was that, you know, obviously I’d been more or less without income. Now you’re going to understand some of my tenants continued paying rent. but about half of them didn’t, but as you know, in real estate, being a landlord, half your money goes just in costs. So I was effectively going backwards and I got round up by not paying my city taxes, which I wasn’t happy about. Nobody was, but I didn’t have any choice. So, ⁓

Eventually, yeah, they gave me about $80,000 and that was great, but it was all gone in about an hour. But, but, when they sent me the 80,000, ⁓ it came with a note on the bottom that I hope nobody would really act on. But it said that I’m not allowed under any circumstances to evict these tenants for another two years. And under any circumstances means even if they don’t pay rent. So.

Dylan Silver (13:15)

Yeah.

Bruce greig (13:36)

Unfortunately, my tenants all knew that and they just continued to not pay the rent. So that’s how I ended up in the hole. And then of course I ended up with a $200,000 tax bill, which I had to get from a hard money lender.

So yeah, I’ve been a…

Dylan Silver (13:55)

Now,

when you were going through that, and this is actually something that I appreciate you discussing here, because there’s so many people that go through this specifically, and we tend to not address it in the real estate community at large, because we wanna show the HGTV level glamor side of it. But COVID is one big example. I know also a lot of flippers in Texas where I’m licensed.

who were losing money on flips or who had flips that were sitting for a very long time. When you’re having these issues arise, are you thinking at that moment, hey, should I sell these properties? Or were you thinking, you know, I’m gonna weather this out?

Bruce greig (14:38)

I decided I didn’t want to be a landlord, but it’s not easy to back out of. So I’m now aiming to set my business up. all I do is buy houses for cash and flip them one at a time, but maybe buying a second one just when the opportunities present themselves, you know.

So, yes, sorry, what was the question again?

Dylan Silver (15:06)

would like to pivot here, ⁓ Bruce and ask you about the market out there in Bighamton. ⁓ What’s like the typical acquisitions price ⁓ for a rental grade property, not something that’s brand new, but something little

Bruce greig (15:21)

Okay, I’m just selling a bunch of my houses for around the 130.

So they’re very affordable.

Dylan Silver (16:10)

Yeah, that is very, so 130. And how far is Binghamton from like New York City if people were using that as a reference point?

Bruce greig (16:17)

Three hours maybe.

Dylan Silver (16:20)

Okay, okay, so it’s out there.

Bruce greig (16:21)

We’re an hour

from Scranton. We’re an hour from Albany. ⁓ It’s having a bit of a resurgence in Spinghamton, thank goodness. yeah, the university here is enormous now. The population, I don’t know if I’d say it’s growing, but there’s a better bunch of people coming in here. There was a lot of unemployment and addiction and stuff like that around, but now there’s people.

Dylan Silver (16:24)

Okay.

Bruce greig (16:49)

actually coming here. A lot of people came up here from New York City after COVID and other reasons they’re leaving New York City.

Dylan Silver (16:56)

can imagine anytime you’re in a market where there’s a university, there’s this university sprawl, if you will, where the effects of the student housing can grow into the town itself. I imagine you’re seeing a lot of that as well up there.

Bruce greig (17:15)

Oh yeah, the student housing has gone crazy. My personal opinion is people are, I mean, there’s some pretty good rent in it. I believe some people are paying like $1,500 for a bedroom at the university. I mean, I’m only getting like $500 for a room, I suppose. But yeah, I’ve seen my rents go from like 800 to 1,800 in the last five years for a three bedroom house.

Dylan Silver (17:37)

Wow.

Nearly. Yeah, yeah. We are coming up on time here though here, Bruce. Any new projects that you’re working on and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to get in contact?

Bruce greig (17:53)

Well, I can give you my phone number.

Dylan Silver (17:56)

Yeah, go ahead.

Bruce greig (17:57)

Okay, 607-221-7596.

Dylan Silver (18:03)

And then are there any new projects that you’re working on or are there any type of specific deals that you’re looking at in the Bighamton area?

Bruce greig (18:11)

No, I’m not really buying anything right now. I’m just getting on top of all my debt and selling houses. ⁓ So what I’m doing is I’ve still got, I just got some squatters out. They were left over from the whole COVID thing. It took me like three years to get them out. So I’m finishing that house. I’ve currently just done three houses that are on the market now. I think they’re sold, but the guy’s struggling to find finance. ⁓ I’ve got a, I did buy, I flipped the house a couple of years ago.

and it went really well. I cleared a hundred grand actually, but then I had to buy another house, which isn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to use it to sort out my finances, but my accountant told me because of the quick turnaround, it would all be going on taxes or half of it at least would go on taxes. So I had to do a, was it 1041 exchange? So I bought a big old house right on the river, which is right where I am now. ⁓ I’ve currently got renting it by the room. I live here myself.

Dylan Silver (19:01)

Right, right.

Bruce greig (19:10)

and I’ve got seven people here at the moment.

Dylan Silver (19:14)

Wow, well.

Bruce greig (19:15)

And it

was actually quite interesting because it had a very big basement and the basement, I’m actually sitting in it right now and as you can see it’s got a wonderful view of the river out there. But the basement only had a six foot ceiling height so we took the floor out, dug it down two feet, three feet actually I think we went down, and I’m making an apartment in the basement.

Dylan Silver (19:37)

All right, well, Bruce, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for coming on the show.