Real Estate Investing A to Z: Deals, Funding and Property Management

Adrian Fernandez (20:04)

There is two ways that you can pay for success. You can pay with mistakes or you can pay with education and learning. So y you can you can learn by learning the theory and that kind of thing, but you still need the practice.

Or you can learn from people that have done it before and then partner with those people before you go on your own. but either way there’s going to be a cost, so you choose what price you want to pay.

Issa Hanna (01:32)

Welcome back to another episode of The Real Estate Pros Show. I’m your host, Issa Hanna, and today I have Adrian Fernandez and Jose Gomez with LEGADO Builders here to share their knowledge with us. Welcome guys, how are you?

Adrian Fernandez (01:43)

Gonna you?

Issa Hanna (01:44)

I am doing yeah guys, I’m doing so amazing. Super excited to have you guys just talking to you before this. Great partnership, great synergy you guys have. It projects through the screen. but for people at home, give us a little rundown on what LEGADO Builders is and then what your day-to-days look like, Adrian, and then what your data days, Jose, look

Adrian Fernandez (02:04)

So to start, LEGADO Builders is a real estate advisory firm. It was co-founded by both Jose and I. Before we used to work for a real estate investment fund in acquisitions and now we use that same methodology to deliver that same kind of investment to our clients.

although we also add a holistic approach regarding combining pretty much everything from A to C that any investor needs because we get the funding, we I connect our clients with tax advisors and that kind of thing. So you also wanted to know about what our day today was like. Jose would you like to start?

Jose Gomez (02:55)

Yeah, very well. So I am actually in charge of the disposition here. So what me and the team does is that I generally take the calls from the leads that we get from our edge company. and I just do those calls basically day to day to make sure we actually have these leads that are interested and do want to join the company. And then what the rest of the team does is they actually take the properties that Adrian’s team sends over to us.

And then we plug it out over to our end buyers or our institutional buyers, whichever comes first, or whatever the property investment fits to them. So pretty much.

Issa Hanna (03:32)

Amazing. And Adrian, what are your day to days looking like every day?

Adrian Fernandez (03:33)

So my day today well as most of the listeners know entrepreneurs wear a lot of hats so every single day is completely different. however I am in charge of the acquisitions team, so it’s evaluating the properties that our team sends to me before we send it to our buyers. I make sure that all of them are good to go.

And besides that it’s planning the finances, looking at opportunities in the market, everything that has to do with strategy.

Issa Hanna (04:08)

I love that you guys perfect synergy, like I said earlier. one complements the other. and that’s what huge great partnerships are built off of. And it’s amazing. I mean, you guys find the investments. You guys find them the financing, you guys literally handle everything A to Z for these investors. So for my for my armchair investors, for my guys who like that limited, investment, limited liability type stuff.

These are the guys right here, right? So they’re gonna find you it, they’re gonna secure the financing, they’re gonna take you to the finish line, A to Z on this property. and you’re not gonna have to deal with the stress because they will do it for you. Amazing business model, you guys. I mean, truly, amazing. And then Jose, we were talking earlier. He said, Jose told me, you guys, one of his strengths and one of the company’s strengths are connections.

are super important. Can you shed more light, Jose, on why connections are super important, how you guys got so good at connecting?

Jose Gomez (05:07)

Yeah. So as we were working together at the previous company rights, a lot of the clients that we used to work with, we did such a good job just providing the actual property, providing and analyzing everything to the point where they’re like, look, these are the people that we want to work with. We don’t want to work with anybody else just because of how easy and how smooth we’ve made the overall process.

So really just providing a good result and providing a good overall process allowed these clients to have such trust that they just wanted us to take care of everything. but not just that, having already a system built and improving upon such system, reaching out to lending or lending officers, reaching out to property owners, making sure these properties have been negotiated, making sure, wholesalers are wanting to work with us, all these different types of people and just maintaining that connection by, feeding them.

properties or receiving something from them and making something out of it. So pretty much just staying alive in every aspect allowed us to solidify these connections and pretty much bring us to where we are now in terms of connections.

Issa Hanna (06:07)

Definitely, man. I know when I got a couple of companies like you guys that I deal with out in Ohio and a couple of the guys are my favorites because you guys feed it you guys know what our buyer’s net is what your institutional buyers want.

and you’re a constant source of deals for them. You’re constantly making them money. and we love people like you. Investors, we love people like that. Adrian, you’re bringing in also a lot of knowledge because you are a former real estate agent and a loan officer. So can you tell us more about that?

Adrian Fernandez (06:32)

yes, definitely. So I realized that well when I was an investment realtor, I realized that we needed a lot of hard money and DSCR and that kind of loans, the regular investment loans and that if I knew about the process from a to C I was going to be a better realtor.

as well as I was going to be a better loan officer and matching them both was going to be a better overall. I compared whether I should be join a brokerage or just a direct lender and I realized that as you probably know it’s when you worked in lending that using a broker instead of only one product that well you they can

The loan officers can offer multiple products, but I mean a one only lending company. filtering through over two hundred different lenders allows us to find a lot better interest rates and other opportunities. so now we are using the same team that I used to work for, the company’s Loan Factory. so

we are providing those same loans specifically targeted to our clients.

Issa Hanna (07:45)

Amazing man. and as a former agent or as a current agent myself, a lot of home buyers, over 250 home buyers under my belt. And I cut my teeth in the as a loan officer and the real estate game and loan processor. There’s no other way to learn the game better, learn the process better than to do that. so you’re able to identify these certain types of loan products for your investors just by talking to them because you have this background, right? You’re basically

pre-qualifying your o your own people, like, okay, I think this type of package, this type of loan service is the best for him. So man, like I said, man, you guys are truly remarkable that the partnership, the synergy, is right there. And now I kind of want to get the origin story of LEGADO Builders, right? how did you guys come together? What made you form this? And Jose, you can go if you want.

Jose Gomez (08:35)

Sure. so we used to be friends or well, we’ve been friends really since high school when I moved over to Florida. I met Adrian, if you don’t mind me, it was in tenth grade or eleventh grade, if I’m not mistaken. Or

Adrian Fernandez (08:45)

Ninth grade, but close enough.

Jose Gomez (08:47)

Yeah, so we met each other in high school, and out of all the friends and out of everybody, he was pretty much the one that would always keep me on track in terms of studies. everybody else wanted to run around and be doing all that, but he was the one that was more centered into actually getting a good grade and actually finishing school. So and I really appreciated that. Anytime I would struggle, Adrian would come over with the logic and just attack me and just be like, Hey, this is the way to do it. So he was always a very logical one. I was always like the more

social one and that’s why we pair up so well together, because anything that needs logic, there he is. and over the years, we we fell through for a bit whenever I moved from Tampa over to Austin. But eventually we reconnected and when we did reconnect, it was like it was just something like just a Powerball just coming together. Right. we started catching up, we started sort of learning more about each other and just he was working at the previous company, GWP, he was working there.

I was working at a factory, just a traditional regular factory job, nothing to do with real estate. And I was also in college for mechanical engineering. so one of the days, he called up and he was talking about the company he was working for. hey, I’m over here doing fix and flip and this and that. And, I had a little bit of interest. I’m like, hey, so how do you actually start off doing this? And he pretty much just gave me an intro and started training me. And then like took about six months.

And eventually I joined the company myself. I let go of the factory job. And it was just, we just started working together, working together, learning more together, and just pretty much building each other up so much so that we were like, hey, why stop here when we can do something greater and actually build something out of this connection that we have? And that’s where we introduced and created LEGADO Builders. And this is the beginning to something pretty much extraordinary from both sides.

Issa Hanna (10:45)

definitely, man. I mean, super impressive. and

as I mean, having the childhood friend, yeah, you guys have known each other since you were kids before you even had a dime to your name. And you guys hung out. And then you reconnected years later, and it was like, I have a good friend, and same thing. We reconnected after ten years, and it was like a day hadn’t passed, Those are the type of people you want in your life, those are the type of people that you want to do business with because

money’s not the most important thing in this relationship. These guys have known each other since the ninth grade. they went to high school dances probably together, brought your dates and came to what I’m saying? So amazing, man. How cool is that? I didn’t know that from our pre-conversation. So that one hit me by surprise a little bit. but enough of the feel-good stuff. I want to get the nightmare story from you guys now, right? All of us investors, we have

The real estate nightmare. The one time, a lot of times, it’s multiple times, stuff went sideways. We had to pivot, we had to get through it. So give me one of you guys’ real estate nightmares.

Adrian Fernandez (11:28)

So this was the worst nightmare that scenario that I had to work with. So this was actually my dad, so very close to family finances. we started investing and he did it with his funds and then actually that’s how I got started into investing in real estate assigned sourcing the properties and all of that.

So he heard about buying properties at auctions and it made sense because the properties were cheaper. So he pulled some some money from business credit cards, the zero percent APR and it sounds great as long as you can pay it back within twelve months. So yes, that works perfectly for reward fix and flip.

Except that there was a detail that none of us knew because I was a new real estate agent and he was a new investor and we didn’t seek any other counsel before doing this. So although regular title companies they always do a title search when buying for closed properties, you need to do your own title search. Nobody does that for you. So we found the property, it was really cheap, it

seemed like a great opportunity. And then there was a Ninety thousand dollar HOA link.

I hate HOAs as most people. It e every single time I talk about an HOA, it reminds me of a communist organization, to be honest. They want everything to be the same, that the rules are so strict, many times it doesn’t make sense, and there is no way to go around it. so

we had to pay that and then the property was a loss and that kind of thing. so there were two options declare bankruptcy and lose all of the money that was invested or investing a second one and with the profits of that property pay back the debt before the twelve months happen for the business credit cards.

My dad knowing how he is and the reason why I’m here today, he chose to take the risk. And with that profit, he almost broke even and then with the other property, then it was profit, and then three properties turned into five, ten, fifteen and everything w we succeeded a after that. But we have not invested into foreclosed property since.

We will eventually but we realize that there is a high RY by investing with hard money instead of with cash because of the leverage. So that is why we’re going that way and that’s why at LEGADO Builders we usually recommend our investors unless they have a lot of cash to invest with hard money.

Issa Hanna (14:14)

Wow man, definitely a nightmare. A ninety thousand dollar lien, those HOAs, man, they’re tough. I’ve had my fair share of dealings with HOAs as an agent in the past. Yeah. but man, what a real estate pro thing to do, right? Instead of folding, instead of instead of getting out, man, you guys said no, we’re doubling down. We’re gonna buy another one and we’re gonna make the money back. And that’s the beauty of real estate, you guys. And you never lose, you always learn in real estate, right? So

since that day till now, I bet you both know right now to look at the HOA, make sure there’s no liens, make sure it’s just a lesson that you learn, So it makes you harder, it makes you stronger, it makes you more decisive as a person. And that’s why I always ask about the nightmare, because once you get through it, at the time it’s horrible, right? It’s just most stressful thing ever. Once you get through it, you kinda laugh about it and you’re kinda thankful that you went through it because

you were taught something that doesn’t happen to a lot of people. So it’s just even more information. Jose, I want you to talk about your future opportunities that I asked you about earlier because you told me you got some things cooking up. So what does LEGADO got cooking up here?

Jose Gomez (15:20)

Yeah. So apart from doing just regular day-to-day investing, fix and flip and fix and hold, we do want to go ahead and take a route and actually do these government contracts. we still haven’t

initiated it, right? We’re still new to it. But we’re gonna learn eventually and we’re gonna have that experience and we’re actually gonna go ahead and complete a few contracts, see how it goes. but also growing the company on the client side as well. So having these clients and eventually building an entire program of just from zero to a hundred regarding real estate investing, doing live streams, actually showing people in real time how to actually take an investment, how to make it into a fix and flip or a fix hold

how we actually go about analyzing properties, just pretty much everything when it comes to investing. We want to be like a central hub for investors, somewhere where somebody can be like, hey, you need somebody to invest. Hey, colleague all the builders, we’re here. We want to show you, we want to teach you. even for experienced investors, we also want to open up a sector for people who have experience who just don’t necessarily want to manage their property. They just want to be like, hey, I just want to collect a check. I need a company to manage the property for me. So we want to eventually do property management as well. Things like that. So

We have a lot of aspirations, a lot of goals. And the best part is we know how to start, where to start, and how to actually make it happen. a lot of people want to do these things, but they don’t have that sort of initiation phase. so and that’s what one thing is to why I like working with Adrian, and he’s very good at taking action. Very, good at that. I tell him something, if he likes it, he agrees. We’re already on it, literally on the next day. So pretty much that. I mean, it’s it’s gonna be a good five years. I’m excited for it.

Of course, there’s gonna be some rough patches here and there. Nothing ever flows perfect with real estate. But learning how to attack a problem and not just attack it, but learn from it, grow from it, and eventually just transition it into something beautiful is what real estate is about. So and that’s where a lot of companies fail. And that’s where we have to overcome and succeed and actually create this well being of a company and create this trust and this connection that we want as a company for the people by the people. Because we were the people too, we

didn’t come from a rich family. We came from nothing. Now we have something and we want to take this something and make it into something greater even then. So one hundred percent, man. very beautifully put too. And I know you guys are gonna crush these future goals these next five years. The partnership, like I said, the synergy. You guys are like peanut butter and jelly over here. you guys flow perfectly together. and now I want to get

Both you guys to give me some advice for my younger generation, for my new investors, for my new realtors, for my new startup companies, right? and you guys touched on this a lot in your answers. Connections, business relationships, your network is the most important thing in real estate, right? knowing how to get that DSCR loan, knowing who to talk to, knowing the contractor, super important in our game. So if you had to give the new guy one piece of advice.

On how to get the ball rolling on the business relationships, what would you say? I would say nothing says it better than this movie, Top Gun: Maverick. And it’s don’t think, just do. It’s as simple as that. I can promise you. When you when you start going about it like that, don’t think, just do, you have so many opportunities that open up. And it’s actually one of the things that has helped me get to where I’m at today. So it’s very beautiful.

Issa Hanna (18:25)

100%. How about you, Adrian? What would you tell them?

Adrian Fernandez (18:31)

I totally agree with Jose. So what I will say is that there is two ways that you can pay for success. You can pay with mistakes or you can pay with education and learning. So y you can you can learn by learning the theory and that kind of thing, but you still need the practice.

Or you can learn from people that have done it before and then partner with those people before you go on your own. but either way there’s going to be a cost, so you choose what price you want to pay.

Issa Hanna (19:10)

I love that you guys don’t think just do. That is that is true success. you pick the price you want to pay, you pick the route you want to go. I mean, very eloquently put you guys, I see huge bright things in the future. and my viewership, this show, we have a lot of investors on here. I bet you their ears are perking up, just talking to you guys, seeing the light you’re bringing into the show.

the knowledge you’re bringing to the game. So if they wanted to get a hold of you guys, if they wanted to do business with LEGADO Builders, where could they reach you guys at?

Adrian Fernandez (19:41)

Simply go to our website, LEGADObuilders.org. Over there you can reach us by phone, email, whatever you want.

Issa Hanna (19:49)

Mm-hmm. 100%. LEGADObuilders.org, you guys. Make sure it’s a .org. It’s not the .com. check them out. These guys will take you to the finish line. They’re going to make you tons of money. Very personable guys that do business and hold themselves to the utmost integrity. And those are the type of guys you need in your corner. Guys, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show, bringing your knowledge to our world. It was a true honor to host both of you.

Jose Gomez (20:15)

Likewise, thank you so much for having us. It was a pleasure and I love it. I love it. Definitely a repeat in the future.

Adrian Fernandez (20:19)

Yes. Thank you so much for everything, Issa. It was wonderful to be on your podcast.

Issa Hanna (20:26)

Thank you guys so much for coming on. Like I said, it was a true honor. And to our viewers at home, if you enjoyed my conversation and want to see more like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time, the real estate pros are out.