On this episode of the Passive Income Attorney podcast, Seth is joined by Eloy Retana as they discuss the mobile home park sector and how this legitimate high-return, low-risk commercial investment vehicle is hitting the mainstream. Eloy explains why he made the jump to mobile home park investing and why you should, too, given the high demand for such a scarcely supplied product. Enjoy!
“There’s so many different ways of making money. It just depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to find another job or invest in your future?”
HIGHLIGHTS:
Here’s a breakdown of what to expect in this episode:
- Learning financial education along the way and taking control
- How to find your niche in real estate investing
- How you can jump from single family houses to apartment complexes to mobile home parks
- What makes mobile home parks better than multifamily assets
- Considerations in looking for locations for mobile home parks
- And so much more!
ABOUT | ELOY RETANA:
Eloy Retana is a real estate investor with 20 years of experience currently, actively, and passively invested in 95 multifamily units while also investing in his ongoing education through top-notch courses and personal mentorship with two of the industry’s leading experts Bryan Ellis and Adam A. Adams. He can build trust and deliver on his promises that forge the foundation of strong relationships with investors.
Eloy is also a network engineer exceeding 25 years of progressively responsible positions. With a demonstrated record of high-performance standards, including attention to schedules, details, deadlines, budgets, and quality of work, he brings high energy, enthusiasm, and dependability as an individual who excels in challenging and competitive environments. Also, he has a reputation for effectively communicating technical knowledge to all levels of an organization.
FIND | ELOY RETANA:
Website: www.partnerwithapex.com
Links: https://linktr.ee/eloyretana
CONNECT | SETH BRADLEY:
Snag | The Freedom Blueprint: http://www.attorneybydesign.com
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Seth: [00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Passive Income Attorney podcast. Hope you’re having a fabulous week. When you have a moment, be sure to go to intelligentpassiveinvestor.com and get the Cashflow Calculator for free while you still can. It will show you how to buy back your time piece by piece. All right.
So you may or may not have heard the height, but the mobile home park sector as a legitimate high return, low risk commercial investment has hit the mainstream, putting all trailer park jokes aside. We’re talking about a scarcely supplied product with high demand. It’s a sector I’ve become more and more interested in as of late that’s for sure.
And when I find a proper investment to take down, I’d love for you to join in on the fun. Today’s guest is a friend of mine and a converted mobile home park investor. Eli Retana is a highly experienced real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. And today he’ll tell you why he made the jump to the MHP world.
All right, let’s go.
Seth: [00:01:39] Eloy what’s going on, brother. Welcome to the show!
Eloy: [00:01:42] Thank you very much for having me on. I appreciate it.
Seth: [00:01:45] iAbsolutely, man, I’m really excited to talk to you today. So let’s just jump right in. Um, you know, what’s your story.
Feel free to brag a little bit. Uh, just, just take them as far back as you’d like.
Eloy: [00:01:58] Well, my name is Eloy Retana. I live out here in Denver, Colorado. I started my it career back about 25 years ago and I started. Investing in real estate after I took a lease options course back in 99. So what’s interesting around that time, I was kind of decided whether I should continue on with my career in it, or, you know, pick up or start to do more real estate at that time.
Things were like blowing up in it. Right. So I made the decision back then and just continued forward with my it career. And, uh, my real estate took a, took a back seat. I wish I wouldn’t have done that. Right. Because I’d probably be in a very different place today. So I, you know, I went through the crash in 2001, the, uh, the internet crap, the internet boom crash in 2001.
And then again, you know, being in a market, the market crash in 2008. So it’s been an interesting ride, but here we are, no words just trying to push forward and trying to build out our assets right.
Seth: [00:02:58] Yeah. Cool, man. Well, tell me a little bit about your, your current business.
Eloy: [00:03:03] So, uh, apex communities is my partner and I, uh, we started down the road of trying to like, you know, most people that start down the road of syndications, we S we decided we wanted to go look for apartments.
Right. And that sounded like a great idea. Um, but. Sharing number. We quickly found out that everything was just so overpriced. Right? I mean, there was nothing, the numbers just didn’t make sense at all. So we started looking at other markets. So we started to pick out markets like, you know, if we’re going to buy where, where, where we’d like to buy it.
Right. So we looked at, uh, Phoenix, Kansas city, Tucson, Orlando, things of that, uh, you know, markets like that. And then we finally bought it. We figured it was going to take us about a year before we finally, you know, of just. Calling, you know, calling brokers and getting them to listen to us writing, as you know, at the beginning, nobody wants to listen to anything you got to say, right?
You’re you’re too new, right. Everybody just blows you off and hangs up on you. And so there is, you know, you gotta hustle through that. You gotta just keep calling them and be persistent and, and show them that you’re serious and that you want to be in the space. And funny enough, it took us exactly 13 months.
Right. So we figured it was going to take a year before we found our first deal.
Seth: [00:04:13] Nice. Nice. Now, did you just jump right into commercial real estate or did you kind of take a step by step with residential? Like a lot of people do? What, what did that journey look like?
Eloy: [00:04:23] Well for, for me personally, I had picked up, uh, back when I was taking those lease option courses.
I had picked up properties sharing there, but never enough to kind of jump in with both feet. Right. Cause I would, my, my primary career was still it, but it never occurred to me that back then, when you were picking up properties here and there, um, It was more of a, it was more of a long-term retirement play.
Right. And it never occurred to me that you can make. Sufficient income through, uh, through cashflow that you can actually like quit your job. Like that never occurred to me until much, much later, fairly recently, actually, when, when my partner, uh, Steve, who, you know, interesting story about him and I is that we met through.
Uh, the salsa, the salsa dancing community. We were both salsa dancing. That’s kind of how it’s kind of how we met. And then when, uh, when evening we worked, we were chatting and we were like, Hey, what do you do for a living? We had been friends with them for a year and I never bothered to ask him what he did for a living.
I mean, out of the blue, tell me. He flipped, he flipped homes. I like you flip homes. Oh, I’ve been doing some admin. I’ve been kind of getting into some of that myself and doing some, some, uh, some wholesaling. And I had some rentals that I had picked up over the year, you know, lease options, things of that nature, but it w for me, it was always, uh, It was always transactional.
Right. It never occurred to me that I could actually do this full time and to, uh, be able to develop cash flow out of it. So, um, that’s kinda how him and I got started. And, uh, when he went in fact, when you told me the very first time that you kind of wanted to put an end to his, um, you know, uh, his flipping career and kind of start taking on apartments, you asked me if I wanted to be his partner and I.
My first reaction. Cause I had no idea that multi-family was even a thing. My first reaction was like, yeah, whatever, man, I don’t have millions of millions of dollars to go buy apartment, but okay. So that was my, that was my initial reaction. I mean, man, he thought, no, no. It’s like we, we find a good deal.
Right. And we, then we bring on, uh, uh, investors to help us fund the deal. And then we, we manage, you know, the property until, until we do so until we have an exit strategy. And then that’s how we can just, you know, scale, right. We don’t have to onesy twosy, single family homes anymore. And I thought about that for a second.
And I, that, you know, it made sense, but I shouldn’t think it was something that I could do. Right. So right around that time, I started attending these, um, these multifamily meetups up here in Denver. Um, Adam Adams had these, these great meetups and I just, by listening to him, she would describe it as, um, Each each team member would wear a different hat.
Right? You have a, uh, uh, a guy who wears the acquisitions hat and you have a guy who wears the asset management hat and you have somebody who does the investor relations hat, but you’re all, you’re all focused on a goal. Right. And you’re all, uh, of the same, you know, with the same mindset and the same goals.
And I thought that that makes a lot of sense. And then, so the next time Steve, I talked to Steve, he was like, are you ready to do this? So let go. Yeah, I think, I think we can do this. And that’s kinda, that’s kinda how we started down this road of a multi-family.
Seth: [00:07:32] Yeah. That’s a really cool story, man. Salsa dancing.
You never know where you’re going to meet your next business partner know? Yeah. And it goes to show you, I mean, you know, when you’re getting involved in real estate and you’re interested in, and you don’t know what the next step is, I mean, just start talking to people, just start networking. You never know who you’re going to run into.
You never know who invest in real estate and you might find your next business partner that way.
Eloy: [00:07:54] I bet that’s probably been the biggest, um, hurdle for me is, cause I, you know, I’m a pretty introverted guy. I’ve been in it for 25 years and I, I don’t interact with people in my job really. I mean, I’m sitting behind it too because trying to get out of my comfort zone, this whole, this whole experience with real estate, for me, you know, doing investor relations, relations, uh, and being on podcasts and stuff like this, I mean, it’s so.
Not what I’ve ever done. Right? So it’s, it’s like something completely different from unit six. It’s exciting, but it’s, it can be a little nerve wracking sometimes, but I mean, I, I it’s like given me a new lease on life to be able to do something, experience something new, which is cool. Yeah,
Seth: [00:08:35] I share in that experience with you, man, I’m pretty introverted just as naturally and know, hosting a podcast or going on other people’s podcasts or even getting on social media and just like blasting out all this stuff.
It’s like, you know, this is just new territory for me and it’s uncomfortable. Right? I mean, you’re into that zone, but it’s kind of fun to, I mean, you, uh, you’re progressing and growing as a person that way. That’s right. Yeah. And I wanted to go back to something you said about, you know, the financial education piece, because we don’t get enough of it.
Right? I mean, when we’re growing up in school, we, we take home-ec classes and physics classes and learn about algebra and stuff like that, but we don’t learn about financial education. We don’t learn about anything. They just teach us how to do a job. And we don’t realize that there’s a whole entrepreneurial business, real estate side of life that can really get you to financial freedom.
And it takes people, some people a long time to figure it out like you and I, it took us a while to figure it out. Cause we weren’t brought up that way.
Eloy: [00:09:34] Exactly. Yeah. I mean, what I mean when you, when most people, even today, even though there’s so much information on multifamily and all these different niches within real estate on YouTube.
You have to know, to go look for that, to find that right. Cause most people, when they think of real estate investing, they generally think of either flipping homes or rentals. Those are really the two that I can think of that people that, that have no real estate investing think of, but there’s so many different niches.
Right. And there’s so many different ways of making money. It just kind of depends on what you’re. What you’re trying to accomplish. Right. And when I tried wholesaling, I thought it, I thought I can just quit my job and just start wholesaling quickly. I found out that it’s, it’s a grind and it, you know, when you’re flipping homes and you’re attempting to wholesale, You’re it’s really another job.
Right? So when I, when I started doing some of that stuff myself, I thought, no, this isn’t, I didn’t realize I was buying another job. I already have a job and I enjoy what I do. I don’t need another job. So I kind of have to take a step back and, and kind of. Well, what is it that I’m trying to accomplish here?
Am I trying to find another job or do I want to invest for the future? Right. And do I want to start building, you know, cash flowing assets and that’s ultimately what I wanted to do and, uh, you know, build out, uh, acquire properties that are gonna allow me to cashflow.
Seth: [00:10:52] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s kinda what you got to ask yourself for the people just getting started and they’re trying to figure out, Hey, I want to invest in real estate.
I don’t know how, I don’t know how to get started. And they’re thinking about fixing and flipping or buying, you know, single family houses or even wholesaling things that are like a little bit more transactional. Um, they might not realize it’s not as easy as HGTV. I mean, it’s a lot of work. I mean, I did it while I was working my W2.
At a big law firm and it’s nearly impossible, uh, to have that workload and then add this other stuff on top when you’re trying to manage contractors and property managers, especially from a distance from, you know, 2000 miles away. It’s, it’s overwhelming at times.
Eloy: [00:11:33] Exactly. There’s now with the advent of the internet and all these tools you have available, I think it’s easier, but still, yes.
It’s a challenge. It’s not that it’s nowhere near as easy as some people make it out to be it’s going to be work.
Seth: [00:11:48] Yeah. And then on the other side of things, you’ve got, you know, your financial advisor that says, Oh, you want to diversify in a real estate. Well, why don’t you just put some money into like these REITs, right.
And that’s not the same. You don’t get the tax benefits. You don’t get all of those things that come along with real estate, like actually directly owning real estate, whether that’s through passively investing or actively investing, but you just don’t get those tax benefits. And there’s more and more fees because.
REITs, you know, there’s just different layers of fees compared to, if you’re investing directly, there may just be one layer of fees or no fees at all.
Eloy: [00:12:18] Exactly. And I, and I don’t know what their situation was back in 2008, but I, I mean, most of my money that was invested in my 401k was invested in these, these mortgages, right.
That, uh, are these reeds that were network. Follow these of these mortgages. So I was like, when I lost everything, because of that, I was like, okay, this clearly isn’t working. I need to find an alternative. Right. And that’s when I decided that I wanted to focus on real estate and then acquire single family homes.
This was back in 2009 and 10. And then later I, when I, when I learned about multi-family and then mobile home parks, I thought, okay, that’s. This is going to be my niche and this is where I’m going to build my business and grow my business.
Seth: [00:13:04] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know that you had invested in, in real estate before that, but would you say that that’s one of your, one of those inflection points, you know, when you lost a lot of money because your financial advisor told you, Hey, why don’t you invest in real estate and using REITs and you lost a lot of money in the stock market basically.
Was that kind of like an aha moment for you to turn the light bulb on.
Eloy: [00:13:23] Well, you know, what’s funny is that you rely on back then not knowing what I know now and, and not educating myself. Uh, uh, you just kind of put your money in your 401k and make, you know, you just listen to these guys, right? Oh yeah.
It’s just, I’m going to put my money here and they pitch it in a really. You know, a very salesy way and it, it sounds great. Right? Well, I’m going to, we’re going to diversify across these things and over here and over there, and you’re like, Oh yeah, that’s awesome. I’m going to be a millionaire by the time I’m 40.
That’s awesome. And then, you know, at 2008 happens and you lose almost everything and you’re like, wait, what, what, what happened? Right. Right. And then that’s kind of, yeah. At that point you’re like, okay, I need to. I need to kind of start taking control over my own finances. So I need to start educating myself in these areas where I want to be invested in rather than just kind of.
Kind of relying on somebody else that I don’t, I don’t even know her half of the time I call these guys, they’d never pick up the phone and that, you know, a couple of days to call you back and that’s yeah, that’s not, you know, I was kind of unsatisfied with that, you know, so I decided I’m going to, I’m just going to take control and do the stuff myself.
Seth: [00:14:30] Yeah. Yeah. And not all financial advisors are like that. They’re not all salesmen. They’re not all looking out for themselves only. I mean, a lot of them are really good. They’re good at what they do. And they, they mean well and they want to help you out financially. But you’ve got to do your own due diligence.
You’ve got to do educate yourself and you’ve got to look outside of the stock market into other asset classes. So you’re not, you don’t have all your eggs in one basket.
Eloy: [00:14:55] Yep, exactly.
Seth: [00:14:57] Well, let’s jump into, to mobile home parks because that’s your specialty, man. How did you come across mobile home parks?
Why did you kind of decide that that was going to be your specialty and where you’re going to focus all your efforts?
Eloy: [00:15:10] Well, going back to when we started, uh, we were looking at these different markets, right. And, um, but we, we were dead set on pregnant in the apartment complex. Right. We were looking for, you know, you’re told to go big 50, 60 units or something big, uh, And then out of the bloom, Steve, my partner says, Hey, I think I’ve got something in.
And I said, what do you got? He goes, I found a trailer park. I’m like what? My first reaction was like, no, how did we go from, how do we go from looking for an apartment complex to finding a trailer park? That’s that’s ridiculous. No, no, no. That was my, and he’s like, and he was like, no man, look at these numbers.
Uh, These numbers make awesome, some sense, and we’re never gonna find anything like this, uh, um, in an apartment. So he, he showed me that the numbers for, um, a mobile home park that you found in Cape Canaveral, Florida, which was kind of in the area we were looking and I looked at them and I thought, wow, that’s.
These numbers, you know, these numbers are really good. So I told him, I told him, give me a week, let me bury myself in as much information and read every book that I can get my hands on and listen to every podcast that I can. Because I knew nothing about mobile home parks, like zero. I just, my initial reaction was like, no, I want nothing to do with this.
But, um, so I did, I did that for a week. I, I buried myself in all the podcasts and the books and at the end of that week, not only did I thought, you know, this not only is this the right. Asset for us. But I think the timing of it is, is, is pretty good too, because there’s so much, um, uncertainty, you know, economic of uncertainty that an asset like mobile home parks just makes more sense for us, you know?
Um, so, you know, we went for it and then we picked up the park and you know, we’re about to, we’re about to refile on that. Um, it’s, it’s been a. It’s yeah, it’s been a success. It’s our first park has been pretty good. So we, once we landed our first, you know, we got our second one within, right before the coronavirus hit, uh, um, right around March.
So we had to kind of wait because of the lending stop, but that’s, you know, that’s been a, a great part for us as well. So we’re, you know, we’re well on our way. And we’d like, that’s not to say we won’t look at other assets. Classes. Um, we like, we still like the idea of owning an apartment complex in the future, but I think for now I think mobile home parks is kind of where it’s at for us.
Seth: [00:17:48] Cool. Well, um, from maybe a passive investor perspective, you know, what makes mobile home parks let’s say better than multi-family like make the argument, I guess, for mobile home parks over multifamily or other asset types.
Eloy: [00:18:03] Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, the coronavirus at least proved to us that we had picked the right asset class because we have not seen some of the, um, some of the, the, the non-pain.
Tenants right. That it’s some of our friends that own apartments are seeing, it’s not to say that everybody’s going through that stuff, but we haven’t. And none of our peers that are on mobile home parks are seeing people just not paying the rent. And one of the reasons for that is, you know, in most cases we don’t aim to own the mobile homes.
Themselves, right. We’re just looking to, to purchase the land. Um, and any park owned homes, we, we rehab them and sell them as is, or, you know, or, you know, we’ll rehab them and sell them owner finance. But at the end of the day, the tenant owns the mobile home. Right. So they have an incentive to stick around.
It’s their home, what are they just not going to pay lot rent on, on, on their home. And the other thing too is, you know, if you can’t. I think about this all the time, but if you can’t afford $500, $600 a lot rent, I mean, where are you going to go? You can’t afford to live anywhere. Right? So that’s been for us, the steady cashflow as a result of, of, of, of people sticking around, despite, you know, the Corona virus, it’s kind of proved to us that this is at least a stable, uh, it’s an asset class with stable cashflow.
Seth: [00:19:29] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I love mobile home parks too. I mean, affordable housing shortage is a huge issue in this country. And mobile home parks obviously represent a solution to that. Um, it’s, it’s just, it’s a scarce product, right? I mean, there’s only so many mobile home parks. It’s really hard to get an area zone to put in a new mobile home park.
It rarely happens. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a scarce commodity. Um, and, and you have sticky tenants. You, you brought that up about sticky tenants. I mean, if you’re renting, you know, the lot and they own the home. Well, it’s too expensive for them to move that home. They’re sticky. Yeah.
Eloy: [00:20:03] And, and oftentimes, yeah, and oftentimes they can’t.
Right. Because some of these homes are all older homes and the city will never grant the permits to move those homes because they’re so old or, or you’re, you know, you won’t be able to get insurance on them either. So, you know, they’re sticky. Yeah.
Seth: [00:20:21] Yeah. Now, are you seeing better returns on, on mobile home parks than let’s say your typical apartment buildings, which is getting pretty saturated at this point?
So I would imagine that you you’d see a little bit better returns for your investors.
Eloy: [00:20:34] Uh, generally, well, at the beginning we were, uh, I think it’s because there’s so many people moving into the mobile home park space. Now I think some of the, you know, the cap rates are compressed, so they’re not as good as, as they had been.
There’s still good returns. Uh, but in terms of, of, of comparing one or the other, yeah, I would say it’s a little better, but I don’t know that it’s a lot better.
Seth: [00:20:56] Gotcha. Gotcha.
Eloy: [00:20:57] Um, yeah, one of the reasons I would tell people that, that, uh, the. You might consider, uh, mobile home parks is, is because of there’s a recession resistance and you know, again, due to the pandemic, there’s, there’s people sticking around mobile homes.
So it’s more, the cashflow is a lot steadier. I would say you don’t have people moving in and out all the time. Yeah.
Seth: [00:21:18] Yeah, for sure. Um, for our, our passive investors that are thinking about investing in mobile home parks, you know, what, what do they need to look out for, I guess, and what are some of the, when they’re vetting a deal, they’re looking at the, you know, the Owen, the offering memorandum, you know, what, what are some of the things they need to look out for?
What are, what are some yellow or, or even red flags?
Eloy: [00:21:38] Well, if you, if you don’t know anything about mobile home parks as I didn’t one of the first things that, that stuck out to me that, that you don’t get with an apartment complex is you don’t have, uh, the private utilities that some parks come with.
Right? The, the septic systems, the, the, um, uh, the water Wells, and at the beginning, uh, when I. When I looked at this stuff, I’m like, well, let’s only find, let’s only look for city water, city, sewage, um, which you can do. Uh, I think you’re limiting yourself by doing that. Um, So, I mean now, I mean, I would stay, I would still stay away from say a, a lagoon.
Uh, but I mean, those septics after learning about sites, septic systems and water Wells, they’re nowhere near as scary as, as, as, as when you first hear about them. Like, I. Don’t want anything to do with water, Wells or septic systems. You just have to understand them, right? You make sure you’re maintaining them.
And, uh, like everything else, like an apartment complex, just, you got to look for your two twelves and you’ve got to do your due diligence and understand the rent roll and that this the same sort of, uh, rules apply.
Seth: [00:22:45] Gotcha. And, and I think you brought this up before, but you do prefer that the majority, if not all of the lots are actually owned or the, the, uh, the trailers are actually owned by the tenants rather than the other way around.
Cause I have talked to a mobile home park operators who actually liked the other way around where they’d prefer the, the ownership of the trailer parks, the trailers themselves, because they get a little bit more rent.
Eloy: [00:23:09] Yeah. Um, uh, I would, I would say that’s on a case by case basis. I mean, I, I’m not, I’m not one of the deals that we’re looking at now where we’re actually just thinking of just keeping them renovating, renovating them and then renting them out.
So. Ideally, you know, it depends on the park. Um, but to say that we’re all, we’re always going to look, we’re always going to look to sell the mobile homes. That’s not entirely true either. I mean, it just depends on, on the parking, the location. If we feel we can get more money from rents by renting them out, then, you know, we’ll, we’ll consider that for sure.
Cool.
Seth: [00:23:42] Cool. And what about markets? So, you know, when we’re looking at multi-family properties or residential real estate, you know, w we look for those hot markets, we look for places with, with big population and job growth and job diversity and all those sorts of things. When we’re looking at a mobile home park, is that a little bit different?
I mean, a lot of these mobile home parks might be a little bit more rural. I mean, w you know, what are some of the things we need to look for about the location in the market?
Eloy: [00:24:08] Well, certainly a lot of the same things, right? You need to, you need to consider populations, uh, population growth, job growth. Uh, it’s one of the reasons that we love the state of Florida so much is because it continues at least for the last several, uh, last couple of years.
It’s the number one. I don’t think it was a number one migrated to state Fisher. I think it was top three, but according to U hall statistics, it a it’s one of the top States that people are migrating to. Right. A lot of the people that left new York’s, um, upstate New York are moving down the Florida, right.
That whole. Uh, central Florida down in the South Florida is, is experiencing huge growth, huge population growth. So a lot of the same things still apply. We want to see population growth. So we want to see jobs. Um, we want to make sure that, you know, people have a place to work. So, um, but you know, they Tona that, that central Florida area, I mean, there’s so much work and there’s so much, you know, people continue to move there.
So we’re not going to have a problem finding tenants.
Seth: [00:25:07] Gotcha. Cool, man. Before we jumped into the freedom for what’s one last golden nugget you have for our listeners.
Eloy: [00:25:14] Well, yeah, you wanna, you wanna, if you consider a mobile home parks, um, I love the asset class, um, but you still have to do your homework, right?
You still have to read out your operators that people that you want to, you want to work with, but, um, yeah, it’s. It’s not all about returns because I have people who would say, well, how much, you know, what are the returns? It’s you gotta look at the big picture to what, where are we going to be five years from my words, economy is going to be five years from now.
The fact that we simply don’t know, and at least for my money, I’d rather, I’d rather be in assets that, uh, well, I believe we’re going to weather this storm of over the next several years.
Seth: [00:25:52] That’s awesome man. Yeah. I always keep the big picture in mind. Let’s jump into the Freedom Four.
Seth: [00:26:00] So what’s the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy?
Eloy: [00:26:05] Oh, that’s a great question. Um, I did two things. First of all, I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for a couple of years now. So it’s, I should show you pictures of what it looked like 10 years ago. I was probably about 60 pounds heavier and I, and I still what’s crazy now is I, I still, I can eat, man.
I can eat. But if I intermittent fast, I do it all within a six hour window. So that, that works out well for me, so I can still eat, but I just, as long as I do it within a window, I’m good. And I’m still keeping the weight down. And then I like to wake up early and workout. I have a gym and, you know, I’ll, um, I’ll lift weights.
And you know, if I, if I do that regularly and. After that I, I I’m ready to conquer the day.
Seth: [00:26:49] That’s cool, man. I do the same thing. You’ve got yours compressed down to six hours. Mine’s about eight. I just do it naturally. Like I don’t eat breakfast, which whether that’s good or bad, I don’t eat breakfast, but then I eat lunch at 12 one o’clock and then I eat a big dinner, like seven, eight o’clock and then I don’t eat again until the next day at noon.
So it’s just kind of natural for me.
Eloy: [00:27:08] And you feel great, right? I mean, you don’t feel, you don’t feel like you need to nibble on stuff all day. It’s like, you’ve got, you’ve got it down and that’s your schedule and it works out. It’s working for me. Yeah.
Seth: [00:27:20] That’s the thing. I mean, people always say like, how can you not like snack?
How do you not eat breakfast? I don’t know. I’m not really hungry. I just drink coffee. Yeah,
Eloy: [00:27:29] me too. Same thing
Seth: [00:27:31] in an alternative universe where you weren’t involved in your current businesses, what would he be doing?
Eloy: [00:27:37] And an alternate. Wow. Um, you know, growing up as a kid, like a lot of little kids, I always wanted to be an astronaut.
So if I had that option, I’d, you know, I’d be up in space doing something cool up there. For sure.
Seth: [00:27:53] I like that, man. Even high ain’t even high. Where were you at five years ago. And where do you see yourself? Five years from now.
Eloy: [00:28:01] Five years ago, I was trying to find my space within real estate. I’d done a few different things and I couldn’t figure out what was the best fit for me.
Right. But as I told you, at some point, you need to ask yourself, what, what is it that you’re trying to accomplish? Right. And whatever that answer is, there’s probably going to be a niche that works for you. And I found a niche that works for me, and that’s in mobile home parks five years from now. Back to, uh, be owner of at least 500 units, uh, mobile home and maybe some apartments and some storage.
So that’s where I see myself in five years.
Seth: [00:28:34] Awesome, man. Well, on your way, well, on your way, last question, how has passive income made your life better?
Eloy: [00:28:42] I love what I do in my it career. I’ve been doing, uh, um, networking in cyber security for, for almost 25 years. Um, I don’t, you know, now that, that I’ve, I’ve found, uh, uh, real estate, um, the idea of me working in another 20 years until I retired now, I don’t think I can do it, but the fact, the fact that I’ve got properties now that are cash flowing, and we’re going to continue to grow.
You know, you have that option now, right? Where if you have something that’s due to replace your income, if something bad were to happen, like you get laid off. It’s nice to know that you got something to fall back on. Right. And I think that’s what I love about it.
Seth: [00:29:24] Yeah. Yeah. Peace of mind, confidence. I mean, almost a little bit of hope.
It’s like, you’ve now started to buy back your time and you’re seeing the progress and you’re like, okay, well I’ll just continue on this path. I’m good to go. It’s not going to take long.
Eloy: [00:29:35] Exactly. Yeah. Awesome.
Seth: [00:29:37] You Lloyd has been great. Thanks for coming on the show. Where can our listeners find out more about you?
Eloy: [00:29:42] Uh, easiest way to go to partner with apex.com. Um, my number is also (720) 934-3471. Feel free to reach out to me. Um, we’ll leave some, uh, additional, uh, my link tree in the show notes, but feel free to reach out to me anytime.
Seth: [00:29:59] Well, I really appreciate it, man.
Eloy: [00:30:02] Thank you for having me.
Seth: [00:30:04] Awesome. Eli. Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge with our crew.
Eli’s story is particularly powerful because it’s a familiar one that I think many of us can resonate with and, and that story is losing it all. Or at least losing a lot to the stock market roller coaster. There’s no control over the next time that your 401k becomes your two Oh one K. It will happen.
It’s happened before. It’s inevitable. But that’s why it’s so important to diversify into alternative assets. Now more than ever, these vehicles are available to you, they didn’t use to be. So now it’s time to educate yourself, take action, and take control of your future to learn more. I’d love to have you guys join EPIC, our Esquire Passive Investor Club, by going to passiveincomeattorney.com and clicking join the club. Okay. Folks, you know what it is? Enjoy the journey.
