From Accountant to Real Estate Investor: Mysti Marcantonio’s Journey to Freedom

Dylan Silver (00:01.004)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Dylan Silver. And today on the show I have Mysti Marcantonio. Mysti is an accountant by background and now getting into the real estate space, looking at multifamily and a number of strategies. Mysti , welcome to the show.

Mysti (00:19.54)
Thank you so much for having me, Dylan. I appreciate this.

Dylan Silver (00:22.442)
Absolutely. At the top of the show, I typically ask folks how they got into or interested in the real estate space. But your background is a little bit different. Before we hopped on here, you mentioned you were working as an accountant in a couple different spaces. So walk us through your journey up to where you are today, whereas looking towards the real estate space as an investment vehicle. But how did you get into the accounting space?

Mysti (00:47.794)
Sure. So that’s actually a great question. I was in the restaurant and retail world for the longest time. And then I transitioned to be a stay at home mom for a decade of time. And while I did that, I went to school for accounting. And the reason I did that was because I was trying to assess, and this was pre-COVID, I was trying to assess what can I do for a job every day where I can have more time, freedom, and flexibility because I also homeschooled my children.

It’s very heavy as just active mom, right? So I went through a lot of diagnosing the different careers out there that would give me the flexibility. accounting was something, I was looking at law, paralegal, I love law, and I love accounting, it’s very similar stuff. The boring stuff behind the scenes, the research aspect. And so I was like, okay, can I build my…

business and not work for somebody else and there where I can just kind of do it behind the scenes the hours that I want and just kind of be available for clients but it’s something that they don’t need like heavy you know clocking and clocking out like nine to five you know hours all the time and so I really settled on on starting an accounting firm that way and so after I finished accounting school I started I launched and I just really starting your business I’m as any entrepreneur knows

it’s a journey and you just kind of have to take what you can get at the time, right? Like as you’re growing, you’re putting stuff out there, you’re just talking to everybody you know, say, hey, I’ve got this going on. That’s the way it always starts. So, I mean, I did like construction, nonprofits and, you know, real estate and then consulting, just so many industries. And then I realized over a couple of years, I’m like, I really hate.

really hate the construction industry so I do not want to do this anymore. So a couple of things that I loved, a couple of things that I just didn’t want to do, but one of the things that was very common was that business owners and entrepreneurs, which I will say are a little bit different, they also want to find other avenues for investments. know, usually they’re like, what else can I do?

Mysti (03:09.234)
And then a lot of them, was like 80 or 90 % of my clients, no matter what industry they were in from the business owner or entrepreneur standpoint, they all had like a rental or some kind of property that they’re looking at, commercial building or something like that. And so essentially, I have one client, one entrepreneur, one business owner who has multiple businesses now. And that’s kind of…

where it developed from my accounting firm where I just was in like, used to call, I joke, and when I say like we’re serial entrepreneurs where like you just can’t get enough collecting, right? And so essentially they’re investors, you know, and so investors are always looking for, you know, another way to put money, make their money work for them. And so it’s only been recent in the past two years that I really focused in on real estate investors.

Dylan Silver (03:45.644)
Yeah. Yep.

Mysti (04:04.474)
And my favorite besides those are the restaurants just because as a kid I was a server, I was a cocktail waitress, I was a bartender. I managed, then I managed some more and then I’m just like, okay, so I know that industry so well from the inner workings from the tiniest thing to the highest level that I was like, okay, I really want my business to be restaurants and real estate. And it’s funny because those are the two most complicated.

accounting, bookkeeping like things, industries but yeah so that’s kind of where it it really developed. So right now the the real estate market has been so obviously we know it’s so crazy. I just never thought I would get into it because it’s a it’s a historical thing just a personal personal journey that I had a lot of hiccups and I won’t get into that but

Dylan Silver (04:37.251)
Sure.

Mysti (05:00.48)
I was just like, I’m never gonna be able to do that, right? Because my credit worthiness or my capital, right? I’m like, don’t want, I don’t even wanna talk about it. So something happened as I was going through, like I always do more courses, forever learning, I’m a forever learner. I’m like, I wanna keep the, yeah, in the tax, I the tax world, you literally have to, but so yeah, so for accounting and all that stuff, I’m just keeping more courses and more education for myself, CPE.

Dylan Silver (05:16.088)
have to.

Mysti (05:27.24)
Now something came across my desk and it was like a, you know, a workshop for real estate investment. I’m like, okay, let me just go. I got nothing to lose. And it turned out it was the, the multifamily sector. And my mind was blown and I was, it was so exciting to me. And then I just, excuse me, I just had to know more. And that was kind of where that.

Excuse me.

Dylan Silver (05:56.898)
You know, when I think about my journey in the real estate space, it was from a place of not knowing anybody to then networking and networking and networking to then going to a of RIA meetings to then attending a conference that I paid a bunch of money for to then thinking, OK, maybe I can do this to then getting my first deal to then getting my first 10 deals and then realizing, OK.

Mysti (06:06.112)
.

Dylan Silver (06:24.778)
I think I can do this, I really want to carve out a niche for myself working with investors and working with people who…

are potentially facing difficult situations, maybe foreclosure at some type of financial distress or distress in the home. That’s what a lot of wholesalers deal with. And so when I was on the outside looking in, it seemed totally impossible. It seemed impossible because not only did I not know anybody, my perception was that, and I think a lot of new investors who are in my same shoes, my perception was that you needed to have tons of money, all the right connections,

and you needed to basically have it in your blood in order to do this. So that’s all the people that I knew who actually had property in their name. That’s what they fell into. But then as I started to go down this process, I realized, you know what? There may be more gurus than we can count out here, but there’s also if you look and you attend these different events and you network and you continue networking. I was at an event for being a realtor in DFW earlier today.

Mysti (07:10.485)
Thanks.

Mysti (07:19.616)
Mm-hmm.

Mysti (07:32.872)
Dylan Silver (07:33.548)
you eventually run into people who are doing what you want to be doing and they’re more than willing to share the secrets. And so, you know, to your point, just always having that drive and that desire to where can I get the next, you know, gold nugget.

Mysti (07:38.538)
Mm-hmm.

Mysti (07:48.38)
Mm-hmm. Yes, for sure. I love that. I love that you just put yourself in the room with the people who are doing it and that’s what I’m trying to do. I know there is absolutely a billion gurus out there and it’s hard now. Again, you all the algorithms for all the socials, once they get you, now you see nothing but that, right? Which is so funny. I didn’t even know there was that many gurus until now. Yeah, I am super excited. So what…

Dylan Silver (08:09.102)
That’s it.

Dylan Silver (08:12.93)
I know.

Mysti (08:17.022)
what happened was we did wind up spending a lot of money on a mastermind, a group, a community. And again, so then you realize your doors open, you realize what’s out there. And then you’re like, okay, so we actually jumped ships and we changed communities because then I realized that this was a thing. So then I’m like, hold on. And here we go with my, you know, I want to research, I want to find out, I want to dig, I want to learn. And I realized there were so many. So then we started.

you know, my husband and I are partnering on this. And so I said, you know, we need to vet this better. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And now that I know a little more, I want to really go through the steps and I want to vet this better. And we vetted several, I think a total of like five initially, and we just fell in love with our current community. So we still there’s, you know, but it’s

Dylan Silver (09:03.694)
Nice.

Mysti (09:06.738)
it’s surrounding yourself with the people who are like-minded, who they’ve done it before and they over and over, they’ve got, they’re coaching you, they’re telling you, they’re inspiring you, then you’re also surrounded with the same people that are just like you with that constant drive going, are going to do this, you know? And so, I mean, you know, in the multifamily sector, well, it’s all about like underwriting, underwriting, underwriting, right? So, and that’s something that’s just, that’s vastly different than…

the single family sector, mean, so.

one of the things that really excites me too is this I feel like more than anything else and maybe I’m wrong if this is my perspective from what I have learned over the years that this this multifamily investment this sector is like a win-win-win for everyone involved like I just I can’t see I mean there’s obviously there’s risk if there’s if you want to be an investor and we talk about this all the time right just in general if you want to be an investor and you want you some you want to take no risk you just don’t need to be an investor there’s just no

such thing but when you look at that you know risk on multifamily you’re like hmm like it seems safer than and again I’m just on the outskirts here just learning it but it seems a whole lot safer than the single family side to me what are your thoughts on that one

Dylan Silver (10:27.468)
love to hear your thoughts. My thoughts are, my thoughts are there’s definitely the ability for you to have more tenants that could leave more vacancies. That could also mean more cash flow. That could also mean that it’s a higher price point. It also means that it’s harder to find buyers. So if you do need to sell, because let’s say your tenants leave or you’re not positively cash flowing because a handful of tenants leave, then it’s going to take longer depending on where you are. But certainly in most places, it will take longer.

than selling a single family home because anyone can buy a single family home. Anyone who needs to live a place can move into a single family home, but multi-family has to go to an investor or someone who plans on using it as an investment. So as a first time investor, and I’m not at this point myself, where I’m at right now is I’m getting my, I would say my nest egg up, but also my relationships in a place.

Mysti (11:09.844)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (11:24.184)
where I can go and partner on these deals. So I’m someone who personally, maybe I might change this, but I’m someone who personally doesn’t want to do this on my own. I would like to have someone who’s right there with me. And so I have to get to that next point. So in many ways, I’m in much the same place which you are at. And I think that having, you mentioned your husband is doing this with you, a spouse who’s in the trenches with us is amazing.

Mysti (11:24.352)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mysti (11:39.23)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (11:53.494)
is amazing and so I think that you you’re blessed to have that type of dynamic and then you know I’m curious Mysti what your perspective is single versus multi.

Mysti (11:57.843)
Absolutely.

Mysti (12:05.022)
Yeah, so I love it so much because I’ve just heard now, I’ve just sunk and dove into the stories and I’m looking at, you know, the properties, the offerings, I’m looking at the rent rolls, I’m doing this underwriting stuff and I’m looking at what all these people have done and I’m putting myself in rooms with these people and I’m hearing and I’m going, okay, the multifamily, what I’m doing now, I love, like all of my clients that are in the single family, like if you, you know, you and me, right, we’re talking, I’m going.

Hey, Dylan, I’m calling you going, I think you should look at this, right? I got a property offering, let’s partner, right? Because a lot of people that I know, they’re already LPs, want that passive investment income. And I’m going, I know their struggles. I walk with them all the time on single family. Your personal walk as a real estate investor on a single family ownership, you’re like, okay, I’ve got to flip, I got to.

this one tenant, right? If this one tenant doesn’t pay, you know, two or three months in a row, like what that does to your cashflow. What if something goes wrong? Now you got to struggle. Again, I hate the construction accounting just because there’s so much headache with it. But also the real estate investor who’s dealing with the contractors who, you know, all those pricing and all of the headache and getting them to show up. you know, it’s just, I’ve walked those paths with them. And I just think that it’s way, way, way

better for a real estate investor if they have the capital to invest in a multifamily and it is. It’s way higher. The price points are way higher but that return is still everything that I’ve seen and so far I mean when you’re like your ROI is getting to be like that 20 % versus what you have on a single family I’m going that just looks sweeter for a lot less effort, lot less energy and I think

that I want, keep, I’m telling them all, because as soon as I get a deal, like they’re going to invest in my multifamily property.

Dylan Silver (14:06.904)
Let’s dive in on one of those deals that you’ve underwritten. We can go as specific as you want to get, actually. But when you’re underwriting a multifamily deal, what’s your process? What areas are you looking in? And then is there a specific buy box that you have, characteristics that you’re looking for?

Mysti (14:24.618)
Yeah, well as I said, I’m still learning. is my practice phase. So we have a really great coach who, we meet with them weekly and we go over underwriting. We literally just pull off of Marcus and Millichap or something, just kind of fictitious. We would never buy them, we know that, because they’re already, they’re on market, off market deals are what we’re looking for, right? You know this. So we’re just giving that basic 10 minute fast underwriting.

And so I can’t even really speak to all of that. I don’t want to steer anybody wrong right now just to say I’m not a pro with that, right? And my philosophy is, listen, somebody really brilliant said it one time, an amateur does something until they get it right. A pro does it until they can’t get it wrong. So I don’t know that I’m ever going to say that I’m a pro at underwriting, but knowing that I have a team that I can say, I underwrote this.

it looks good to me, here, what do you think? You’ve been doing this a whole lot, you know, so that’s kind of what I do. So I would suggest to anybody getting into that, like make sure you have somebody that can review your underwriting, so I’ll just leave that there.

Dylan Silver (15:31.31)
You know, Ms. Niemann, when hear you talk about this, I think back to when you were, or and still are, I believe, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re active in the accounting space still? Okay.

Mysti (15:42.541)
yeah, yeah, I probably, don’t know if I’ll ever, I love my accounting. I love doing it.

Dylan Silver (15:47.254)
Right, right. So, you know, you’re active in the accounting space, you have a restaurant industry background before doing the accounting, and then you also do accounting for restaurants. Any thought to doing some type of business acquisition, purchasing a business? I know that that’s not exactly a real estate deal, but there’s a lot of overlap, tremendous overlap between people who buy businesses and people who buy real estate.

Mysti (16:07.456)
There is.

Mysti (16:10.964)
Yeah, yes, that’s a great question and I appreciate that. I literally, one of my clients, I have a couple of two partners right now that we, they just launched a brewery and not too far from you, in Guthrie, Oklahoma actually. And it was super exciting and I never got to launch a business like that before. Usually I just come in after it’s already established. But this one, because again, these are, I’ve already had these clients with other things and so we did this together. So I was the CFO, the role.

And it was so exciting. So one of the investors bought the actual commercial building. The other investor is the boots on the ground. He’s the COO. And then I was the overall, very, you know, the high level numbers person. And also because it was really funny, Dylan, we joke about this all the time. I really had to jump in because neither one of them had any restaurant experience. And I’m like,

we can do this guys you got me like we can do this because i know what i’m doing and so that’s kind of one of the funny things that i said i said i don’t love because right now where we’re at like it’s it’s very difficult money wise i’ve had to make a capital call like it wasn’t fun because it’s just it can be rough but it’s been so exciting and great so far and i said guys i want another one

I want it in Costa Rica. So I’m joking, but I’m going let’s get, that’s one of our plans. So we have two different plans. So I’m going the next one we do, we do together, we got to make this one work. And then I’m going, let’s do it again. Cause so far we’ve done really pretty good.

Dylan Silver (17:54.638)
My feedback here and that is you’re a subject matter expert in accounting. I would say I would go so far as to say you’re a subject matter expert in restaurants, right? And the business side of that, you understand the accounting side of it, understand underlying and underwriting, you know, a plaza and maybe rehabbing it to be a, you know, restaurant that may be that may be challenging. But there’s lots of you may not need to own the underlying

land the real estate, but it could nonetheless have a lot of tremendous overlap if you were to go make an offer, for instance. I don’t know specifically. I probably should know this, but I think there’s a lot of people who are potentially agents who actually sometimes broker these deals because it’s a lot of similarities to it. Yeah, there may be attorneys involved, but there’s a lot of similarities to it. And so, you know, you may come across a deal where someone is

you know retiring or older and looking to to to sell their restaurant and you have this opportunity to quote fix and flip the restaurant and that you know i think that’s a super nish thing that you can do

Mysti (19:00.02)
Mm-hmm.

Mysti (19:05.024)
I love that, I love that Dylan, thank you so much for that. That’s a really great piece of advice and I’m not even gonna lie, I am subscribed to all of the groups that are all restaurants on on all the different platforms that I can be. Because like if there’s a restaurant for sale, like yes, I’m going to look at it. I wanna see what’s happening, because.

Dylan Silver (19:18.979)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:24.844)
Have you been making offers on them?

Mysti (19:28.252)
No, because I said, like I said, I just now got to the point where I was like, okay, I think I’m ready to buy something myself. And so, and we just got through tax season, so there was that. Like the first quarter of any year is never a time that I’m looking to buy anything anyway.

Dylan Silver (19:36.428)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:47.054)
Well, this is what, when I’m a realtor now, so my primary objective right now is to work with sellers and investors. But when I was specifically looking at off-market deals before I was a realtor, we wrote about 150 offers. Now, I couldn’t submit them because I wasn’t a licensed agent, but we wrote, this is how much we want to offer on it. This is what we’re underwriting the deal for. And it was at like, I want to say it would be at, you know,

Mysti (20:07.808)
Mm-hmm.

Mysti (20:12.245)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (20:17.23)
60 to 70 % of what the business would, excuse me, their real estate would sell for if it was listed on market or if it was listed on market, we were just offering at 60 to 70 % of that. And so we had offers get accepted that way. We had numerous offers get accepted that way. Some of them went through, we were able to assign those contracts. And so I tell this because you’re that subject matter expert. I believe that same strategy could work with restaurants. If there are these people that, you know, sure,

Mysti (20:28.652)
Hmm, okay.

Mysti (20:33.299)
now.

Mysti (20:45.578)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (20:46.414)
there might be a low offer, but at the same point in time, how many other offers are they getting? Where are the other offers coming in from? You make enough of these offers, maybe you can meet somewhere in the middle. And you know everything about that. And there may also be an opportunity there to buy the underlying real estate. I know nothing about this. I would, would just take shot of water. I couldn’t do it, but there’s probably not that many people who have your specific skillset. So you’re in the groups. Like this is such a niche thing that I think, you know, could be great for you.

Mysti (20:55.892)
Yeah.

Mysti (21:02.91)
Yeah.

Mysti (21:14.858)
Thank you so much, I appreciate that. I will tell you, I did submit one offer myself for acquiring my business acquisition and it was another bookkeeper who was selling her book of clients and she felt the same way about real estate clients that I did about construction and she was like, I want somebody to take all my real estate. But it was not a good, you know, I looked at it and I put an offer in, it wasn’t a good fit, but that was the first thing that I actually ever said, I actually want to acquire something.

Like, I’m just now getting there.

Dylan Silver (21:47.542)
It was honestly shocking doing this like a hundred times because it’s a lot of effort. And so you would think that a formula that’s simple wouldn’t pan out, but it did to shocking degree. there are, I have noticed this, that there are kind of fads or peaks and valleys that people kind of ride out. There’s a lot of people that are

Mysti (21:56.476)
Yeah, it is.

Dylan Silver (22:17.616)
acutely aware of what short-term rentals are airbnb there’s a lot of people that are aware of what wholesaling is but if you go back ten years ago how many people were aware there might there’s probably more people where of airbnb than there was people aware of wholesaling if you go back fifteen years ago you know

it might have been a toss up for both of them, right? And so if you’re able to find, you know, kind of that niche and the high level operators that I talk on here that are the most successful really have a dialed in niche. Like they do this. I’ve had people who tell me I buy distressed second position notes in X area. I’m like, wow, I barely know what that means, but God bless you.

Mysti (22:37.632)
Yeah.

Mysti (22:48.074)
Yes.

Mysti (22:57.024)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s no, it’s very true. so I have been able to partner with, you know, a couple of people in our community where I can tell you, I did, you did ask about the buy box and I didn’t say that I was talking about the underwriting. But our buy box is very specific and it is like an, you know, an ABC class property in an AB area, ABC area, you know, 50, five to 50 doors, five to 50 units that is a value add, right? And

Dylan Silver (23:19.746)
Yep.

Mysti (23:26.076)
and in our backyard, so we couple of very specific markets. so we’re looking at the median income, 40K or more, just very, very specific stuff. that’s huge because it really helps weed out really quickly everything else you don’t want. And that’s important.

Dylan Silver (23:43.801)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. Hugely important. Having that buy box identified. mean, truthfully, I probably could have done a better job when I was when that was my full time effort of identifying exactly even as a wholesaler. What type of properties that I want to target? What type of sellers that I want to go after? I was looking for anybody who’s got any type of distress.

they’re just tired of it, whatever, or can’t afford it, foreclosure, probate. I was looking for anybody and everybody. But now I’m saying, know what? I really could have dove in and been like, anyone and everybody, I’m in the DFW Metroplex in Denton, Texas. could have been like, anyone in DFW who has a probate home under $400,000 and there’s less than

free airs, like something like this. And I’m just falling into it. But like that’s the level of niche that I’m looking at right now. Because when I’m getting on these calls with people, I want to know that I’m bringing them something that is way different than anything else. often, mean, let’s be real, in many cases, specifically if we’re looking at it as an investment.

Mysti (24:40.24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mysti (24:52.8)
Thank you.

Dylan Silver (25:00.098)
we do have to make it course worthwhile for us as the investors. So it’s not like I can go and make them an offer that is gonna exceed what they can get on their market value. But why should they choose me? Why should they choose me, right? And so that’s the differentiating thing.

Mysti (25:03.839)
Yeah.

Mysti (25:09.344)
All about gender writing.

Mysti (25:16.243)
Awesome. That’s a great point. That is so, yes. Yes.

Dylan Silver (25:20.556)
Yeah, Mysti, we are coming up on time here. Where can folks go to get ahold of you?

Mysti (25:27.058)
I have two different websites. I one for the real estate side and I have one for the restaurant side. Books and Bytes dot com if people need restaurant accounting help and I’ve got account on Mysti dot com which is the real estate investing side.

Dylan Silver (25:47.874)
Mysti, thank you so much for coming on the show, for talking with us about your journey. Congrats on all your success so far and let us know when you get that first deal under contract.

Mysti (25:58.504)
I will. Thank you so much for this Dylan. This is really exciting. And I just want to add one last thing. This was huge for me because I hate being on camera and one of my mentors mentioned that this is something we really have to do to grow to get out of our comfort zone. You want something different, you got to do something different. So I just want to extend my appreciation to Investor Fuel, Mike, you, yourself, your team that helped me get here because it can be scary for some people. So I appreciate you guys hosting.

Dylan Silver (26:13.187)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (26:26.188)
Absolutely, absolutely. Thanks for coming on.

Mysti (26:28.832)
Thanks.