5 Key Lessons from a Top Real Estate Agent on Thriving in Crisis

Michael Stansbury (00:26.58)
Hello everybody and welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Mike Stansbury, Special guest today is Joseph Cosentino. Joe, how are you, sir?

Joseph Cosentino (00:46.136)
I’m doing great, Mike. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Michael Stansbury (00:47.904)
Well, we’re gonna find out all about what Joe’s doing to help people in his markets, but first, we’ve gotta pay the bills, and that means that we’re gonna talk to you about Investor Fuel. At Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses, to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. So Joe, I always like this question first, is what were you doing before you got into real estate? What’s the origin story?

Maybe, where was life taking you and what caused you to pivot? Give us that real quick.

Joseph Cosentino (01:20.792)
Yeah. Well, back in many years ago, over 20, I owned an Exxon service station and we serviced. It was in Westchester County. I did that for 10 years and it was, you know, mostly full service, high end clientele. And back then, before cars were leasing, people actually owned cars and they fixed cars and…

You know, they had two or three cars, a train car, the kids had cars, so everyone would come into the local shop and get their cars repaired. So that then, I started seeing things change a little bit, more leasing, more of the newer cars were a lot harder to work on because of the technology was changing fast in automotive. And I saw all the gas stations were kind of going out of business and switching to…

Convenience stores what you see today So I didn’t really Have any kind of idea about a convenience. So I looked into it I was gonna maybe do like a Dunkin Donuts, which I should have probably did but At the time we didn’t have the capital to you know raise the money to come up with the renovation and the gas station the gas companies weren’t helping us so I decided to sell the business Put it on the market with a local realtor

that I knew, it was actually a client of mine. And he sold it to another mechanic basically, who came in and bought the place. And then at the closing, I saw what he made, what they made. And I said, wow, this is a lot of money for a little bit amount of work. I I did most of the work. I said, let me, now I sold my business, I gotta do something.

I have a family, have mortgage, I have bills, so I decided to get into real estate. I had owned my own home already. I kind of was familiar with real estate, but I never really thought of it as a business.

Joseph Cosentino (03:29.486)
So I took the test, I started working on new construction. Back then it was a boom of new construction. It was early 2000s, so a lot of new construction, especially in the Bronx and the five boroughs, we had tax abatements, there was a lot of tax benefits for developers to build residential homes. So you started seeing a lot of single…

family, two family, three family properties and lot of condos. And that’s kind of how I got involved in real estate as an agent. just worked with the new construction projects.

Michael Stansbury (04:12.243)
So at the beginning, it’s always curiosity, right? You’re in this transition of you see some things coming down the pipe and you say, hey, maybe my business is not gonna be as profitable and as easy as it once was because of all the changes in automotive. And then you see what your realtor makes and you’re like, okay, that could be an option. And then you just took action. And so from there…

Joseph Cosentino (04:35.0)
Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (04:36.361)
You know, talking about 23, 25 years ago, you you’ve built a business and you have, and where it is today. So let me ask you about kind of the, before we get to what you’re doing today to help folks in your markets, what were some of the transition or pivot points as far as, you know, growing into maybe brokerage and helping other agents? Tell me what that looked like.

Joseph Cosentino (05:00.702)
When I first started, I worked out of my house as a signal realtor. know, just as a, mean, after I, let me back up a little. I started as a realtor in an office working for a broker. For two years I did that and I became the top agent in the office. You know, I sold more than anyone.

Michael Stansbury (05:20.329)
Well don’t bury the lead here Joe, how did you become the top agent in the office? What kind of groundwork were you doing? What kind of tilling were you doing? What were the tools that you were using?

Joseph Cosentino (05:24.579)
Hello?

Joseph Cosentino (05:29.676)
I mean, we didn’t have cell phones really. We didn’t have internet. It was just cold calling and doing open houses and marketing. I used my marketing background. I took some marketing in college and from having my own business, I had some good business skills as far as taking care of your clients.

really working to get them the best deal at the time. Working for a developer was nice, but I really liked working for people, helping them transition from a rental property into a home or buying their first investment property or seeing the family come and all of sudden they were living in a two-room apartment and now they have this beautiful house. So I felt that was really the right way to do it.

So I kind of transitioned into my own brokerage, took my own entrepreneurial skills and I said, I’m gonna open my own business. So I did that. I opened up in 2006 or around the end of 2006. I started in my house, I had a little home office and just one computer and myself.

And then the market crashed, obviously, a few years later. But I was able to kind of withstand it because I didn’t have these big expenses. I didn’t have a big office. I didn’t have overhead. I didn’t have managers or payroll. One of the things I learned about having a repair business was the payroll, the insurance, the taxes, workers comp. And I’m like, I don’t need any of this. And I can make as much money.

and just do it myself. So that’s kind of, you know, why I chose real estate as a business.

Michael Stansbury (07:17.705)
Right?

Michael Stansbury (07:22.953)
You knew what you didn’t want, right? And so that’s great. And so a lot of our audiences, a lot of our audience are real estate investors, doing the brokerage and helping people out. What is your real estate investments been like? How was that journey? Because what happens usually, it doesn’t happen for everybody, but people that do our realtors, our brokers do…

know, on the, on as a part of their vertical, they start investing in real estate, especially when they get access to deals their way. Tell us what that looked like for you,

Joseph Cosentino (07:56.93)
Well, in the beginning, obviously, when you don’t have money and you’re coming out of, you know, you’re a young guy and you have a family and it’s hard to raise capital, no one really is going to give you money. But I wish I bought more back in 2005 and 2006. I wish I bought twice as much as what I own now. But eventually, you know, I did get more money and as I saved up money, I bought real estate.

One of the developers that I worked for, said, you you got a great advantage because you’re a broker. You could find the deals. Everybody thinks the brokers could find the deals, but, you know, 10, 20 years ago, we did find the deals because people came, you know, I want to sell my house and, you know, there was no internet. was none of these, you know, none of this technology that investors have today. It was just word of mouth and, you know,

Michael Stansbury (08:49.076)
Right?

Joseph Cosentino (08:52.846)
You find the deal you call an investor or first you you know if it wasn’t good for yourself you’d flip it to an investor and then as I Got a little more savvy and I started saying you know Let me let me instead of flipping houses and fixing them and doing all this work I could flip a house make my you know 20 30 grand and be in and out quick and sell it to an investor

So as the market shifted from retail, I got more into investors and learning the fix and flip game. And then I started to do a lot of short sales and a lot of foreclosures because that’s all we really had at the time. We didn’t have this market that we’ve had in the last few years. So I had to adapt again and learn how to work with the investors and their mentality.

while trying to be an investor myself. So sometimes it’s fine line because if you start being too much of an investor, the investors are, you know, you’re going to buy all the deals for yourself. We’re not going to come to you anymore. So then you lose that business. it’s, you know, it’s hard to really be a broker, be an investor, you know, read. You got to kind of wear different hats.

Michael Stansbury (09:47.977)
Well… Right.

Michael Stansbury (10:11.157)
Right, you you gotta take care of people, but you also have a portfolio that you wanna do for your family. And so yeah, there is a fine line for it. Some people can’t do it that well, and they just go all in on one thing.

So tell me a little bit about today, 2025. we’re, you’ve got a depth here of business. You’ve been through a couple cycles. You’ve been through COVID, you’ve been through a wait. You’ve, you know, you’ve been where, so a lot of people get used to, this this market’s.

good, this market’s terrible. somebody that’s been in it as long as you have is like, you go, just wait, something’s going to change. And that always does. But in 2025, what is the vibe in your local markets? then it looks like you’re, again, you’re in a lot of different places. You’re in Florida and you’re up in the Northeast. Tell us about that.

Joseph Cosentino (11:08.817)
2025, like we said before, has been a unique year, especially after coming out of 21, 22, and 23. The market, all it did was skyrocket. So if you were an agent or a broker, you hired a realtor and as long as they were following up on leads, they were closing deals. So if you had a team of 20, 30 agents, they were probably each closing 10 or 20 deals a year.

You didn’t really have to work. You could just sit back and collect money.

You I always worked. Like, I’m a worker. I don’t like to just sit back. I mean, I like to take some time off. But right now, I feel like the difference is the workers are out there and the hustlers are making money. It’s a lot harder. It’s not as easy with all the new laws and the market the way it is. But there is business. You’ve got to be a dealmaker. You’ve got to know, you know, you’ve got to really kind of be almost like a chameleon.

So if you’re working with a buyer and a seller, you got to kind of wear both hats. The buyer’s side to try to get them a good deal, but the seller wants the most money for the property. So you got to really know how to work both sides and negotiate and common sense. Like, you know, we only have one offer on the table. You know, it’s a lower offer. You want this, they want that. Let’s try to meet in the middle and make a deal happen. So if you kind of can weave through this.

craziness that’s going on with rates and prices and you know what’s going on. If you could just eliminate the outside noise and stick with the know what you’re trying to do. Obviously you’re trying to help people buy a home and you’re trying to help the seller sell their home. So those are really the key rules I tell all my agents. Just stick to your fundamentals and try to you know make deals happen.

Michael Stansbury (13:11.433)
Yeah, how’s it been in the markets that you serve? Have you seen a contraction in real estate and agents? How’s that affected your business and how’s it affected maybe your local MLSs there?

Joseph Cosentino (13:24.014)
Uh, it’s affected it a lot. I’ve been on the board of, uh, one key MLS, HGAR. so in the past year we’ve, we’ve lost a lot of agents. Um, obviously if there’s no business, they’re not going to keep paying MLS dues. um, you know, even in my brokerage, I’ve lost agents. If there’s, obviously they’re not doing business, you know, I can’t charge agents monthly fees and desk fees.

Marketing fees if there’s no business so But I give everyone at least a year I say look you got one year to do a deal if you can’t do a deal in a year find a different business This is not for you So you got one year you come into my firm, you know, this is our deal and depending on your Expertise and and where you are in your life

Michael Stansbury (14:07.029)
It’s very honest and forth, yes, good, I like it.

Joseph Cosentino (14:23.01)
I feel like every agent deserves a chance to at least give it a shot. Everybody wants to be their own. Everybody wants to be their own boss and their own. And I tell them straight out, I’m not your boss. You don’t work for me. You work for yourself. But you got to be an entrepreneur. You got to advertise and market yourself. Otherwise, you’re not getting any business. So the ones that listen and I tell them, just follow what I’m doing. You don’t have to do everything I’m doing, but try to watch what I’m doing.

Michael Stansbury (14:27.829)
Yeah, I like that.

Joseph Cosentino (14:52.962)
I don’t mind you copying what I’m doing at all. My competitors do it anyway, but I’d rather see my agents do it. And if you don’t have a listing or you don’t have clients, come to me and say, can I use one of your listings to do an open house? I mean, got 30 listings. Take one of them and it’s your listing. I’ll put you as a co-lister and get it sold. Or you work all the buyers that come through the open house and those are your clients.

put them in our CRM and just, you know, start market to them.

Michael Stansbury (15:27.507)
Right, so what’s great about what you’ve done and what you said right away is you’re not a broker that’s just like, hey, come one, come all, and just keep those desk fees and those transactions. You’re somebody that says, hey, this could work for you, it may not. And you need to give yourself this amount of time, and then it’s up to them to take action. There’s always, whenever I’m coaching or mentoring a young person in entrepreneurship, I said, there’s no handholding here.

It is watch and do, watch and do, watch and do. And if you can’t do it, then go get a job, go get something else. So I like that. So I am interested, so you have, so do you spend time in Fort Lauderdale? Do you spend time there? yeah, tell me what that looks like. Is that just during the seasons? And how did you get interested in opening up a shop down in Florida?

Joseph Cosentino (16:26.054)
That was right after COVID when I started, know, clients of mine were going on vacations and obviously it was, Florida was open, New York wasn’t. And I started seeing a transition of some of my higher end clients buying properties in Florida. So I said, you know what, let me go down there and see what’s, you know, cause I’ve always gone to Florida, but I’ve always gone to Miami. You know, it’s more of a vacation destination.

know, spot, let me start venturing out to some of these other areas and see what’s going on in the Florida market. And I saw prices were pretty inexpensive compared to New York. I was like, wow, I could buy a two bedroom condo on the water and it’s into 200,000s. I mean, you can’t even buy a garage for that in the Bronx. So I bought a condo in Fort Lauderdale. I got a great deal.

And I saw it was pretty easy to do business there. mean, it wasn’t as like, it was very cut and dry. The listing broker only did listings. The agents did all the running around and the showings and the brokers really didn’t have to go and do all the legwork and grunt work that we do here in New York. And it was just sort of a kind of managerial type of business where you can just manage your agents.

But I did see the agents making more money than the broker. obviously they have a different model where they work on volume and, you know, the splits are very different. But I really wasn’t into opening up a big firm or doing any kind of, you know, big, big stuff. I just wanted to get my license, have helped my clients that were moving or selling in New York and moving down south or buying a second home.

So I started picking up some clients that way that I sold their home in say New York for a million dollars and they were gonna go down to Florida and buy a condo for 500 and put 500 in the stock market. And then I would get more of that. So the first year I think I did eight deals, made a decent amount of money and…

Michael Stansbury (18:40.98)
Yeah.

Joseph Cosentino (18:50.712)
things were looking like I was really going to open up down Florida and say, you know what, this is really, I think the future for me to go and open something in Florida. But then obviously interest rates jumped up and know, prices started really going up. And it didn’t make sense for a lot of my clientele to start continuing, unless they had a lot of money or they were completely cashing out. The second home market kind of dried up a little.

second home buyer, however you want to call it. Most of it was condos, very few houses. People that had their family and their jobs and their work here, but they wanted a nice second home in Florida.

Michael Stansbury (19:35.794)
Right. Okay. I like it. I mean, you took it, you, you went with the market, told you, you, and so that was, that’s a nice pivot there. I like, I always like to hear how entrepreneurs think and process things. And it sounds like from the very beginning, when you see something, when you see something happening, you see the wave before it becomes a bigger wave. And you’re just like, okay, well I need to, take the surfboard out, put a paddle on there and then get out there and ride that thing. All right.

Joseph Cosentino (20:04.398)
So then I started seeing a slowdown obviously about a year ago, you know, in the Florida market because of the hurricanes and the weather. So that’s another issue that you really don’t think about when you’re selling real estate, you just sell, you know, you don’t really think about hurricanes when you live in New York and, you know, you’re selling up here. And then some of these hurricanes were just so devastating and wiping out whole communities.

you people started second guessing, do I really want to sell my house and go down there and start over and, you know, possibly lose it in a hurricane or a flood? So, you you always got to look at your, the areas you’re servicing and, you know, what’s the draw to that area and what’s the negative.

Michael Stansbury (20:44.361)
Right.

Joseph Cosentino (20:56.003)
It’s a decent market. mean, I wouldn’t say it’s terrible right now. There are some challenges, but you can still sell real estate.

Michael Stansbury (21:05.521)
Alright. Well Joe, I’ve got some other questions for you, non-real estate related. So I’m looking at maybe the background. Are you a big Yankee fan? So who is your all-time favorite New York Yankee?

Joseph Cosentino (21:15.682)
Yes, I am.

I mean, I have to say Jeter. I mean.

Michael Stansbury (21:24.341)
Alright, so let’s go but okay, let’s so not in the 90s 2000s but like older than that like

Joseph Cosentino (21:31.911)
probably say Thurman-Munson.

Michael Stansbury (21:34.141)
Okay, all right. Great catcher. Tragic end to his life. I’m a big baseball fan. I’m a Cardinals fan. so Cardinals and Yankees are just, they endure. So.

Joseph Cosentino (21:44.046)
Yep. Yeah. I Mattingly also, would say Mattingly is up there in the top three. But if I had to really pick, I always like, you know, I always like to go back to those seventies teams. mean, they were really just like down and dirty, hungry and they didn’t take shit from anybody. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (21:51.901)
Yeah, it was great.

Michael Stansbury (22:08.945)
No, Steinbrenner, that was Steinbrenner’s first few years as a ownership. And the 50s and the 60s Yankees were hilarious and fun and good and classic. Yogi Berra grew up in St. Louis, so I have a natural affinity for Yogi Berra. He actually grew up on the same street as my…

Joseph Cosentino (22:13.901)
Yeah.

Joseph Cosentino (22:19.907)
Right.

Michael Stansbury (22:30.431)
grandfather and so it was really neat. But I don’t love the Yankees, I love the Cardinals. But I have an affinity for Yankees and Yankee fans. I’ve got some good buddies that are. So what else, Joe, do you do in New York and in Florida? Not real estate related, but what are your hobbies? What are fun things that you and maybe your family like to do? What does that look like?

Joseph Cosentino (22:52.974)
Golf obviously we try to play golf as much as I can You know even though it’s Challenging mentally and physically people think golf is not you know a challenging sport, but they never play it so It is physically and mentally challenging. I just love being out with the guys You know hanging out playing golf and you know smoking a cigar enjoying it

Michael Stansbury (23:19.519)
Do usually take them pretty good or where are you in the pecking order?

Joseph Cosentino (23:24.782)
I shoot mid-80s, know, consistently. It’s hard to get, you know, some days I’ll shoot 90, some days I’ll shoot 85. You know, it’s hard to get, you know, when you’re really, when you’re not playing every other day and once a week or twice a week, it’s hard to really get that mechanical, you know, swing down, you know, and the endurance, you need to be in shape. I mean, it’s very tough out, especially in the heat.

Michael Stansbury (23:34.035)
That’s really good. Yeah.

Michael Stansbury (23:48.532)
Yep.

Yeah, June and July, August, it does not, it weighs on you. I don’t, so I don’t play golf for one reason, only because I have a younger brother and he didn’t get married until he was in his mid thirties. So all that boy did between the ages of 18 and 35 was play golf. He just got addicted to it.

Joseph Cosentino (24:09.666)
think he’s

Michael Stansbury (24:11.153)
And so whenever I played golf, I’d play with him and I don’t know if he have a brother or if he have a rivalry. It’s like Boston and New York. So I just chose, I choose not to play.

Joseph Cosentino (24:17.294)
Sure.

Joseph Cosentino (24:22.67)
He beat you down a little bit.

Michael Stansbury (24:25.585)
Not only that, I’m kind of athletic, so I can swing it pretty good. so the last time we played, on the first tee, I hit a great drive. And he came up to me and said, that was awesome. You could be probably as good as me if you just did this every day for the rest of your life. You could probably beat me when we’re in our 80s. And it was just so deflating. was like, man, I’m not playing this anymore.

Joseph Cosentino (24:53.71)
You got to practice. It’s not a sport where you could just say, I’m an athlete, and I’m going to be a great golfer. You could be, like you said, a great athlete, but you just don’t have the mechanics down or the swing down. You could hit a drive 250 yards, but then you can’t shoot a 10-foot putt or chip on the green or hit an approach shot from 100 out and be, you

Michael Stansbury (25:14.484)
Right?

Joseph Cosentino (25:22.254)
three feet from the flag. So you watch these pros and as you play, really get a level of respect for them and how it’s really mental. A lot of it’s mental and it’s just muscle memory. Obviously I work out and try, I gotta stay in shape to be in business today. If you’re not in shape, you know, you can’t just expect to sit behind a desk and run your business and say, okay, I’m going to have, you know, a team of agents going out and doing all the work for

Michael Stansbury (25:45.438)
Right?

Joseph Cosentino (25:51.63)
You know, sometimes a call comes in and someone wants to see your property. What am going to do? No one’s here in the office. I can’t get an agent to drop what they’re doing. I got to run out and show a house, especially if it’s one of my listings. Um, you know, and you got to work late. You got to work early. Sometimes, you know, you don’t get home seven, eight o’clock at night and, you know, you haven’t eaten dinner yet. Sometimes on the weekends, you got to run out on a Saturday morning early and you’re out Friday nights with the wife and the friends drinking.

So you gotta really, know, it’s like I’m gonna be home on a Friday going to bed. I got nothing to do tomorrow, but then all of sudden, you know, phone rings and, or yeah, I want to see this house tomorrow at 9 a.m. I’m like, oh my God, I was out all night drinking. got…

Michael Stansbury (26:30.367)
phone rings the texts come yeah

Michael Stansbury (26:39.197)
No, I gotta hydrate and get out of here. That’s right. Well…

Joseph Cosentino (26:42.264)
So, but I do like to work out and exercise and play golf. Big Yankees fan, Giants fan. I like all sports, know, Rangers, New York fan, Knicks. Obviously we had a great run. I’m kind of sad they fired the coach, but you know, yeah, they fired them the day, two days after they lost, which is shitty, but.

Michael Stansbury (26:46.25)
great.

Michael Stansbury (26:56.873)
They did.

Michael Stansbury (27:01.12)
I didn’t know they fired the head coach. I did not know that.

Wow.

Yeah, NBA coaches get axed for reasons I can’t ever understand. We’re Grizzly fans here, obviously. I’m in Memphis. And we axed ours in the middle of the season. And we were doing OK. And then we just fell off a cliff. anyway, we could talk about all that fun stuff all day. Hey, Joe, if our audience wants to get in touch with you, maybe they are doing deals or wanting to do deals in your area, where can they find you on the internet?

Joseph Cosentino (27:39.086)
Probably the best way to get me is on Instagram if they’re on Instagram Joseph see Joseph see cousin Tina Or they could just call my office 718 239 7000 Email info at Morris Park realty calm Just search my name on Google and you’ll see me pop up everywhere. I mean it’s people have

Michael Stansbury (27:44.533)
Okay.

Joseph Cosentino (28:07.822)
My cell phone is online and I’m easy to find today.

Michael Stansbury (28:12.733)
He’s easy to get to. Well, Joe, thank you for being part of the Real Estate Pros Podcast. Folks, all that information about Joe will be in the show notes below. Folks, remember, do everything like and subscribe, comment below, do all the things they tell you to do here. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next time on the Real Estate Pros Podcast. Thank you, Joe, for being on the podcast, sir.

Joseph Cosentino (28:32.738)
Welcome Michael, have a great day. Take care.

Michael Stansbury (28:34.91)
See you guys.