From Corporate to Creative: Jay Lirette’s Real Estate Journey Revealed

Dylan Silver (00:01.779)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today on the show we have a creative solution based real estate agent who leads a team doing lots of creative deals out there in Connecticut. Jay Lirette. Jay, welcome to the show.

Jay Lirette (00:20.866)
Dylan, how are you today?

Dylan Silver (00:22.909)
I’m doing well. was telling you before hopping on here that I’m in North DFW in Denton and I’m grateful that there’s no tornadoes or inclement weather here today. How is it out there in Connecticut?

Jay Lirette (00:35.543)
it’s a little bit rainy.

Dylan Silver (00:38.057)
but par for the course, right? I always like to start off at the top by asking folks how they got into the real estate space.

Jay Lirette (00:40.66)
Absolutely.

Jay Lirette (00:46.869)
Well, I was corporate America. I call it the work to die program. We were, I was basically working 70 hours a week when I ended up getting fired for being late too many times. And I was actually going business to business, just asking for 15 minutes of their time, business owners time of, you know, what I wanted to do next. And one of the people that I met,

I was a, it was now a good friend of mine, Tony Shabbat. He’s a real estate agent out here, but he was one of my mentors in the beginning. And I was giving him so many referrals that he was just like, you got to go get your license so I can give you the proper referral fee. He ended up making me a deal where he was like, go get your license and I’ll pay for everything. So I ended up going for it. I went for like insurance first.

and I couldn’t retain the information. read the same paragraph about six times and then real estate, I just took a love to it. So it definitely was the right choice.

Dylan Silver (01:52.371)
I have to agree with you and also say that if people are going to be doing something that’s their location, their career, their job, the thing that they spend most of their time doing, enjoying it is probably one of the biggest, I would say, fastest ways to scale. Because if you don’t, where is the motivation going to come from? Some people will maybe argue with me and say, it’s not that important. You can just use discipline and discipline meets motivation.

But I genuinely love real estate. I love everything pretty much about it, even the things that other people are frustrated with, maybe like tenants and dealing with the legal. I think it’s all fascinating to me versus I as well went the insurance route, you know, and I got my license, but I just wasn’t passionate about it, Jay. I don’t know what it was.

Jay Lirette (02:41.586)
Yeah, I could totally agree and totally resonate with the insurance part. I read the same things over and over and over. And then when I was like, I can’t retain this, they said, you don’t need it. You don’t, you know, you just need to pass the test. And I was like, well, if I can’t retain it, I can’t pass the test. So, which, I mean, I failed the real estate exam twice. And then I went in there with a personal. Yep. I went in there like this is personal.

Dylan Silver (03:05.823)
It’s And then let me tell you about that. So this is funny because the real estate exam in Texas is like notoriously hard. And I’ve had brokers from other states. I would say offline tell me like, I tried to take the real estate exam in Texas or I did and I failed it. And I was like, yeah, it’s ridiculously hard, I would say or not ridiculously, but it was for me. And

Thank goodness I passed on the first try. But I would say I was in the scared straight category because when I was going through real estate school, first of all, I tried to do it online. was 180 hours. I wasn’t getting through it. Then I went to the real estate school and they kind of allow you to, I would say, speed up through some of the 180 hours because you’re in there personally. But there was so many people, Jay, who filled it twice.

you know, people who failed it multiple times. I think after a certain number, you have to like retake courses and whatnot. So I studied hard for that exam and I did not think I was going to pass. When they handed me the certificate that said pass, I just bolted out of there. said, let me get this before they change their mind or something like that.

Jay Lirette (04:19.304)
Yeah, I had this similar experience.

Dylan Silver (04:24.937)
I want to ask you about that first year in the business. I know you’re involved in a lot of current day. At that point in time, once you got the license, what did that first year look like for you?

Jay Lirette (04:38.354)
So I actually had clients before I had my license, but I was working with my mentor at the time. I was working at a dealership. So I was taking lunch breaks and going to showings and doing some stuff to kind of just try to make it work beforehand. The dealership ended up, I was not a car guy. I was just, I did what I was told. was very, very positive.

So it was a good experience when people interacted with me, but at the same time, I was not knowledgeable in the car field. So I had a few clients here and there, made some money, realized that it was possible. But then I think year number two, when I got into the investing space, I know you mentioned wholesaling. Once I got into wholesaling, I was like, OK, this is the area I want to be in.

Dylan Silver (05:07.764)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (05:28.276)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (05:34.119)
What year are we talking about? What year roughly?

Jay Lirette (05:37.146)
That was about year two. So I had my license and then I got into the investor space. We started hosting real estate meetups in Northeast Connecticut. We were one of the only ones doing it. And because from our meeting, we ended up having other investors throw them in the areas because of our proximity to Mass in Rhode Island. We have some quite

Quite large ones in Masson Rhode Island that have started because of what we created.

Dylan Silver (06:08.083)
Was this pre-COVID? What year are we talking about here?

Jay Lirette (06:11.238)
Actually, it was right in the, our first one, I think was right around the beginning of COVID is when they, you know, and it was funny because we were like, oh, we can’t, we can’t post these pictures cause no one’s wearing masks. And one of our guest speakers, he’s a, he’s, you know, he’s a big investor. He has a quite a big following and he started just sharing all these photos from the night. And we were like, oh my God, we, we need to contain these as much as possible.

Dylan Silver (06:17.075)
Okay.

Dylan Silver (06:36.575)
I know that East Coast was a different, you know, thing that during that time period. I’m in Texas right now, so we may be a little bit more lax. But I remember being in Baltimore, Maryland, I believe, maybe DC area. And I went to a gold’s gym and I’m on one of the machines in the middle of a set. And I just take my mask down. And then I get like someone yelling at me. I’m like, I’m not even

thinking about it. They come over to me. It’s one of the employees. They’re like, pull your mask up. I said, my gosh, I guess I just won’t breathe then. who I guess, you know, we’ll figure it out.

Jay Lirette (07:17.913)
Yeah, it was crazy over here. remember right in the beginning of it too, moving my parents from Florida to Connecticut. They moved down there and then they said, is enough, move me back. I flew down there, moved them up and it was right in the beginning of it and we couldn’t use bathrooms and it was quite challenging to say the least.

Dylan Silver (07:40.755)
Now in the real estate space, was actually, I would say, good conditions, right? You had low rates, you had lots of buyers. So working with, on all sides, working with investors, working with people who are looking at homes, it was a great time to be a real estate guy.

Jay Lirette (07:56.876)
absolutely. ended up having, because I’m a father of nine, so a lot of the families that have large families, they actually gravitated to me because they knew upon showing stuff like that, they knew that I was great with kids and I understood about large families and challenges like that. it was quite the experience in the beginning.

Dylan Silver (08:26.173)
I want to pivot a bit here, Jay, and ask you about the creative space. Being an agent and being an agent myself, understanding that, you know, a lot of times agents and I would say investors and agents who work with investors are kind of at odds. I’ve noticed this. It’s almost like, you know, another creative offer. But I like that space. And I think you probably have a similar affinity towards it. I prefer actually the investment side of things over the traditional.

listing in a single family homes and working with people who are you first-time buyers and so on and so forth

Jay Lirette (09:01.93)
Yeah, it’s a lot less emotions involved. So we deal with a lot of sellers that have property with situations. We had one where it was an older woman who was facing foreclosure. We created a few solutions. She ended up, we ended up getting her the best solution for her situation. We felt great about it. We ended up, you know,

taking over her mortgage while we renovated the property and it went very well. So then there’s other situations where there was a hoarder house. The woman was the woman quote unquote said she was drowning in the ocean. We ended up, you know, giving her a lifeline and pulling her out. She couldn’t own the house because she was in, she has situations. She couldn’t own it. And it was a hoarder house.

Dylan Silver (09:51.935)
up.

Jay Lirette (10:02.473)
tons of leans on the property and she’s like, don’t have the money for them. They’re still in my name. We ended up coming in basically giving her the solution that we’ll take over everything. We’ll clear the debt. We will take over the mess, anything. We just said to get your stuff and we’ll take care of the rest.

Dylan Silver (10:25.843)
I wanna pivot a bit here Jay and talk about, I would say…

I’m trying to come up with the right term here, but I would say mutually beneficial creative deals when there is distress because we were chopping it up Jay beforehand before hopping on here. And I think a lot of people in the I don’t want to say anything negative about the wholesale sales, but I as a wholesaler who was unlicensed for two years and now someone with a license, I have a different perspective. And I think a lot of times people are like take it or leave it cash off for boom, you know, and that’s it. But there’s also so many other possibilities. And then

specifically creative ways where I would say sellers can be benefited apart from just that initial cash payment to effectively vacate the property. I know you’re involved in lots of creative deals. What’s been your perspective on this space and maybe walk me through some of the more creative deals that you’ve done.

Jay Lirette (11:22.631)
Yeah, and I think you hit it right on the head is that you know cash offers that’s the way majority of companies go after properties they give a cash offer and take it or leave it out in 30 days. We tend to lead with our creative situations or solutions and we also have a cash offer. We did one the other day where you know the lady just wanted to be out. We said we can close in 10 days.

So we can do that, but we don’t lead with it. Some of the things that we offer, if there is a mortgage, that’s one of the first questions I ask. If there’s a mortgage, because then it just defines the offer strategy. If there’s a mortgage, then we can take over the mortgage, obviously, with a subject two. But our subject twos are usually short term. We use them short term to utilize usually a good interest rate.

The one that we had was a 3.2 % interest rate, so it’s cheaper than hard money just to take over that loan for short term while we do the renovation. We try not to take over long term. know people have, you know, it just is not usually a good situation for the seller. If there is no mortgage, then we usually use like a seller finance. We’ve been doing a lot of deals where

We can give like half down. So we give them what they need to get out or move on in both situations. If they have a mortgage or not, we pay off the mortgage and then give them a little bit for moving expenses or their next future endeavor. And then we basically have a seller’s note on the end. We’ve done lease options. We’ve done joint venture or innovation agreements.

where we come in, we renovate the property while the seller still owns it. We’ll just be a joint venture at that point and we get them what the property is worth and then we cash out after the sale.

Dylan Silver (13:30.631)
I want to ask you about exit strategies. you looking at flips on these? Are you looking at holding onto these? Are you turning any of these into short term? Is short term even a possibility out there? Do you make a lot of affordable housing? Where do you see a lot of exit strategies? Is it one particular vertical or is it multiple?

Jay Lirette (13:51.033)
It’s basically by the deal. I have a very big philosophy in that every transaction is different. I have also an analogy where I say, if you and nine other people walked into a grocery store with a list, different recipe, and different budget, are you all coming out with the same items? So it’s very case-by-case situations where if novations, it’s usually a flip.

If we can get it at a good price for seller financing, then we would consider renting it if it has like a good cash flow amount. We have one right now that we’re working. We have it under agreement. We’re supposed to be closing in a few weeks. Where is a seller finance, 0 % interest rate. And we have a 90 day deferred payment so that we can bring in tenants. So that’s obviously going to be a great, you know,

tool that or strategy that we’re going to use to get a tenant in there in that time frame.

Dylan Silver (14:55.795)
Yeah, I mean, all these exit strategies and these unique and creative ways to put deals together, I would say are specifically something that is niche, I would say, in the investing wholesale space. But then as a real estate agent myself, I think when we’re not in the hottest market ever, people are more open to these creative solutions. And you were mentioning before hopping on here that you’re also bringing some of this creativity to

properties that maybe are listed for long periods of time or maybe collaborating with other agents on deals that aren’t moving.

Jay Lirette (15:30.981)
Yes, absolutely. We use a collaboration over competition approach. We reach out to agents weekly, ones that we haven’t touched base with in a while. We talk amongst our brokerage. So my brokerage already knows that I’m not trying to go after listings, that I actually give the listings away. And that’s one of the things that we offer with agents, that we compensate them for the referral.

we’ll fix the property up and if it’s a flip as an exit strategy or even if it’s a rental after they can either have the lease or they can have the listing back after we complete the renovation.

Dylan Silver (16:11.721)
Hmm. Lots of interesting strategies here. think as far as real realtor investors, I think more opportunity potentially in markets that are I shouldn’t say more. I would say there’s more openness to working with investors working with these creative strategies when folks maybe aren’t in the hottest type of market. Jay, we are coming up on time here, though. Where can folks go maybe to

Learn more about your business or to reach out to you and get in contact with you.

Jay Lirette (16:44.925)
Yes, absolutely. We are at LoretteInvestmentGroup.com. We also have daily social media posts from Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, 860-334-1869 is the best way to reach me and Lorette.Investment.Group at gmail.com.

Dylan Silver (17:09.609)
Jay, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.

Jay Lirette (17:12.71)
Thank you very much for having me.