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Show Summary
In this conversation, Charissa Napoles shares her unique journey into real estate, transitioning from a music teacher to a successful realtor and investor in Cincinnati. She discusses her initial experiences with real estate investments, the challenges and successes she faced, and her insights into the Cincinnati real estate market. Charissa emphasizes the importance of being an investor-friendly agent and provides valuable advice for aspiring real estate professionals. The conversation also touches on the current state of the Cincinnati market and future development opportunities.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Charissa Napoles (00:00)
We had no idea we were buying like a slam dunk property. And I still know the owners who bought it from us and they it’s worth just for example, we bought it for 96,000 and we sold it for 170 six months later and it’s now worth like 425. So we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot. Like maybe we should have just kept it and rented it out. It would have been a great cash flow. But it definitely wasn’t intentional until we got to about our third property.Dylan Silver (00:17)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Charissa Napoles, is a realtor and rehabber in Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her husband work on projects and invest together. Charissa, welcome to the show. Great to have you on here. And I always like to start off at the top, Charissa, by asking guests how they got started in real estate.
Charissa Napoles (02:13)
Hi.So it’s definitely
kind of a funny story. We moved to Cincinnati from Miami, Florida. We bought a house sight unseen. I don’t even know how we ended up really with our realtor. We had picked a different one. My parents happened on a very strange whim to be in Cincinnati and I was like, go look at houses for us. And somewhere along the line, my mom switched realtors on us and then just let us know. ⁓ So I actually had to go back and apologize to the first lady. was like, I’m so sorry. It feels like you got fired halfway through your job. It wasn’t me.
⁓ But then ⁓ we bought this house sight unseen. It ended up being an incredible investment. Inadvertently, I didn’t know anything about the area. We’re just like, we like the house and the prices, right? ⁓ And so that realtor then went on to help us buy and sell, I think, six other properties. ⁓ And every time she’d be like, you’d make a great realtor. You’d make a great realtor. Like every time. She’s like, you know the contract so well. Like you find my mistakes. And so…
At one point I was about to go for it and then I got pregnant again and I was like, I’m just not in the head space to be doing school and sick all the time. So I waited and then COVID hit and I was teaching music on Zoom, which was torture, like actual torture. With that, the kid would come in on Zoom and the thing is I play piano and I sing, so I would teach voice lessons and I always accompany my own students, but there’s a lag on Zoom.
Dylan Silver (03:37)
How do you do that? How do you do that?Charissa Napoles (03:49)
So there was always like a second off and we just had to roll with it and it was torture, it was terrible. If they couldn’t figure it out and their parent wasn’t available, we just missed the class. So it was rough. And so just as they were coming back, there was like a schedule thing that didn’t work out. They wanted me to switch days. My husband couldn’t watch the kids and I was like, you know what? I think this is the push that I needed. So I told them, you know what? I’m not coming back to the music school. I’m gonna start real estate school.So I completed all the classes in about six weeks and then because of COVID, it took me just as long to get my test scheduled because they were spacing people out really far. You know, a classroom that used to test 50 now did 15. it’s not hard, but I’m a good test taker. Like I have, I like taking tests. I always say that it’s weird. I always do really well in tests. have.
Dylan Silver (04:29)
How hard was the test in Cincinnati?Charissa Napoles (04:39)
a couple different degrees and I’m just, I’m good at that kind of thing. It’s not a big deal. But you only have to get a 75, which to me is like a fail. So, yeah, so you only have to get a 75. It’s really not that hard. Most of the stuff on it, you don’t really practically need to know to be a good realtor, youDylan Silver (04:49)
You’re like, acing this.Charissa Napoles (05:46)
Like they even make t-shirts that joke about the acreage and how to calculate it, because they hammer that into you. I’ve never needed to use that in my life ever.Dylan Silver (05:55)
wanna ask you about those deals. So you were investing, it sounds like, and correct me if wrong, prior to being a realtor, were these all long-term buy and holds, put a renter in there, was it very intentional, hey, we’re gonna get involved as investors, or did this kind of become like a progressive interest? Hey, this one worked out well, let’s do another. Hey, those two worked out well, let’s keep this going.Charissa Napoles (06:00)
andCorrect.
Yeah, it was definitely not intentional.
Like I said, we just needed a place to live. I had a job already in Cincinnati. My husband didn’t have his job yet. He had his interviews lined up, but he technically got the job after we bought the house. So we definitely stepped out on faith for that one. It was not intentional. We just liked the house. It was in a good spot for me to drive to work and for him. It was kind of centrally located.
had no idea we were buying like a slam dunk property. And I still know the owners who bought it from us and they it’s worth just for example, we bought it for 96,000 and we sold it for 170 six months later and it’s now worth like 425. So we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot. Like maybe we should have just kept it and rented it out. It would have been a great cash flow. But it definitely wasn’t intentional until we got to about our third property.
Dylan Silver (07:00)
That was a flip.Charissa Napoles (07:11)
And that one, we renovated the entire kitchen. We painted the entire house. We changed every single light fixture. Like we did intentional landscaping. And then ⁓ after that house, ⁓ during COVID, so we closed on our first truly just purchase as an intentional investment ⁓ four days after I passed my Realtors License exam.Dylan Silver (07:36)
And so you’re now real estate agent, investor. It sounds like you were doing flips at that point in time. What was the scope of work on these projects? Were they heavily distressed? Were they just needing some light TLC? Was it a mix of both?Charissa Napoles (07:41)
Mm-hmm.So the
ones that we bought to live in, obviously we were living in them, so they were passing conventional loans. So was just cosmetic, paint, light fixtures, intentional things that just add value to the property without a full-blown renovation. The one that we bought purely as the investment during COVID, right when I got my licensing test, technically there was people living in it at the time, but I still don’t know how. They didn’t have plumbing in the bathroom. I haven’t the foggiest idea how they lived there. So that one was a
Fairly heavy rehab. It was a small house, two bed, one bath, and we spent about $40,000 on renovating it. And that was doing a lot of the work ourselves. I painted the entire upstairs myself. ⁓ And then we kind of, we didn’t know what we were doing, like literally at all. We just had some connections. We sort of hodgepodged it. I had a friend who was just starting out doing that kind of work. And he did all the electrical, all the plumbing, a ton of the flooring for like really cheap, because he just needed the work. He didn’t even.
And now he’s like a super high-end bathroom model guy. Like he does really high-end tiling. Yeah. So we’re thinking of pulling him in on some like high-end bathrooms when we need to because he does all the fancy tile work.
Dylan Silver (08:52)
Hey!I want to ask you ⁓ to get a little bit granular here talking about being an investor agent. I’m ⁓ a, I should say, investor friendly agent. haven’t done any investments for myself yet personally, knowing many investor agents like yourself, there is a little bit of a, what’s the approach that I take with this property? Do I buy this for myself? Do I make a cash offer? This type of thing. When you’re working with individual sellers or
sellers are you looking at every property as a potential hey this is something that we can take down or someone in our network could could take down and if they don’t want to do that then we could of course list their home
Charissa Napoles (09:42)
I wouldn’t say that with listings, ⁓ mostly because all, not all of my listings, I think I’ve had one in five years that wasn’t a flip listing. It happened to be a really good friend who was like, hey, sell my house. So I did.But all of the listings that I put are specifically investors who came to me to buy a house, to flip it and sell it. So I’m always listing it for them because that’s just the project. ⁓
Dylan Silver (10:46)
Yeah.Charissa Napoles (10:46)
So I wasworking with a real estate coaching service and they would send me all their leads like for free. They’re like, hey, we just like you. You worked for, I worked for the guy who owns the company ⁓ as his investor here in Cincinnati for a couple of years. So he would send me all of his leads in investing school. So the goal was always, Charissa is a great realtor because she’s investor friendly. She’ll find you the house.
come up with the comps, the ARV, she’ll get you through the renovation, she’ll project managing. I design all of them myself as well. So paint colors, light fixtures, kitchen layouts, like all of that. So it’s always ⁓ a partnership. then, you know, on occasion we’ll be like, we’d like to go in on this one ourselves. ⁓ Or this one, like the one we’re closing this week, we’re partnering with a former client. ⁓ And we’re going in on this duplex to buy and hold it.
Dylan Silver (11:20)
Yeah.Charissa Napoles (11:40)
So it’s kind of a little bit of everything.Dylan Silver (11:43)
sure, sure. want to ask you about working with investors, ⁓ especially as an agent, you know, ⁓ and providing value where maybe other ⁓ agents fall short. one of the things that I know a lot of investors don’t like to do is sign buyer’s rep agreements. ⁓ I’ve encountered this. And one of the reasons why I’ve at least seen is well, I don’t want to lock myself into only making offers with this person, especially if it’s theirCharissa Napoles (12:01)
youDylan Silver (12:13)
first interaction with an agent, right? And they think, well, I’ve always made my offers off-market. I don’t see why would need to work with an agent. Have you encountered any of that at all? And also, what advice do you have for aspiring investor-friendly agents who may be dealing with some of that?Charissa Napoles (12:14)
ThankSo
for me, it’s definitely been a different experience because most of my clients for the bulk of the last two or three years came as those referrals from that company. Those people were not looking to work with anyone else. They don’t live in state. They’re from California. They’re like, we wouldn’t even know how to find another roadster. You’ve been recommended. We’ll sign it. We’re good. Now, if there’s something off market, it doesn’t actually even apply. So it doesn’t hinder them from buying something off market because that has nothing to do with me necessarily.
Dylan Silver (12:59)
Yeah.⁓
Charissa Napoles (12:59)
They couldget a deal from a wholesaler and they could go offer on it and my buyer’s rep with them is not in the way. It only applies to MLS listings.
Dylan Silver (13:08)
Right, right.When you’re working with those out of state buyers, do they have a…
buy a that they’re super locked in on. Because what I’ve noticed is investors generally want to get in on some, especially if they’re newer. Maybe it’s not their first deal, but their first couple of deals. They know generally they want to invest in real estate and they may have an idea, okay, I want this square footage, I want this year of a home, I want this scope of rehab, right? But then when they start looking at their options, they may be open to something else entirely, like small multifamily. They may be, hey, I want to do, you know, HGTV level
Airbnb and then they may think well I actually want to rent this out and maybe I just need to you know quote-unquote rental grade do you see a lot of that or do you see more so people knowing like hey this is what I want and I’m not wavering one inch from this
Charissa Napoles (13:57)
So it depends.Anyone who was coming into that coaching company as a brand spanking new, I’ve never invested in my life, they always had an idea of like how much they wanted to spend on their first one. So that obviously locks them into a particular type of house, right? If they’re like, hey, I only have a hundred grand cash. We’re very limited on what we can find them because they don’t have a ton of capital. It’s their very first one. They want to go light rehab. They want to go easy.
There have been plenty of other people who came into that coaching service, not because they needed the coaching on investing so much, but they did it for the connections. This company specifically picks markets ⁓ where they build a relationship. They have the contractor, they have the title company, and they have the realtor. And everything’s sort of a package deal. So they got into it for that connection. So a lot of them are like, hey, we’re seasoned investors. If the numbers make sense, we’ll buy it. We don’t care what it is.
So they’re a lot more broad spectrum, like, hey, send me an apartment, send me a flip, like, if you like it, we like it.
So it depends on the person, it depends on the stage they are in. I don’t have a lot of this very strict buy box type of stuff, mostly because none of them have ever been to Cincinnati. So they’re like, you tell me what sells over there, I don’t know. So it’s a lot more.
Dylan Silver (15:58)
Yeah.Charissa Napoles (15:59)
they definitely come to me for advice. Like, hey, if you like the house and you think it’s gonna sell, you know the neighborhood, then we’ll go for it.Dylan Silver (16:07)
Now, Cincinnati’s an interesting market, right? So you’re talking about out-of-state investors, and they may be looking at a number of markets. How do they zero in on Cincinnati, when they could have ⁓ so many other areas of the country, even secondary markets, but they chose Cincinnati? How are these people finding Cincinnati?Charissa Napoles (16:25)
So if they were100 % honest because of me, and I don’t say that because I’m so great, but because that company is only in Cincinnati because I pitched it to their owner. Like I hounded him. was like, hey, Cincinnati is a great market. You should definitely invest in here. And it took him, it was probably a good year of me emailing him back and forth before he entered the Cincinnati market. So then once he was in Cincinnati, then it was a natural offshoot for him to add it to his list.
And he specifically likes Midwest. So he does Detroit, Nashville, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, and maybe Pittsburgh? Like all kind of in the same, I know Pittsburgh’s not Midwest, but it’s not that far, it’s like four hours. So because I pitched it to him and then he had it on his list, then all the investors going to his website have just those few markets to pick from. And then I guess I just got lucky if they picked Cincinnati, so. ⁓
Dylan Silver (17:24)
When we’re talking about Cincinnati, I’m one of these people who is maybe a little bit willfully ignorant on Cincinnati real estate. ⁓ Give folks, our audience, may not be familiar, and myself, a picture of what Cincinnati real estate is like. Is there a lot of multi-use commercial going up? Is there a lot of commercial residential, new subdivisions? What’s the real estate market like in Cincinnati right now?Charissa Napoles (17:48)
So honestly, there’sa lot of everything. We absolutely love living here. Like I said, we moved from Miami, Florida. To me, it’s, we moved from Miami, Florida, but I only lived there for two years. Before that, I was in this tiny little town. Like the population is still like 16,000 people in Virginia. So for me, Cincinnati is the perfect in between. We have all the cool stuff. We have Broadway, we have ballet, we have concerts. We have all the cool stuff here, but it’s not big like Miami.
Dylan Silver (18:06)
Wow, yeah.Charissa Napoles (18:18)
It still has a small town feel. I go to the same coffee shop every morning. I see the same people. They know my order. Like, it’s got that vibe. But for real estate, yeah, it has a mix of everything. It’s a very historical city, so there’s a ton of old, old buildings. But there’s a lot of new developments going up. There’s a lot of D.R. Horton is here, Ryan Homes, Fisher Homes.So there’s a lot of new neighborhoods going up as well. We have Homeorama here every year. I don’t know if you’re familiar with what that is. It’s been hosted in Cincinnati since like the mid 70s. So the rent here is good. The housing market is good for first time home buyers. Like our average sale price is $265.
Dylan Silver (19:04)
Yeah, that’s a good market for first time.Charissa Napoles (19:05)
Yeah, it’s a great market forfirst time home buyers. There’s little pockets of neighborhoods where you can still get a nice house for under 200. ⁓ So I think investors like it because they can expand the type of property without leaving the city. So they can start with a two one single family flip that goes for 200 and they can scale all the way up to like that condo building we were talking about that was luxury condos downtown because we have the range of things. ⁓
Dylan Silver (19:34)
Yeah,yeah. One last question. We are coming up on time here,
Charissa. When I think about some of these other markets that people may not immediately…think about, know, Cincinnati being one, but you mentioned all the benefits. I also think about, I mean, you mentioned, I believe, 260 first-time home buyer price, you know, for looking at new homes. When you’re seeing some of the urban sprawl, so like the outskirts of Cincinnati, and then maybe even like 45 minutes or an hour beyond that, are there ⁓ new developments and new homes? ⁓
being built on the outskirts of Cincinnati beyond city limits and that type of thing. And is that appealing to people as well?
Charissa Napoles (20:15)
Yeah, absolutely.Excuse me. So an hour outside of Cincinnati, you’re already past Dayton. So you can’t go too far before you’re in the, like Dayton’s only 40 minutes from where I live. ⁓ So that’s maybe a little bit too far because it’s not that big of a city. I think people think it’s bigger than it is. ⁓ But we also sort of borrow part of Northern Kentucky while we’re at it. ⁓ yeah, for sure. There’s actually a little town. I live.
in what’s called Colerain Township. I’m not in the city limits. I’m not technically in Cincinnati. ⁓ But I’m in Colerain Township, which is the west side, and only about seven to 10 minutes from me is another little town called Harrison. And there was a lot of cheap land out there, so developers have snatched it up, and there’s just popping up probably like 10 new neighborhoods. Nice houses, very family-friendly neighborhoods. ⁓ know, four bed, two bath, brick. So there’s a lot of new developments even in the smaller kind of outlying towns as well.
Dylan Silver (21:16)
We are coming up on time here, Charissa. Where can folks go to reach out to you or to learn more about your business or maybe they have a deal that they’d like your feedback on? How can folks reach out to you?Charissa Napoles (21:27)
So if you just Googlemy name, ⁓ it pops up on Google with all my business information. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, not Twitter. I don’t know why just don’t have Twitter. And then my husband’s company is also on Instagram, but I run his whole Instagram for him. So it’s got all the videos of the rehabs that he’s done. I love to do before and after. I think people really enjoy those. So yeah, if you just Google my name, all that should pop up.
Dylan Silver (21:53)
So thank you so much for coming on the show here todayCharissa Napoles (21:54)
Absolutely, it’s been a pleasure.
