Subscribe via:
Show Summary
In this conversation, Brian Baniqued shares his extensive journey in the real estate industry, detailing his evolution from a young agent to a successful entrepreneur. He discusses the importance of adapting to changes in the market, leveraging technology like AI, and the lessons learned from navigating the Great Recession. Brian emphasizes the significance of building financial independence through real estate and the strategies he employed to create multiple income streams.
Resources and Links from this show:
-
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Brian Baniqued (00:00)
Well, thanks. Thanks for that question. ⁓ So I can’t say that it was all planned, right? mean when when when I broke away from my parents, that was a very difficult thing. We didn’t talk for two years. Okay. We didn’t talk for two years. And so it wasn’t so much, hey, now’s the time to go to the next step. It was more, ⁓ here’s a new dilemma that’s been that I’m facing and how do you deal with it? Right. So if anything,Anyone who who says they’ve got a crystal ball and knew exactly when to jump onto the next step they’re lying
Q Edmonds (02:08)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the real estate pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And today I have someone who has 34 years of experience. So he said I can throw him curve balls, but I think if I do him a curve ball, he probably still knock it out the park because you know, he’s seen a lot, he’s done a lot. ⁓ and I’m excited for us to peek through his lens to get to know a little bit about him and what he do. And so.I would like to introduce you all to Mr. Brian Baniqued
I appreciate you being here today. And listen, I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Brian. I kind of want to dive in. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. I would love maybe you give them little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got started and then what markers you’re operating in. And so, Mr. Brian, sir, you have the floor.
Brian Baniqued (03:03)
Thanks Quentin, so let me try to consolidate this as quickly as possible So I’ve been in the industry real estate for the last 34 years. I started back in March of 1991 and just a little backstory origin I got my real estate license in general passed my license test in January of 1991 in my senior year of high school So now my license became valid in March and I’m I’m selling in closing dealsAgain, at that time it was just single family home deals. I remember the very first house I sold. I’m a California broker. It was a $253,000 house. And I was doing this for the sole purpose of raising cash to pay for my way through college, right? As an 18 year old. And I actually did not want to go into real estate. I come from a real estate family. So my parents were immigrants and I’m an immigrant by the way.
uh got their license in i think 1979 and they started a practice and they had agents and they had me coming into the office at 11 years old filing paperwork so this was something i really didn’t want to do uh and i wanted to become a scientist and so to pay for my way through college i got a real estate license and started selling houses saving up money and then going to school so from like 18 years old to like probably 24
which took me a little bit longer to get my degree. I’m selling real estate. Now what happened during that time is as a college student, full-time and then working full-time as a real estate agent, you’re always in feast or famine mode, especially in the early 90s, right? This was right after the SNL crisis and interest rates were 10.5%.
On average, it was really difficult to get financing in a lot of cases. And a lot of people just didn’t want to buy real estate. A lot of deals would fall through.
So I’m always in this feast and famine mode. And so what happened with me was a lot of my real estate sales gravitated towards multifamily. So back then, and even now, there’s a thing called FHA. And you can use FHA to buy up to a four unit building with as little as 3.5 % down.
So, you know, as this 18, 19, 20 year old going through college, when my clients had come to me and they’d be like, hey, I’ve saved up, you know, 10%, what can I buy? You know, I want to buy a house. I would turn them on to diverting three and a half percent of that 10 % towards buying a fourplex first, especially if they didn’t own a house, because then they could qualify for this primary financing. I’d sell them a fourplex. Then I’d let them know, hey, get ready to move out of that fourplex in three to six months.
And with that remaining capital you had from your 10 or 15 % saved up, we’ll go buy you that single family house. And so of course, when they moved out, now where they were getting free rent, because you have three other tenants in their poor unit building paying the mortgage and their income, now they have this cashflow of 500 to 800 bucks that’s going to pay their mortgage on their house. And so for me, that would get me to two sales.
in, you know, with one client a year and I’m handling a lot of different clients I’m juggling. I’ve always been that A type personality. And then of course they, you know, they have this cashflow coming in and at that point I’m letting them know, hey, don’t get attached to your fourplex because we’re going to 1031 exchange that in about two years when you’ve gained X amount of equity. And I’d run the calculation forum based on projected rents and internal rates of return and go, Hey, you’re to have this much capital.
we’ll roll that into a six unit or an eight unit or so forth. So this was the model of my business as I was going through college. Now, of course, I did this for myself as well. So I practiced what I preached and I bought a fourplex with my first purchase. And so my clients had that credibility. So by the time I get my degree in biology, I’m really headlong into real estate. I never give up.
I never actually stopped ever selling real estate during that time. But I actually work in the lab and working on recombinant DNA and it’s boring as can be. Right. It’s like, it was not at all what I expected. And at this point I’m making a lot of money during real estate. at 24 years old, I decided I’m going to start my own company. I broke away from working with my parents. It just wasn’t working out. We were always getting into issues. And so like in 1998, I founded Beniquity Realty.
which now goes by BCRE as well as a bunch of other acronyms because it’s easier to use acronyms than to pronounce my last name. In 1998, when I first started my own company in the real estate side, a lot of my clients who I’d sold four Plexus to and then exchanged them into bigger and bigger properties, which is the same thing I was doing, they actually, in a number of them,
Q Edmonds (08:46)
Yeah.Brian Baniqued (09:05)
So if you can imagine, I’m a 24-year-old with a broker’s license, been in the business now seven, almost going on eight years, starting my own company. And I was really honored to find that a bunch of my clients who were like in their 40s and 50s at the time when I met them, and I built up a pretty good cashflow for them, they decided they wanted to get their real estate license and come work with me. So here I’m here, I have my first set of eight real estate agents under me.in 1998, 1999, and they’re my past clients and they know the mantra. They know about buying a multifamily 1030 when exchanging. I did it for them. They see that I was doing it. So back then I had my first five apartment buildings. I 1030 and exchanged them all into larger and larger buildings. So I had like 20 units.
and rolled them into a 60 unit, an 86, a 30, a 20, an office complex. And that was kind of the origin story behind it, right? I mean, by the time I was 25, 27, I was holding onto a substantial amount of multifamily real estate, which I didn’t even think of as its own separate business. Just like a lot of times now, you’ll meet clients like, oh yeah, I’m a real estate investor, right?
In my mind, this was my side hustle. It was a way to keep creating cash flow so that I wasn’t relying on commissions. And then I had, of course, my real estate brokerage business. And because the model was to sell multifamily, 10th-run exchange every two to three years until you get to a certain amount, you know, the next segue to that was a separate property management company. That’s all it did was just manage properties that range from multifamily to office to retail.
Again, was a lot of it complimented my own personal real estate holdings and then that of my clients. Cause as I’m selling my clients properties, they’re like, well, you know, at first I would just hand them a book on how to manage property. But after a certain point, we started offloading that and adding that as a service. And so you have these two vertically integrated companies working in tandem, the real estate sales side finds clients that want multifamily or, or, or rental properties, the management side manages it.
And then every couple of years, we’re 10th or even exchanging that client out of that property and into other things. So as you could, at this point, I’m having to discover, know, ⁓ understand all kinds of different financing, right? I it’s all evolve or die. And so what, kind of kept me separate at the time is I would always look at the, the, the most highly leverageable forms of financing to allow me to get to buy the most number of properties or
do the same for my clients, right? Because again, here I’m able to do more sales. ⁓ This is the mantra in the office. And so my agents, where everyone at that time was like, hey, I’m going to sell you a house and give you Christmas cards and birthday cards for the next five or seven years so you remember me. Our whole mantra was we’re going to sell you these multifamilies, set up cash flow. By the way, at this point, I’m getting a real firm understanding of tax shelters, tax credits.
how you accelerate depreciation on your assets and how this is offsetting my own personal taxable income from the sales and the management. And then of course now the financing, right? Because we’ve developed a third vertical, which was a mortgage company and everything from one to four unit to five units or more to SBA. So now we have all of these different tools in our arsenal to help our clients more. Of course,
you know, we’re getting access to these great deals. And so I always would train my agents, save up your money, buy multi-family, you know, don’t take the road of a lot of real estate agents or brokers where they don’t buy any income property for themselves. And again, this was a big saving grace for me because right around 2000, you know, I met my CPA, who was my CPA for the last 23 years.
And he turned me on to like a lot of really advanced techniques from holding, you know, real estate and single asset LLCs, keeping all my entities in separate corporations, accelerating the depreciation. you’re creating these huge tax shelters. Again, it’s just feeding into that original mantra, save my cash, which is a real immigrant mentality, right? Save your cash. You know, they can deport you at any time. you of course that wasn’t, that wasn’t really the case back then, but you know, that, that’s.
thought, right? You self-establish, save your money, buy assets, you know, and that was just the mantra we had. so again, I didn’t realize until looking back that that was the foundation for getting an MBA degree, You know, like understanding partnerships, indications, you know, and things of this nature. So right around 2004, I have a lot of my clients whose wealth I built up. I built up my own wealth.
And that was about the first time that I started doing my first syndication. And we did it. raised capital. I threw capital in and ⁓ raised most of it from my own clients and ⁓ agents that work with me. And again, back then, it’s not like now where you could advertise if you do reg C or reg D. It was all that traditional reg B syndication where you only could talk to your close friends or family. You can’t advertise.
And so at
Right around 2004, we raised about 15 million. And so again, you have these vertically integrated companies, a real estate sales side, a management side, finance side, and now a development side. And we’re going out and finding developable sites to go out and build condominiums on and then turn around and sell them. And so that’s what segwayed me into multiple different transactions. The fact that California was really booming back then as far as income.
is what led me to go out into other states because sometimes when we would sell, you know, California multifamily, we’d get more bang for the buck by going to Texas or going to Arkansas or going to Tennessee and so forth. So, you know, again, it was was a big roaring tie between 2000 and 2007 or eight. You know, we’re developing property, we’re acquiring property in multiple states, we’re managing property, multiple states.
were representing clients in multiple states and multifamily. at that point, the real estate office had grown to 80 real estate agents. The mortgage company had grown to like 40 loan officers. We had a pretty large support staff. And then of course, the Great Recession happened, right? Of course, we don’t know it’s the Great Recession at the time. ⁓ It’s like 2006, middle of that. And at that point, we had developed four condominium communities.
We’re still doing everything that we were doing from the very beginning in 1998, which is taking on new clients, selling them multifamily, doing the financing, managing the property, making recommendations of when to sell and when to exchange. But we’re also building new communities in California. It’s great. And I remember turning to my partner at the time, again, like long story short, past client of mine, he was a corporate attorney. I sold him a bunch of apartments.
He’s like, Hey, let’s go into developing. that’s how I got my start in syndication. And in 2004, so by 2007 ish, we’re looking at each other like, man, it would take a global recession to like, for this to stop. You know, horrible words to say because that happened, right? And of course that’s when you get to really test, what personal guarantees mean the effect of owning assets in different entities.
And you know and and trying to how to weather that kind of a storm. Yeah, right. So So, you know a lot a lot of these ⁓ These these tools had been playtested to death between yeah So of course jumping over that that that horrible period of the great recession, know, you start back over in 2011 again, know, we’re not starting over because i’m still going into 2011 with a substantial amount of like network and assets and
and multifamily. At that point, like every single time, the real estate agents get weaned out. And so, of course, you’re working with, I used to have a huge 80 agents, and then we went down to like 20, which is still a good number, but it was a lot more manageable. So you learn all these different lessons of having a large organization,
and everything that’s good about that and everything that’s bad about that and how to go through these different tools. And more importantly, how to utilize all these different entities, not only to weather crazy storms, wherever they come through, but also how to keep leveraging and finding that niche each time that sets you apart. So that’s always been what we’ve kind of done ⁓ throughout the years.
So I’ll stop there otherwise I might keep going on and on and I want to make sure I leave time for you. That’s the and that’s that was the direction of the industry and you know a little bit about the experiences.
Q Edmonds (20:08)
Absolutely. I love it. Thank you for walking me through the journey. Thank you for letting me know how you said you kept using the different kind of niches and things that you did to of keep rebranding yourself and keep things afloat. And so I want to ask you a little kind of an introspective maybe question because your parents real estate in 1970s, you real estate at 18 to create cash to go through college.wanted to be a scientist, kind of knew like once you started doing that, maybe this wasn’t it. So my introspective question is, what personal skills do you, or personal strategies, maybe that’s a better way to say it, that you feel like are key things that kind of have helped you kind of, I’m gonna say reinvent yourself, but how you knew when to go to the next step, how you knew when it was time to break away from your family, how you knew it was time.
to go to commercial or just different things. How did you know what strategies, of personal strategies that you developed that you knew, okay, this is the time for me to make these changes? Like, you pinpoint, like, you know, just those personal strategies that kind of are tightly wired to the way you think and the way you process and the way you transition.
Brian Baniqued (21:27)
Well, thanks. Thanks for that question. ⁓ So I can’t say that it was all planned, right? mean when when when I broke away from my parents, that was a very difficult thing. We didn’t talk for two years. Okay. We didn’t talk for two years. And so it wasn’t so much, hey, now’s the time to go to the next step. It was more, ⁓ here’s a new dilemma that’s been that I’m facing and how do you deal with it? Right. So if anything,Anyone who who says they’ve got a crystal ball and knew exactly when to jump onto the next step they’re lying
The biggest takeaway I think is just when when the going gets tough, you just gotta keep on trudging away At it until yeah, you know you see the light at the end of the tunnel and and so a lot of times when in fact
There’s a guy named Alex Hormozy, right? He’s probably heard of him. And he talks about this a lot, so I relate to this to Ladi, but he’ll say the same things very similar to the way that I thought, which is it wasn’t like I had some clear, exact path. Sometimes you just have to keep taking the hits until you see the path or the light and then start going down that direction. Me, I like to map things out. So I will always kind of map out multiple scenarios, you know, good, bad. I like to…
They call it game theory now. Right? So like, I like to play chess. I like to play a lot of strategy games and you kind of have to map things out. I’m a spreadsheet junkie. And then coupled with the fact that you had those simple tools of always writing down your goals, literally on a piece of paper, crossing them out. So when those, when those dilemmas or those crises came, it would always be a matter of one kind of sticking through to it until you see the light. Once you see the light, which, know, is, how am going to get out of this situation or improve it?
Then mapping out like literally with steps and writing down here’s where i’m at. Here’s where I want to be but also being able to kind of be resilient enough to to go the other way or or to change direction or pivot If you see that what you’re trying to do isn’t working right and so and And then the biggest thing is just hanging in there. I can’t you know, like even if you’re just ⁓ trying to keep things going
So in the beginning, if you remember, like when I was ⁓ talking about the whole strategy behind buying a floorplex, the whole purpose behind it was making sure I had housing and income always coming in. And so whether it was a little or whatever I had to work with, in order to just pay the college tuition, right? So by the time I got out of college, there was no debts. And then as I started seeing, hey, this cash flow is good because I have X amount.
And then as I’m growing that X amount to a larger amount, it, I’m just kind of staying and living within those means. so anything else above that, you know, if I close a deal or, know, you alone or do whatever, it’s just extra cash. Right. And so those are the things that I’ve always kind of just been ingrained in me is budgeting out, know, like right down to when you’re, you’re first learning how to balance a checkbook. So a lot of times I tell people like,
Hey, you know, take some kind of a background in accounting if you can, right? I mean, me, I did not take any classes in accounting, but I kind of learned along the way because I’m using tools like QuickBooks and just understanding, oh, here’s what a chart of accounts is. Oh, here’s what a balance sheet means, right? Here’s how that plays into other things. And then, of course, because I’m in an industry where I have to utilize these tools to do a loan for somebody or to do a loan for myself, that was…
You know those that was that foresight that I’d be able to get that as I’m trying to trudge through a dilemma and figuring your way out, you at least have a foundation of things to know. Well, here’s my burn rate. Here’s what I’ve got to work with. You know how much time before, you know, can I hold on for dear life if I’m in a dilemma before that cash is gone or do I always have some kind of replenishable cash?
So for me, that was creating multiple income streams, right? And so that’s the mindset that I would always kind of take into any type of industry, whether it’s real estate or something else. And it was something that I always would try to ingrain into my clients’ habits and even that of my agents who work with me, ⁓ just to make sure, know, and let them know that, I’m not just saying this to be saying it. I actually do this stuff too.
Q Edmonds (26:15)
Yeah.Well, Mr. Brian, I thank you so much, man. You have given us really good nuggets. You’ve given us really good tools. Thank you for taking us through the process, your business strategies and your personal strategies. I think it was absolutely fascinating. I know people that listening has really got some great nuggets from me. So listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate, how can they reach out to you, Mr. Brian?
Brian Baniqued (26:38)
You know, the best way to reach out to me probably I’ll just give you drop my personal email. All that my personally know about my main business email is Brian. That’s with an I B R I a n the at sign and then be C R E dot C O. that’s Bravo Charlie Romeo echo dot C O. There’s no It’s a dot co. but outside of that, you know, they can Google my name and they’ll, they’ll probably get access to the different, ⁓ companies that I have andreaching out either to one of my personal assistants to find ⁓ my calendar or things of this nature. that’s, but, know, just direct email always works and really helps out.
Q Edmonds (27:21)
Awesome. Mr. Brian, thank you so much. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for your story and just thank you for your perspective. I think you have a ton of value to our listeners and just thank you so much for being here and sharing with us today.Brian Baniqued (27:37)
Quentin, thanks. It’s my pleasure being here and I hope your listeners get some benefit from that knowledge and feel free to reach out again.Q Edmonds (27:47)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Brian, he giving you information. So definitely check him out. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here because we’re going to continue to bring up amazing, fascinating people just like Mr. Brian. So, sir, I thank you again and to everyone else. We’ll see you on the next time.
