How Foreclosure Led Zareena Samidon to Real Estate Investing and Wholesaling Success

Zareena Samidon (00:00)
I knew nothing about real estate. And so I walked in and I’m like, I just, I’m curious, like how do you earn, you know, 20, 30, $40,000 with only $10 in your bank account? Because that’s pretty much all I had at that point.

And I remember this was he was selling that house for 70. Well, I negotiated it down for $70,000. It’s a $285,000 property. The house did need a lot of work. But I remember thinking, OK, you know, what’s the big deal, right? I’ll just get it on the contract and sell the contract, turn around and sell it for 90,000. I’ll make 20 grand.

but

You know, that point, because I did not have any experience,

I remember he signed the contract for seventy thousand and I put an earnest money of ten dollars, which is what we deposited at the title company. And, you know, after executing that contract, I remember getting back into the car and I was throwing up because I don’t I didn’t have seventy thousand dollars. It was the most scariest feeling ever. But you know, I was able to find a buyer. Thank God and made twenty thousand dollars on that very first deal.

Michelle Kesil (02:39)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil Today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Zareena Samidon, who is a real estate investor focusing on wholesaling and really excited to have you here today.

Zareena Samidon (02:57)
I’m excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

Michelle Kesil (02:59)
Perfect, let’s dive in. First off, for those not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is?

Zareena Samidon (03:07)
Absolutely. So we are a investment company buying and selling real estate. We focus on foreclosures, bankruptcy, tax liens, anything that a homeowner may feel threatened by about to lose their home. Or if they want to just simply cash out and they want to get more money in their pocket and they want to just hassle free quick sale of their home. That is our main focus. So we come in, we

Help homeowners to find a solution to their to their situation if they want to sell their home quickly We go in and we buy that property and then on the market on the back end Do we basically fix it up whether we fix it and buy and hold it or we fix it and put it back on the market and sell it so we’ve got multiple different ways on the back and that how we do the real estate so That’s just what we focus on

Michelle Kesil (04:00)
Awesome. And which markets are you operating in?

Zareena Samidon (04:04)
We are currently in Texas, Tennessee, Florida. We opened up Indiana this year, Ohio. We are also in North Carolina. we are to this year, well, this quarter, we are opening up Georgia and ⁓ we pulled away from Pennsylvania due to some loss, but in South Carolina.

Michelle Kesil (04:27)
And what do feel have been some of the main keys that have allowed your business to grow and run successfully?

Zareena Samidon (05:22)
So I would say what has been the

most success in my business is the opportunity that we get to partner with homeowners. We don’t really have to offer a lowball offer. And because of that, we have so many different good exit strategies. And because of that, we feel really blessed to be able to come in and find a solution. I I tell my team, like, we are professional problem solvers. We are not necessarily home buyers because what we are doing

is bringing in a solution to a urgent need and there’s a situation, they’re literally about to lose their entire life earning. That’s what a home is to all of us. You work nine to five job and you really trade time for money so that you have a roof over your head. So we take that seriously.

Michelle Kesil (06:18)
Absolutely. And so you mentioned that your focus is on the foreclosures and the bankruptcies and these more distressed situations. Why is that the specific target and market that you are serving?

Zareena Samidon (06:32)
Great question. So this one is very personal to me. Several years ago, I myself went through foreclosure and I remember laying on a cold floor, no electricity and didn’t know what to do. And I remember getting down on my knees and praying, Lord, if you are real, you know, give me, I need something, I need a solution. need you to show up in a way that it is undeniable.

So he did and he sent me some investors. It just so happened. The right people just showed up at the right time. And it was coordinated by God and you know, there’s no question about it. So.

They showed up not only they were able to help me buy the house, which prevented me losing the next 10 years of my life, basically losing on credit and because the foreclosure stays on your credit for a long period of time. And it’s just not a pleasant, mean, know, you really can’t do much once that hits your credit for next pretty much 10 years, seven to 10 years. So.

And so it is more to serve people than anything else is why I particularly chose full closure of bankruptcy because it’s very personal to me.

Michelle Kesil (07:48)
Yeah, that’s beautiful that you got to learn through your own experience and then be able to step into the other side of the equation and yeah help people also.

Zareena Samidon (08:00)
Yeah, there are just a lot of nuances that people don’t really know. I didn’t at that time. And had I not prayed for an intervention and a breakthrough, and I wouldn’t have known. So, you know, and I feel like God pulled me out of that situation so that I can be a blessing to others as well in that situation.

Michelle Kesil (08:03)
Sure.

Yeah, so how did you then step into the role of investor?

Zareena Samidon (08:28)
So after I got myself out of this biggest debt and mess that I was in, I was able to sell the house and come ahead and buy my own apartment. I literally had to, long story short, reposition myself. And in the process, was just, you know, wondering what really happened and how this all happened. But in that, in that whole time period, I saw an ad on TV and

And was an event in Dallas, so I just walked in. I knew nothing about real estate. And so I walked in and I’m like, I just, I’m curious, like how do you earn, you know, 20, 30, $40,000 with only $10 in your bank account? Because that’s pretty much all I had at that point.

So I went into this and I knew very little, but they did talk about how to get a property under contract. So I was driving for a dollar with a little bit of money that I did have and a little bit of gas in my tank. I would be driving around looking for properties and one homeowner contacted me back.

And this was a house in Fort Worth, Texas. I still have the full address. And I remember this was he was selling that house for 70. Well, I negotiated it down for $70,000. It’s a $285,000 property. The house did need a lot of work. But I remember thinking, OK, you know, what’s the big deal, right? I’ll just get it on the contract and sell the contract, turn around and sell it for 90,000. I’ll make 20 grand.

but

You know, that point, because I did not have any experience, I remember he signed the contract for seventy thousand and I put an earnest money of ten dollars, which is what we deposited at the title company. And, you know, after executing that contract, I remember getting back into the car and I was throwing up because I don’t I didn’t have seventy thousand dollars. It was the most scariest feeling ever. But you know, I was able to find a buyer. Thank God and made twenty thousand dollars on that very first deal. It was.

wholesale deal. Yeah, and the rest is the history because that happened like that. And then I now dabbled into it, learn, learn the whole process, what is really wholesaling and learn the contract. And there’s just a lot of stuff goes into it. And it’s a constant education process, you have to constantly educate yourself, because the laws are changing, technologies changing. And so yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it always almost does if you trust God and if you feel led and if you you will know it deep down you will know it and it and it always stays off.

Michelle Kesil (11:38)
Yeah.

Yeah. And what are you most focused on solving or scaling to next?

Zareena Samidon (11:44)
So right now what we are focusing on is building a portfolio. our strategy, and of course we are constantly helping people because we have so many different products, we are able to bring lots of solutions now. So.

Our biggest focus is building portfolio and what that is is gathering 20 to 40 multifamilies or collecting some Airbnb deals. We are looking at a couple of deals in Missouri right now. It seems like ideal Airbnb. So that is our biggest focus. We are really focusing in on getting and building the portfolio.

Michelle Kesil (12:24)
Yeah, amazing. And so how are you structuring that? Do you have like a team that works with you as well?

Zareena Samidon (12:31)
Yeah, I have a team of four. We have a lead manager, we have an AI lead manager, that we’ve got a team of people that are producing leads. We spend about 15 to $20,000 a month in lead generation. So what that does is the lead generation team or the advertising team brings in these leads in our AI lead manager and the human lead manager. They dial and they set up the appointment.

for our acquisition team and then the next department is acquisition and they call and they get the property under contract and then ⁓ once they get the property under contract they transition over to our disposition department and our dispute deal manager then goes out and does the disposition process whether it is to keep the property or fix and flip it or wholesale it you know those are some of the exit strategies that we currently do.

And we also purchase creative we do subtails sub 3 whole tail like there’s lots of different ways The the biggest point the reason we have different products Not to confuse people is that if a homeowner needs You know, let’s just say that the house is the only 300,000 but you know, they have 270 thousand dollars in mortgage balance

and there’s only 30,000 equity, then nobody’s going to touch that deal. Particularly the seller may even have to bring money to closing if the house needs work. Let’s say $20,000 worth of work needed. So the homeowner already know that he’s going to be losing money, but he has no choice because he can keep paying the mortgage payment. We just come in, we buy it as is. We even give him $5,000 to $10,000 to walk away so that he can get an apartment rented.

products like that. So, know, first and foremost, like when somebody choose to work with us, we’re going to make sure that we take care of them. And if we can, we will refer and we’ll let them know that we can. But, you know, we are looking to bring a solution and to be able to help their situation before we ever even look at the it’s a deal and making money, because I believe doing the right thing, the money will come.

We’re all here to serve each other and so let’s serve and then make money instead of the other way around.

Michelle Kesil (14:55)
Yeah, absolutely. And what have been some of the biggest obstacles or challenges you’ve had to overcome in this role.

Zareena Samidon (15:45)
Wow, I’ll tell you what this one particular deal.

just to kind of give you an example. got this under contract back in January and this was a novation deal. Basically, sellers give us authorization to list the property on the MLS before we ever flip it. So we don’t take possession of the property. However, sellers still owns the property. They give us the right to go ahead and list the property on the MLS. So we had it under contract and we almost brought in a buyer. There was multiple offers already on the

table but the sellers are losing their home. The bank goes in and winterized the property and during this whole time but the sellers never told us this. So we bring in a buyer they see the property but they can’t get in. They can’t get in to see all the entire house and if they if it were to pass after end of April they were going to lose the property altogether and they were going to lose 240

$40,000 like we jumped in we got it. We said, okay, we will buy a summit on holding will buy it directly And so that you know, your credit is saved first of all, not only that you’re walking away with Money in your pocket on a deal. You might have lost everything Plus your credit for the next 10 years not just you you and your husband because they’re going through divorce so There are challenges in every I mean almost

every single day. Like we go through, we do, it’s just nothing but challenges. And on top of that, you have staffing challenges, right? Like you hire new people, you want to make sure they are going to be fitting for your culture. Like, you know, we have a culture in our organization. just finding that right fit, because we are a faith-based company. What I mean by that is we pray, we worship, we give glory to Jesus. So, you know,

And not everybody might be interested in that, be, you know, may want that. And so there have been some big challenges in retaining staff and maintaining staff and also in every single deal, you know, and there’s just, OK, everyone wants everybody come to the table and then the sellers like, OK, I don’t want to sign the title companies taking too long. Whatever the case, the most silliest thing you could possibly think something’s going to go wrong.

wrong and then you you have to wear too many hats. Sometimes you’re a counselor, you’re a plumber, you’re an HVAC guy. It’s just it’s so awesome to really to be able to bring solutions to a lot of problems people face.

Michelle Kesil (18:25)
Yeah, that’s amazing. And where do you see your business going to? Like what are the goals that you have for the growth that you envision?

Zareena Samidon (18:27)
you

Yeah, so we for the next 12 months, we want to 10x what we did last year. 2025, we did one million in revenue and we want to 10x that if that is possible. And I think we are well on our way to be able to accomplish that goal. But our most long term goal is to really build a hundred million dollar portfolio. I didn’t start that there, but

after seeing how the company has grown and how we are doing things and we’re very different from most investment, almost real estate companies or investors out there. I see a huge potential in growth of that company. You know, I’ll get back here in a year and then I’ll tell you the success story. But I’m that confident really. because I believe in doing the right thing. And when you do the right thing, there’s no reason for you to not success because I’ve learned

if you fall in love with the process, the results are inevitable. And that is a, you know, after 20 years of being in business, I just learned that. So we are, we’re.

perfecting and adding constantly to our process so that when we follow that process 100 % of the time, that outcome is going to be there. So, you know, that is our vision. That is our goal. And beyond that, really what I in the next three years, my

biggest vision for the company is to fund my kingdom, the kingdom work, basically to bring people to Jesus, introduce Jesus to where I’m originally from, Sri Lanka. It’s a tiny town and people haven’t heard of, they never had an opportunity to know Jesus and I want to give them that opportunity. yeah.

Michelle Kesil (20:24)
Amazing, sounds like you’re on track for a beautiful vision and some great opportunities.

Zareena Samidon (20:29)
Yeah, I am definitely looking forward to it.

Michelle Kesil (20:32)
Well, before we begin to wrap up here, someone wants to reach out, connect, and learn more about what you’re up to, where can people find you and connect with you?

Zareena Samidon (20:41)
Yeah, thank you for that opportunity. So we are all over social media, Zareena_Samidon You can find me on Instagram, Z-A-R-E-E-N-A underscore S-A-M-I-D-O-N. And, you know, I’m very active in social media. I post every day. So, you know, connect with me. You can connect with me on Facebook or you can simply text me 817-900-2837. That’s our, my direct line.

with the company and if there’s any question, right, anything at all, reach out to us and if there’s a way for us to help you, we will.

Michelle Kesil (21:18)
Perfect, we’ll appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.

Zareena Samidon (21:23)
Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. You have a good one.

Michelle Kesil (21:26)
Of course, and for those tuning

into the show, if you got value, make sure you’ve subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Zareena who are building real businesses. We’ll see you on our next episode.