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Show Summary
In this conversation, Alek Meston shares his journey from working in construction and a prison to becoming a successful real estate agent. He discusses the challenges he faced in his early deals, the importance of building relationships and adding value to others, and his vision for scaling his real estate empire by training and mentoring new agents.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Alek Meston (00:00)
So the property ended up going into Tidewater with the appraiser. Well the big thing was is the appraiser couldn’t factor in that there was a 40 by 50, two bay like, semi…workshop right for this guy to bring in semis to work on on semis and so no there was no other property that had that kind of building so it was a residential property with this huge block building on it and so i had to try and go pull comps for it i ended up pulling comps separately for the home and one separate from the garage itself but that
that was really super hard for me mainly because just navigating tidewater and having to kind of challenge the appraiser on that, it was difficult but at the end of the day it ended up actually getting overturned and it actually went my way and we got the value that I had suggested.
Erika (02:31)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Erika, and today I’m joined by someone that I’m excited to chat with, Alek Meston. He’s been making serious moves in the real estate world. Alek, I’m glad to have you on the show today.Alek Meston (02:48)
Yeah, glad to be here. Thank you for having me.Erika (02:51)
So Alek, let’s dive right in. For people who may not be familiar with your world, can you give us the rundown? How did you get started in real estate?Alek Meston (03:04)
I would probably say built houses for quite a while. Got real familiar on how they go up, repair side of things. So I just decided to start taking it to the sales side of things, really help people on that side. Been building from a young age, so just wanted to help people get the best value for houses, because they’re not going away.Erika (03:27)
Yeah, yeah, and what for you, what caused that shift from, you know, working with building to then going to the sales side?Alek Meston (03:37)
I got four kids needed to make a little bit more than what a builder made. You know what I mean? And that’s kind of just shifted me because the real estate has so much potential. You know, your input is the direct correlation of your output. So, you know, that just kind of helps propel me.Erika (03:53)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. ⁓ when it comes to the sales side, what’s your main focus these days and what markets are you operating in?Alek Meston (04:04)
Yeah, so mainly in Northeast Florida and North Central Florida and I would say I’m really like to target VA buyers. anybody who’s been in the military but also community service members, law enforcement, teachers, anything like that, we call those hometown heroes. So anybody that serves the community is really anybody who I’m really trying to give back to.Erika (04:28)
Yeah, that’s awesome. And when it comes to the buyers at large in Florida, whether it’s the people that you’re targeting or investors, what kind of opportunities are you seeing in the market? What should people be paying attention to in Florida?Alek Meston (04:46)
So there’s a lot of new updated homes hitting the market. There’s also a lot of new constructions hitting the market. That can play a big factor I see mainly because the new constructions, one-third of the sales in Florida are new constructions, especially in Northeast Florida.That plays a big factor in home sales in general because say that you have an older home that may not quite be worth enough.
those new sales in the area might just be enough to kind of say, hey, yeah, you know, it might be worth it. But it also runs into a lot of which brings the downside of it, which Tidewater happens when, you know, property that’s appraised by the appraiser has a discrepancy with what our list price is. It then goes into Tidewater. That can be kind of a big problem that I see coming up, but trying to avoid that and staying closer to more of
I would just say looking at the overall price and price per square foot is a huge thing on the opportunities and watching where to go because the price per square foot is huge when it comes to certain things, I would say.
Erika (06:47)
Yeah, yeah. And speaking of the price per square foot for you, when you’re looking at a property for someone, how do you identify that a property in the residential space is high quality? What are you looking for?Alek Meston (07:03)
So the first thing I’m going to look at before we go into any property, I always pull up the seller’s property disclosure on the MLS. One of the biggest things. Look over what the seller has openly expressed to us. Huge thing. Whatever the seller says is kind of going to be a good baseline of where everything’s at. Okay. That’s my first indication. And then from there, I’ll look at the metrics. I’ll look at the size of it. I’ll look at how many bedrooms it has. I’ll look at how old the roof is, how much ait has. All of that goes into factor. And then what another thing is the price per square foot is one of the first numbers that I look at when it comes to a price. It will give you a good idea of what the home is selling for. However, one thing you have to factor in there is the land.
Sometimes land does not always calculate into that price per square foot, right? Because say that you have 10 acres because out here were say 45 minutes south of Jacksonville I can find 10 acre 15 acre plots, you know So if I run a 15 acre lot on a three bed two bath house, well, that’s you know, 600,000 that’s not the same as a three bed two bath house in a home and I like in a city So that’s one thing when I look at but also another thing is the
Materials that the actual home is if there’s nice countertops such as granite countertops That’s a big factor for me and I can see that from pictures I don’t have to like walk the home you can see that from pictures You can see the quality of the paint is there you know is it one solid color or are there kind of mismatched colors places Flooring is another big thing if you can look at flooring and you can see it’s pretty
smooth and level throughout and pictures you can see little lips you know. So those are all little factors that I look at when pricing in a home but you know the biggest key factors I would say are the appliance ages and then the roof age and how much land it has. Those are some of the biggest factors that I look at.
Erika (09:11)
Yeah, absolutely. And I’m sure with your experience as a builder, you also notice things that other agents wouldn’t notice. How would you say that experience has given you a different perspective?Alek Meston (09:25)
Huge, huge. like whenever I start, whenever I walk a property with some buyers and they start noticing that I’m looking under cabinets at the piping, like really inspecting it, kind of looking for discolorations. I’m looking in corners of every bedroom to look at discolorations in maybe possible roof leaks, all of those little things. And then like another thing, one big thing I tell my buyers is this, if you can see little things on the outside,the open just imagine what you can’t see covered up and that really really gets people thinking when I start pointing out you see how that baseboard is like a half inch out there
why do you think that is well I don’t know the wall might be out of alignment there you see what I’m saying and so then like
It’s little things that people point out that they don’t notice at first. Because again, when you walk home the first time, you know as well as I do. When you get into the home after like three, four months, you start to notice the little quirks of the house. Like, hey, this door kind of shuts a little bit wrong. This one rubs the carpet. You know what I’m saying? But if you can really just slow down, and that’s what I’m there for.
Because everybody walking home, the buyer has that, oh, excitement, excitement, a new home type deal. So that’s where it’s my job to come in, be calm, look at it at any other house, hey, this is here, that’s there. It’s my job to do that. So that’s what really sets me apart so that I can show them like…
See, we got an issue kind of right here that just tells me, you know, this XYZ happened, you know, and it just really helps me kind of guide my buyers to the best possible scenario and what may or may not need repairs very fast, you know.
Erika (11:50)
Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure as you know, Alek, every real estate pro has a moment where things get real. Maybe a deal went sideways or there’s a time you had to pivot fast. Can you share one of those moments on your journey and what you learned from it?Alek Meston (12:10)
Very second deal that I ever had, I think I was in real estate maybe a month. I had gotten this buyer from running an open house. Now the open house itself, it was a fixture upper. I’m not gonna lie. But it was my second like ever deal, right? My first ever open house I ran. I got a buyer. The buyer…had gotten through inspections and there was some stuff that had come up and at the end of the day the appraisal had come back under value. Now I didn’t know what to do at the time I had no clue you know came back under value okay so we just kind of renegotiate and the seller didn’t want to renegotiate.
Come on man, like, you know there’s a lot of repairs going on, there’s a lot of stuff happening here. He’s like, nope, I need this for it.
So the property ended up going into Tidewater with the appraiser. Well the big thing was is the appraiser couldn’t factor in that there was a 40 by 50, two bay like, semi…
workshop right for this guy to bring in semis to work on on semis and so no there was no other property that had that kind of building so it was a residential property with this huge block building on it and so i had to try and go pull comps for it i ended up pulling comps separately for the home and one separate from the garage itself but that
that was really super hard for me mainly because just navigating tidewater and having to kind of challenge the appraiser on that, it was difficult but at the end of the day it ended up actually getting overturned and it actually went my way and we got the value that I had suggested.
So it was pretty nice, know, at the end of the day getting a tidewater reversed on my second deal in real estate ever. it was pretty good for that to happen.
Erika (14:15)
Yeah, wow. Is there anything that you do differently because of having that experience?Alek Meston (14:21)
⁓ I mean, I just make sure that my comps are good, you know, like it’s pretty much apples to apples, you know, if you just make sure that you have everything spot on and you’re comparing exactly what it is, such as the age, the age of the home is the biggest. If you can compare a home that’s the same age and the same size.you’re pretty much golden every time. From there, land is super easy to kind of dictate from there, because land, you can find vacant land lots sold all over the place. You know what I mean? That’s not hard. But when it comes to a home, the hardest thing I would say to find is having to find a home that’s the same age.
Erika (15:44)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There’s so many things, you know, that I think you’re saying here that will be helpful for our listeners who are new to real estate. And I also think that they benefit hearing this from you when it comes to building relationships, growing your network. What’s made the biggest difference for you in the real estate world?Alek Meston (16:07)
just adding value to people honestly. Like even from other agents, I will easily call up an agent and you know, hey, I’ll do some free marketing for you. got some Facebook, I got some people on Facebook. You mind if I do a Facebook listing for you? Things like that. You know, so like a lot of agents.I’m not going say they don’t do that, but a lot of them just don’t really think about kind of doing those smaller things, you know? agents, people, even for sale by owners, you know, offer free value to people in marketing and people tend to like you a little more, you know what I mean? They’re willing to kind of go, this guy gave me some free advertising, brought me a buyer one time. Yeah, ⁓ I’ll work with him a little bit more than the other guy. You know what I mean?
Erika (16:53)
Yeah, yeah, have there in your area, have there been any real estate groups that you’ve really benefited from or networking groups that you’re a part of?Alek Meston (17:05)
⁓ so yeah, I would say when it comes to certain groups, I’m in my real estate brokerage. I’m with Epic Realty and with them we have an actual real estate mastermind group and we meet every Wednesday, kind of a zoom meeting and then we have training. We’ve got Facebook groups that we’re in and it’s called the agent Alliance. So I mean, it really helps with agent attraction because I am trying to build with Epic. can.I can generate profit from seven generations down. So if I was to recruit one person, I would make money off of their sales. Anybody they recruit, I make money off of them as well. Seven generations deep. it’s just, for me, it’s more or less just being able to build my empire, if you will.
Erika (17:57)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, let me ask you this, what are you most focused or on scaling or solving next? You know, what what does it mean to build an empire, Alek?Alek Meston (18:14)
I really just want to get people underneath me so that agents can have the tools that they need to succeed. That’s really what it is for me because a lot of times I can real estate. When I first got into it before I got with my real estate mentor now, his name is Walter Key, super good guy, wrote a book called The Startup Agent. It’s really my focus is mainly just kind of building those agents underneath me. If I can build the agents underneath me.I won’t have to sell real estate all my life. You know what I mean? I’ll be able to kind of focus on my other things. Because I do run other businesses. Because real estate is a business that takes lead generation. And so with lead generation, I’ve created a business model that allows real estate to scale with it. So really just building the empire and allowing it to run on its own one day.
get agents underneath me, get them well trained so that they have the same skills that I do. Even though they may not have the building experience, they can see what I can see without the experience of building. ⁓ And that’s building a legacy, allowing people to have the knowledge I have for free. I’m not trying to charge people anything. I give my knowledge free and that goes back to the networking. Just offer people free value and hopefully things will build from there.
Erika (19:40)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a big, especially with the experience and ⁓ networks that you do have. Before we wrap up, if someone wanted to reach out, connect with you, collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to reach you?Alek Meston (19:57)
So you can find me on Google. Just Google Aleksandr Meston and it’s A-L-E-K-S-A-N-D-R M-E-S-T-O-N You can find me on Google, but you can also find me on Facebook. You can also find me by Alek Meston, A-L-E-K, but a lot of times some people kind of find some other people when they search that. So, you know, but you can also find me on Facebook as well and even TikTok at AK Dreamquarters.Erika (20:27)
Awesome. Well, you we appreciate you sharing your story, your experience. It’s really great.Alek Meston (20:35)
Thank you, I appreciateit. Thank you for having me.
Erika (20:38)
And for our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you’re subscribed to the Real Estate Pros podcast. We’ve got more conversations lined up with pros like Alek who are out there building fantastic real estate empires. We’ll see you on the next episode.
