Build Wealth While You Sleep: Adrian Pannozzo on Long-Term Multifamily Cash Flow and Freedom

Adrian Pannozzo (00:00)

16 years later, we have an empire of real estate that we own with our partners. ⁓ that has obviously given, given us a lifestyle and freedom. People say, why’d you do it? I wanted freedom. wanted, I wanted obviously financial freedom, but more so I wanted, wanted to live life on my terms.

Dylan Silver (00:14)

Yeah.

Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest, Adrian Pannozzo is the CEO and founder of Generational Wealth, Inc. He was a police officer for 22 years before retiring in 2017. He has 15 plus years in multifamily real estate, starting from working with triplexes and now having scaled aggressively into the apartment building space. Welcome to the show, Adrian.

Adrian Pannozzo (02:15)

Hey, thanks for having me, Dylan. Excited to be here.

Dylan Silver (02:18)

It’s great to have you on here. And when we talk multifamily real estate investing, there’s a lot of people, think, especially right now, who are looking at getting into this space, especially in the States where there’s really quite a bit of new construction. So it’s harder to do some strategies like fix and flip. How did you get started in multifamily investing?

Adrian Pannozzo (02:42)

Yeah, so for me it was about 16 years ago when I first embarked on my journey. At that time I was a police officer in Ontario, Canada. Most people have heard of Toronto, whether they’re American or not. But nevertheless, yeah, so I’m probably 11 years into my police career.

And the light bulb went off and it was kind of like, okay, after I put in my 30 years on the job, so to speak, you know, what, and I’m on my pension, my police pension, you know, what kind of lifestyle do I want to have? Because I’m going to be obviously on a reduced income being on pension. ⁓ so I started thinking, okay, real estate, real estate investing and, ⁓

At that time, my wife and I didn’t have a lot of money at all. ⁓ But what we did have was equity in our principal residence. So in speaking to a mortgage broker, he kind of made it live to me and kind of painted a picture and he said, you you have this equity in your home, ⁓ several hundred thousand dollars equity in your home. Like, what are doing with that? And I said,

Back then, I didn’t even know what equity meant, to be honest with you, so long ago. But nevertheless, he’s like, let’s get you a home equity line of credit, pull out that equity and use that equity to obviously buy rental properties. So essentially that’s how it started for me, again, 16 years ago. I believe my wife and I started with a, I wanna say it was $200,000 line of credit on our house.

And we use that line of credit essentially to buy and start investing in real estate. So we leveraged the only thing, the only money we had in our, in our principal residence to start real estate investing all the while I was a young father, ⁓ police, you know, police officer, et cetera, et cetera. So, but I had a vision and I wanted to create some kind of cashflow.

So I have that cash flow, maybe two properties, three properties, maybe, you know, create that cash flow. So when I retire, I still have on top of my pension, some cash flow coming in. So that’s kind of how it all started. The light bulb went off, pulled the equity out of the house, line of credit, use the line of credit to invest in rental properties. ⁓ Fast forward, I guess. ⁓

Dylan Silver (05:52)

Right, right.

Sure, sure.

Adrian Pannozzo (06:20)

That went well. The initial investments went well. We then refinanced the initial ⁓ first several properties we bought, pulled the equity out of those rental properties, bought a couple more. ⁓ Ultimately, still a police officer. ⁓ My wife worked full time. We had a young family. So yeah, we were really busy.

You know, there was lots on the go. I took care of the properties myself. I managed them. I dealt with the tenants. I did everything, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ All the while working shift work on the police department, et cetera, et cetera. So they went well. Those initial investments, I want to say the first four properties, four rental properties we purchased were just using our own ⁓

lines of credit and refinances. It was probably after the fourth one that we started to partner, join venture partnerships with some like-minded investors. We started to build a little bit of a reputation and friends and family and colleagues, ⁓ build a bit of a reputation on, you know, investing in multifamily real estate in the West end of GTA. ⁓

Dylan Silver (07:15)

Yeah.

How did you get started in specifically picking, you know, multifamily? Did you have mentors or folks who you knew who were investing in multifamily? You know, was this a referral from the broker that you mentioned? How’d you pick multifamily?

Adrian Pannozzo (08:01)

Yeah, great question. So multifamily, was kind of, I guess a referral from the broker I was working with too. And he kind of painted the picture of instead of buying a single family home and renting it out, if you have two, three, four units, for example, there’s a little bit of a buffer there because if one tenant leaves, you still have a couple other tenants in there to cover your mortgage and expenses on that said property.

So kind of makes sense as opposed to buying just, you know, a single family residence and having one tenant and that tenant vacates. If you don’t fill that vacancy right away, you’re pretty much paying into from your own pocket. Well, that kind of was the thought process and it made a lot of sense to me to have that cushion with like two, three, four units, two, three, four tenants in one building ⁓ to cover that off.

Dylan Silver (08:47)

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Now,

Adrian Pannozzo (09:00)

So we

went down that path with multifamily as opposed to single family. And over the years, continued to partner with other investors who wanted us to be the sweat equity guys. ⁓ Essentially, they were pretty high profile people, ⁓ entrepreneurs, very successful people who essentially, you know, wanted to put their money in multifamily real estate, but they didn’t want to do a thing.

Dylan Silver (09:27)

Sure.

Adrian Pannozzo (09:28)

They don’t want to deal with tenants and toilets and construction or whatever else comes with it. They just want to see the return on investment. So that continued to grow again, still on the police department. And we started buying, like I mentioned, know, triplexes and fourplexes and so on. And as the years went by, ⁓ we continue to scale into bigger

multifamily products, buildings. You know, now we’re encroaching on, you know, 10 units, 20 units. And we started to focus on bigger investments, just which ultimately produced more cashflow than the smaller guys and more security than the smaller guys.

And, you know, here in Canada, the financing that we’re able to achieve

with larger buildings is actually more attractive and better terms, better rates than your typical triplex. So if I’m buying a 20 unit building, I’m getting better rates and better terms on that commercial mortgage here in Canada than the residential mortgage. ⁓ So we started to scale in size as well. And again, ⁓ did well attracting

joint venture partnerships overall, which ultimately led me to retire from the police department early after 22 years of service. And I moved up in the ranks there overall, great career, by the way, I had a lot of fun and got to see and do a lot of different things. But yeah, after 22 years, I threw in the towel. ⁓ We essentially created enough cashflow

Dylan Silver (11:31)

Now.

Adrian Pannozzo (11:56)

through our rental properties that we own with our partners to mimic what I was making on the police department so we could pay the bills and survive. ⁓ So that led me to retire early. And then, you know, the light bulb went off and it was kind of like, why don’t, if I can focus strictly on real estate investing and continue to grow this portfolio and continue to attract joint venture partners,

I could really explode this real estate investing angle because now I don’t have the police department kind of having to focus on that and this. I could just focus on growing our business and our portfolio. So in 2017, yeah 2017, 2018, I retired early and then I just focused full time on growing the business and growing the portfolio with partners.

and essentially I’ll fast forward to the end of the story. ⁓ essentially what we created you know what I wanted to create was Costco for real estate investors. ⁓ I wanted to create an ecosystem where we have everything under one roof. So the acquisition side of stuff. ⁓ we have a team that goes out and looks for all kinds of deals for us.

on market, off market, private sales. We have a team dedicated to that in-house. We have our own construction company now in-house because we transitioned from buying ⁓ over the last three years, we transitioned from buying ⁓ I call them vintage buildings. So already built buildings with existing tenants. We transitioned over the last three years and we’re building apartment buildings now ground up.

So we established our own construction company in-house. And then lastly, we established our own in-house property management company. So essentially from step one, right to the day the tenants get the keys, it’s all our group of companies. It’s all in-house. Our investors just deal with us and only us. There is no, you know, Luigi or Giuseppe who’s, you know, a third party involved. It’s just myself.

my team, my group of companies. So essentially created like a Costco full service operation for people who want to invest in multifamily real estate in Ontario, Canada, ⁓ and not have to deal with anything other than get the returns on their capital. And 16 years later, here we are today. We now own almost 90 buildings and about 620

units across ⁓ the different cities in Ontario, Canada, which is obviously something I never, you know, if you asked me 16 years ago, it started out with, I want to own one or two rental properties to subsidize my pension.

Dylan Silver (15:04)

Sure, sure.

Adrian Pannozzo (15:52)

16 years later, we have an empire of real estate that we own with our partners. ⁓ that has obviously given, given us a lifestyle and freedom. People say, why’d you do it? I wanted freedom. wanted, I wanted obviously financial freedom, but more so I wanted, wanted to live life on my terms.

Dylan Silver (16:07)

Yeah.

Adrian Pannozzo (16:13)

And, and you know, if I want to take off tomorrow and spend a month down in Italy or wherever I could do that.

And I can work from anywhere in the world. I just need my laptop and my phone and I conduct my business anywhere and I have the team here, boots on the ground to do that. So I really did it all for freedom and that, you know, if real estate investing can give you that type of freedom overall, cause it’s an avenue where you’re creating cashflow and you’re essentially, I like to say you’re making money while you sleep.

Dylan Silver (16:25)

That’s right.

Adrian Pannozzo (16:46)

because your properties are continuing to grow in equity year after year after year. And we all know, I’ll end it off and then I’ll pass the mic to you. We all know, historically, the longer you hold real estate for, you can’t lose. Historically. Obviously, the longer the hold, the more you can gain eventually 10, 15, 20 years down the road.

Dylan Silver (17:05)

True.

Adrian Pannozzo (17:14)

when you do

cash in and sell that asset. But we’re more long-term wealth kind of investors that we work with. Generational wealth, long-term wealth, we don’t fix and flip. We’re long-term hold, long-term wealth, ⁓ I guess model that we live and work by. So that’s it. That’s my story.

Dylan Silver (17:38)

You you meant… You mentioned…

the ability to be vertically integrated and really having everything in house, right? One of the bottlenecks that I see for multifamily investors specifically is property management. And so, you know, when you’re taking over a property and they may have existing property management in place and you’re having to find new property management, that whole process can be challenging, especially if you’re in a market where there may be a lot of competition or maybe even new, know, multifamily

developments, new housing, and you know people are having to fill vacancies, you have to have that property really on lock and how critical that really is. When you were building out the property management arm of it,

Did you ⁓ face any specific challenges in property management that maybe were unforeseen or that you saw, okay, well, there’s more here than meets the eye.

Adrian Pannozzo (18:47)

So while I was a police officer, managed, like I mentioned, I managed all my properties myself. So I actually were in the, I was in the trenches myself and learned the business and dealing with tenants and toilets and leasing and missed payments and et cetera, et cetera. And everything that comes with property management, I did it myself for years before eventually I started our property management company. So.

Dylan Silver (19:03)

Yeah.

Adrian Pannozzo (19:15)

I’ve been there and I’ve witnessed it and I’ve dealt with it. So when we again, for my investors, the goal was to have everything in house and deal with just our properties that we invest in together and provide that white glove service to my investing partners overall, where they have the peace of mind that Adrian’s team in the house is dealing with everything.

So there’s no, we’re obviously owners of the property along with our partners. So we give that white glove service to the properties on that property management aspect. So there wasn’t a whole big surprise or learning curve for me essentially. I’ve been there, done it.

Dylan Silver (19:51)

Are these typically-

you’d already been there in the trenches.

Are these typically, you know, five to seven year holds? I see that common in multifamily. I’ve seen people, you know, hit proformis faster than that.

Or are these longer term horizons?

Adrian Pannozzo (20:10)

I’d say on average, there are at least minimum of five, minimum of five, but again, our property’s cashflow. So, um, there’s really no need to cash in after five, although we do have the option to do that, but I’d say closer to 10 really is the sweet spot for us. Um, overall,

again, I find after, before 10, you, you, you may be leaving some money on the table, obviously, but.

Closer to 10 years is our sweet spot to hold the properties for.

Dylan Silver (20:44)

We are coming up on time here, actually, Adrian. Any new projects that you’re working on, and then as well, what’s the best way for folks to reach out to your team?

Adrian Pannozzo (20:55)

Yeah, so we locked up nine new sites that we’re going to be building nine new apartment buildings. We locked up these sites in 2025. So we’re breaking ground this summer. We’re just waiting on our permits from the city.

and we’re breaking ground this summer. this summer we’re shovels in the ground on nine separate apartment building sites. So it’s going to be a busy summer. Super excited about that. Our goal for 2026 is to replicate our success in 2025 and match those numbers. So we’re definitely busy. ⁓ We’ve got a lot on the go and yeah, as far as connecting with us, we’re all over social media.

So our company’s generational wealth creators, Generational Wealth Inc. Obviously, if you go to Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, punching my name, they’re on the screen.

Or like I said, go to the social media sites and punch in Generational Wealth Inc. ⁓ You can find us everywhere for sure.

Dylan Silver (22:11)

Adrian, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for your time.

Adrian Pannozzo (22:15)

Awesome. Thank you for having me.