Building a Real Estate Empire from Architecture

Dylan Silver (00:00.812)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show we have Sanjeev Sharma out of Seattle, Washington, real estate investor out of Seattle, Washington. Sanjeev, welcome to the show.

Sanjeev Sharma (00:14.123)
Hey, thank you.

Dylan Silver (00:15.938)
I always like to start at the top, getting to know my guests. Sometimes I find I do these shows and then it’s like old friends talking on the podcast. how did you get into the real estate investing space and did your journey start out there in Seattle?

Sanjeev Sharma (00:30.517)
Yeah, actually, am my journey is kind of interesting. I am actually an architect and I have I used to work for a very big corporate firm and I was always wanting to kind of do my own stuff. So I would approach a realtor friend of mine saying, OK, you know, if you ever have any jobs for me, new houses, anything.

I want to kind of start my own outfit. And he said, why don’t you get a license? So I said, you know, maybe I don’t have a personality for a real estate agent. And I don’t know. I think it’s kind of like a little, you know, something which I had not dreamed of. So he said, why don’t you try it? No harm, you know, I’ll, you know, hang your license with me and then you will never even call me once you get a license. And the same thing happened.

I got my license, I got points of my friends wanting to buy through me and that was it. So it’s kind of interesting and I do have a little bit of both parts of the real estate just like new construction and buying, selling older houses.

Dylan Silver (01:49.004)
Let’s dive in Sanjeev. So you go in, you’re apprehensive. I don’t know if I’ve this is for me architect. You know, I don’t know if I’m the selling side of it, but you go in and you get some deals flow. You get deals coming in. How did you find those first buyers? they were they friends of friends? Was it people that you knew? How did you find those people?

Sanjeev Sharma (02:07.753)
They were actually good friends of mine. said, you know, if you’re jumping into this, then we owe you some kind of support. So they were my first clients and one after the other. Back then, you know, I had just gotten married. Some of these guys were single. Some of them just got married. So it was kind of like an interesting spectrum. And just one after the other, it just kind of started unfolding. And I never realized that, maybe so many people latch on to my…

as part of my journey and part of their journey.

Dylan Silver (02:39.106)
You know the biggest thing that I notice about real estate professionals and operators who have been in business for decades is they’re problem solvers. Right. So coming in apprehensive I don’t know if it’s for me but you come and you realize hey I have these friends getting married. They need places to stay. They want to support you which is a testament to how good of a friend you are because of course they’re not going to support you unless they like you as a buddy and they need a home. So who better to buy it from than their buddy Sanjeev. So from there

You’re doing architecture and you’re a licensed realtor. And so what’s the next steps look like for you? Are you at that point thinking to yourself, okay, let me dive into being a realtor because I’m seeing traction pick up, I’m seeing proof of concept, or are you thinking, let me just keep this on the back burner for now?

Sanjeev Sharma (03:13.149)
Right.

Sanjeev Sharma (03:28.003)
Honestly, didn’t kind of I just Went with the flow and I thought it was good, you know people were liking what I did and I offered a lot more what you call acumen and And knowledge to all my clients so my goal would be to kind of just make sure They are they become very knowledgeable at the end of it and maybe they don’t even really need me But you know, so I just share everything

from like the site to the specifics of the house to how it was built and also how it could be altered later or if you want to add like another floor to the building. I mean, I have all the pieces of the puzzle, you know, and I’m a very good interior designer as well. So I would offer them solutions, you know, help them with paint selections, cabinetry, anything at all which goes with the house or construction.

Dylan Silver (04:28.142)
So at this point in time, helping your friends, you’re doing a little bit of both from the architecture and the being a licensed realtor. Are you thinking in the back of your mind, okay, how do I get my own portfolio? How do I start building my own rental portfolio? Are you thinking about that at this point or is this a distant thought at that point?

Sanjeev Sharma (04:49.649)
I think I was thinking of a rental portfolio but unfortunately somehow I just got so slammed with everything that it just kind of started coming to me from like different directions so I did a few things but not like a really very jazzy real estate portfolio but a lot of my friends ended up getting a portfolio through me so you

Dylan Silver (05:10.765)
Okay.

Dylan Silver (05:14.488)
So let’s talk about your growth. A lot of people will start out on the outside looking in. My journey was I sold cars, right? So I sold cars for the better part of five years. Before that, I was working in restaurants. And when I think about real estate, it was so foreign to me, Sanjeev. I didn’t know anybody who was a realtor, like in my family or my friend group. Most of my friends sold cars or worked in restaurants. We just lived, we lived at these places, Sanjeev.

Sanjeev Sharma (05:37.53)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (05:43.374)
12 hours a day, right? And so when I initially started to think about a different life, I had no way in. And so it was analysis paralysis to the max, man. was, it was, I’m going to meetings once a month to RIA events, but it really wasn’t enough. I probably did that on and off for like years, like probably four years. Finally, it got to a point at my job.

Sanjeev Sharma (05:43.437)
Right. Yeah.

Sanjeev Sharma (05:55.567)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (06:09.804)
where I just felt like I had to make a move because I was dissatisfied with the conditions of really my life. And it wasn’t one thing, it was so many things. And so I made the switch in my mind, got into real estate, but it wasn’t until I went to a paid conference where I paid a substantial fee to go attend in Texas that I really had a shift because at that event I saw a

Sanjeev Sharma (06:21.209)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (06:37.164)
not just high net worth individuals, but people who are willing to have a conversation with me about their portfolio about their wholesale deals about how to get these deals under contract. And so that was that was around August of 2023 in Addison, Texas. So fast forward today, I’ve probably done around 20 assignable contracts have my real estate license and then funny enough living in DFW Metroplex, so almost in the same area where that conference was. What was the journey like?

Sanjeev Sharma (06:48.408)
Right.

Dylan Silver (07:07.055)
for you Songjeev and where did it take you to today and how are you active today in your business?

Sanjeev Sharma (07:13.165)
I think my journey has been pretty steady except for you know the time when recession came in then you know lot of people were not wise but I did have some really wise clients who ended up buying a lot at that time and you know a lot of my clients are like really high up in organizations so they have a lot of wealth of knowledge so actually I get to learn a lot from them too I mean they get to learn more about the

development aspects or construction or building or investment. And I get to learn more like how they kind of look at real estate as like a strategy. Because they would read up, I would read up. And when we discuss, we just end up finding a lot more new ideas to kind of do the same thing.

Dylan Silver (08:06.808)
So when you’re building and you’re scaling, you’re getting more clients, you’re active as an architect, active as a realtor, did you go into niche fields? Did you explore new fields within the real estate space? Did you get any additional experience that we haven’t discussed already? What was your growth like in the real estate space?

Sanjeev Sharma (08:28.076)
I think one was, I I started doing some commercial ones and I’m very good at land. So I could help my clients identify land where they could build and then I could give them into a service where I can fashion a house for them. So that was one. And then the second one, which was kind of more a recent development, it’s when the market is kind of going up. So I’ve had like a lot of clients buy Ramblers.

and we actually got permits for a brand new house and sold the house with the permits. They would make a lot of money just doing that. you know, so I would produce renderings, animations, and then just pitch them to different clients and some of the other builder would just lap it up.

Dylan Silver (09:16.974)
Let’s dive in there because I’m not familiar with this process. I live on a ranch, so we have goats out here. You’re developing these land. I’m assuming there’s a city sewer on the land, or are you having to get city sewer to go to this development site?

Sanjeev Sharma (09:23.314)
Okay, I know it.

Sanjeev Sharma (09:37.962)
Sometimes you have to the sewer is little bit far off. We do a calculation how much is it going to cost put it in the project cost other times sometimes we leave if the sewer is too far or other times when you have a septic system then you know it helps so you just have to kind of make up your mind and look at the numbers how whether it’s worth the effort of kind of developing some of the lots which I have done really well were very very difficult lots where

Everybody said you cannot build and with persistence and with working with like civil engineers and like environmental guys, kind of fashioned like, know, not like huge homes, but still like about 3500 to 4000 square feet homes.

Dylan Silver (10:23.31)
So as a developer, a lot of people aren’t aware of this, but the city doesn’t pay to develop this. The developer pays to develop it. And so the exit strategy is typically you sell the lots that you develop. Now, when we’re talking about bringing city water, sewer, electricity, right, to these properties, that’s a huge task. It involves so many different layers to it. Have you?

Sanjeev Sharma (10:30.409)
Of course, yeah.

Dylan Silver (10:46.911)
faced obstacles at all with bringing the utilities out there or has it been smooth sailing in the developments?

Sanjeev Sharma (10:53.552)
I think it’s been reasonably smooth sailing. The more problem is with the, sometimes with the city, because you know how any government structure works, nobody wants to take responsibility. So they’re like, okay, it’s very obvious you can do this and there’s no wetland, but there’s nobody with the firm authority saying, go ahead, do it, it’s fine. So we’ve always had to convince and convince and something which could just like take a month.

sometimes could end up taking like six months because cities kind of just like making sure nobody sues them in future. So they want to kind of make sure their end is all buttoned up.

Dylan Silver (11:34.082)
The difficult thing with this is when people are planning it, there’s holding costs involved. So you have to have all this and it quickly becomes expensive. I’ve seen some developments where I worry, they going to get foreclosed on or are they going to miss their payment effectively? Because it’s like the city hasn’t been connected to the development site and so they’re just waiting on something. let’s talk, let’s pivot a bit here talking about developing these areas.

Sanjeev Sharma (11:38.673)
Yeah, they’re holy cow.

Dylan Silver (12:00.544)
It’s a huge capital investment when you’re doing this. I’m imagining most cases you have partners and there’s heavy capital raising that’s involved in this. Let’s talk a little bit about that process for folks who may be unfamiliar with it.

Sanjeev Sharma (12:17.425)
So typically what I do is I try not to have like four disparate people kind of join a group because it’s not going to work out because sooner or later somebody says, so some, is mostly with friends or sometimes extended family where people know what they’re trying to get into. And what I do is I give them like a kind of like a crash course of, know, what you’re looking at.

Dylan Silver (12:37.165)
Yeah.

Sanjeev Sharma (12:44.154)
What are the expenses going to be? What is the holding? We kind of make an Excel chart of everything and try to go 10 % over whatever the cost might be so that there’s a buffer just in case there’s something else weird happens. then once people understand, think then it’s pretty straightforward, just like any other project. You’re just going groceries, you just have a list of things, you just keep taking it off.

Dylan Silver (13:08.056)
Yeah

Dylan Silver (13:12.962)
You know, we might go get a cabbage, had a lettuce, corn. We might go build a subdivision. It’s, you know, tomatoes and tomatoes. So, you know, it’s interesting because I’ve now spoken with folks who build everything from a gentleman who did land in Costa Rica. All he did was land. didn’t develop the land. He would bring utilities to it, or he might build a gate. I’ve spoken with people who do fix and flip.

Sanjeev Sharma (13:18.445)
Right. Yeah.

Sanjeev Sharma (13:37.326)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (13:39.894)
I’ve spoken with people who do land banking in the United States. I’ve now spoken with two developers. I spoke with people who build hospitals, right? And when everyone finds their niche, you still have to be able to adapt and to problem solve within that and then also look at market conditions. So as you’ve gone on in your career, I’m imagining it was an opportunity to develop that first one, that first subdivision, that first area.

Sanjeev Sharma (14:09.155)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Silver (14:09.228)
And then from there you saw, well, how else can I, where else can I develop? Talk us through the growth process of being a developer. How does one get into that position? and then what’s the growth like?

Sanjeev Sharma (14:22.754)
I think in my mind, I try to keep it simple. So I think in my mind, everything is just knowledge. So if you know how to kind of acquire a lot and then what are the 10 things you need to watch out and how much time is it going to take and then put a dollar number to it. And then how do you get that dollar number to work for you? So a lot of times, like I said, it could be four guys trying to get into it because they have a good buffer.

And also sometimes in the beginning somebody is trying it for the first time They’re not they have like somebody else to call fall back on and also discuss and not get so paranoid because sometimes if it could be single guy then he would say man, is like what did I get into you know, so then there’s a lot of that people are not really risk-taking and Sometimes it’s like whoever takes a risk

Dylan Silver (15:11.906)
There’s a lot of that.

Sanjeev Sharma (15:20.483)
I know some of my clients have risen to such enormous, I have one client who has 20 plus houses, one client who has 32 plus houses. So it’s kind of like a fascinating journey. I kind of learn from them also and then it’s kind of like a mutual kind of a thing.

Dylan Silver (15:40.632)
So you went a different route than a lot of my guests in a sense where you decided I don’t want to do the landlord work. I don’t want to be a landlord. I want to be the person that builds what the landlords have. How did you decide in your mind to make that distinction and to not go out and do what a lot of real estate investors do, which is multitask? You said I’m really going to drill in into developing and that’s going to be kind of my niche.

Sanjeev Sharma (16:09.505)
Actually, such, mean, developing, won’t call it my niche. I mean, I do everything. I mean, I do commercial real estate. I do single family homes. Because a lot of these developments, don’t happen, you know, they don’t just come to you every other day, you know, so you still have to kind of sustain. But I think a very important part of my journey is I try to be as creative as possible because of my training in architecture.

Dylan Silver (16:17.143)
Okay.

Dylan Silver (16:24.824)
all the time.

Sanjeev Sharma (16:38.809)
And I try to look at everything very creatively and see, know, how better can we do this? And there’s an energy which I derive from, you know, tasks like these or projects like these. Yeah. So which kind of keeps me going and, know. So I mean, I do a little bit of everything right now, including land development. But a lot of the I’m trying to go towards luxury homes.

and then also finding and developing a really beautiful piece of architecture with somebody can just walk in and say, wow, this is so nice. I want this, you know.

Dylan Silver (17:18.222)
I like to pivot a bit here, Sanjeev, and talk about the status and the state of architecture in the United States. if we look at the grand scheme of American architecture, when I look at it right now, it feels like most of our buildings are very much cookie cutter. And we’ve gotten away from some of the Gothic, like, art deco type of buildings. And sure, there’s modern, very modern looking buildings that go up.

I do feel like the status of American architecture is not as heralded as it once was just because of cost saving, right? I’m curious to see what your perspective is on that and maybe give me some optimism that we’ll see some cool looking buildings here in the future.

Sanjeev Sharma (17:53.98)
Right.

Sanjeev Sharma (18:01.343)
Yeah, think it totally depends on, you know, see, a lot of people, they’re so busy with their lives, they just want a house, you know. And so there are very few who say, okay, you know, I want this house, but I want it as a statement of my personality. Or, you know, this is something I associate with because, you know, somebody goes for a really modern house. I mean, that kind of just shows his, that’s what his taste is. Otherwise somebody could just go with like, you know.

like whatever the builder dishes out, know, like a mass production, they don’t even consider, you know, who is the neighbor or how the windows looking into each other. There’s no sense of detailing when a lot of the builders, because they’re hugely driven by profits. But I think people have a very, very satisfying kind of living once they go into a house which actually they saw getting developed.

Dylan Silver (18:47.885)
hugely.

Sanjeev Sharma (18:58.313)
kind of rising out of the ground and then also where they had like very important decisions to make in pretty much every room, how the bed is going to be positioned, how many skylights and what is the street appeal of the house and you know, and even I had a client who actually wanted to, you know, build a house on the waterfront. He didn’t tell me about the lot. He just took me on a boat saying, look at all these great houses. And then he showed me his part to say, you know,

Can you do something really really very cool, know, so that anybody who’s kind of zipping in a boat, he says, oh man, that’s a great house, you know, I said, wow, that’s pretty cool. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:38.402)
That’s, you know, so true. know, most people generally aren’t focused on, you know, being an expression of themselves. But I do think for such a substantial investment, it would be nice if there could be more of that. On some level, people will do maybe some level of interior design, but I would, selfishly would like to see more of it. I think when people, for instance, there’s a lot of folks on

on the podcast who are Airbnb hosts, right? And I see people really go all out with their Airbnb hosting and it gives like a personality, right? To the point where some of the best Airbnbs will actually be designed by interior designers or people who studied that. And I think it’s a huge, huge benefit to real estate operators in general to have an eye for that. And if you don’t have an eye for it, partner with someone who does because like just as an example, as an agent and as an agent yourself,

If you go into a home that’s been properly staged versus a home, same home, nothing in it. Huge difference.

Sanjeev Sharma (20:43.335)
Right. difference, yeah, of course. Just like a little bit of tweaking here and there also makes a big difference. Sometimes you don’t have to go all lengths to kind of, you can still make it very, and not everybody has a knack, so I like you point, like you rightfully said. But sometimes people are scared, oh, they don’t want to part with just a little bit of design fee, which will actually make every single.

day of their life so memorable. I still remember one of my clients, he asked me to just design a fireplace and something and I came up with like a concept of fire and ice and stuff. And after it was done, he said we never sat in the living room, now we sit in the living room, just like turn the fireplace on and just keep admiring what you did for us. So yeah, so I thought I was pretty kicked with it.

Dylan Silver (21:31.598)
Wow, what a testimony.

Dylan Silver (21:36.888)
That’s fantastic man. Yeah I think some of these you know trades I think people are looking at cookie cutter ways especially with technology where it’s at right now and how often do we actually see blueprints. Real estate is one of the few places left where people put out on a table these big blueprints right. But you know it’s I don’t want to say that it’s a.

Sanjeev Sharma (21:55.873)
Right, right, right, yeah.

Dylan Silver (22:02.168)
that it’s not as important as it once was, because it is to me. I’m just seeing less and less of it. But Sanjeev, we are coming up on time over here. I would love to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for giving us your time today. Where can folks go to get a hold of you?

Sanjeev Sharma (22:17.817)
Actually I’m rebuilding my website and you know so it’s going to be on it’s going to be called www.sanjeevsharmaare.com and then I have a design website it’s called www.designlyric.com so basically what what that means is

getting your design to be extremely lyrical, have a lyrical component to the design, take it to the next level. And then I have another website which is kind of helps people visualize. So these are people who have already have a house or already working with somebody, but they somehow want to see a visualization. So I help them do a formal visualization.

complete with like three dimension animation, everything. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (23:24.45)
We lost you for a bit there, but I you’re back now formal visualization

Sanjeev Sharma (23:27.21)
No. So basically, complete visualization of the house before it gets built so that they know, maybe this will be, when I’m talking about, this window needs to be more expressive, something on top, or, you know, there’s like a balance. So when I really show them in three dimensions, they understand, you know, wow, you know, I didn’t know that you got into this level of detail.

Dylan Silver (23:48.088)
do all that.

That’s tremendous, Sanjeev, thank you so much for your time, for helping educate our audience about where the architecture space is at today, developments, just, man, wearing so many hats. Sanjeev, thank you for your time today.

Sanjeev Sharma (24:06.25)
Okay, thank you so much,