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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel podcast, host Skyler Byrd interviews Anthony Santillo, a seasoned real estate investor and title insurance expert with over 40 years of experience. They discuss Anthony’s journey into real estate, the evolution of the market, and the challenges faced by investors today, particularly in California. Anthony shares insights on the importance of multifamily investments, the complexities of title insurance, and strategies for navigating the current housing crisis. He emphasizes the significance of educating the next generation about real estate investing and the benefits of property ownership.
Resources and Links from this show:
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- Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
- Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
- Mike on Facebook
- Mike on Instagram
- Mike on LinkedIn
- Anthony Santillo on LinkedIn
- Anthony Santillo’s Phone number: (818)307-4767
- Anthony Santillo’s Email: [email protected]
Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode
Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Anthony Santillo (00:00)
went to an auction in 2008 and they had these prices, and I see these houses going for like,25 30 I’m like are these mobile homes or houses to their houses? Where’s desert hot springs? They north side of Palm Springs like well hell so I buy four houses I don’t even know where desert hot springs is that I don’t know where it was I’m like $25,000 30,000 for a house. I’m like, how can you go wrong? It’s a Kenny get a foundation So I went out there next day and I saw it and once I bought four properties I was vested I start buying stuff and I got all my friends one of my friends bought 15 a friend bought 10 a lot of them still own the properties out there I’ve got still some but for the most part they’re gone
So, yeah, it’s good luck. Luck was I had a lot to do with it.
Skyler (00:34)
Wow, okay, yeah, so.Hey everybody, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I am your host Skyler Byrd and today I am joined by Anthony Santillo. Anthony, thank you for joining the podcast. All right. I am very excited to talk to Anthony today. He has got about 40 years of experience, both in real estate investing and title insurance. He’s got a lot of information to give. ⁓ I’m really excited to get to talk to him today. So again, Anthony, thanks for hopping on the podcast with us. All right. Now,
Anthony Santillo (02:33)
Okay.Skyler (02:36)
anything since you’ve you got your start back in in your early 20s correct? All right what got you into real estate to begin with?Anthony Santillo (02:36)
Yep, correct.Well, I’ve always been a hard worker and saved a bunch of money, had a bunch of toys, the big truck jacked up in the 80s, and the boat and the ATVs, ATCs and all that kind of stuff. And my parents had property, so I figured I wanted to buy something. I just got my AS degree out of Glendale College, decided I was gonna buy something, bought a little fourplex. it seemed like the agent did that much and kinda misguided me on things, so I figured I could do a better job, got my…
license and it took off and gave me lot of opportunity to buy at that time because you see everything that’s out there available and at the same time I was able to make decent money and continue on my career and it got my first listing because I listed my building that I bought and 1031 exchanged that and then bought another one and 1031 just kind of got the ball rolling throughout those years.
Skyler (03:31)
Very nice. You know, I’m on a streak of talking to people that seem to have gotten their start in real estate because their agent screwed up in some way or another. And so they just said, no, I’m going to get my own license. I’m going to figure this out, which is great, which is what you got to do. All right. So let me ask you, many properties would you say throughout your career have you bought, sold? What does your portfolio kind of look like?Anthony Santillo (03:37)
HahaYeah.
Probably over the years, probably at least 100. mean, at one point, you know, back in the REO days, I mean, I think I owned probably, I bought 15 to 20 homes out in like desert hot springs where you can buy a house from, was, were selling, either it was foreclosed on or being foreclosed on, you know, or short sale. That’s everything out there. I bought them out of not even knowing what the area was. I was sitting there,
Skyler (04:07)
youAnthony Santillo (04:13)
went to an auction in 2008 and they had these prices, and I see these houses going for like,25 30 I’m like are these mobile homes or houses to their houses? Where’s desert hot springs? They north side of Palm Springs like well hell so I buy four houses I don’t even know where desert hot springs is that I don’t know where it was I’m like $25,000 30,000 for a house. I’m like, how can you go wrong? It’s a Kenny get a foundation So I went out there next day and I saw it and once I bought four properties I was vested I start buying stuff and I got all my friends one of my friends bought 15 a friend bought 10 a lot of them still own the properties out there I’ve got still some but for the most part they’re gone
So, yeah, it’s good luck. Luck was I had a lot to do with it.
Skyler (04:47)
Wow, okay, yeah, so.Well, hey, a lot of us, you you got to make your own luck. So you put yourself in a good place and you are available at the right time. So there’s nothing wrong with that at all. And most of what you’ve done or everything that you’ve done right has been in California. All right. So obviously, besides the pricing out there, what have you seen as one of the biggest changes in the real estate market in California?
Anthony Santillo (05:44)
Yeah. Yeah.Yeah,
From the beginning till now, gosh, back when we were doing it was a two page contract, now it’s like 100 pages. Now it’s DocuSign, which back then you had to sit there and sign all the paperwork. I was a realtor, so I remember having to go to the client’s homes and here’s the contract and filling it all out, line by line, and they’re reading, and they get the engineer that’s reading every single line while you’re sitting there waiting to just sign it. Now no one even reads anything. You DocuSign click, click, click all the way down the line.
You find out you signed something off you didn’t really pay attention to when you did it now. it’s all the disclosure stuff that now you’re covering it. There’s so much more paperwork involved than used to be. And there’s so much more really liability-wise too on that part of it. So it has changed a lot. And it seem like it gets any easier. It just seems to get harder and harder all the time.
Skyler (06:44)
Yeah, paperwork changes everything and I think every industry is kind of seeing the paperwork just increase constantly. Luckily, we’re not killing any more trees nowadays, but it is still a pain. But let me ask you, what have you kind of focused on as far as real estate investing? Do you mostly do single family, multi-family, any commercial in the portfolio?Anthony Santillo (07:03)
Well, it’s funny. So my parents migrated here from Italy and Italians love properties when they get here. And one of my dad would always tell me, he said, look, always buy multifamily. says, you know, if things get tough, you can always move into one of units and have the other ones rented. If you buy a house, you can’t rent out bedrooms in your house. He said, so when I grew up, we always had, we live in the front house and there’d be back units. And then down the line, my parents had enough money, they bought their single family.So my thing was always buying multi-family. was a big into the multi-family. Everything was two to four units for the most part. And then later on stepped up and bought some like eight, 10 unit buildings. But most of it was just a small, my sweet spot was a two to four unit, you know, kind of like the blue collar neighborhood. It never wanted to buy product ownerships. And it was funny, I a lot of friends in real estate. We were all realtors together and I’m buying the stuff that came in the lower blue collar neighborhoods and they’re all buying the pride of ownership stuff. And then.
Skyler (07:39)
Okay.Anthony Santillo (07:54)
It was in 92, whatever, when we that crash and they lost all their buildings and mine were still paying, you know, at the time the rents were $250 a month. You know, now they’re $1,250 a month. Things have changed a lot there too. Yeah, big changes.Skyler (08:03)
Yeah. Geez. Wow.Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, obviously you’ve got a ton of experience on the investment side of things. How did you actually get into title insurance, and when did that happen for you?
Anthony Santillo (08:16)
It’s funny, I sound so, but I have a friend of mine who is also a realtor with me and she called me one day saying, Anthony, I gotta talk to you. I go and talk, she goes, listen, I was recruited into, she was a realtor, doing success, which was I was recruited into title insurance. what do you think? said, God, it’d be a great job for you. You got weekends off, your evenings off, you got all your insurance benefits and all that.So she goes and she takes the job. So then she becomes my title rep and she’s working on it for like a year and a half. And then all of a sudden her and her partner asked me out to go to lunch. And so I go to lunch with them and they start talking to me saying, listen, we had it, want to go to lunch because we wanted to find out. Cheryl’s going to go back to Bakerfield and do title out there. And I need a partner, want you to partner. I said, oh, you guys are so nice. No, thank you though. But that’s not me. I’m, I was killing it in real estate. I was doing 42 deals a year. I was really busy.
and one of the top agents in three offices and they’re going, she’s like, she’s like, but Anthony, you told me it was a good job for me. I said, I know, you’re, yeah, you have your weekends and evenings off and stuff. said, I’m killing it right now. I got a wife and kids. I gotta make this money I’m making right now. And then when I got home, I told my wife and she’s like, what’d you say? said, are you kidding me? I said, I’m gonna cut my income by half at least. And she’s like, yeah, but we’d have a life. You’re never around. You’re always with the, you know, open houses. And so I went back and talked to them and.
You know, I worked out a deal and I said, it was funny because I got out of real estate that was in title at that point and nobody believed I did it. They’re going, yeah, right. I went to the caravan meeting, introduced it. I was like, yeah, right. You’re going to the title. That’s the bottom of the pecking order, you know? And then I had already gotten out my assistant. kept her on just to close all the escrow that I had going. And I bring my wife a check and I said, look, we’re never going to see a check like this again. was like a, back then it was a lie. was like $27,000 commission check. Never going to see one of these again. I hope you’re happy that made this change, but.
Skyler (09:58)
Yeah.Anthony Santillo (10:38)
her side of it, it was a great move because of what I knew in real estate. It took a while to get everyone’s trust in me because they all thought I’m going get all their clients and I’m going go back into real estate again. So that was tough at the very beginning part, but once they saw it, I knew what they were looking for. They said, give me a foreign package. You know, and I knew what they were looking for before they knew what they were looking for, but it’s worked out real well. That’s helped me on that part of it. It definitely kept my family together because real estate, can, you can work 24 seven and I’m a workaholic. So that’s pretty much what I did. It was all real estate.Skyler (10:48)
Okay.So you took all the connections that you had from working in real estate all the agents probably at your office everything you just had to get them over the fact that Hey, I’m not coming back. I’m not trying to steal everybody And it worked out very nice. All right Let me ask you with before we we started the podcast that you were telling me about something pretty interesting So can you can you tell everybody what are you seeing with with stepped up basis right now?
Anthony Santillo (11:12)
Yeah.Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
So, we’re seeing a lot of times, I’ve got a lot of friends that have gone through this. And in fact, I just got done doing a deal with, it’s like a relative of ours, and she had a stroke about two and a half years ago, had a really nice house. And, you know, we’ve been there many times. She’s been at every event ever in our house, weddings and everything else. And she was in her 90s and her friend was the beneficiary of the estate. so I was, you know, successor trustee with her to take care of it.
things happen. And my daughter was looking for buying a house. so she says, why does your daughter buy? I said, you know, thought about it, but it would have to work out the numbers wise. So then we come up with a number and everything is good. She goes, let’s sell to him. said, no, I said, you don’t want to do this, Katie. He goes, what do mean? Why don’t want to sell it to her now? I said, are you kidding me? I said, the capital gains on that thing. This is your inheritance. I said, why don’t we wait until she passes to sell it. And meanwhile, we’ll do is we’ll have the kids move into it and do a lease option. We’ll have it where
you know, they’re gonna pay enough money, because we had to have enough money to come in to pay in the convalescent, I’ll put 9,000 bucks a month. And so that was gonna use up all of her savings and everything else. once we were able to get them to pay, so look, we can get them to pay 8,000 a month. We’ll give them back a credit back, and we’ll do it for like a five year term. We know she’s probably not gonna last long, she was in her 90s, wasn’t doing well anyway, but she lasts a lot longer than we thought, it was like three years she lasted after, you she had her stroke and everything. So we’re just actually closing the transaction now, which we’ve,
we did is we paying 8,000 a month. We got a portion of the money back as credit. She didn’t have to pay, she’s not paying any capital gains because of the stepped up basis. at her basis, she would have ended up paying like 400,000 in capital gains. And now she’s gonna get basically that net $2 million. She would have ended up with a million six. So not only did she get the income this whole time, we had enough money to pay it. So otherwise it would have come out of all the savings she’s gonna get. So it worked out really for the buyers. And my daughter told us that,
She was bugging me going, Dad, when are we gonna close on this thing? Why can’t we just close escrow? I said, until she passes, you can’t close escrow. There’s too much loss to the beneficiary. I said, on top of that, what you’re paying technically when you get your credit backs on an option purchase, that’s way more savings than the tax benefits would ever give you. So just do what you’re doing right now. The longer she lives, the longer, better it is for you, really, in my eyes. So it worked out good for everybody. So it’s a really good way to, and I’ve talked to lot of people about.
when you get someone at the parent or somebody going to a convalescent hospital and they’re gonna have you paying this money every month and the one thing you don’t wanna do is become a landlord, get rid of all mom’s stuff, rent the house out and then mom dies the next day and now you’re gonna be a landlord and you got tenants in there and then you wanna sell it, you can’t sell it. And now you look at some of these areas, you can’t even kick people out of a single family without paying relocation fees. It’s like, it’s a nightmare potentially. So it’s a good way to keep things where you, and a lot of people don’t know about the lease option.
Skyler (14:04)
Yeah.Anthony Santillo (14:10)
explain it to them. But once they hear about it, it’s interesting. So it is a good way to prolong it and sell a property. And no one else is going to be able to buy it, not like they’re going sell it from beneath you. But you got to make sure the title is clear before that. We got to make sure that they have the authority to do it. We need to copy trust and all that kind of stuff. But that’s all clear. It’s something that could be really beneficial for everybody.Skyler (15:11)
Well, I’m sure it’s a little easier when you have the expertise that you do on the title side of things. So, but no, it’s, it’s interesting because when you brought that up, I, again, I was talking to somebody, you know, a few days back and that’s where he saw a lot of opportunity, especially in California was with, you know, deceased homeowners, things like that. And it’s, it’s interesting because one of the things thatAnthony Santillo (15:14)
Yeah, absolutely.Skyler (15:31)
or one of the buzz topics out there rather is, you we’re in a housing crisis and, you know, we need homes, we need family homes. And, you know, you hear other people saying, why do you know, why are these people that are, know, 85, 90 years old, like, sell your home where you can, you know, move into a condo or something like that. And it’s, like, you’re going to get taxed in insane amount, especially in California, you bought your home in 19, you know, in the 60s, like you’re trapped, right? You don’t have an income anymore.Anthony Santillo (15:56)
Mm-hmm.Skyler (15:59)
But this is where some opportunity to actually find homes for the right way to come in. So that’s awesome. Excellent.Anthony Santillo (16:05)
Mm-hmm. Hopefully Trump comes out and gets rid of capital gains and that happens. Huge. But we’ll see if that works or not. But if it does, it could be huge forSkyler (16:10)
Yeah. yeah.Anthony Santillo (16:15)
People are trapped in their homes. mean, they’re $4 million home. They want to go in a small little home and they can’t sell it because their kids are to lose a million dollars of inheritance by them selling it and going into a $2 million home. it could be a million dollars in capital.Skyler (16:29)
Yeah.Yeah, absolutely. mean, especially if you want to stay in the actual, you know, in the area where your family is. Again, if you come from a place like California, you know, I’m sure you’re not going to want to move to rural Indiana or something like that, right? Where something, some of that might make sense, but yeah, it’s a
Anthony Santillo (16:46)
Well, the thingis that people are trapped right now because of our rates are so high that they can sell their house by the time they pay their capital gains and they go from, you know, selling their $4 million home, buying a $2 million home, and then they’re paying their property tax are based on a $2 million now compared, it’s going to cost them more to live in a smaller home than it costs them live in a $4 million after paying capital gains and a new, you know, set up new tax base on there.
Skyler (17:08)
No, no, that’s a that’s a really good point too. All right, so let me ask you, mean, with your decades of experience in in the California real estate market, I mean, what do you see as opportunities right now ⁓ on your side?Anthony Santillo (17:21)
You know, I know it’s kind of funny because I got a lot of my friends in the industry and they’re they’re still doing flipping I get a little nervous about the flipping idea. I’ve never been a flipper I bought properties with the intent of renting them out and if the markets good we’ll put on the market and if we can sell it for the right price great if not mine every time I bought anything was always with the idea that I’m gonna fix it up and I’m gonna rent it out and Then I’ve tried for a month and if I can sell it in a month great Otherwise, my idea was buying it with a number thatthis makes sense for me to buy it and I can rent it out and it pays for itself. That was what I always did in the past. The market, there is some buy opportunities. If somebody can come in with the right creative financing or can make the numbers work, I don’t mind a negative cash flow in situations. A friend of mine listed a little duplex in Eagle Rock and it was occupied and they could not sell that thing because they had to paying 750 rent on a duplex and they were asking like 850 for the thing.
And nobody’s going to buy it. You’re stuck with these tenants. You could be stuck with them forever. Unless you got kids that can move into it, you know? And they just paid like, I think, $30,000 a piece to get them out. Yet the price stayed down the same. I think that’s a great little opportunity. I mean, if you buy something like that at $800 in a good neighborhood, put a little bit of money into it, it’ll be… I mean, Eagle Rock’s a great little neighborhood. It’s a popping area. So there are opportunities out there, but it is hard because once they hit the market, everybody’s out there looking at it.
Skyler (18:18)
Yeah.Yeah.
Yeah,
Anthony Santillo (18:42)
Difficult one.Skyler (18:43)
absolutely. what is it there in California now? Is it like, is it 15 years and then there’s complete rent control? Is that right? Or am I a little off on that?Anthony Santillo (18:50)
⁓You know, it’s different. mean, Pasadena passed the worst rent control, I think, in California right now. It’s awful. And, you know, I never thought that it would happen. the more crazy part about it is you got a self-chosen rent control board. There’s 11 of the ⁓ people are tenants and there’s one property owner on the board. What opportunity is a landlord ever going to have?
where 11 to 12 people are all tenants. You’re never gonna be able to have an opportunity to change anything. They’re trying to make it where, if, you gotta pay relocation, of course, on stuff. I mean, that’s, everyone’s got relocation. But they’re trying to make the, they’re trying to, actually, right now, they’re trying to roll rent back to 2021. You might have bought a property this year based on a certain amount of rent, and now you’re gonna roll the rents back to 2021, and you have no say in the matter? I mean, that’s just ridiculous. So it’s gotten difficult. So, and I don’t know where,
Skyler (19:32)
Yeah. ⁓Yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Santillo (19:43)
where the safe, in California, I don’t know where the safe haven is. mean, it’s like, even Glendale’s very conservative and actually has a pretty good decent rent control, but in that situation, they have a relocation where you pay one month’s worth of rent, fair market rent, for every year they’ve been there, up to six years. So if they’ve been there eight years, you pay six months worth of fair market. Now, if the tenant’s paying 2,000 and fair market’s 3,000, you gotta give them $18,000, even though they only paid you 12,000.in that, you know, it’s crazy. So it’s happening everywhere. Burbank’s now pushing it. And I don’t know why, you look at the area that have rent control, they’ve got the worst rental market because people, I’ve got a guy that’s in one of my buildings 48 years. He’s a guy that I just told you that I had to get a restraining order against. He’s been there 48 years. He’s paying 550 rent. He inherited $2 million worth of assets from his mom. Got a house and, you know, nice house and everything. He won’t move there. He’s crazy.
Skyler (20:15)
Yeah.Okay.
you
Anthony Santillo (20:39)
But he said, even if I move, I’m gonna keep this as a storage for my stuff and there’s nothing I can do about it. Your rent control. As long as he pays the rent, he’s paying 550 and I should be getting 2,000. I mean, that’s where it doesn’t work. People don’t leave.Skyler (20:44)
Yeah. Yeah.Yeah, well, obviously, would imagine, especially in California where the rents are so sky high, if they find themselves in that situation. I mean, yeah, absolutely. And even though we have that kind of situation now, ⁓ you still think it’s important to get your children into investing. I know we just talked about your daughter with that opportunity, but tell me why do you think it’s important for your kids?
Anthony Santillo (20:59)
They never leave.Mm-hmm.
Well, mean, I just think that the stability part of it is that, you know, no matter what happens, as long as you can afford, I would say, I don’t like the idea of, you know, people basically putting everything they have into it because things get tight, you lose a job, whatever. It’s very difficult. But renting a place is not easy either. I mean, if you look on rent a house and all of a the landlord decides next year he wants to sell it. Now you’re moving and it’s not cheap to move. And then where you go, what if, I mean, we got hit up here. I was near the eating fires and stuff. and that poor community has gotten.
you know, devastated and there is no that many rentals available out there. And then they started pushing that whole thing about gouging or whatever, you know, and the problem is you had a big, a huge demand for these places. You people lining up bidding over what landlords were asking for it. You know, I always think that’s something good that if you can get yourself on any property that numbers work, I even tell people, said, look, our areas are expensive. Buy something anywhere. I mean, if you go out to like Palm desert or some of those outside communities,
You can buy something, keep it as a rental. I said, all these young kids that work with me, got her to buy when she was like 23 years old, she was my assistant. I got her to buy her first property, I now you’re making good money, you gotta buy another property. So then she bought another one. So she’s got two houses in desert, she doesn’t live in either one, she rents an apartment, but she owns two investment properties that are paying for themselves. And you get the depreciation, and you get the tax benefits. And that’s one of the big things people don’t look at, you look at as an investment property, they’re just looking at what’s my cash flow on it.
You look at the tax benefits on it on the back end of it. How much you’re saving at the end of the year tax-wise by having the, you you’re able to get your 27 and a half year depreciation, you get to do all your improvements you got to write off and all that kind of stuff. It makes a big difference when you look at the end of the tax year, not just what your cash flow is. That’s about something, they got to own something. I don’t care what it is, they got to some kind of.
Skyler (22:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.Yeah, yeah, so.
Yeah,
absolutely. That’s a good way to look at it. Look beyond the cash flow, look for the ancillary benefits that you get. I like it. And yeah, and Anthony, first of all, we’re kind of coming up on time here. So just before we go, if someone would like to get ahold of you, if they need help for title insurance or anything like that, how can they get in touch?
Anthony Santillo (23:02)
Mm-hmm.You can just call me or send me an email. My cell number is, I always get it out, is 818-307-4767 or my email address is anthony.santillo, that’s S-A-N-T-I-L-L-O @ CTT.com and that’s Chicago title.
If you need any information, my real expertise beside the investment part is really title insurance. And that’s where I really kind of shine on getting problems cleared up. You’ve got a family situation. It’s really sad because I always tell people, let’s look at the title before we do anything, because mom may have forgotten to put it into her trust. And you got to, now you got to probe it on your hands. And that happened to myself. I mean, my mom had a couple of properties and she forgot to put one into her trust. And last minute we’re at the, you know, at the hospital having…
document, notarize the sign so we can put it into the truss so we wouldn’t have had to probate on our hands.
Skyler (24:08)
Wow. All right.Anthony Santillo (24:09)
⁓the time
Skyler (24:10)
It is absolutely tricky. But Anthony, no, thank you very much for joining the podcast. I know I got a lot out of it with all of your experience. And all of our listeners out there, if you got something out of this today, please hit the subscribe button. We have got more interviews like this coming down the pipe all the time. And we will see you on the next episode. Thank you.Anthony Santillo (24:29)
Thank you -
