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Show Summary
In this conversation, Joe Torres shares his journey in real estate, emphasizing the emotional aspects of buying and selling homes, the importance of building relationships, and the impact of market shifts. He discusses his personal experiences, including overcoming adversity and the defining moments that shaped his career. Joe highlights the significance of education and tools for buyers, as well as the value of community and collaboration in achieving success.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Joe Torres (00:00)
And I remember during that time, very dark time, right? The physical pain was the easy part, actually. It was the mental component. It’s you can’t do what you normally could have done. I couldn’t even get up and flick a light switch on, right? Because both legs were broken, right? Just, you know, and now I had this whole new vision of even vantage point. I’m in a wheelchair. I’m looking at the world in a different, different level. And I was like, okay, well, this was humbling.Quentin Edmonds (02:00)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. I’m excited to be here today. And y’all know I say that and you know why, because I have someone here who again, we get to look at things through their lens, through their perspective. We get a possibility of learning something new that we’ve never heard before because each one of our journeys are different. And so I have an expert today that’s an expert in him, expert at what he does.But not only that, he’s just a really good businessman. mean, really good. He’s helping people learn how to break barriers. I love how he talked about really not emotion, getting people to move from the emotion and really move just off of facts, off of data, being stern and still in your decision making. And so I’m so excited to introduce you all to Mr. Joe Torres. Mr. Joe, how you doing today,
Joe Torres (02:52)
I’m doing well, man. I’m happy to be here. I appreciate it.Quentin Edmonds (02:54)
Absolutely, man. Happy to have you here. And listen, Joe, man, I want to dive in. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. You want to give us a little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got started. We love the hero’s journey. So we love that. And then, man, tell them a part of the world you went, where you represent and where your markets are, And so, Joe, you got the floor,Joe Torres (03:15)
Very good. I always, you know, it’s funny you said, what’s, what’s my goal? My goal people ask, I go, I want to do as little as possible, but I’m really terrible at it. Right. I’m really, really bad at it. So it’s, it’s all about fulfillment, but yeah, I, I represent right now the Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill market, or what we call the triangle market in North Carolina. But I’ve actually been here about 19 years, originally moved down from, ⁓ from Brooklyn, New York, whichcan be sometimes polarizing because, you know, it’s like, you know, all northerners came down here, ⁓ but I promise I’m one of the good ones, I promise. ⁓ And I’m trying to keep away the bad ones, so don’t worry, I’m blocking and tackling. Absolutely right, absolutely right. But yeah, so I’ve been down here 19 years now, I absolutely love it. ⁓ And you know, what’s funny is actually what brought me down here was in fact real estate. I acquired my first property at 21 up in New York.
Quentin Edmonds (03:57)
Eating both of you.Joe Torres (04:12)
city for my parents, because I didn’t want to rent. grew up renting a really small apartment and sharing. I use the word sharing very loosely a bedroom with my sister, which meant I had a pillow, right? That’s basically it. So I was like, well, there’s a better way to live because I go, ⁓ I see on TV, I started traveling for work a little bit. I saw different parts of the country and I realized, wow, there’s, this is not a normal kind of thing. This is very specific to where I am. There’s got to be a better way. And then I got an opportunity to move to North Carolina and I jumped on it. And soYeah, and that’s kind of what’s what spearheaded the opportunities to invest in real estate at an early age So I was 21 by my first one and I was 23 when I bought my second one mmm, and then you know ⁓ And then kind of kept going from there and then and once again as I mentioned ⁓ earlier was you know bootstrapped everything I’ve done is my own money
So all the risk all the reward they say
Quentin Edmonds (05:58)
Absolutely, No, thank you, Joe, man. Thank you for taking us a little bit on the journey of how you got to where you are now. I know you and I, you we talked, hopefully, you know, this is okay. I know you talked about how you got your MBA. You got licensed. You’ve been in North Carolina for 19 years. Like you have really navigated your way to success, right? And so I have what’s saying why I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? Man, no matter what we go through in life.Every stop along the journey, even in our childhood bits of that journey makes us who we are now. And I love how you talked about sharing a room with your sister, having a pillow. So destiny has taught you many moments. would love to know what has destiny taught you about yourself? What has it revealed to you? You some people is like discipline. Some people is like self-awareness. So what does destiny reveal to you Joe?
Joe Torres (06:51)
That I’m stubborn. So part of my journey in life was ⁓ a defining moment. think we all have defining moments in our life, right? I’ve had maybe more than a couple of other people and some have had more than me, but we all have our own journey and not one is better than the other. And I like to state that because I’m not any better than anyone else, right?Maybe I’m a little bit more stubborn. Maybe I’m a little bit more arrogant in certain areas. I try not to be, but you know, it is what it is, I guess. So you start with in 2001, I was there for 9-11. I saw the second plane hit firsthand. I was a freshman in college. I was right downtown. Found myself stuck in Manhattan at 18 years old. And now I’m having to walk back into Brooklyn and, you know, numb, right? We, the world was numb. But what I loved,
was how everybody came together. It was one of the most amazing things to witness. you have to scrape out the positive, that was a big positive. So that kind of changed my trajectory. I actually changed the schools. was going to school for something else and I wound up changing majors and schools entirely because of that event. Then there was another event in 2003 for those that may ⁓ remember and were in the region, we had a huge blackout. went from Canada all the way to the Northeast and now I found myself
It was August of 2003. remember because it was really warm. found myself walking over the bridge again into Brooklyn and I’m like, okay, okay. There’s something, there’s gotta be a better way. Right. And then the opportunity to move to North Carolina happened. ⁓ Then we all know what happened in 2008, right? June of 2008, I left one company, the one that moved me to North Carolina. And then I moved to a bank in June of 2008. I went to work for a bank.
Quentin Edmonds (08:39)
Yeah.Joe Torres (08:41)
Two months later, the financial industry went to ground level, right? And then in 2012, I was in a head-on collision on a motorcycle where ⁓ I was hit and I had 22 bones broken from head to toe. I was in the hospital for over a month. I was in a wheelchair for about four months and had about six plus months of rehabilitation.And I remember during that time, very dark time, right? The physical pain was the easy part, actually. It was the mental component. It’s you can’t do what you normally could have done. I couldn’t even get up and flick a light switch on, right? Because both legs were broken, right? Just, you know, and now I had this whole new vision of even vantage point. I’m in a wheelchair. I’m looking at the world in a different, different level. And I was like, okay, well, this was humbling.
So, and that’s where the stubborn part comes in, right? I say that because no doctor, every doctor said, it’s like, we don’t know how you’re here. And so I looked at that and I was like, okay, well, here’s our second act. Let’s rock and roll. Let’s make the best of this. and that’s what I started to do. And I was like, okay, I’m not gonna sit and be a play a victim. We have to really figure out.
our own journey, no one is going to push us as hard as we will push ourselves, right? No one cares about us more than we care about ourselves. So ⁓ I was like, okay, well, what’s the way to, how do I do this? If I want the things that I’m seeing other people get, what do I gotta do? So I decided to go back to school and got another undergrad, ⁓ finished that undergrad. And then that’s also when I got my real estate license. A couple of years before that though, ⁓
In 2017, actually, I bought my first multifamily property and I realized that real estate is a way to grow wealth. Yeah. And ⁓ but real wealth, right? Not not little bits here and there like real wealth. And I recognize that multifamilies were the way to go. But residential multifamilies, I want to make that pretty clear. Two to four units is a residential multifamily property. Right. And with that, you actually can get a normalized somewhat loan.
Quentin Edmonds (11:12)
Yeah.Joe Torres (11:35)
And you know, it’s not going to be a balloon payment like you would on a commercial property, which is five units or more. Right. So I was like, let me stay in the area because once again, bootstrapped all my own money. I wanted to be able to actually afford this. You have to put X amount down all these things. And so, and I wanted multifamily because I wanted to be able to spread the love. Right. If I have a vacancy, I still want to be able to cover as much, if not all of my expenses.So I wanted at least two units. So that’s what I did. So I bought my first multifamily, then I bought a small building in another area. Then I bought another property at the coast for short-term rental. That all happened in a roughly 18 to 20 months span. ⁓ and that’s when I also got my license because the agent that I was working with, you know, she was like, quit the crap, go get your license, come on this side. You clearly know how to do this and you can really help people understand how real estate can, can boost them up. And so that kind of,
That’s kind of the thing. That’s kind of where it all, you will, the defining moments kind of dictate our path a little bit.
Quentin Edmonds (12:35)
Yeah, man, you are the personification of destiny has no wasted moments, right? Like normally I would ask people about their adversities, but man you were so ⁓ blessed us with the gift of your transparency man that you already talked about the adversity that you’ve been through hit on, you know Accident, know seeing the world from a different vantage point. I mean all these things that you Overcame like you said has taught you thatI’m a stubborn SOB. ain’t going nowhere. ⁓ Absolutely loving man. And I thank you, man. I thank you for sharing. I thank you for showing us some of the journey because there are different people at different parts of their journey. And they need to know that sometimes things are smooth. It may be smooth now, may not be smooth always, but either if it’s rough right now, it’s not going to be rough always. And so again, man, I appreciate you for your transparency.
Joe Torres (13:33)
I appreciate that. always say this, this too shall pass. This too shall pass. Right? So that is, I just wanted to add that piece. Yeah. I appreciate that. Thank you.Quentin Edmonds (13:33)
YeahLove
that this teach up as I say that quite frequently myself and so great quote. Yeah, man. ⁓ so let me ask you, what are some of your next real estate goals? Like, what are you looking to solve a scale next?
Joe Torres (13:57)
So I’ve, you know, I think as an agent, right, I work for a smaller firm now and I really, I really like it. But the smaller firm means what that means that you can’t hide, right? So, you know, and I mentioned before, I also have a couple of other companies, I have a healthcare service and a healthcare SaaS company. And those have also been in similar, you know, seasons of up and down, right, where we’re dealing with some big large macro components thatThose are rough right now too. ⁓ and I have employees with that, which as another level and layer of, of complexity and dare I say fun, but I love it, you know, and I’m constantly having to negotiate. So it’s interesting. I take all the negotiations across, you know, all the different places that I operate in.
Quentin Edmonds (14:36)
Yeah.Joe Torres (14:51)
and I use the strengths from each of those and bring those into those different areas. But from a real estate specific standpoint, ⁓ I really enjoy working with buyers.I work with buyers and I think that that’s from what I know, which is anecdotal, I’ll take that. That’s not the norm. A lot of people really like working with the listings because, you know, that’s it’s, I don’t wanna use the word easy because,
Quentin Edmonds (15:42)
HmmJoe Torres (15:57)
I think people from afar think that this is a fairly easy thing to do. Real estate is hard. It’s hard. Okay. It is. We are our own CEO of our own corporation, essentially. Right. And no one’s knocking down our door to be like, Hey, help me sell or help me buy. You know what I mean? We have to go. have to hunt. We have to kill and, know, and stuff like that. So what I’m noticing now, there’s a tremendous shift in the market and the Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill market has kind of been.a really strong market, even in downturns. ⁓ But even here now, we’re facing a shift from a seller’s to a buyer’s market. ⁓ so I think I want to leverage and lean into that more. So I just started a campaign last week with this marketing company that I work with to kind of get out there and let’s tackle some buyer leads. ⁓ So that’s kind of the focus. And then I have a listing that I want to sell. So, you know.
Quentin Edmonds (16:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.Joe Torres (16:55)
But yeah, I think just working more with more buyers over the next six months or so, I think is really what I would like to do. And educate, I love the educational component. Love it.Quentin Edmonds (17:05)
Yeah, I love it man. I mean you really kind of walk me up to my next question because you like working with buyers, right? You like educating so this means human interaction. This means building relationships So I want to get your perspective on building relationships within business within real estate Wish it was your perspective. How do you go about it? Has it had to help you has it served you like what’s your perspective on relationship building within business and real estate?Joe Torres (17:35)
You know, so it’s everything. Relationships are everything everywhere, right? We as a human species, in my opinion, are we’re communal in nature, right? So we, you know, you have some people like, Oh, I don’t care. And I was like, at the of the day, we all do like we all want to do. You know, it’s the Pareto’s law, right? 80 20 80 % or more people are really good people. Right?Now don’t get me wrong, every garden has a weed. Okay. We got people that are not really great people that are out there to really do harm. Okay. We want to do everything we can protect, but most people are really good people and they really want to help and they want to do right by people. I’ll go back to my 9-11 story. Man, we were all strangers that day and everybody helped one another immediately. Right. So that’s who we are in our core. So
relationships are really huge and staying true to your word. If you’re to say something that you’re going to do something, do it, right? Follow through. My strong suit, ⁓ and my wife would probably argue is my weakness, is the fact that I work always because I love it. And I think a differentiating factor for me over some others, not all, but some others, is my response rate. Is I respond immediately.
regardless of time, right? If you send me something at 10 PM, guess what? I’m going to send you something at 10 or 1 PM because you deserve, you deserve that. Okay. So I think it’s all about respect is, is the biggest thing from a relationship standpoint. So, you know, that is the big thing. It’s, I’m going to give you me a hundred percent of me you’re going to get. I’m going to give you every bit of knowledge that I’ve learned all the bumps in the road that I’ve had to, you know, cruise over and deal with.
is that’s kind of what you get. So it’s just being open and honest because ⁓ the truth, it’s just easy, right? I have couple of sayings that I live by and one of them is transparency builds trust.
Quentin Edmonds (19:42)
You’re my favorite guy. I’m writing that down. Go ahead, please continue on writing that down. That’s so good.Joe Torres (19:49)
Another one of my sayings that I truly live by is hard work is easy. It’s finding the right opportunity that’s difficult.And here’s my analogy to paint a visual to it. This comes from my accident, by the way. You know what the hardest part of the gym is? Showing up. Once you’re at the gym, you’re there, work out, do the work, right? So that’s why I say hard work is easy. Right? ⁓ So it’s just, so that’s kind what I live by. You know what I mean? Because people are going to find out you’re only as good as your word.
And that’s why I also serve on a couple of nonprofits. In fact, we had a board meeting just yesterday where we just had an event where, you know, last year we raised over half a million dollars for our nonprofit. And now we can go and rock and roll and do a lot of good. you know, I’m not sitting here on forever money. I enjoy, I love giving back, right? And so if I can, I will. And there’s moments that I’m going to need it too. You know what I mean?
I have some, I’m long-winded here, I apologize, but I have a couple of people that ⁓ I’m working with even for one of my other companies where it’s like, look, we’re getting impacted by insurance reimbursements right now and so we’re a little short. Can you just work with me? I promise I’m gonna make it right. And they’re helping me out. There’s a couple of bobs and weaves that I gotta have and I get it. They’re upset, they should be, but I promise you I’m gonna make it right.
because that’s who I am, right? So that’s what you get, me 100%. And that’s how I think you need to show up always.
Quentin Edmonds (21:33)
Man, I love your perspective, man. I love, I want to double down on when you saw about hard work is easy, right? Cause I think that flew over some people’s head, right? I’m going to say exactly what you said. I’m going to say it a different way. We choose hard every single day. Stop, listen, it’s going to be hard to not go to the gym. It’s going to be hard to go to the gym.It’s going to be hard to not, you know, to not be focused. It’s going to be hard to be focused. You choose a hard every day. So you’re working a hard every single day. Like you said, it’s the opportunity. You got to see the opportunity that’s in front of you and work hard towards the opportunity that can possibly change your life. They can possibly give you peace. They can possibly give you eternal rest. And so, I hear you, man. I love your story, man. Transparency builds trust.
Man, you drop so many good nuggets, man. I really appreciate you, man. I really do, man. So let’s do this. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you,
Joe Torres (22:46)
So a couple of ways, have my Instagram is joetorres_realestate. And I’m trying to be as active as I can on that. My other is my website for my real estate specific, is ⁓ welcomehomewithjoe.com.Quentin Edmonds (23:02)
Oof, I loved it.Joe Torres (23:03)
And one of the things that I have on there that I think is somewhat unique, right? We all want to have a little differentiating factor here. You know what I mean? Once again, I’m not creating gravity here. I’m not splitting atoms. I’m aware of that, right? But one of the things that I have on my website that I think is very beneficial to people is my calculators. So on my website, I have calculators that people can look at if they’re selling a home, buying a home or looking to buy an investment property, they can actually put all the numbers in and the different calculators.They can put all the numbers in, they can actually get real directional numbers on, okay, if I have this much of my balance on my loan and I have this much of, ⁓ you know, commission that I’m going to provide to the agent that’s going to help me sell, what am I going to net in my pocket? Right. And then we put all the numbers together and it gives a breakdown. And then the same thing on the investment side. If this is how many doors, what’s the, you vacancy, what’s the loan, what’s the insurance tax? What am I actually going to cash on cash return per month? Right.
So it provides that directional information, because we go back facts over feelings, right? I say facts over feelings, data-driven decisions, and it provides you that. And one of the things though, and I just did this with one of my clients actually. She was like, hey, do we have to lower the price, right? Because once again, we’re in a more buyer’s market than a seller market. I was like, look, this is what I’m thinking, okay? Go home and answer my question. Don’t answer it right now.
This is the number I’m thinking, but I want you to go home, go to my website, welcome home with joe.com, right? Go to the calculator, put in the numbers and come back to me on what you know is realistic for you. And so she did that and boom. And now we just adjusted the price just yesterday because of that. So, ⁓ I just wanted to put that out there because it’s more of a tool than just a static page of information. I wanted it to be actually something that you can utilize. And that’s nationwide. It doesn’t matter, right? I mean, it’s, it’s whatever. So.
So yeah, joetorres_real estate is the IG, the gram, if you will. And then welcomehomewithjoe.com is my website.
Quentin Edmonds (25:06)
man. So Joe, listen, let me say three things to you, man. So first, thank you for your time, right? Because time is our most precious commodity. We do things to get our time back, right? When we got our time, we in control. So thank you for your time, man. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for the gift of your transparency, the gift of your vulnerability. You told us things today that you did not have to tell us. And for me, that’s a gift. So thank you for giving us the gift of your story. Lastly, man,Thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. I really appreciate you, sir.
Joe Torres (25:44)
I appreciate that as well. Thank you. Thank you for having me.Quentin Edmonds (25:46)
Absolutely, So listen, y’all can’t tell me y’all didn’t get the value out of this conversation I told Joe this is gonna be in this incredible podcast episode. I think we landed there, right? And so check check the show notes get in contact with Joe. Let me listen I love the website. So I’m gonna scream it out one more time. WelcomehomewithJoe.com You gotta go check it out. Welcome home. We want to welcome you. So I listen and I love Joe We had a great conversation check him outBut definitely make sure you’re subscribed here because I promise you, we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Joe. So sir, thank you again. And so everyone else got have a fantastic day.
