Go All In on Commercial Real Estate: How Noah Ruggieri Built a Multi-Asset Portfolio

Share via:

• Facebook
• X (Twitter)
• LinkedIn
• More

Subscribe via:

Show Summary

In this conversation, Noah Ruggieri shares his journey into the real estate industry, particularly focusing on commercial brokerage and investment in the Champaign market. He discusses the importance of relationships, specialization, and the dynamics of various asset classes, including mobile home parks. Noah emphasizes the need for trust and integrity in real estate dealings and offers insights for those looking to transition into commercial brokerage.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Noah Ruggieri’s Phone Number: (217) 367-1700
    • Noah Ruggieri’s Email: [email protected]

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Noah Ruggieri (00:00)
  What I’ve learned in my tenure and what I’ve been taught and what I teach is that you need to specialize.

  And when you’re a new broker in the market, it’s gonna be real, really tantalizing to come in and say, they’re willing to work with me, they’re willing to work with me. But that’s like a dog in a room full of cats, you know, trying to catch tail. And you’re just not gonna be successful. You’re gonna be successful if you become a market expert in a specific niche and you put your blinders on and you just go to town, because you can rinse and repeat all day long.

  Dylan Silver (02:07)
  Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is a commercial broker and investor in the champagne market in Illinois. Working across multiple asset classes, please welcome Noah Ruggieri. Noah, welcome to the show.

  Noah Ruggieri (02:23)
  Thanks for having me.

  Dylan Silver (02:24)
  It’s great to have you on here. I always like to start off at the top of the show by asking folks how they got into real estate.

  Noah Ruggieri (02:32)
  Yeah, great question. And mine is the age old story of nepotism, right? My dad’s been in the business for 50 years and been licensed pretty much my entire life. And so I followed in his footsteps with ⁓ much heel dragging and kick feeding though. It took me a few careers to get here.

  Dylan Silver (02:53)
  I want to ask you about growing up in the business because I have the exact opposite story. I had nobody in the business and when I got into real estate in my late 20s, everybody said, what are you doing? You don’t know what you’re doing. But growing up in the business, was there lots of conversation about real estate, about deals and so on and so forth?

  Noah Ruggieri (03:14)
  I wish I could say yes, I really do. However, he’d hit his thing and I was just an oblivious kid. I knew that I wanted to do real estate my entire adult life, but I didn’t get there right away. I just knew that it was a great way to build wealth. People make their money at their jobs, but they get wealthy by investing in real estate.

  Dylan Silver (03:38)
  Is family your family from Chicago?

  Noah Ruggieri (03:42)
  We had a lot of family in Chicago, but I was born and raised in Champaign.

  Dylan Silver (03:48)
  I want to ask you that’s right champagne. I meant I meant to say that the greater Illinois area my bad. I want to ask you about that that market in general Illinois in general. I mentioned Chicago you’re in the champagne area. There’s a lot of interest from folks across the country in investing but not just in their market in other markets across states. Do you see that same type of interest from out of state investors looking at champagne and other areas.

  Noah Ruggieri (04:17)
  We do. fact, Champaign is one of the only economic markets in the state of Illinois that has positive population growth and job growth year over year.

  Dylan Silver (04:27)
  Now you’re involved a niche down in the commercial space. Was it always that way or did you start off in residential? How’d you get into commercial?

  Noah Ruggieri (04:36)
  Yeah, no, by that time my dad was commercial broker still, of course, and I jumped right into commercial. I knew that I didn’t want to work nights and weekends and I didn’t want to be doing open houses or answering my phone at odd hours of the night because the color of the bathroom was wrong.

  Dylan Silver (04:52)
  So you said let’s hop into commercial. Before we hopped on here, I was asking you about the asset classes that you’re involved in. Commercial really encompasses a wide range of deals. Is there a specific niche that you work a lot with within the commercial space?

  Noah Ruggieri (04:56)
  Yep, 10 years to come up.

  On the brokerage side, I like to work with SFR portfolios. I manage some property and I’ve been involved in ownership in different asset classes between mobile home parks, office buildings, and neighborhood retail centers.

  Dylan Silver (06:15)
  I think some of those that you mentioned, you mentioned mobile home parks in particular have a lot to do with these land plays that are their own niche in and of themselves. You got a lot of people who are looking at new construction. You’ve got a lot of people who are looking at mobile home RV parks and storage facilities. But these can be some very interesting deals because they operate a little bit differently. How did you get involved in that mobile home park deal?

  Noah Ruggieri (06:44)
  Honestly, I live in Illinois. So my partner called me, he’s out in Colorado and he said, hey, you live in Illinois, do you want to be a partner on this? I said, sure, what do have to do? Sweat equity? Sounds good.

  Dylan Silver (06:58)
  Well, what was it you managed that one I’m assuming yourself

  Noah Ruggieri (07:01)
  Yeah, I do. ⁓ I do that from afar. We hire someone locally to kind of oversee the park. And then we’ve partnered with the local bank, actually, and all of our rent payments go directly to them. They have all our deposit slips out there, teller windows, and I can even email them and they’ll pay, you know, our basic park utility bills and property taxes and stuff.

  Dylan Silver (07:25)
  I want to ask you about when you’re looking at deals personally, you’ve been active across so many different asset classes. How do you find what the next good deal is? And then also, do you spend a lot of time looking at one specific type of deal, whether it’s mobile home parks, whether it’s multifamily, commercial residential? Is there any one thing that has your attention as an investor these days?

  Noah Ruggieri (07:51)
  The people involved, it’s not so much about the asset class or the asset, but it’s about the people involved and the partners that I can have and trust to work with me on the project, especially if it’s not in my backyard.

  Dylan Silver (08:04)
  I’ve got kind of the same mentality, which is when I hear folks investing in areas where they don’t have boots on the ground, I wanna know how in the world they do that, because it almost scares me away from it. I wanna have someone who I can call to go out there if I need some boots on the ground, some eyes on site. When you’re looking at these deals and you mention partners, how important that is, is it a lot of, you know…

  people that you’ve done deals with coming to you, bringing you another deal, is that a lot of folks who have heard of you may be ⁓ acquaintance of an acquaintance and they’re bringing you a deal and then you’re evaluating both them and the deal for the first time.

  Noah Ruggieri (08:43)
  Yeah, so I took this pretty seriously when I got into it and I started going to what’s called equity marketing meetings for licensed brokers all over the country. And I’ve been doing that almost eight to 12 meetings a year all over the country.

  I’ve built up a vast network of investors and brokers and I’m also part of the SVN franchise on the commercial brokers and that has over 2,500 brokers worldwide. And so it’s all about the network and if you can get the right network of people together I can look at projects in any market and go to my expert there locally and say, hey, what do need to know about this that I don’t already know?

  Dylan Silver (09:27)
  Do you have a, as someone who’s in the champagne market, do you have a preference as an investor in looking at deals in that area? Or do you see that when you’re evaluating deals, they’re coming from across the board, doesn’t just have to be located in champagne or in Illinois in general?

  Noah Ruggieri (09:44)
  Great question. As far as brokerage goes, 64 % of all commercial transactions happen across state lines. if my clients are buying across state lines, why wouldn’t I be looking across state lines?

  Dylan Silver (09:59)
  Right,

  right, you know, I think it’s one of these things where there’s leverage in commercial deals. So sometimes people can think they need to have more knowledge about the deals. There’s a greater level of risk. But at the same point in time, you mentioned a lot of this is larger capital, larger leverage, partners from outside of the area. So you do have to get a bit ⁓ creative when I want to pivot a bit here, Noah, when comparing some of some of these deals, like for instance, a mobile home park,

  deal to multi-family. ⁓ Do you have, ⁓ I don’t want to say a preference, but do you have ⁓ a more bullish outlook on one asset class versus another?

  Noah Ruggieri (11:17)
  So I say there’s more buyers out there for multi-family in general because more often times than not people understand that and there’s more money to be made in mobile home parks because there’s usually more upside and sellers that are more capable and willing of doing creative deal structures.

  Dylan Silver (11:37)
  It’s a huge thing. You know, I think right now, especially there’s a lot of buzz surrounding the mobile home park space because there seems to be an influx of private equity, capital and folks from really all across the board taking a look at some what you could consider distressed assets and saying, well, how can we ⁓ really expand upon this? I want to pivot a bit here, Noah, and ask you about brokerage on the commercial side.

  and your feedback as someone who’s been doing it for a while, if we have agents listening who may be looking at getting into a commercial from residential or maybe looking at starting a career in commercial, do you have any ⁓ bits of gold or feedback for those listeners?

  Noah Ruggieri (12:23)
  Yeah, go all in. heard recently a guy tell me who worked as a coach and mentor and trainer. And he said, when you get started in this business, all you have to do is work half days. And I laughed because I was thinking, you know, eight hour days, that’s not so bad. You know, four hours. He was like, how many hours are in a day? And then I eat in that 12 hours a day. you know,

  Dylan Silver (12:43)
  Right.

  Noah Ruggieri (12:47)
  If you really want to advance, then that’s kind of what you’ve got to do. So have some money put aside. If you are working another job, make it nights and weekends because prime business hours are prime dollar hours. And you want to make sure you give yourself plenty of runway, like 18 months to two years to get a solid pipeline going.

  Dylan Silver (13:07)
  You mentioned that that runway there’s a lot that goes into that right? mean you can’t remotely compare the deal flow of the residential space to Commercial and that can take some getting used to for folks who may be making that Transition you had family in the business. So maybe even though you there might not have been a whole lot of conversation subconsciously You knew that what the expectations to set for for folks who may be looking at making that

  that transition, do you think that they need to be, you mentioned all the networking that you did and getting tapped into to mentorship and the like, do you think that folks need to have that experience in order to make that transition? They need to be tapping into those types of networking opportunities and communities?

  Noah Ruggieri (13:54)
  Absolutely, I don’t think you have to have all green lights before you hit go on your car But yeah, you’ve certainly got to make a plan and execute it over the course of you know months and years It just makes sense that that’s what your focus is gonna be you could even transition out of residential a little bit and take your clients and say hey You know, we sold you this house. We know you’re a local business owner. Do you know anyone who’s looking for you know retail space and if you really are confused

  about what’s going on, find a local commercial broker and partner with them and split your fee as much or as little as they’re willing to do so you can get experience because at that point what you’re going to be learning and the education you’re getting is going to be more valuable than the dollars you might get.

  Dylan Silver (14:41)
  I want to pivot a bit here and ask you about the regionality of commercial brokerage because A, you’re not going to have the volume, but you need to have, would say, exponentially more expertise. And there’s a degree of jargon, of language that comes into having these higher level conversations that can be frankly intimidating for some people.

  But also you do need to have that regional expertise.

  When folks are looking at getting educated and making that transition potentially, and then also for existing agents in the commercial space, do you feel like there’s one key to growth, to securing more deal flow, or is it a lot of moving things that come together to really make a great commercial agent?

  Noah Ruggieri (16:12)
  Great question. I’m the managing broker, broker of record, however you want to call it here. I’ve got ⁓ six people that hang their license with me right now. We just went to the C5 Summit for NAR in Chicago last week.

  What I’ve learned in my tenure and what I’ve been taught and what I teach is that you need to specialize.

  And when you’re a new broker in the market, it’s gonna be real, really tantalizing to come in and say, they’re willing to work with me, they’re willing to work with me. But that’s like a dog in a room full of cats, you know, trying to catch tail. And you’re just not gonna be successful. You’re gonna be successful if you become a market expert in a specific niche and you put your blinders on and you just go to town, because you can rinse and repeat all day long.

  Dylan Silver (17:02)
  The idea of niches is something that I think a lot of people are aware of but don’t necessarily understand the power of it. In commercial, yeah, you know.

  Noah Ruggieri (17:12)
  Can I give an example? Yeah, so an

  example is how many types of doctors are out there? How many doctors? Yeah, I mean you go to your general practitioner and he tells you, you’ve got an issue with your collarbone. And he sends you to a referral for an expert.

  Dylan Silver (17:19)
  I don’t know. Tons.

  Noah Ruggieri (17:33)
  because there’s a doctor who works with just the bones. And there’s even down to skin cancer of the nose. I mean, and how much do those specialists make when you go, a general practitioner makes the least amount of money out of all of the different types of doctors. The more you specialize, the more you narrow your field of focus, the more money you’re gonna make and the less time you’re gonna spend doing it.

  Dylan Silver (17:36)
  Right.

  That’s great point. That example specifically I think rings home to a lot of people who maybe had to get an MRI recently or something like this. we are coming up on time here though, Noah. I do want to ask you before we go here, you’ve got a diverse range of experience. You have experience working with investors across ⁓ states. You’ve got experience as an investor yourself personally.

  If you had to take a look at all of this, is there one central theme that you feel like makes an effective real estate operator?

  Noah Ruggieri (18:30)
  Yeah, quality relationships and good integrity and moral standards. So if people can trust you and people like you, they’re going to do business with you.

  Dylan Silver (18:35)
  Amen to that.

  Noah, if folks are interested in maybe looking at a commercial deal in the champagne market or if they’d to get in touch with you from anywhere across the country, how can they reach out to you?

  Noah Ruggieri (18:48)
  Anywhere.

  Yeah, so my cell number, if I can give that here, is 217, 217 area code, 3671700, and my email is noahruggieri at SVN.com. And I work in all…

  Dylan Silver (18:54)
  Go ahead.

  Noah, thank you so much

  for coming on the show here today.

  Noah Ruggieri (19:08)
  Thank you Dylan for having me.