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Show Summary
In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Vladimir Nemchinov, a real estate investor focused on buy and hold properties. Vladimir shares his journey into real estate, discussing his strategies, challenges, and lessons learned over the years. He emphasizes the importance of consistency, financial literacy, and the need for careful tenant management. As he looks to the future, Vladimir expresses his desire to acquire more properties and offers advice for aspiring investors, highlighting the significance of starting early and doing thorough financial analysis.
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Vladimir Nemchinov (00:00)
Start early. That’s probably a good lesson. But also do the math. I guess better than what I’m doing. Like I’m saying, I’m a small time and I’m going deal by deal. I do not do enough analysis. And something tells me now that I’m working on the other side and not only putting all the eggs in the real estate basket, I’m also going to mutual funds and retirement accounts trying to build that up.A lot of times all this work not worth it because when you can have 10 to 12 % return in mutual funds with zero work, that’s hard to beat, know, so you have to have a structure your deals very well that you actually make money.
Michelle Kesil (02:17)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. And today I’m joined by someone I’m looking forward to chatting with, Vladimir Nemchinov, who does real estate investing with buy and hold properties. So excited to have you here today, Vladimir.Vladimir Nemchinov (02:35)
Thank you, excited to be on the podcast.Michelle Kesil (02:37)
Awesome, so let’s dive in. First, for those who are not familiar with you and your work yet, can you share what your main focus is?Vladimir Nemchinov (02:44)
my main focus personally or with my real estate.Michelle Kesil (02:47)
with your real estate.Vladimir Nemchinov (02:49)
Real estate. Okay. Just want to make sure. Right now I am a weekend warrior. I have several properties. I would like to be acquiring going forward a property a year that I would hopefully buy at a good price, ⁓ turn, put tenants in and hold it forever.Michelle Kesil (03:05)
Awesome. And which markets do you operate in?Vladimir Nemchinov (03:09)
I am in Cleveland, Ohio.Michelle Kesil (03:10)
Awesome. And how did you get started as an investor?Vladimir Nemchinov (03:13)
⁓ I started as buying a first, my first property was a duplex. So house hacking, you might say. We lived in one property or one unit and then the other one we fixed up. Then we moved into that one and rented out the other one. Still have those tenants 12 years later.Michelle Kesil (03:30)
Awesome. So what does your current investing strategy look like?Vladimir Nemchinov (03:37)
Currently I’m doing BRRRR essentially. My previous homes I bought several with cash. Once I stabilized them, made repairs, put tenants in, then I cash out, refinance, use the money to buy next property and so on.Michelle Kesil (03:51)
Awesome. And what do you feel are the main keys that have allowed your business to grow?Vladimir Nemchinov (03:57)
Consistency, probably. It’s a lot of saying no and using money elsewhere, but keep it in the business. I always separated my personal finances from real estate and I was able to accumulate money so I can buy a next property or put a down payment or ⁓ buy with cash. Then we do repairs at the speed of cash sometimes and through the process over and over again.Michelle Kesil (04:20)
Awesome. And what are you looking forward to when it comes to other opportunities for your business?Vladimir Nemchinov (04:29)
Well, I would love to acquire at least one property a year. I’m a very conservative investor with my personal finances and the same as with real estate. So I would like to acquire one a year. I’m also considering paying off what I have because at that time it would be a nice ⁓ equity and a lot of monthly income, passive income.Michelle Kesil (04:52)
Sure. And what are some of the main things you’ve learned through investing?Vladimir Nemchinov (05:45)
wow. There’s a lot of things I learned how to deal with tenants. I’ve learned a lot of repairs. I started from nothing, not knowing anything. Now I’m actually running a maintenance department where technicians report to me and I have to check their work remotely essentially based on what they say in the pictures. So all the repairs I’ve learned, I can pretty much rebuild a property, which I don’t want to do at this point. I learned management.with tenants, I went from going around every beginning of the month and collecting all the cash to not going anywhere and everything being done online. So saves a lot of time. I’ve learned from cutting grass and bunch of properties to hire it out, to put it on tenants. So less work, less management is on me. So ⁓ now knowing vendors around, I can outsource the work actually to other people that would do very good.
quality repairs. So those are in a nutshell things that I learned through this experience.
Michelle Kesil (06:44)
Yeah. Do you have any stories you want to share of some challenges or hurdles that you’ve overcome?Vladimir Nemchinov (06:50)
The challenging situations. Well, I do personal finances on the side. And that’s one of the important things to me. When I came to this country, I didn’t have anything and I had to learn through credit cards. I did not know what interest was. And the hardest thing for me probably to see is when tenants struggle due to making mistakes andordering DoorDash. Like I said, my first property was a duplex where we lived above our tenants and we would see pizza delivered back then before DoorDash. Pizza would be delivered to them and then when the first comes, can we pay you next Friday? And that is all the time and the realization how people don’t know how to manage money. That’s probably the hardest thing for me. I do still have both my first and second tenants.
living on my properties, I’ve learned a lot of lessons what not to do with them from contracts to background checks to late fees, those kinds of little things.
That’s what I have. I can come up maybe with other stories if you would like.
Michelle Kesil (07:54)
Yeah, maybe just if you want to expand on what are some of those tips to manage those financial moves so people don’t make so many mistakes.Vladimir Nemchinov (08:05)
Yes, unfortunately I have not figured that one out. It’s hard to tell people that what they’re doing wrong. You know, I have sat down with actually my first tenants. The funny, it would be funny, it wouldn’t be so sad story with that when I would have to look at their payment and they would say, I cannot pay it on the first, I can do next Friday, which would be, let’s say, seven, 10 days later. And I would be like, okay, but you got paidtwo other times previous month and they’ll be like, no, I didn’t. I was like, yes, you did. Because I knew they were getting paid every two weeks. And I literally had to look, okay, you’re getting paid seven days from now. That means 14 days before that day you got paid and then 14 days before that. it, no matter how you slice and dice it, it would be two payments at least every month. And two times a year, you will have extra payment as well. If you can manage your money and just live off of two payments, you have one.
bonus is what I call it twice a year and I had to literally walk them through their calendar and show them that you in fact have paid got got paid twice previous year and now you cannot do I have anything to show for it so that’s pretty painful but also how do you not know that strange
Michelle Kesil (09:18)
Right. And do you know, like, what would some solutions be for that? Is it just like a more awareness tracking? What would you suggest?Vladimir Nemchinov (10:02)
Unfortunately, I can’t suggest much. Like I said, both of my first tenants are still with me and both tenants are in this situation because back then I did not do background check. I would be like, hey, at my place of employment, anybody looking for rent? you’re looking for rent? Okay, you look like this in person. Let’s move you in. Both of them are still with me and the second person actually I’m about to work on eviction for him. Same problem.was looking forward to paying off his car. I was like, what you gonna do now with all the money that you don’t have a car payment? I’m gonna give it to my wife and buy another one. You just got off the payments. And now he has a nice truck, much nicer than I have, but he can’t make payments. Something happened with his job, no emergency fund. This is personal finance. And unfortunately, like, can’t be waiting. Mortgage is not waiting on me, you know. I am, because of my reserves, I’m better off. So I’m not struggling myself.
because of them not paying. But unfortunately, I offered to create a budget. I like that. Let’s do this. We can set up all your payments. We can look at all your payments. We can cut down whatever you don’t need, what you want, like pizza deliveries, like we have all bunch of subscriptions anymore. You can forego that for actually being able to pay for the place you live at, you know?
Not rocket science, however, it is hard. We deserve things. We want to have what we want and we don’t think about the first, the rent.
Michelle Kesil (11:25)
Yeah, I can understand that. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that story. So what are you most focusing on solving or scaling to next for your business?Vladimir Nemchinov (11:36)
Currently, I’m looking, I’m actually refinancing the property that I bought last year to get some capital. And then from there, I’ll see what I wanna do, potentially improve our main residence, potentially move, looking into different options there. But with real estate, I like to, just like with personal expenses or as personal budget, ⁓ cut down on expenses, like some water bills, for example, and increase the rent.Every year, spring is coming, rent is going up.
Michelle Kesil (12:06)
Definitely. And are you looking to invest in other properties as well?Vladimir Nemchinov (12:11)
Correct, yes. With that money that I’m trying to get out, recapture from the property that I just rehabbed last year, I’m actually looking, there’s a property here in my market, a five unit building, that potentially would be one of the options that I can do, and instead of having a duplexes, I can go into a commercial, essentially five unit as it would be a commercial property. I could venture into that. So far, numbers work, seems to me.but I’m working on that.
Michelle Kesil (12:43)
Awesome. And how do you find the houses or the complexes that you’d like to invest in?Vladimir Nemchinov (12:51)
Not that sophisticated yet. I have bought through MLS and I have bought through wholesalers. I’ve been looking into the share of sales and such, but it’s a heavy capital upfront and my niche, you will, smaller properties, two bedrooms that I can buy at a low price, but then rent is not much lower than a three bedroom, for example.Michelle Kesil (13:57)
Awesome. What advice would you give to someone that’s looking to start getting into investments?Vladimir Nemchinov (14:03)
I cannot give advice. I’m actually a securities agent, so I can’t really give advice. So this is not advice, but I really like myself for young people to probably consider the house hacking. As soon as you can buy a property, would, back then, knowing what I know now, I would buy a property, back then would have bunch of roommates, it would be hustle.Michelle Kesil (14:10)
hahaVladimir Nemchinov (14:27)
but then my equity goes up, you know, with the mortgages, I have some cashflow from the roommates and from there, pretty much I would build what I’m building right now.Michelle Kesil (14:37)
Yeah, amazing. Is there anything that you wish you knew or did differently in your journey?Vladimir Nemchinov (14:44)
One of the lessons that kind of helped me to speed it up, I had a property that I bought for $13,000 and I was holding on to it for four years because I was renovating it at speed of cash. And I need to go after work and do all the work there and it was hard. When I actually started with this, with my current deployment, and since they were doing that, they were like, you’re losing money every month is sitting on the market, let alone years. And so…That helped me a little to switch my mentality instead of taking all this time to kind of focus to get it done, prioritize that, because then, from then on, it’s gonna throw out some cash, basically. So that was one of the biggest lessons for me in real estate.
Michelle Kesil (15:28)
Yeah, absolutely. And are you connecting with other investors, doing networking, anything like that?Vladimir Nemchinov (15:34)
I am not doing networking. I do talk about anybody who willing to listen. As I said, I work with, for the one of the biggest real estate companies here in Cleveland. So I do talk a lot and learn a lot, whether my CEO or other people who are in the industry, but I do not do anything on the side, no meetups. I have done it in the back in a day, my…growing up in real estate, bigger pockets, times, but have not since.
Michelle Kesil (16:03)
Yeah, awesome. And so is there any sort of like educational platform that you’ve used to gain some knowledge?Vladimir Nemchinov (16:12)
BiggerPockets podcast probably would be the only ⁓ source that I used. Now it’s all AI, so you can ask away all kinds of things and learn pretty quick and painless. But obviously experience and working with people who have done that is very, very important, very beneficial.Michelle Kesil (16:30)
Yeah, absolutely. What are you kind of looking forward to in this coming year? Maybe like shifts in the market or anything that you’re forecasting for real estate.Vladimir Nemchinov (16:40)
I’m not that sophisticated. I’m just going small scale. But once I have this capital from this property, tenants moving in on Saturday, finally. It took longer in the winter to get somebody in. But once I have the capital, now I can… my options are open right now again. So I’ll be able to either buy another property maybe, looking for specific deals that come by not often.or buying this commercial five unit building. That’s the plan for this year.
Michelle Kesil (17:15)
Awesome. That’s an exciting opportunity.Vladimir Nemchinov (17:18)
That’s about it. ⁓Michelle Kesil (17:18)
So,absolutely. And so is there any sort of main lesson that you would like to share as far as what you’ve learned as an investor?
Vladimir Nemchinov (17:34)
Start early. That’s probably a good lesson. But also do the math. I guess better than what I’m doing. Like I’m saying, I’m a small time and I’m going deal by deal. I do not do enough analysis. And something tells me now that I’m working on the other side and not only putting all the eggs in the real estate basket, I’m also going to mutual funds and retirement accounts trying to build that up.A lot of times all this work not worth it because when you can have 10 to 12 % return in mutual funds with zero work, that’s hard to beat, know, so you have to have a structure your deals very well that you actually make money.
Michelle Kesil (18:17)
Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. So before we begin to wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, learn more about what you’re up to, where can people find you and reach you?Vladimir Nemchinov (18:28)
⁓ Well, you can look for Vladimir Nemchinov on Instagram, Facebook. I do have a website, investsteady.com, where I help people ⁓ with retirement, essentially.Michelle Kesil (18:38)
Perfect, well appreciate your time and your story. Thank you for being here.Vladimir Nemchinov (18:42)
Thank you for having me.Michelle Kesil (18:43)
Of course. And for the listeners tuning into the show, if you got value, make sure you have subscribed. We’ve got more conversations with operators like Vladimir who are building real businesses and we’ll see you on our next episode.
